The underground test of a nuclear weapon in North Korea on Memorial Day was registered by

earthquake detectors all around the world - among them many stations of our Berkeley Digital Seismic
Network (see blog January 9, 2009). Our station deep inside the Yreka Bluehorn Mine (Siskiyou County) -
dubbed YBH - is also part of the International Monitoring System (IMS). It is run by a suborganization of
the United Nations in the Austrian capital Vienna, which has what is probably one of the most
complicated names on Earth: "The Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban
Treaty Organization."

Map of the region showing the location of the test, nearby earthquakes, and seismic monitoring stations
as well as seismograms of the explosion and a recent earthquake.

Figure 1: From "Sleuthing Seismic Signals", Science and Technology Review, March 2009, published by
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Underground detonations of nuclear weapons can be detected like earthquakes for a simple physical
reason. In both cases - either when rocks rupture in a quake or during the explosion - very strong forces
rapidly act inside the Earth. This leads to intensive shaking of the rocks around the hypocenter, which in
turn generates elastic waves. They can travel thousands of miles and are detected by sensitive
seismometers.

Moment tensor for the North Korea seismic event of 25 May 2009 calculated by Prof. Doug Dreger using
the BSL's complete waveform regional moment tensor code for a source depth of 800m.

Figure 2: Moment tensor for the North Korea seismic event of 25 May 2009 calculated by Prof. Doug
Dreger using the BSL's complete waveform regional moment tensor code for a source depth of 800m.
The seismic waves from this event are consistent with a shallow explosion source.

There are, however, major differences between the seismograms of natural tectonic earthquakes and
those of explosions. Firstly, the waveforms look very different. While an earthquake generates strong S-
Waves, the seismograms of underground nuclear test lack most of these waves. Instead, the P- (or
primary or pressure) waves dominate the seismogram from the detonation of an atomic bomb below
ground (see figure 1).

A second way to distinguish between the origins of the elastic waves is to analyze the data collected by
many stations in what is known as a "Moment Tensor Solution." By performing this computation,
seismologists trace the elastic waves back to their origin. That not only pinpoints the precise location of
the focus, it also shows the mechanism of the forces initially shaking the rocks. During an earthquake,
rock breaks in a shear fracture, which results in the rapid sideways movement of two flanks of a fault. In
an explosion, however, the origin is indeed a point, from which elastic pressure waves travel
concentrically outward. Berkeley's Moment Tensor Solution for the most recent North Korean test is
shown in figure 2. (hra039)