Wysession has held several editorships of geophysical journals, and is on the Executive Committee of the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology, the primary policy-setting organization in his field, where he is currently working to enact congressional legislation to create a national array of thousands of seismometers for viewing the structure of the Earth beneath North America. The study of earthquakes is fascinating, with an unusual history. Early attention to earthquakes was largely given because of a desire to locate, and later predict these potentially destructive earth movements. With the reinvention of the theory of Continental Drift in the form of Plate Tectonics, seismology took on an important geological role. It took the Cold War for seismology to become a fully funded field of research, as governments realized that the monitoring of nuclear tests could best be done with seismology.
Bombs are similar to, but distinctly different from, earthquakes in their seismic characteristics.
However, with the wealth of seismic information available due to the politically driven establishment of worldwide seismic networks, new possibilities emerged for investigating the structure of the deep earth. Since light doesn't pass through rock, and the deepest we have ever been able to drill is about 8 miles, we knew relatively little about the interior of our own planet until quite recently. Using seismic waves from earthquakes in a manner similar to medical tomography, we are now able to create amazing images of the complex structure of earth's interior. What we have found is a fascinating and complex half-billion yearlong cycle that rock passes through during a journey from the surface to the core and back again. Ocean seafloors subduct beneath the edges of continents and sink into the mantle.