LIGO+Seismic+Sensitivity+Project+Post-Activity

LIGO Sensitivity Project Assessment


 * 1. Use Google Maps (or Google Earth—your pick) to calculate the distance from the quake’s epicenter to LIGO.**

- To find the distnce between the earthquake and Ligo, I used the Google Maps measuring tool. By putting the starting point at 34.5390, 73.5880 for the earthquake, and then putting the end at 46.455211, -119.407642 for LIGO, I got a distance of 10927.5 km.


 * 2. Calculate the seismic wave speed twice, once for each of the LIGO plots shown.**

- To find the speed of the waves we'll use the distance divided by time. Distance/Time=Speed.

1. __Using the Seismic Graph Y__: You would use 10927.5 km as your distance, and the time it was picked up at LIGO would be approximately 4:12. The actual inception of the quake was 03:50:40.80 and so the time difference was 21 minutes and 20 seconds or 1,280 seconds.

(10927.5) / (1,280) = 8.54 km/sec.

2. __Using the Seismic Graph Z__: You would use 10927.5 km as your distance, and the time it was picked up at LIGO would be approximately 4:08. The actual inception of the quake was 03:50:40.80 and so the time difference was 17 minutes and 20 seconds or 1,040 seconds.

(10927.5) / (1,040) = 10.51 km/sec.


 * 3. Comment on any difference you see between the LIGO plots, and between the wave speed estimates obtained using each plot.

-** As you can see from the graphs, the seismic y graph was received by about three minutes later than the seismic z was received. The seismic z graoh also has a different spike than the y's. It spikes once like normal, but than shortly after that it spikes again. This could be from another earthquake that LIGO detected, but than if that is the case, why wasn't it picked up on the other graph? According to this [|animation] S-waves can't travel through the earth's cores, and since the two graphs represent different detectors that pick up different directional movement,