On the use of the mutual correlation of cosmic rays penetrating the earth’s crust with geoacoustic emission

Abstract

The elastic deformation energy accumulated at the edges of a fault in the earth’s crust in a seismically active area can be released with a small external impact, causing vibrations that propagate in the form of a sound wave through the lithosphere and can be detected on its surface. As a trigger effect that causes such a vibration, an ionization can be used that is created in the deep lithosphere by particles of the penetrating component of cosmic rays. This idea was once proposed in the number of theoretical studies. An experiment to test this hypothesis was started at the cosmic ray facility at the Tien Shan Mining Scientific Station. As a result, short-term sporadic acoustic emission signals were recorded by highly sensitive microphone detectors of the station. Presumably, the origin of this emission can be associated with seismic processes occurring in the area of a deep earth fault, located directly under the station. A statistically significant temporal correlation has been found between acoustic emission and high-energy cosmic ray muon events up to 100 TeV. If the further research in this direction is confirmed, then the effect of stimulated acoustic emission from a seismically active region of the earth’s crust may be of interest for solving the problem of short-term earthquake prediction.