Listening for Nuclear Tests at the Top of the World
Vložit
- čas přidán 11. 09. 2016
- At Qaanaaq, in Greenland, there's IS18: an infrasound station that's quietly listening for nuclear tests - or any other large bang. Here's what, why, and a few words the man who, for years, has been quietly keeping it running. Pull down this description for more!
I'm here because of Chris Hadfield's Generator Arctic - go check out everyone else who was on the trip, and have a look at tickets for their show at Massey Hall, Toronto, on November 12th! generatorevent.com
Thanks to all the team at Quark Expeditions - www.quarkexpeditions.com - who made it possible for us to get there, and whose crew and staff on board were just amazing!
Thanks to Elmo Keep - elmokeep.com - who not only held the camera for this, but who tracked down Svend Erik and got him to drive out to the station! There's a whole behind-the-scenes detective story there. She's also writing a detailed profile of Svend-Erik: follow her on Twitter to see it when it's published! / elmo_keep
Also on the voyage:
Ben Brown produced daily vlogs on board: / benbrown100
Norm and Joey from Tested are putting together videos from inside the ship: / testedcom
TimToTheWild is putting together beautiful footage: / timtothewild
PLUS: These folks took incredible photos:
Vivienne Gucwa: / travelinglens
Paul Colangelo: / paulcolangelo
Simone Bramante: / brahmino
AND: writing an album on board, singer-songwriter Danny Michel: / dannymichel
I'm at www.tomscott.com/
on Twitter at / tomscott
on Facebook at / tomscott
and on Snapchat and Instagram as @tomscottgo
I'm pretty sure Mr. Ascanius' voice can trigger the infrasound detectors. A voice like calving glacier. I love it.
I could listen to him for hours
It sounds like a very typical Danish person speaking English
I may be 4 years late, but I scrolled down just to see if anyone else noticed how sick his voice is
His speaking made my ears very happy, that's all I'm going to say publicly.
I should say: when Chris Hadfield says "we're" putting on a show at Massey Hall, he's referring to himself and his team. I'm just going to be in the audience!
Well that's a tiny bit disappointing. But still, sounds like something that was very interesting to be a part of
Oh, too bad. Would've loved to see your performance in another episode!
funny.... the nuclear detonation ban, yet we buy new nuclear weapons we cannot test to see if they work... and is a deterrent.... and we can only see if they work if it all goes belly up...
be funny if then, the government realise it was a big con and someone is sitting pretty with loads of money all this time...
Remember the inclusive "we"?
That where some crikey old computah's there... dot matrix printers and all. Saw a book on Windows 95 and NT Resource/development kit Those where obsolete even before the year 2000...
On the thumbnail it looked huge then you walked up to it, still good find while you were in the area though.
colinfurze omg how am I the only one to reply to you
I swear all "big?" CZcamsrs watch tom Scott
Hello colin
Colin colin HI
I’m not sure but I think they both worked together once.
This is the sound of a man who pledged his life to infrasound.
OH MY GOD ITS SVEND! MY PHYSICS TEACHER ACTUALLY TAUGHT ME ABOUT HIM SPECIFICALLY A FEW YEARS AGO! I MUST SHOW HIM THIS.
I hope you showed him within these 4 years.
Me too
Me too!
So they detect disturbances in the force. :P
We made mecha-jedi before actual jedi.
Lockirby2 this is not the tom you're looking for
I guess Obi Wan wasn't available
_I sense a-dammit, America!_
Kill me
Tom: I still cannot believe that you did this in the small amount of time that you had for it and knocked it out of the park. Just re-watched this twice. SO GOOD. Miss you.
I'm indebted to Elmo - she tracked down Svend Erik while I was hiking off trying to find the listening station on my own! I've given her a link in the comments - I'm looking forward to the results of the half-hour interview she did with him, when it's published. (And yes: let's get the Generator team back together soon...)
Can't wait for that interview either (along with Simone's photos!).
Miss you too, baby :(
floppy disks and nixie tubes. Pretty retro stuff. I like it!
Hey, if it's cheap and works for what you need, why upgrade?
+WhackyJ in AK indeed. I study IT but this old stuff is really intresthing.
I would have thought a nuclear test listening station would be a reasonably important thing. You'd normally upgrade as a precautionary measure as equipment has a finite life. If that 486 or whatever it is failed today, finding spare parts would be difficult, unless they happen to have their own stash. Once that stash runs out though...
Never change a winning team.
3hoursago
Well, when the 486's start to all die off and run out migrating to something else cheap and easy like a of the shelf ARM Processor DEV kit. For example, one could implement something like the CHIP Project or Raspberry/Banana/Orange Pi, etc. Super numerous, and of a very common and cheap architecture, also a significant step up from the 486. The Arduino (Atmel ATMega) and STM series ARM controllers are a bit too weak for the data collection, but they could serve as a dedicated interface controller between the custom hardware to one of the above mentioned ARM systems. I's also not too hard to use a Floppy Drive any of those either with a controller implemented in software (quite a few exist already) or a USB Floppy bridge. Could be done just to migrate, or to still use them as normal till the need to upgrade the storage system is unavoidable. Best part is, ARM based dev kits, although they keep improving over time, use pretty much the same dev enviroment regardless. The STM series is near universally Arduino compatable, the Pi boards can run a full Desktop OS, as well as the CHIP can run a full Desktop OS too. In fact, the QEMU virtual machine program could run Windows 95 by translating instructions from i386/i486 to ARM32/64 in realtime, to keep compatibility while the new system is being programmed. Mark my words, when they upgrade, it'l likely be to a *NIX based system like Linux/BSD running on some easy to replace ARM based embedded computer system. It's just cheaper to implement special hardware like that on systems with very low level hardware access. That basically means outdated i386/i486 hardware or modern embedded systems.
Svend's voice is so low that the detector will pick disturbance from it 🤔
2:40 FLOPPY LIVES ON
Yup, all the latest technology right there....
Also those chieftec dragon chassis... I had one like these when I was a kid... I'm 32 now.
And the nixitubes and that sick looking retro electrontube screen
Having only recently discovered Tom's videos, I understand I am late to the party on this one, but I was curious if the infrasound stations detected the explosion in Beirut, and they did! Here's an excerpt from the report:
"The Seismological Observatory (SIS) of the University of Brasília (UnB) located
the explosion occurred in Beirut, today, 8/4/2020, at 15:10:42 (UTC), 12:10:42 (Brasília time) and 18:10:42 (local time), using data from three infrasound stations of the International Monitoring System (IMS) network. (...) that explosion in Beirut may have released the energy of about 0.3 kilotons (preliminary calculations)."
There are really cool figures on the report, that show the waveforms they detected as well as a visual of how far away the infrasound stations are from Beirut, it's very impressive.
Hey, I worked with these systems in the Air Force back in the sixties. There was a whole alphabet of systems for detecting and analyzing "nuclear incidents" from stations all around the world, even places where we weren't supposed to be. For this "acoustic" system, there would have been 4 to 8 stations set out miles apart from each other. Each station would have arrays of pickup tubes going out a hundred yards in 4 directions and the pressure reading sent back to the detachment electronically. They could tell from what direction the infrasound came from. The results were passed on to Washington where it was combined with all the other detachments and monitored in real time.
This location on Greenland probably could not detect Beirut, but we had other detachments much closer.
Glad you made it back safely! Awesome video, can't wait to see more!
I could listen to Svend talk for hours. What a soothing voice.
Wow the clipping distance for that country is really terribly; can they not afford a more powerful graphics card.
the textures are also lacking... but playermodels are rendered beautifully
Right. We need a Greenland Graphics Extender to have distant land rendered instead of all the fog the devs put in to hide that the view distance only extended one cell into each direction.
+Nik Butler
+
+varana312
+
No long distance rendering is premium content and can you get it by paying for the dlc - EA customer support.
The Windows 95 box on the shelf, oh my god. That did make me laugh. P.S. I've really enjoyed the guest videos but I'm glad you're back, mr. Scott.
And the power supplies brimming with Molex connectors.
Why not Windows 95? Just because Windows 10 is out does not stop these machines doing what they were designed for.
Looks more like the Windows95 (and NT) Resource Kit books, the good old days when you looked up fixes and tricks in a book :)
+Jango Bobafett Ignorance must be such a bliss for you!
***** Call me Oog! I've never been stuck in Windows of whatever vintage. In my cave we only run Unix.
02:35 - can we appreciate the beauty of these Nixie tubes?
They are Numitron tubes, not Nixies.
@@williephuger Thanks! I was wondering what tubes those are.
The power of nixie tubes at work!
I noticed them too
Slight correction: Those are numitron tubes. They work like a 7-segment display, but use filaments like those in an incandescent lamp. Still pretty cool, though.
Vacuum fluorescent display?
You could not have timed this video better.
I've been completely away from the news for three weeks, so I had to look up why that was -- if I'd known, I'd probably have tweaked my script a bit!
Have I missed something or are you referring to 9/11?
Yesterday or so South Korea unveiled plans to raze North Koreas capital in the case of any nuclear aggression from them.
Edit: Also North Korean nuclear tests. I need to brush up my world-news-fu it seems.
North Korea did a nuclear test a few days ago.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-37331852
did it detect anything from north korea's recent test?
I've just had a reply from the folks at the Preparatory Commission, after sending them this video -- they're still collating all the data as I write this comment, but at least 25 of their stations around the world have shown it so far, so there's a good chance.
Boy this video had great/awefull timing depending on your perspective.
Ah right on, was wondering about this myself.
+Tom Scott how many stations are there worldwide?
I hate to nit pick but "would have shown" is not "have shown". Do you know if they picked up North Korean testing? Since we know they were testing, that would be a great way to know that the network works.
So much old tech in that listening station, just sitting there, quietly doing its job 20+ years after installation. Wonder if it'll make it to 50?
Also, unexpected Hadfield. Always a pleasure. He seems like a genuinely nice guy.
Wow that older guy his character was amazing, would be good to get a full documentary with him in it
Chris is an awesome guy. Got to work with him a little when I was working at the Canadian Space Agency... A real class act.
Jesus, Tom. You go away for three weeks to look at a nuclear detection facility and miss the nuclear detonation by mere days. If it were any other coincidence I'd laugh!
Great video as per.
this dude is living the life. middle of nowhere, nobody to bother him. just do your job, and live your life surrounded by nature.
Holy cow, you met "The Chris Hadfield" our most favorite Canadian spaceman..!!
If you guys don't know him search for the CZcams video called "Space Oddity by Chris Hadfield...He's just a legend you know.
Also a professor at my University
Where is your University?
University of Waterloo
He started there fall of 2014, immediately after I graduated unfortunately
I searched it and I it was like near Toronto and London, I was tottaly confused.
But now I get it Canadians have a city called London.
I remember meeting him at the Newark Space Centre (Newark UK not USA), what an amazing man, you Canadians should be proud of him
you should 100% be on the TV - you explain things so well
Welcome back Tom - it's great to see you *literally* on top of the world! :)
What a fascinating mega-listening station
It's cool that John Hurt looks after it.
Svend has an incredible voice and has a great way of telling something! lovely stuff!
that engineer has the most relaxing voice in history
I've been looking forward to seeing the stuff you found in your Arctic journey, but I'm even more excited that the days have been documented in videos! Time to grab the popcorn.
I bet that dude is great at telling stories to his grandchildren.
I LOVE CHRIS HADFIEKLD! It's amazing that you got to meet him.
fun timing that this video were to come out a few days after North Koreas 5th nuclear bomb test
I’m glad there is something like this it makes me feel like we are moving in the right direction. Moving slowly but at least it’s in the right direction
The danglish is strong with this one
This is some impressive engineering, thanks for sharing
Got this out really quickly! Well done! Also, great video!
That fence and the fog beyond it really does look like it's marking the edge of the map
Rewatching after realizing it was edited on ship (or at least a rough version of it was ready)
You're not the only one ;)
the technology is so old that there are still using floppy disk
Shipping anything out to a place that's so remote is incredibly expensive -- so if it works, and they've got spare parts for it, then it makes a lot more sense to keep what's there and well-tested!
Floppy disks are more secure and harder to hack.
they're*
In some cases they actually ARE more secure. They are physically larger and carry far far less data, making walking out of anywhere with stolen data more difficult. Transferring data off them is also a relatively slow process. I've had the 'pleasure' of working with a few government systems over the years that haven't been upgraded because the security evaluation on newer systems came with too many risks of breach and loss.
They're also reasonably robust, and 'good enough' to do the job in many cases. The cost of designing, building, and TESTING a replacement system often far outweighs just buying a few extra spares and carrying on for another few decades.
Floppies can be incredibly durable. I've got Commodore 64 games on 5.25" disks and Amiga games on 3.5" disks that still read fine today. The floppies of the late 90s and early 2000s were much less reliable than older ones, and you can buy archive-grade diskettes today that are just as reliable as the older ones from the 80s
Huge thanks for the shout out at the end Tom! So happy the awesome Vivienne-half of Adventuress was there with you! :)
Nice to see you back. Your guest contributors did a fantastic job while you were up there.
0:20
Tom: "In 1989..."
Subtitles: "In 1996..."
That's weird. I could understand if it misheard it and thought he said 1999 or something else that sounds similar, but where did the 6 come from?
Oh, never mind, according to this it was signed in 1996. I guess he said it wrong and he can correct the subtitles himself?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_Nuclear-Test-Ban_Treaty
And occasionally (usually), the subtitles are just plain hideous.
+Alex Knauth yep. also, unless the subtitles say "auto generated" the subtitles were written by a real meat popsicle. Except in the rare case (I have seen it before for some reason) whereby someone manually copies the auto generated subtitles to the human transcribed ones.
also, if it has little to no punctuation it's likely machine transcribed.
ergo, +Tom Scott needed to correct a mistake. he should probably do that via an annotation and a correction in the description as well.
They know both say 1989
Humm wonder if this picked up that explosion in Lebanon
I was thinking the same
This year mate its cursed
It probably did
Amazing. I feel overall better knowing these listening stations exist, even tho the need for them sucks.
chris is the coolest dude. I saw you in his arctic trip photos and it blew my mind. i didnt put 2 and 2 together and realized it wad the same trip
What a fascinating video. Something truly extraordinary that I had no idea existed, I'll have to do some reading on the systems/politics behind it all. Love your work Tom, keep it up!
Dat Stan Lee Scientist.
The data logging equipment is beautiful.
I like the quality of your camera. Good video as always
Is this research base a Dharma station? I'm getting that vibe.
Fascinating video, that was something I did not know.
2:47 I didn't realize this was a marvel production
Uhh no that’s not a good joke
I can't believe you put this together so quickly!
Yay, footage from your tour to the Arctic. Damn, is it foggy there. Damn, I'm still not asleep. Thankfully, your this time calm moderation will help me.
Dang! Mr. Ascanius's voice must have been setting off all the sensors!
I wonder if this picked up the explosion in Beirut
Well that was interesting, as usual. Keep up the great work Tom!
Loved the guest videos, Tom, but I missed you. Nice to see you back.
Were they able to detect North Korea?
Yes, I do believe that seismic sensors have detected large under explosion in North Korea
There is no need to detect North Korea - it's already been found, so you can just look it up on Google Earth. :-)
Benny Löfgren
Are you sure? I thought "North Korea" was a myth, like New Jersey!
I doubt it. This only detects atmospheric nuclear explosions. I'm pretty sure NK does theirs underground -- there's less fallout that way. In which case seismometers have the underground scene well and truly covered.
sion8 North Korea is more of a black hole - everybody knows they're out there, nobody knows what it's like in there and once you get too close you can't leave.
Location discovered:
Edge of the glowing sea
Underappreciated joke
I really enjoy your videos. Every day is a school day.
Great video!!
Så dramatisk - også står der bare Sven Erik, som stille og roligt fortæller om hvordan måleinstrumenterne virker - hvor sejt
375th like. No dislikes. Only the top tier sub to tom Scott
One dislike so far...must be from kim jong un.
Like to dislike ratio is now 4435:12. I wonder how well that correlates with the "oops-I-pressed-the-wrong-button" factor.
A fascinating video. A similar thing, to detect atomic tests, was tried out in Cornwall, in a disused copper mine, called the Kit Hill Tunnel. It was run by the AWRE (Atomic Weapons Research Establishment), and was called 'Operation Orpheus'. Test explosions (non nuclear), were performed through the late 1950's, and it was proved that information could be picked up on ground stations some distance away. It was run in conjunction with a similar American experiment (Operation Cowboy). The tests concluded, and the site abandoned in 1960.
You lucky so and so, getting to travel to so many interesting places.
For someone who is on top of the world, he doesn't seem that excited :)
Because Chris Hadfield was a Canadian astronaut and was 'above the world' on the ISS, rather than just on 'top' of the world.
1:25 Grandpanomaly????????
+Aephaxia
Where is his Grotto ?
I saw you talk about this with Norm from Tested, so I figured I'd check out your site. An amazing piece of tech.
This is a very interesting video!!! Thank you for sharing this cool info with us :)
People have stopped complaining about the lack of red shirt.
He's wearing one beneath the coat; I have x-ray vision.
Nathan Berrigan How would X-Ray vision show that?
I'm sure he meant infra-red.
2:46 windows 95
On the shelf
I wouldn't be surprised if some of those computer still ran it. After all, the programs managing that installation have probably been made to run on it and I doubt most of them have been updated since then.
Also a bit of Unix and Linux manuals too. One for Debian if my eyes are good enough to make it out.
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Windows 95 resource kit book, and Windows NT resource kit book.
If those cases runs something old still it's probably NT4.
Was I the only one noticing the Sperry binders on top of the shelves? That's pre-1986.
Chris hadfield is such a joy to have in any circumstances. Every time I think what I'm doing is normal and boring, he's just like "hey, chris hadfield here, to explain that what YOU'RE watching is ACTUALLY really cool! here's how:
+Tom Scott Welcome back! Nice video!
What are those plastic thingies with a metal part which looks like a save button? At 2:42
I'm hoping for the sake of folks my age your kidding. If not, it's a floppy disk. Think like a USB key but with 1.4Mb of storage.
1.4Mb? you mean 1.4Gb right?
floppy disks are like jesus, they died to become the symbol of saving
It's a 3d printout of a save icon.
+YeahGoAhead oh god no. Back when these were major, 1gb would have been a huge hard drive on your PC. And a multicore processor was something that major server racks had - "no one would ever need that much power"
Well did they detect the recent NK nuclear explosion?
If you know about it, they detected it.
Kind of them to set that up while he was down there.
Was recommended by CZcams and It didn’t disappoint me ! Good to know...
I'd love to see you do like a half hour show talking about things in different places around the world, would be awesome
This video is terrible. Not a single red shirt in sight.
The shirt must be on the outside, in site, or there will be dislike....(s)
*in sight
Holly Boreham I mean, in the...Er...Site the video is?
(I can totally get my way out of this)
+That Guy
Hidden in plain web site :P
0:06 THERE, the guy in the background!
That office is stuck in the late 90s and I love it
Videos like this really make me wish I would have continued to pursue a career in a STEM field and could serve some kind of purpose in facilitie like this.
Aww yeah! Here we go! The Arctic videos begin!
Wow. Really interesting thank you for sharing this!
Woo!! Chris Hadfield is awesome! Just finished his book!! :)
Nice video!
A rather timely video, given the events last week.
Chris Hadfield! One of my personal favorite people
Love that (likely) 1 take explanation of what Qaanaaq is in the beginning of the vid!
It's also the world's most northern palindrome, according to the expedition team on our ship!
That is the most interesting but sadly useless information I have heard in a long time!
I just have to thank Monthy Python that I actually know what a palindrome is. Because I would have never guessed that, since my native language is not English or anything similar ;)
You go to places I never knew about
that last bit with Hadfield was so loud it felt like a punch to my head.
Welcome back!
This is really cool
Chris Hadfield is a pretty cool. guy. saw him once when he we as touring around Canada
Did anyone notice their hardware has 5.25" floppy disc drives? I was hit with a flood of nostalgia from my childhood because of that. 🤣🤘
Chris Hadfield is such a legend...
Wow. Some of that computer equipment looks absolutely ancient!
Wish you were among those coming to Toronto!
This Osmo video looks very good, Tom! The other with fake vinegar had a lot of needless stabilized motion.
Try to avoid the temptation to look at the screen on the side. It shows especially on closer shots.
Otherwise, very good and informative video. Thank you!