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This is Scientific American's 60-second Science, I'm Christopher Intagliata.
In addition to giant crustaceans and creepy anglerfish, the deep oceans hide a vital piece of technology: the cables connecting almost every continent, island and archipelago to the Internet. But it seems those undersea cables can be used for more than just sending cat memes around the world.
"We can do a good job picking up earthquakes using offshore cables."
Jonathan Ajo-Franklin is an applied geophysicist at Rice University and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. He says that fiber-optic cables are like threads of glass—and there are impurities built in. So when you shoot lasers through the fibers, those impurities backscatter some of the light right back to the laser source.
"And we make measurements of the change in the backscattered light over time, which gives you information on the stretch of the cable at each location."

His team took advantage of a brief maintenance period when a particular cable, off the coast of Monterey, California, was not being used for communication. The researchers studied the slight deformations in the cable and were able to sense a small earthquake, pinpoint unmapped faults in the seafloor and observe movements in the water column—all of which might be of interest to oceanographers.
Their work is in the journal Science.
Ajo-Franklin points out that seismometers are pretty sparse in the world's oceans:
"It's a big blank spot."
So these cables could really come in handy. And unlike for this study, you wouldn't even have to turn off the Internet to do it.
"We're looking at ways of potentially using just a small section of the spectrum, so you can communicate at the same time you can do sensing on these kinds of cables."
Which might bring more of the Earth's deep rumblings online.
Thanks for listening for Scientific American's 60-second Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata.

参考译文

这里是科学美国人——60秒科学系列，我是克里斯托弗·因塔格里塔dm=*_UuK,*way%+。
除了巨型甲壳纲动物和令人毛骨悚然的安康鱼外，深海还隐藏着一项至关重要的技术产品：几乎将所有大陆、岛屿和群岛与互联网连在一起的电缆2y&X2N^J-Yo。但是这些海底电缆的用途似乎不仅仅是将可爱的猫咪表情包发送到世界各地FKaS&7GY![pZXV[bF。
“我们可以利用海上电缆准确地探测地震mHi0ljX8@R^8oqRz.E。”
莱斯大学和劳伦斯伯克利国家实验室的应用地球物理学家乔纳森·阿霍-富兰克林说到FinvI40j-lZYIn|。他说光纤电缆就像玻璃纤维一样，里面有杂质IfuP;3B5r@W~!gmnz。因此当你通过光纤发送激光时，这些杂质会将一部分光反射回激光源T;O@hI5;mMkik#xO。
“我们测量了后向散射光随时间的变化，这种光提供了各个位置电缆段的信息vR[A,ScYAs2X@M。”
他的团队利用电缆短暂维护期来进行研究，当时加利福尼亚州蒙特利海岸的一条特殊电缆未用于通讯Zge|Zj+3^ek6;S。研究人员研究了电缆轻微变形情况，并能够检测到小地震、精确定位海床上未标明的错误以及观察到水柱的移动，所有这些都可能引起海洋学家的兴趣w5rmEq=R5v179@TEH。
他们的研究发表在《科学》期刊上TEP_yRYM_#KLE|P^jab。
阿霍-富兰克林指出，地震仪在世界海洋中相当稀少：
“这是个巨大的空白@gJ@nRK|c9&。”
因此这些电缆迟早会派上用场NBY20DO3neN!ajNtuZI。与此项研究不同的是，人们甚至不必关闭互联网来检测地震|8-jZFg]O3Y。
“我们正在寻找可能只使用一小截电缆的潜在方法，这样就可以用这种电缆检测地震的同时保持通讯EDiN|*Qj2j1c。”
这可能将地球更多的低沉隆隆声连接到网络上OG*t5.pb-J]zZ#4。
谢谢大家收听科学美国人——60秒科学Hlm1D[|qGfs~gEj%27。我是克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔66Dh149z@_D。

译文为可可英语翻译，未经授权请勿转载！

重点讲解

重点讲解：
1. take advantage of 利用；
She took advantage of the children's absence to tidy their rooms.
她趁孩子们不在时收拾了他们的房间zY&AiXwJjM].#wiO。
2. be able to do sth. 可以…的，能够…的；
You'll be able to read in peace.
你就能安心地读书了p@DvmUvp#%8VoR。
3. come in handy 派上用场；
That key will come in handy if you lock yourself out.
要是你把自己锁在了屋外，那把钥匙就派上用场了3ELlh,%BLWB。
4. turn off 关上；关掉；截断，切断（…的供应）；
The light's a bit too harsh. You can turn it off.
灯光有点太刺眼了0U.G.!1u4VZsEK。你可以把灯关掉g)8s_M-d%_;mDU。