Seismic data can identify aircraft by type
Instruments typically used to detect the ground motion of earthquakes can also be used to identify the type of aircraft flying far overhead, research by University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists shows.
That’s because aircraft sound waves also shake the ground, though to a much lesser extent.
An aircraft’s type — a Cessna 185 Skywagon, for example — can be determined by analyzing a seismic spectrogram to find the aircraft’s frequency imprint from the sound waves it creates and then matching ...