Geosciences professor Jeffrey Johnson appeared on Good Morning America to discuss using infrasound to study volcanoes. Volcano sounds are below the frequency limit of human perception but can be recorded with specialized microphones that are built at Boise State University.
Johnson’s work takes him and his students (both undergraduate and graduate) to volcanoes to record, analyze and interpret how these low frequency sound waves relate to eruption dynamics.
“Volcanoes like to speak in sounds low frequency sounds that humans can’t perceive, called infrasound,” said Johnson. “So we develop the sensors that we can deploy to listen to the volcano talk to us.”