Science - USA (2021-12-10)

1312 10 DECEMBER 2021 • VOL 374 ISSUE 6573 science.org SCIENCE

I PHOTO: WOJCIECH GAJEK

n August, as Iceland’s long summer

days began to wane, Sölvi Thrastarson

made his 10th visit to a volcano so

young it lacks a name. Since it began

to erupt in March on a peninsula a

short drive south of Reykjavík, the

volcano has drawn flocks of tour-

ists to its fiery but relatively tame

outbursts. Thrastarson, a geophysics

graduate student at ETH Zürich, joined a

throng of sightseers on a ridge of weath-

ered basalt 2 kilometers from the summit,

and watched as globs of lava leaped out of

the caldera. Camera shutters clicked as the

volcano surged. “This really is the perfect

tourist eruption,” Thrastarson says.

The swelling crowds have been a boon

for Thrastarson and his science. In April,

Neyðarlínan, the Icelandic emergency tele-

com company, extended a fiber optic line

to the volcano, providing internet access to

a region lacking cell service. For the tour-

ists, the fiber is a digital lifeline. For the

researchers, it is a way to take the volcano’s

very pulse.

Researchers are weaving optical fibers into a low-cost network of seismic

sensors that can probe Earth’s hidden dynamics

By Paul Voosen

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