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Science 11 March 2005:
Vol. 307. no. 5715, pp. 1568 - 1569
DOI: 10.1126/science.1109834
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Perspectives

GEOPHYSICS:
Information from Seismic Noise

Richard L. Weaver

Contrary to intuition, noise can contain useful information. In his Perspective, Weaver highlights the report by Shapiro et al., who show that noisy seismic wave fields can be used to extract information about the Earth's crust. Despite their random appearance, the wave fields retain a residual coherence, which distributes their energy in characteristic and non-intuitive ways and generates correlations that reveal information on Earth's internal structure. Such residual coherence in multiply scattered wave fields is also observed, and finds application, in electronics, ultrasonics, and optics.

The author is in the Department of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. E-mail: r-weaver{at}uiuc.edu

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)