Listening for Nuclear Tests at the Top of the World

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!

Also on the voyage:

PLUS: These folks took incredible photos:

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.

[colinfurze]

On the thumbnail it looked huge then you walked up to it, still good find while you were in the area though.

[TomScottGo]

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!

[VivienneGucwa]

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.

[ElagabalusRex]

This is the sound of a man who pledged his life to infrasound.

[idontremembermylogin]

OH MY GOD ITS SVEND! MY PHYSICS TEACHER ACTUALLY TAUGHT ME ABOUT HIM SPECIFICALLY A FEW YEARS AGO! I MUST SHOW HIM THIS.

[Lockirby]

So they detect disturbances in the force. :P

[gekesulen]

floppy disks and nixie tubes. Pretty retro stuff. I like it!

[CollinAbroadcast]

Glad you made it back safely! Awesome video, can't wait to see more!

[jservice]

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.

[NikButler]

Wow the clipping distance for that country is really terribly; can they not afford a more powerful graphics card.

[timothyharder]

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.

[Spekka]

Svend's voice is so low that the detector will pick disturbance from it 🤔

[ThatNateGuy]

I could listen to Svend talk for hours. What a soothing voice.

[maio]

02:35 - can we appreciate the beauty of these Nixie tubes?

[Aeternum_Gaming]

this dude is living the life. middle of nowhere, nobody to bother him. just do your job, and live your life surrounded by nature.

[DrawCuriosity]

Welcome back Tom - it's great to see you *literally* on top of the world! :)
What a fascinating mega-listening station

[flensborg]

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.

[auzdwijksd]

Holy cow, you met "The Chris Hadfield" our most favorite Canadian spaceman..!!
If you guys don't know him search for the YouTube video called "Space Oddity by Chris Hadfield...He's just a legend you know.

[EmanuelsWorkbench]

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.