Earthquakes in the blind spot

Despite major advances in understanding where and why earthquakes happen, the world’s most energetic events continue to occur without warning. For example, the 2025 Kamchatka earthquake off the far-Eastern coast of Russia triggered tsunami warnings across the Pacific and the evacuation of millions of people. It is among the 10 strongest earthquakes since 1900 and the largest worldwide since 2011. Could such a megathrust event have been predicted? The answer is “maybe,” had there been sufficient instrumentation at the right time and place on the ocean floor. On page 1361 of this issue, Atterholt et al. (1) report a new strategy to improve seismic sensing in the ocean by transforming a fiber-optic array into seismometers that detect the ground motion associated with seismic waves generated by earthquakes. This approach could help identify large earthquakes on a time scale of seconds and mitigate the impact on public safety.