For a number of years RAS specialists have been studying the Elbrus area, a region where the highest European mountain (5,642 m), a two-peak cone of the dormant volcano, is located. Last time the volcano erupted about 1,800 years ago, and today there is a great probability that Elbrus will "wake up"*; besides, the territory around the "sparkling giant" is densely populated and there is actively developing turism–all these factors speak for the necessity to organize a regular geophysical and seismic monitoring in this area. And the ice has already been broken: scientists of the RAS Institute of Physics of the Earth (Moscow) and Kabardino-Balkarian State University (Nalchik) arranged five observation posts located in the territory of the university (Laboratory No. 3 in specially designed deepened premises), near Elbrussky settlement (Karachayevo-Cherkessian Republic), in the Big Sochi region and in the tunnel of the Baksan Neutrino Observatory of the RAS Institute for Nuclear Research (Laboratory No. 1 in a separate lateral cutting of Glavnaya tunnel and No. 2 in the lateral chamber of Vspomogatel-naya tunnel). The measuring equipment is installed on concrete bases molded in the bedrock. Seven years ago scientists of the aforementioned educational establishments took interest in a remarkable phenomenon–well-marked change of the magnetic field before earthquakes. From that moment geophysicists began to develop a new research trend that gave impressive results. Leonid Sobisevich, Chief Research Assistant of the RAS Institute of Physics of the Earth, presented new scientific data to Stanislav Fioletov, reporter of the Poisk * See: V. Alexeyev, N. Alexeyeva, "Is Elbrus Waking Up?..", Science in Russia, No. 1, 2008.–Ed. стр. 96 newspaper, in the course of the All-Russia Conference Natural Processes, Geodynamics, Seismotectonics, held in September 2010 at Kabardino-Balkarian University. Specialists have established the following: all major ... Читать далее