Apparently a combination of harddisk wobble and P2P networks could be the next inexpensive early warning system for tsunamis.
According to a report in NetworkWorld.com this brainchild of Michael Stadler The Tsunami Harddisk Detector would use the vibrations in the computers hard disks to detect undersea earthquakes; which are the cause of tsunamis.
As part of their operation, hard disks measure vibrations in order to keep the read-write head of the disk on track. These measurements can be read from some hard disks. The Tsunami Harddisk Detector captures this vibration data and shares it with computers in other locations connected via a peer-to-peer network to determine whether an earth tremor is occurring.
In the peer-to-peer network, several participating computers act as supernodes, which analyze the data received from the other “sensing” nodes. The supernodes are able to ignore vibrations generated by a computer being kicked or shaken, by recording how many computers report the same vibrations simultaneously.
