[HN Gopher] Cicadas are so loud, fiber optic cables can 'hear' them
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Cicadas are so loud, fiber optic cables can 'hear' them
Author : nixass
Score : 204 points
Date : 2023-12-02 17:11 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| tomcam wrote:
| First time we traveled to Texas when I was a young lad, and we
| heard cicadas, they were very close to us and I thought it was a
| vacuum cleaner.
| lacrimacida wrote:
| Cicadas make different sounds, in my area hard to confuse with
| anything else. Here's a video(1) with various samples of
| cicadas. Was any of these sounding like a vacuum cleaner?
|
| (1)-https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=thbgObpfoNs
| kadoban wrote:
| When you have no concept of insects being able to make that
| much noise, the brian just maps it to something else. When
| you're familiar with them, you can pick out the patterns in
| the frequencies and the ebb and flow, when you're first
| exposed to it it's just generic _loud_.
| tomcam wrote:
| That was exactly it.
| tomcam wrote:
| It was that sound but it was right next to my head,
| camouflaged by the tree it was occupying. I had no idea what
| it was and didn't detect its visible presence. I assumed it
| was many feet away. Wasn't for days that I understood it was
| an insect.
| pbj1968 wrote:
| We used to call them locusts in Texas. I still miss it. Yes, I
| know they aren't locusts. We're all suburban tv babies sharing
| the same accent these days.
| jhot wrote:
| They were called locusts in my area as well. Wasn't until
| college zoology that I learned we were calling them the wrong
| thing.
|
| Anyways, I had a dog that would watch from the back porch and
| when he saw one flying low across the back yard would run out
| and catch it out of mid air. The things would be flapping and
| croaking about until they were crushed mid-swallow. It was a
| gross but impressive feat to behold.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| I grew up calling them zeezer-bugs. Or cicadas if you
| wanted to be fancy.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| My grandmother in N TX called them that too. They're cicadas
| and they're damn loud. Since 1980, all grasshopper species
| remaining in N America are too rare now to enter a gregarious
| phase.
| RowanH wrote:
| New Zealander checking in - our February (summer) is insane if
| you're close to certain types of bush. Deafening. Not sure if
| it was in the article (paywalled) but the little mofos can get
| up to 100db. There's a good couple of weeks I avoid the bush
| for sure.
| boyter wrote:
| We had a big year for them in 2021 in Australia. I was
| testing an Apple Watch at the time and since exercise was one
| of the reasons at that time to be allowed out I went for bush
| walks in my local area.
|
| In quite a few areas the noise was so loud the watch informed
| me I was going to damage my hearing if I remained in the
| area.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| When I first heard them, I thought some power lines were
| damaged.
| ctoth wrote:
| Wonder what else you could use this sensing capability for ...
|
| It sounds like you can turn any arbitrary underground fiber into
| a microphone with a certain sensitivity.
| foobarbecue wrote:
| Yes, you can. This was first used by the Navy to record /
| detect submarines, many decades ago.
|
| You can also use the cable for distributed temperature sensing
| (some of my research used this).
| aidenn0 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microphone#Fiber-optic
| colechristensen wrote:
| They're definitely used to detect earthquakes and such.
| ccakes wrote:
| FibreSense have commercialised hardware and software that does
| just this in an insane amount of detail, it's very cool
|
| https://fibersense.com/
|
| Not affiliated, just a fan
| imposterr wrote:
| Lots! https://lunainc.com/solutions
| thsksbd wrote:
| Gyroscopes, accelerometers, and magnetic field sensors
| _kb wrote:
| There's a network under Melbourne [0] that's in use for
| research what's possible for city scale sensing. Seems to be an
| option for seismology, traffic, rainfall, drainage etc.
|
| [0]: https://www.rmit.edu.au/research/centres-
| collaborations/mult....
| RowanH wrote:
| I was listening to a YouTube ( I think it was 60 minutes of all
| things ) where volcanologists are burying them deep down in
| icelandic volcanoes to help detect when volcanoes might blow.
| Sensing the underground magma movement..
| echelon wrote:
| Apart from fireflies and mantises, cicadas are one of my favorite
| insects.
|
| The sound of cicadas is a hallmark of summer. Whether you're
| inside or outside, it envelops the senses and recalls the
| nostalgia of endless childhood summers and adventure.
|
| I'm looking forward to Brood XIX [1] hatching next year in
| Atlanta. It should me amazing.
|
| I'm hoping to see the synchronous fireflies [2] next year.
| Together with the total solar eclipse, there's a lot of good
| nature and science to take in.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brood_XIX
|
| [2] https://www.firefly.org/synchronous-fireflies.html
|
| [3] https://science.nasa.gov/eclipses/future-
| eclipses/eclipse-20...
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| Definitely relate to this - quintessential summer sound and
| almost relaxing at this point. They're some dumb insects
| though, run into anything and everything.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| How do their noise compare to crickets?
| kadoban wrote:
| Subjectively: cicadas are louder but far less annoying.
| brainbag wrote:
| I enjoy the sound of crickets and cicadas (which are much
| louder) except for the one particular kind of cicadas we get
| occasionally in Texas that make a singular unwavering high
| pitched ambient buzzing sound, like the whine of an old tv
| cranked to 11, coming from everywhere. It's a horribly
| unpleasant sound, but thankfully they don't stick around
| long. The other cicada sounds are nice.
| I_Am_Nous wrote:
| Crickets chirp (mostly a single kind of chirp) while Cicadas
| grind. The grinding lasts for half a minute or so, and they
| rhythmically pulsate the frequency, ending in a descending
| slowing of the grinding. Like a long
| WEEEEhoooWEEEEhoooWEEEEEeeee...
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| Cicadas sound like a defective transformer.
| I_Am_Nous wrote:
| For clarification, are you meaning an electrical
| transformer or a Transformer robot? Because I can imagine
| both being possible lol
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Or a multi-attention head with skip connections
| bhk wrote:
| Something like comparing a whisper to a jet engine, at least
| when there is a big brood.
|
| https://housegrail.com/how-loud-is-cicada-in-decibels/
| hristov wrote:
| Fiber cable can actually be a very good sensor. Some light gets
| reflected back from the most minute bends of the cable. By
| sensing reflections and comparing them with previous reflections
| you can see whether the cable has experienced any new bends. By
| timing the arrival of reflections you can calculate exactly where
| the new bends are. By sensing the intensity of reflections you
| can calculate how sharp the bend is.
|
| And this is not a research project anymore. Well, the fiber the
| article talks about is a research project, but there is a company
| called luna innovations that sells production fiber sensors that
| operate in commercial environments. There are underground fibers
| that sense whether someone steps in a restricted area. There are
| fibers stuck to pipelines that sense whether someone is trying to
| drill a hole in the pipeline to steal some oil (or any other
| vibrations or ruptures). There are fibers glued to the undersides
| of bridges that sense whether the bridge vibrates and bends too
| much.
|
| It is a very useful sensor, because you can essentially get
| sensing along a large area without paying for multiple sensors
| and trying to figure out how you are going to power them, how
| they are going to communicate back, etc.
|
| The electronics for extracting data from the fiber are complex
| but they do not have to be out in the wild in the area being
| sensed, they can be safely housed at one end of the fiber.
| isaacdl wrote:
| I've had a fiber line for residential internet buried in my
| yard. At one point it stopped working and a tech was able to
| pinpoint the exact location that it had a slight kink using a
| device that measured the reflection. They just dug up that
| section with hand tools to unkink it.
| mlyle wrote:
| Yup-- an optical time domain reflectometer.
|
| Though TDRs are in common use for copper cable, too. You send
| the pulse down the line and get a reflection back. They're a
| little worse than optical ones because there's more
| uncertainty of the speed pulses travel down a random network
| cable than a piece of optical fiber.
| I_Am_Nous wrote:
| They make some really cool in-line OTDRs these days, but
| the one we use was about $10k I believe and it's had a
| broken screen for years. Still works if you plug a mouse
| in!
| hunter2_ wrote:
| Does varying twist rate contribute to that uncertainty? I
| imagine that a cable with a high twist rate is slower
| because the twist means the individual conductors are
| longer (maybe just by a couple percent) than one with a
| lower twist rate. And if the test equipment isn't
| configured for the pinout scheme being used (A vs B) then
| it might not even be pulsing a single pair at a time (each
| pair has a different twist rate) although perhaps that
| issue is automatically avoided.
| mlyle wrote:
| > Does varying twist rate contribute to that uncertainty?
|
| Yes, but beyond the effect that you're saying. The
| distance between conductors affects speed down the cable.
| Tighter twisting also changes the distance and the amount
| of dielectric around, which also varies speed of
| propagation.
|
| These effects can be massive; a typical cat 7 cable has a
| velocity factor of 80% of the speed of light, varying by
| a couple of percent; a cat 5e cable more is often more
| like 65%. If you launch a pulse into a mess of mixed
| wiring to find out where something is unplugged or cut,
| you could be off by 20% or more.
| shpx wrote:
| How does a cable develop a kink while it's buried?
| isaacdl wrote:
| I don't know, but it happened relatively quickly (within a
| few days) of initial installation. I suspect either
| settling soil or animal activity.
| type0 wrote:
| > or animal activity
|
| more likely tree roots hugging it
| thsksbd wrote:
| A professor I knew would measure temperature and gas species
| along the entire length of a fiber at refractory temperatures.
|
| Fibers are incredibly accurate devices
| nimish wrote:
| All of modern technology owes its origin to measuring light
| precisely. Optics is an ancient science. It's quite low tech,
| surprisingly so.
| closeparen wrote:
| I worked for a local IT contractor in a small Midwestern city
| 10 years ago. We had a handheld Fluke TDR device in the truck,
| for locating fiber breaks.
| thrtythreeforty wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if the Fluke cost as much as the
| truck.
| jes wrote:
| "If you drop your DVM and it still works, it's a Fluke."
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| We use similar sensors in test flow loops to see how prototype
| electrically heated nuclear fuel rods jiggle.
| aaviator42 wrote:
| It's insane how cool humans are to be coming up with this
| insane stuff.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > there is a company called luna innovations that sells
| production fiber sensors
|
| Luna is the current front, but acquired the technology from
| Optasense [0] relatively recently. There is a good timeline of
| Optasense commercial development in the fibre optic sensing
| domain at [1], going back to 2007, when Optasense was spun off
| from QinetiQ, which was itself the commercial spin-off (in
| 2001) from the UK's Defence and Evaluation Research Agency.
| This timeline illustrates the wide range of application areas,
| including pipeline and railway monitoring, border surveillance,
| drilling seismology, deep sea and others.
|
| [0] https://www.optasense.com/
|
| [1] https://www.optasense.com/about-us/company-background/
| azepoi wrote:
| I know of several compagnies in europe that do geophysical
| monitoring of dikes levees and dams with optical fibers
| fpierfed wrote:
| Indeed and fiber cables are used to sense distant earthquakes
| as well. They are a very good sensor network.
| ofslidingfeet wrote:
| > It could lead to a new way of monitoring insects.
|
| Hm!
| cperciva wrote:
| Remember, keep Cicadas away from your hard drives.
| irrelative wrote:
| (slightly) less pop science version: fiber optic cables are so
| sensitive, they can even detect the sounds of cidadas.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| The cicadas can't be heard any more where I live.
|
| When I was a kid they were so loud your ears buzzed.
|
| It makes me very sad that we have ruined the eden that was the
| earth.
| lukas099 wrote:
| We haven't completely ruined it. Build native habitat in your
| yard, be vocal about your concerns, donate to land preservation
| and get involved in your local politics and you can make a huge
| difference.
| latentcall wrote:
| Yes but we get a new iPhone every year! The Internet can write
| poems for us! We have electric cars! Who needs God's green
| Earth when we can have...stuff! /s
| brnt wrote:
| In so many parts of the world that part of Cyberpunk is
| already true: _everything_ is human made, even the plants and
| animals are purpose bred. You can live a life where the only
| natural thing you ever see is the grass between street
| pavement.
| weregiraffe wrote:
| >It makes me very sad that we have ruined the eden that was the
| earth.
|
| Are you the Platitude Man? I think I just died of cringe.
| Lamad1234 wrote:
| I saw them for the first time in West Virginia in the summer
| 2016!! It was freaking surreal, the noise, the smell of dead
| ones, you'd imagine they made some places slippery to walk on!!
| They look very intimidating but were very harmless!!
| Mtinie wrote:
| You are welcome to join us in Northern Virginia in the summer
| if you'd like to experience the halcyon days of cicadas you
| remember.
|
| On the plus side, they compete with my tinnitus and make it far
| less noticeable.
| brightlancer wrote:
| I heard them once in a Maryland suburb of DC: there were so
| many that it was just a constant whine in the background,
| unlike what I've heard elsewhere.
|
| Thankfully I was just passing through or it would've given me
| a headache.
| jjeaff wrote:
| While you usually will hear a few cicadas every summer, they
| are all normally on a 13 or 17 year cycle. You may simply live
| in an area that is in the middle of a cycle. when that 13 or 17
| year mark hits, you will likely hear them everywhere again. You
| can look up the "brood" cycle for your area online.
| Shatnerz wrote:
| There are also plenty of annual cicadas in North America,
| which I assume you are talking about NA with the 13 and 17
| year brood cycles. While not nearly as loud as the broods,
| annual cicadas have always been a sure sign of the seasons. I
| have always considered the end of summer when the cicadas
| stop singing. They become such a constant background noise
| that it is easy to forget that they are even there if you
| have lived in the area for awhile.
| hackernewds wrote:
| Cicadas ruin my sesame seeds for my burger king so I'm find
| with that
| quantisan wrote:
| I worked with Fiber Bragg grating [1] technology in the 2000s,
| exploring its applications in diverse fields. This included
| biomedical applications, where a fibre optic cable inserted
| inside a catheter measured temperature and pressure at specific
| points within a person's body. And in deep oil drilling, where
| the same fibre optic cable could extend kilometers down a well.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber_Bragg_grating
| tgv wrote:
| Neat, but I think it's a bit gross to use the same cable for a
| catheter that you used in an oil well.
| softfalcon wrote:
| We did this at Pure Technologies (now Xylem) running fibre cables
| over infrastructure to listen for wire breaks in underground
| pipes, and on bridges to listen for micro-fractures in the
| concrete structure and steel cabling.
|
| The analysis and install was called "AFO Analyst" [0].
|
| [0] https://www.xylem.com/en-us/products--services/pipeline-
| asse...
| inasio wrote:
| No kidding about cicadas being loud. We were in the south of
| France earlier this year and it's incredible how much of the
| soundscape is dominated by the cicadas. I have no idea if it was
| just a couple or a couple billion, but it seemed to just come
| from everywhere above us
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| Some people don't like the sound of cicadas but I _love_ them.
| My little piece of paradise on earth is on the french riviera
| and it is full of italian stone pine trees [1] and there are
| lots of cicadas.
|
| I go there since I was kid and I actually lived there for a
| while (my kid went to school there). Many of our little family
| movies (the ones we now all film with our phones) have noisy
| cicadas in the background.
|
| At times there has been years without cicadas (I think due to a
| terribly harsh winter and the weird/long cicadas lifecycles)
| and I was dearly missing them.
|
| It's become a Pavlovian conditioning to me: I hear cicadas in a
| movie and I want to be there!
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_pine
| ptek wrote:
| 56k dialup, here we go again. I still have a external USR 56k
| reubenmorais wrote:
| A few years ago I went to a party in Brazil during cicada season.
| The event happened in a country club, surrounded by coffee farms
| stretching over the hills around us, and fencing the club itself
| was a line of tall eucalyptus trees. The stage was huge, maybe
| three thousand people dancing under the tent. The sound was as
| always insanely loud, four massive stacks, two main and two
| delays. A huge wall of subwoofers, maybe 10 meters wide.
|
| As you walked from under the tent to the corners of the country
| club, under the eucalyptus trees, the cicadas would slowly become
| audible, then loud, then completely overpower the soundsystem,
| which blew my mind at the time, considering we weren't really
| that far away from the speakers.
|
| In a way even though the cicadas are themselves extremely loud,
| it created a little chill sound bubble around the event, because
| their sound somehow still feels like nature, and was definitely
| more pleasant than the leftover sounds of far away speakers.
| tonyarkles wrote:
| This fall I was in Iowa and had to pick up a coworker at the
| airport in Des Moines. I was sitting in the cellphone lot and
| as the sun started to set this crazy noise started picking up.
| It sounded like it was almost... spinning in a circle around
| the airport. The direction seemed to be constantly moving. For
| a while I thought it was one of those noise generators that
| were meant to annoy teenagers. We got back to Ames and I
| started hearing the same noise in the hotel parking lot. I have
| no idea what compelled me to think "cicadas" but as soon as I
| googled it I confirmed that that's what it was. Crazy crazy
| little creatures!
|
| Had a similar experience around dusk earlier this year when I
| started thinking that I was having vision problems. I kept
| seeing all of these weird little sparkles of light out in a
| corn field. Sure enough, fireflies!
| rpozarickij wrote:
| It turns out that when you Google "cicada", there's a speaker
| button near the Wikipedia card in the top right corner which
| allows you to play the sound of cicadas from within the search
| results page.
| aatd86 wrote:
| So a transducer? Hmmh I think I remember a potential usage in oil
| pipelines as pointed out by someone above.
|
| Puts the expression "cable leaks" into perspective lol /jk
|
| Anyway, interesting.
| Xorakios wrote:
| Random goofball aside, but cicadas erupted at my graduation from
| Princeton 1987 and it was so loud a couple times it truly was
| hard to hear each other.
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(page generated 2023-12-03 23:02 UTC)