Page 18 - January 2006

sion following the bow-wave, STS-107 signals are not anom- alous.
Summary
The rebirth of interest in infrasound resulting from the International Monitoring System has provided a cadre of
(a)
personnel and experimental stations capable of monitoring the Earth for sources of infrasound. In an era where hazard warning is an important element of mitigation, infrasound provides one more monitoring tool. Use of the global sys- tem to provide information on nuclear treaty violations is certainly important but the most probable use of the system over the next decade will be in the nature of infrasound sources and hazard warnings. As a global monitoring tool, infrasound requires the cooperation of scientists from all countries. The extent of this effort exceeds that associated with the ocean warming experiments envisioned during the past decade. Never in our lifetime has there been an effort to conduct acoustics research on such a large scale. This article offers glimpses of what might be learned from this vast array but the full realization of the potential of this investment relies on participation of the entire acoustics community.AT
References for Further Reading
1. G.B. Olmsted, “Detection of airborne low-frequency sound from atomic explosion of operations Buster and Jangle,”
(b)
Fig. 7. Results of infrasound analysis of the Columbia shuttle (STS-107) re-entry on February 1, 2003. (a) Projected track and the locations of the infrasonic stations (circles) whose data have been analyzed (after Reference 38). (b) Single-channel traces from each of the infrasound arrays which clearly detected infrasonic signals from the Shuttle re-entry. The traces are aligned on the first detected infrasonic arrival, and ordered by distance of closest approach of the nominal trajectory to the record- ing location.
16 Acoustics Today, January 2006