France Creates Seismic Cloak

Earthquakes are a big problem. Just think back to, well, two days ago when a magnitude 8.0 earthquake occurred off the coast of the Santa Cruz Islands. Within moments of the tremor the USGS sent alerts across the globe to warn of possible tsunamis. Communities from Hawai’i to Irian Jaya braced for the catastrophic possibility of a towering wave.

But islands in the vast Pacific aren’t the only areas that need to prepare for earthquakes. Major urban centers like San Francisco and Tokyo sit along fault lines and sooner or later may be devastated by “the big one”. But now a team in tectonically inactive France has made some groundbreaking steps towards reducing the cataclysmic effects of earthquakes.

The team from French companies Fresnel and Menard has begun testing a plan to divert the energy waves created by earthquakes. While this sounds near impossible, the team has proven it to be simple, inexpensive and feasible. But there’s a catch.

By drilling a carefully arranged array of five meter deep holes the energy of an earthquake can be diverted around any desired area. The catch is that once the energy is diverted it has to go somewhere, and that somewhere will still experience quite a shock.

The French project is still in the research phase and both Menard and Fresnel are looking into ways to remedy their solutions “catch”. But the take away is that now we know how to build a seismic cloak, and that could prove very useful to preventing damage from earthquakes.

Images Courtesy of the USGS and Tech Review