National Aeronautics and

Space Association

THE SOUND
OF SILENCE
 Into Memory
Husband | McCool | Anderson | Brown | Chawla | Clark | Ramon
W.I.R.E.D magazine looks at the 2003
Columbia disaster and how one sci-
entist used the event to study infra-
sound.
Page 4
THE SOUND 12.01.06
OF SILENCE
IT’S 1:45 AM ON A WARM SUMMER NIGHT at
the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The
huge protective enclosure at Launch Complex 36 has
been rolled back, exposing an Orion missile, primed
and ready to shriek into the sky. The 15-foot projectile
is equipped with a 50-pound explosive payload. After
takeoff, it will veer north and self-destruct roughly 30
miles above the desert floor.
Traffic has been stopped along a nearby stretch of
Highway 70 as a safety precaution. The last call has
gone out for personnel to take shelter in the block-
house, a Cold War-era cement structure 100 yards
from the launch ramp. Inside, 30 or so Navy and
civilian technicians sit under fluorescent lights, running
final system checks on vintage control panels.
A battery of TV cameras survey
the area to make sure no one is Traffic has been stopped along a
outside during the launch. But
someone is outside. nearby stretch of Highway 70 as a
Milton Garces is on the roof of the
blockhouse, sitting at a card table
safety precaution.
and nursing a venti-size coffee. He stares intently at
the screen of a souped-up Dell Latitude laptop linked
to a $60,000 infrared camera. If the missile explodes
on the launch ramp, the University of Hawaii will
lose one of its most promising – and certainly most
adventurous – scientists. If it goes off as planned, the
information he’s gathering could prove critical to the
emerging science of infrasound.
The Sound of Silence | Typography Spring 2017
JOHN GEIRLAND
The airborne detonation will send powerful waves of
infrasound – ultralow-frequency acoustic energy –
shuddering across the southwestern US. The audible
sound of all but the biggest explosions diminishes
over a short distance, a few miles at most. But
infrasound, pitched well below the range of human
hearing, can travel far – even crossing oceans – and
20 microphone arrays scattered throughout six states
are poised to record the blast’s subsonic rumble.
Capturing such signals allows scientists to keep
tabs on a host of frightening phenomena, particularly
nuclear explosions, a concern that has become all
the more urgent in the wake of North Korea’s recent
test. These waves can also help scientists detect and
measure natural threats like volcanic eruptions, stray
hurricanes, and apocalyptic meteors.
Tonight’s exploding-rocket experiment will generate
data that promises to make the science of infrasound
more precise. With a better understanding of how
infrasound behaves, scientists will be able to use it
not only to monitor cataclysmic events but possibly to
predict them as well.

But the information collected by distant listening sta-
tions isn’t enough for Garces, a trim 39-year-old with
glowing hazel eyes. He wants to videotape the launch
itself. “The ignition stage is a source of infrasound,” he
says, “and it’s useful to have a time-stamped record
of that sequence. Plus, if the rocket blows on takeoff,
it will make for some killer footage.”
The White Sands experiments – this is the third in
a series of four – are rooted in a national tragedy.
When the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated over
Texas in February 2003, US infrasound stations were
listening. First, scientists heard a massive sonic boom
trailing behind the craft. Then came a succession of
smaller impulses, some arising from turbulence, oth-
ers from changes in the ship’s spatial orientation. The
final signals, picked up by mics in Texas, coincided
with the Columbia’s “unscheduled disassembly,” in
the impassive parlance of rocket engineers.
Garces and his colleagues wrote reports for the
subsequent NASA investigation, interpreting the
infrasound signals generated by the incident, whose
cause was not yet clear. They were able to rule out
some possibilities, such as a meteor collision and
high-altitude electrical discharges known as sprites.
But they were frustrated by their limited understanding
of how infrasound moves through the upper atmo-
sphere. Unlike seismic signals – low-frequency audio
waves reverberating through Earth’s relatively stable
crust – infrasound moves through an environment that
Page 5
changes constantly. Without knowing how factors like
air currents and pressure systems interact with sound
waves at the bottom of the frequency spectrum, sci-
entists couldn’t explain much of the shuttle disaster’s
infrasound signature.
The explosion tonight will give the researchers a rare
opportunity to correlate effect and cause. Usually,
infrasound scientists wait for signals to show up
and then try to determine their source, a difficult
and sometimes fruitless task. But when the missile
detonates, the data record will come from an event
whose parameters, from the force of the explosion to
the surrounding weather conditions, are fully known.
It’s the closest thing to a lab experiment that can be
conducted in the upper atmosphere.
Garces describes the goal of the test with a term bor-
rowed from satellite research: ground truth. Ground
truth is the context infrasound scientists need to
decipher the signals they collect. The data generated
tonight will help them model the myriad pathways
that infrasound waves take as they move through the
sky. With an accurate representation of infrasound’s
behavior in the upper atmosphere, the next time an
unexpected disaster occurs in the sky – whether it’s a
disintegrating spacecraft, the skyward blast of a vol-
canic eruption, or an exploding meteor – Garces and
his colleagues will be able to figure out exactly what
happened. If he makes it offthe blockhouse roof alive.
Page 6
if he makes it off the
blockhouse roof alive.
THE COLUMBIA DISASTER wasn’t the first unex-
pected event to produce a notable infrasound signa-
ture. On Aug. 27, 1883, the volcano Krakatoa blew
its top near the Indonesian island of Java, creating
atmospheric ripples so intense they circled the planet
several times. Barometers worldwide recorded wild
fluctuations that resembled, as science writer Simon
Winchester wrote in his 2003 account, Krakatoa: The
Day the World Exploded, “an earthquake in the air.”
Researchers who gathered the paper records com-
pared the waveforms to determine the magnitude of
the explosion. The science of infrasonics was born.
Crew of the STS-107 ‘Columbia’ in October 2001.
From left to right: Brown, Husband, Clark, Chawla, Anderson, McCool, Ramon. (Courtesy of NASA)
The technology quickly proved a boon to the US
milwitary. During World War I, primitive microphones
were placed on the battlefield to pick up infrasound
signals generated by enemy artillery, allowing techni-
cians to triangulate the cannons’ positions. Cold war
fears prompted further research into the technology.
In 1954, US Atomic Energy Commission chair Lewis
Strauss recorded signals produced by a US nuclear
The Sound of Silence | Typography Spring 2017
test, playing the recording for President Eisenhower
at high speed to make the slowly unfolding sounds
audible. Soon infrasound was being used to detect,
locate, and estimate the yield of Soviet nuclear tests
half a world away.
In the late ‘60s, the Pentagon abandoned infrasound
in favor of satellites, which provided visual docu-
mentation, deemed more reliable, of foreign nuclear
programs. Funding for infrasound research all but
disappeared, and the technology became a hobby
sustained by a handful of meteorologists.
Then, after 20 years as a scientific backwater,
infrasound made an unexpected comeback. In
September 1996, the UN General Assembly adopt-
ed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. To
ensure compliance, the accord established a rigorous
surveillance regime that comprises satellite, seismic,
hydroacoustic, and air-sample monitoring, as well as
a worldwide network of 60 infrasound stations. Infra-
sound was included because it works over extremely
long distances and, unlike satellites, has no inherent
blind spots. The US signed but didn’t ratify the treaty;
nevertheless, it has implemented the agreement by
supporting a number of treaty-mandated facilities.
Usually powered by solar panels, an infrasound
station consists of four or more extremely sensitive
microphones spaced about a mile apart, ideal-
ly arranged to form a triangle. One mic sits in the
center. Signals picked up by the mics are amplified

and digitized, then transmitted to research facilities.
To foil vandalism, arrays are often camouflaged –
though that doesn’t prevent the odd moose or boar
from wreaking havoc. In desert installations, cables
are painted with coyote urine to discourage rats and
hares from gnawing through them. Weather noise
can mask the infrasound signal, so an ultrasonic wind
sensor – a futuristic-looking cylindrical device that
gauges wind velocity – is essential equipment. Scien-
tists use the sensor’s output to assess the impact of
wind noise and figure out how to minimize it.
Until the 1980s, scientists analyzed infrasound
signals by poring over rolls of paper covered with
pen tracings. “But there’s only so much you can do
with paper,” Garces observes. Today, researchers
use computers to separate meaningful information
from background noise. Then they plot the direction,
speed, and curvature of incoming waves to determine
the location of the sound source.
Sometimes it’s not easy. Infrasound waves in the
upper atmosphere can be trapped or funneled great
distances. Picture the atmosphere as a grand, ev-
er-changing network of pneumatic tubes formed by
shifting winds and temperature gradients. Winds can
propel, bend, or disperse sound waves. Temperature
gradients create ducts that can carry the vibrations
thousands of miles. A wave may take multiple paths
to a given destination, arriving first via a stratospheric
route and later via the thermosphere.
Page 7
This makes it tricky to track down the source of any
given infrasound signal. For example, during the Janu-
ary 2005 eruption of the Maman volcano in Papua
New Guinea, several nearby arrays detected nothing.
Stations as far away as Alaska and Germany picked
up the commotion – but didn’t necessarily know
what they were hearing. That’s why ground truth is so
important: If nobody had witnessed previous volcanic
eruptions and noted the types of signals they create,
the Maman event would have been another inexplica-
ble airborne percussion wave – consigned to the file
scientists designate LGM, or little green men.
THE QUEST FOR GROUND TRUTH has been a
driving force in Garces’ career. Born in Cali, Colombia,
in 1967 and raised in Puerto Rico, he studied astro-
physics at the Florida Institute of Technology but soon
became frustrated by the field’s inherent abstraction.
Stars and nebulae were distant, inaccessible. There
was no way to confirm hypotheses up close – no way
to obtain ground truth.
So Garces ditched astrophysics for earth sciences.
In 1995, he earned a PhD in oceanography at UC
San Diego, where he focused on the acoustics of
volcanoes. At the time, only a few infrasound studies
of volcanic activity existed, and they were mostly
decades old. The young scientist recognized not only
Page 8
an intriguing line of inquiry but also an unfilled niche.
He landed grants to work at universities in Alaska,
Hawaii, and Japan.
A few years later, Garces experienced an infra-
sound-producing event firsthand. He was driving his
Toyota Corolla around the Sakurajima volcano on the
southern tip of Japan’s Kyushu island, an open vent
that’s often in a continuous state of low-level eruption.
Garces was downloading seismic and infrasound data
amid explosions and raining ash. Fatigued, he parked
his car, set an alarm, and fell asleep. He awoke
gasping for air, his vehicle filled with choking fumes.
He couldn’t start the engine at first, but eventually
the ignition caught and he drove out of the cloud. He
continued his rounds in pitch darkness, downloading
data while a dense fog of glowing gases wafted down
the mountainside.
Garces and his colleagues published their Sakuraji-
ma report in a 1999 issue of Geophysical Research
Letters. The article contended that infrasound could
be used in conjunction with seismic data to “moni-
tor and potentially forecast volcanic eruptions.” The
team’s measurements showed that such prediction
was theoretically possible, though whether his ap-
proach can be generalized to other volcanoes remains
questionable.
Garces was at the University of Hawaii in 1999 when
he met Henry Bass. A physicist at the University of
Mississippi, Bass had been tapped to lead the US
The Sound of Silence | Typography Spring 2017
nuke-test infrasound program and was visiting the
Big Island to scout the location. He and Garces hit
it off, and the young volcanologist soon became an
important member of Bass’ team. Bass, 63, has
Stations as far
away as Alaska
and Germany picked
up the commotion.
since emerged as the nerve center of US infrasound
research, coordinating scientists who have found it to
be a useful tool in disciplines as diverse as meteorolo-
gy, geology, biology, and astronomy.
An avid surfer, Garces has since studied beaches in
Hawaii and French Polynesia to see what infrasound
can tell him about the waves. This winter, he’ll be
working with the National Weather Service to train a
portable array on Oahu’s North Shore, a renowned
stretch of prime surf. The goal is to evaluate safety by
measuring the amplitude, period, and spatial distribu-
tion of breakers in real time.
Garces’ high tech surf watch is an example of what
he calls nowcasting – using infrasound to get a more
precise sense of prevailing geophysical conditions.
Nowcasting is good for more than finding the best

surf breaks, however. It can shed light on imminent
disasters as they develop, making it possible to re-
spond quickly and perhaps head off catastrophe.
For Garces, nowcasting usually involves volcanoes.
About 60 erupt every year, spewing ash into the sky
and posing a serious hazard for airplanes. Volcanic
ash can buff windshields until they’re opaque. Sucked
into a jet engine, it melts and then resolidifies in cooler
areas. In the past 50 years, more than 80 planes have
flown through airborne ash, sometimes with near-fatal
results. In 1982, a Boeing 747 carrying 240 passen-
gers entered the plume of Indonesia’s Galunggung
volcano at 37,000 feet. All four engines shut down,
and the plane plummeted 25,000 feet before the pilot
managed to restart three of them.
Volcano observatories and ash advisory centers keep
tabs on the threat, but the system is inherently flawed.
Many volcanoes lie in remote areas, and bad weather
and nighttime darkness can make them invisible to
satellites. So the infrasound community aims to com-
plement the existing ash-alert system with a network
of microphone arrays. Garces is playing a lead role in
this effort, especially at Ecuador’s Instituto Geofisico,
where researchers now factor data from two infra-
sound arrays into their daily volcano report.
As scientists become adept at using infrasound for
nowcasting, they’re beginning to apply it in forecast-
ing, listening for signals that might foreshadow a
Page 9
violent upheaval. “It’s the holy grail,” Garces says. One
of the most promising possibilities is predicting the
trajectories of hurricanes. Garces spent part of 2003
collecting infrasound data on Pacific storms. When
he plotted it on a map, he saw that the most intense
signals formed an ovoid shape, with the narrow end
pointing in the direction the storm later appeared and
continued to move.
Hurricane Katrina IR clouds from GOES on 29 Aug 2005.
Visualization Credits: Greg Shirah, Alex Kekesi, Dennis Chesters
Then came Katrina. Hurricanes often change course
unexpectedly, and this one was no exception. The
storm struck the coast farther east than expected,
complicating evacuation in Henry Bass’ home state
of Mississippi. Afterward, Bass revisited Garces’
charts and wondered whether infrasound data would
have made it possible to forecast the course of the
tempest. When Hurricane Rita tore through the area
a few weeks later, he had an infrasound array at the
ready. The mics picked up an ovoid pattern similar to
the one Garces noted – not enough data points to be
Page 10
1,000 times the
explosive force...
sure that infrasound can predict a hurricane’s path,
but sufficient confirmation to warrant further investiga-
tion. For the 2006 season, Bass assembled an army
of portable arrays, ready to be deployed to the Gulf or
Atlantic coasts when the next hurricane barrels in.
As helpful as infrasound may be for assessing current
conditions and predicting the course of future events,
it also serves as a purely scientific tool, a window on
phenomena otherwise difficult to observe and mea-
sure. Consider bolides, meteors that explode as they
enter Earth’s atmosphere. The Tunguska blast over
Siberia in 1908, believed to have been caused by a
bolide, detonated with the force of 10 to 15 megatons
– up to 1,000 times the explosive force of the bomb
that obliterated Hiroshima – and leveled 800 square
miles of forest. Tunguska-size bolides are extremely
rare, but exploding meteors of 1 kiloton are relatively
common. Peter Brown, an astronomer at the Univer-
sity of Western Ontario, is working with colleagues
at Los Alamos National Laboratory to pair infrasound
data with satellite imagery. He hopes to track the
number of bolides entering the atmosphere over a
given time span. Knowing how often these events
occur will make it possible to calculate the probability
of damage on Earth’s surface. It will also help astrono-
mers date terrain on planets, moons, and asteroids
based on the number of craters in a particular area.
And there’s another reason to study bolides: “You
want to make sure you can distinguish them from nu-
clear explosions,” Brown says. He cites a meteor that
of the bomb that
obliterated hiroshima.
The Sound of Silence | Typography Spring 2017
burst over the Mediterranean Sea in mid-2002, at the
zenith of nuclear tension between India and Pakistan.
Had it entered the atmosphere a few hours earlier, it
would have exploded nearer the Indian subcontinent
and might have been mistaken for a first strike, possi-
bly triggering a nuclear exchange.
Infrasound technology is poised to make such night-
mare scenarios a lot less likely. In the coming decade,
the network of microphone arrays will be folded into
an ambitious international initiative involving nearly 70
nations. Established in early 2005, the Global Earth
Observing System of Systems will integrate satellite,
seismic, hydroacoustic, tidal, and infrasound sensors
into an integrated planetary monitoring apparatus.
Back in the blockhouse, the countdown is under way.
Technicians cluster on the scuffed linoleum floor. The
building has thick, blast-proof windows, but they’re
tinted and thoroughly scratched by blowing sand.
Everyone stares at a big videoscreen on the wall.
A heavyset Navy technician counts down: 3…2…1…
A bright light pierces the windows. The Orion missile
shoots from the launch ramp like an overgrown bottle
rocket, and the screech of its thrusters reverberates
through the concrete walls. Seconds later, the steel
door flies open and people pour out of the block-
house. Floodlights illuminate the smoke wafting over
the launch area. A tarantula stands motionless in
the sand. On the roof, Garces is uninjured, his head
 Page 11

cocked back in a full-throated laugh. Now he stands

and frames a portion of the heavens with his hands.
“Look in this part of the sky,” he says:

“This is where the rocket will explode.”

Two minutes pass. A flash appears in the northern

sky. Waves of compressed air fan out from the point
of detonation at 660 miles per hour, passing over
highways, hamlets, and people sleeping in their beds.
Like an earthquake in the air.

A photo taken July 16, 1945 shows an aerial view after the first atomic explosion at the Trinity Test site in New Mexico. (Associated Press)
ONLY WITH
COURAGE WILL
WE KEEP ALIVE
THEIR DREAM
TO CONQUER
NEW HORIZONS