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New Science - Forensic Seismology

15.08.2002

More than forty years ago, the nuclear powers began to create networks of seismic stations to monitor enemy nuclear tests. Now these networks, which have evolved significantly and increased their sensitivity, are largely out of work.

At the annual conference of the American Geophysical Union, held in April of this year, representatives of a new science - forensic seismology spoke. Recordings of supersensitive seismographs, it turns out, can contribute to the investigation of various incidents and crimes.

So, Terry Wallace, a seismologist from the University of Arizona, collected seismograms of such incidents as explosions of oil and gas pipelines, plane and train crashes - about 400 records in total. Having analyzed them, Wallace can now, for example, determine from the seismogram of a plane crash whether it hit the ground still intact or exploded in the air.

Another geophysicist finds secretly dug underground tunnels by reflecting seismic waves. So it was possible to identify the tunnels made by smugglers under the US-Mexico border at a depth of 10-20 meters (drugs and illegal immigrants were delivered through these passages).

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Ants can build landmarks, marking the way home 07.06.2023

Insects living in the desert have to travel especially long distances in search of food. Ants Cataglyphis fortis live in the Sahara. There is little food there, and in search they have to move a long distance from the nest.

At the same time, the desert and flat landscape is often devoid of any natural landmarks. As a result, the ants have evolved highly unusual navigational abilities. For example, to choose a direction, they periodically check with the position of the Sun, and to track the distance, they count their steps.

But if that's not enough, C. fortis can navigate by the low mounds they build themselves to mark the entrances to their underground nests. This unique behavior was discovered by German biologists from the Institute for Chemical Ecology of the Max Planck Society. An article by Markus Knaden and colleagues is published in the journal Current Biology.

At first, scientists drew attention to the different heights of mounds that ants erect on the surface, above underground anthills. Having examined the mounds at 16 nests, biologists noticed that those closer to the edge rise only a few millimeters, but as they approach the center, they can reach several tens of centimeters.

To find out why C. fortis spend energy on these structures, the researchers followed their foraging trips. It turned out that these sorties are extremely difficult and dangerous. In some cases, the ants walked more than two kilometers, while up to 20 percent of the insects died under the hot sun, never finding their way home. But after scientists destroyed the mounds of some anthills, the mortality of ants increased dramatically - by 250-400 percent.

Having discovered the destruction, the ants immediately set to work and quickly restored their artificial landmarks. If they were supplied with a worthy replacement (for this, biologists placed black cylinders of different heights near the nest), no construction was carried out. The ants did not waste energy and resources on this rather difficult task for them.

It remains a mystery how exactly the insects determine that the beacon mounds should be built anew. It is possible that this behavior is stimulated by the increased mortality of workers who leave the nest in search of food.

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