Matteo Cavalli-Sforza: Ultrasounds to explore the underground

Wednesday 19 Oct 2016, 13:00 → 14:00 Europe/Madrid

Seminar (IFAE)

Jelena Aleksic (IFAE), Joern Lange (IFAE Barcelona), John E Ward (IFAE)

Looking for objects buried underground without excavating, which consumes resources and may partially destroy what is looked for, is a challenge that has been addressed for many decades by different methods, mostly relying on electromagnetic (EM) tools. Sophisticated commercial hardware and software is readily available, using techniques such as magnetometry, static and dynamic electrical conductivity measurements or ground penetrating radar (GPR). I will briefly review these methods. Each of them has its characteristic strengths and drawbacks. There may be a domain where none of these approaches is powerful enough: detecting and imaging small non-metallic objects at relatively small depths, in most soils. Our idea is to apply ultrasounds to find and image such items, and larger structures. In the next few weeks two of us plan to do a pilot experiment, in order to establish the viability of the concept. For starters, we are looking at using commercial hardware.