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Mighty_Emperor Divine Wind
Joined: 18 Aug 2002 Total posts: 19943 Location: Mongo Age: 42 Gender: Male |
 Posted: 14-01-2004 22:18 Post subject: Earthquake Prediction Advances |
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| Quote: | Earthquakes Can Be Predicted Months in Advance, Report UCLA Scientists, Who Predicted San Simeon Earthquake
Date: January 6, 2004
Contact: Stuart Wolpert ( stuartw@college.ucla.edu )
Phone: 310-206-0511
Major earthquakes can be predicted months in advance, argues UCLA seismologist and mathematical geophysicist Vladimir Keilis-Borok.
"Earthquake prediction is called the Holy Grail of earthquake science, and has been considered impossible by many scientists," said Keilis-Borok, a professor in residence in UCLA's Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics and department of earth and space sciences. "It is not impossible."
"We have made a major breakthrough, discovering the possibility of making predictions months ahead of time, instead of years, as in previously known methods," Keilis-Borok said. "This discovery was not generated by an instant inspiration, but culminates 20 years of multinational, interdisciplinary collaboration by a team of scientists from Russia, the United States, Western Europe, Japan and Canada."
The team includes experts in pattern recognition, geodynamics, seismology, chaos theory, statistical physics and public safety. They have developed algorithms to detect precursory earthquake patterns.
In June of 2003, this team predicted an earthquake of magnitude 6.4 or higher would strike within nine months in a 310-mile region of Central California whose southern part includes San Simeon, where a magnitude 6.5 earthquake struck on Dec. 22.
In July of 2003, the team predicted an earthquake in Japan of magnitude 7 or higher by Dec. 28, 2003, in a region that includes Hokkaido. A magnitude 8.1 earthquake struck Hokkaido on Sept. 25, 2003.
Previously, the team made "intermediate-term" predictions, years in advance. The 1994 Northridge earthquake struck 21 days after an 18-month period when the team predicted that an earthquake of magnitude 6.6 or more would strike within 120 miles from the epicenter of the 1992 Landers earthquake — an area that includes Northridge. The magnitude 6.8 Northridge earthquake caused some billion in damage. The 1989 magnitude 7.1 Loma Prieta earthquake fulfilled a five-year forecast the team issued in 1986.
Keilis-Borok's team now predicts an earthquake of at least magnitude 6.4 by Sept. 5, 2004, in a region that includes the southeastern portion of the Mojave Desert, and an area south of it.
The team has submitted a description of its new short-term earthquake prediction research to Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors, a leading international journal in geophysics.
Prediction by this method is based on observations of small earthquakes that occur daily.
"We call our new approach, 'tail wags the dog,'" Keilis-Borok said. "For example, I recently had a sharp pain in a small area of my arm. The doctor sent me for an MRI to test whether this pain was preceded by an unfelt deterioration of the muscles in the whole arm during the last few months. If yes, the pain signals that the deterioration has escalated, so I am in trouble, and need urgent medical treatment. If not, I may have just hit something, the pain will subside, and it's of little concern. To detect these symptoms in order of their appearance — first emerged, first detected — could seem more natural but it is much more difficult; we would not know when and where to look for long-term deterioration.
"Similarly, we look backwards to make our earthquake predictions. First, we search for quickly formed long chains of small earthquakes. Each chain is our candidate to a newly discovered short-term precursor. In the vicinity of each such chain, we look backwards, and see its history over the preceding years — whether our candidate was preceded by certain seismicity patterns. If yes, we accept the candidate as a short-term precursor and start a nine-month alarm. If not, we disregard this candidate."
In seismically active regions, the Earth's crust generates constant background seismicity, which the team monitors for the symptoms of approaching strong earthquakes. Specifically, they consider the following four symptoms: small earthquakes become more frequent in an area (not necessarily on the same fault line); earthquakes become more clustered in time and space; earthquakes occur almost simultaneously over large distances within a seismic region; and the ratio of medium-magnitude earthquakes to smaller earthquakes increases.
One of the challenges in earthquake prediction has been to achieve a high proportion of successful predictions, while minimizing false alarms and unpredicted events. The team's current predictions have not missed any earthquake, and have had its two most recent ones come to pass.
Still, not all seismologists are convinced. "Application of nonlinear dynamics and chaos theory is often counter-intuitive," Keilis-Borok said, "so acceptance by some research teams will take time. Other teams, however, accepted it easily."
Keilis-Borok, 82, has been working on earthquake prediction for more than 20 years. A mathematical geophysicist, he was the leading seismologist in Russia for decades, said his UCLA colleague John Vidale, who calls Keilis-Borok the world's leading scientist in the art of earthquake prediction. Keilis-Borok is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the European, Austrian and Pontifical academies of science. He founded Moscow's International Institute of Earthquake Prediction Theory and Mathematical Geophysics, and joined UCLA's faculty in 1999.
His research team has started experiments in advance prediction of destructive earthquakes in Southern California, Central California, Japan, Israel and neighboring countries, and plans to expand prediction to other regions.
Vidale, interim director of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics, said, "Most seismologists agree that the ingredients of the 'tail wags the dog' method are sensible, but argue about the performance. However, the proof is in the pudding, and Professor Keilis-Borok's methods have now delivered several correct and impressive forecasts."
At the most recent stage of the research, four members of the team worked at UCLA on the "tail wags the dog" method for short-term prediction: Keilis-Borok; Peter Shebalin, geophysicist from the Russian Academy of Sciences and Institute of the Physics of the Earth in Paris; Purdue University mathematician and geophysicist Andrei Gabrielov; and UCLA researcher Ilya Zaliapin, whose field is analysis of complex systems.
Keilis-Borok's team communicates the predictions to disaster management authorities in the countries where a destructive earthquake is predicted. These authorities might use such predictions, although their accuracy is not 100 percent, to prevent considerable damage from the earthquakes — save lives and reduce economic losses — by undertaking such preparedness measures as conducting simulation alarms, checking vulnerable objects and mobilizing post?disaster services, Keilis-Borok said.
During the last few years, the team was supported by the James S. McDonnell Foundation.
How does Keilis-Borok compare this research with other discoveries he has made over his scientific career?
"I think this is the strongest result we have obtained so far," he said.
-UCLA- |
http://www.internetanniv.ucla.edu/page.asp?RelNum=4835
Last edited by Mighty_Emperor on 10-08-2004 02:35; edited 1 time in total |
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| KeyserXSoze King of Otters
Great Old One Joined: 02 Jun 2002 Total posts: 1040 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 16-04-2004 07:15 Post subject: Big One Hits LA By September 5th |
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http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/04/15/1081998278993.html | Quote: | Quake to hit LA 'by Sept 5'
April 15, 2004
A US geophysicist has set the scientific world ablaze by claiming to have cracked a holy grail: accurate earthquake prediction, and warning that a big one will hit southern California by September 5.
Russian-born University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) professor Vladimir Keilis-Borok says he can foresee major quakes by tracking minor temblors and historical patterns in seismic hotspots that could indicate more violent shaking is on the way.
And he has made a chilling prediction that a quake measuring at least 6.4 magnitude on the Richter scale will hit a 19,300-square-kilometre area of southern California by September 5.
The team at UCLA's Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics accurately predicted a 6.5-magnitude quake in central California last December as well as an 8.1-magnitude temblor that struck the Japanese island of Hokkaido in September.
"Earthquake prediction is called the Holy Grail of earthquake science, and has been considered impossible by many scientists," said Keilis-Borok, 82.
"It is not impossible.
"We have made a major breakthrough, discovering the possibility of making predictions months ahead of time, instead of years, as in previously known methods."
If accurate, the prediction method would be critical in an area like California, which is criss-crossed by fault lines that have spawned devastating quakes over the years including ones which ravaged San Francisco in 1989 and Los Angeles in 1994.
That has given credence to his research, which was endorsed by a state panel, the California Earthquake Prediction Evaluation Council, earlier this month.
"Even two years back it was practically a dirty word to say earthquake prediction," said Nancy Sauer, an organiser of the annual conference of the Seismological Society of America which began yesterday in Palm Springs.
The UCLA team - made up of US, Japanese, Canadian, European and Russian experts in pattern recognition, geodynamics, seismology, chaos theory, statistical physics and public safety - says it has developed algorithms to detect earthquake patterns.
The experts predicted in June an earthquake measuring 6.4 or higher would strike within nine months in a 496-kilometre region of central California, including San Simeon, where a 6.5-magnitude temblor struck December 22, killing two people.
In July, they said they predicted a magnitude 7.0 or higher quake in a region that included Hokkaido by December 28. The September 25 quake fell within that period.
Now they predict a major quake will hit an area that stretches across desert regions to the east of Los Angeles, home to around nine million people, including the Mojave desert and the resort town of Palm Springs, which lies near the notorious San Andreas fault.
That is where experts began gathering for the Seismological Society of America conference that looks sure to be dominated by passionate discussion of Keilis-Borok's prediction method.
"There is something going on," Sauer told the Desert Sun newspaper in Palm Springs. "People are at least willing to entertain the idea. It is not seen so much as junk science now."
Another seismic expert, University of Oregon professor Ray Weldon, was scheduled to present findings to the conference that appear to support Keilis-Borok's research by saying the San Andreas fault is about to enter a new and violent period of shaking.
The data, according to the Desert Sun, was gathered over 18 years around the famed fault, showing it is under high levels of stress.
"You could consider that support (for Keilis-Borok's research)," Weldon was quoted as saying. "But I dont lend any insight or support to a window of time."
But researchers still point to the fact that the science of earthquake prediction has been notoriously inaccurate and the geographic area targeted by the UCLA team for an imminent quake is very large.
"It is not specific," said Susan Hough, a seismologist for the US Geological Survey based in Pasadena, near Los Angeles. "They've made three predictions and two of them have been borne out."
Keilis-Borok himself acknowledged the caution expressed by some of his colleagues. "Application of non-linear dynamics and chaos theory is often counter-intuitive, so acceptance by some research teams will take time."
But if his latest prediction that the earth will move in the area around Los Angeles within the next five months proves accurate, his research could end up saving lives and transforming seismology |
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| waitew Great Old One Joined: 15 Apr 2004 Total posts: 301 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 17-04-2004 04:07 Post subject: |
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Well,it's about bloody time.I've lived in California my whole life & as long as I can remember they've been telling us,"The big one's coming"I've heard it before & the date allways came & went with no great quake.Even Parkfield failed.
I'd wager it doesn't happen,but even if it does there's a 10% chance merely by chance alone.So,it wouldn't be that astonishing a prediction. |
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| headnspace Galavanting Wisdom Trader
sphere circle disk pi O Joined: 06 Sep 2001 Total posts: 153 Location: Atlanta USA, formerly San Diego Age: 7 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 20-04-2004 16:42 Post subject: track earthquakes! |
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I lived in San Diego, and felt one earthquake in 6 years. (there were supposed to be 2 others, but I slept through them).
After I felt one, I found this site which tracks earthquakes worldwide. They happen ALL THE TIME.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/
I felt the one that happened on October 7, at 10:35 AM. I was working on the 6th floor of a 6 storey building. It was a mild shaking, like a huge truck driving by a house. But since I was in a huge building, I looked at my co-workers saying "did you feel that?" It lasted only a few seconds, and it was "only" a 3.6.
this link gives the details of the earthquake that I felt.http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqinthenews/2003/ci9949649/map.html If you feel one, check out this site to see how big it was.  |
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| Mighty_Emperor Divine Wind
Joined: 18 Aug 2002 Total posts: 19943 Location: Mongo Age: 42 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 10-08-2004 02:37 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | August 9, 2004
We're All on Shaky Ground
By David L. Ulin
This morning, I'm listening to the birds outside my window. It's a soothing sound, a harmony of chirping just above the level of background noise. Were I anywhere else, I might not even notice, but in Southern California, the simplest things often come loaded, carrying a weight far greater than themselves.
This is, after all, earthquake country, and in earthquake country, the story goes, birds stop chirping three hours before a major quake. Is that true? Probably not. But on both a conscious and a cellular level, I keep an ear out for the birds.
The idea that birds (or, for that matter, animals in general) can sense an impending earthquake is one of the oldest seismic myths I know of, going back to ancient Greece.
It's also the tip of the, er, earthquake, because when it comes to seismicity, we can't help but look for signs. We talk about earthquake weather, with its flat, dry heat, its sudden stillness; we prepare (or don't) based on our superstitious natures, the sense that we might influence what's going on.
In his 1946 book, "Southern California: An Island on the Land," Carey McWilliams lists legends that emerged after the 1933 Long Beach earthquake, including the supposition "that the earthquake was really caused by a moving mountain near Durango, Colo.," or that it "was the first manifestation of an awful curse which the Rev. Robert P. Shuler had placed on Southern California, after he failed to be elected to the United States Senate."
To some extent, such beliefs are not so different from those of the Chumash, who thought the Earth shook when giant underground snakes got tired and changed positions, or from the theories of contemporary earthquake predictors, who look to cloud formations or their own physical sensitivities and ailments to suggest when and where the next earthquake will hit.
Where do such impulses come from? And what do they mean? On the most basic level, they suggest our fear of the uncontrollable, our need to erect (if only psychologically) elaborate protective systems for ourselves. With seismicity, however, there's another dimension, for what we know has a way of shifting underneath us, like the Earth, continually altering the nature of our belief. Of the three main pieces of folklore that McWilliams catalogs — the notion of earthquake weather, the fear that "tall buildings are particularly perilous in a quake area" and the idea that "earthquakes are caused by the drainage of oil from the bowels of the Earth" — the latter two, have, over the last 60 years, gained at least a measure of credibility as we learn more about how earthquakes work.
By the same token, it's no longer entirely unreasonable to claim that there might be something to earthquake sensitivity, since we recognize that temblors disrupt the Earth's electromagnetic field, which may produce headaches in some people by affecting the magnetite in their brains. This is also the logic behind anomalous animal behavior, that birds or dogs or horses are disturbed by electromagnetic variations before a quake. It's a bit of a stretch, but the same was once said of an idea called earthquake interaction, which, as recently as 1992, seemed the stuff of science fiction. Then the Landers and Big Bear earthquakes struck just hours apart in the same corner of Southern California, forcing seismologists to accept that one temblor might help set up another one, that earthquakes develop out of a complex process of stress alignment among a region's faults.
In the broadest terms, what this suggests is that science may simply offer another angle on earthquakes, a more intricately nuanced type of myth. Because you can't create a temblor in the laboratory, when it comes to studying quakes seismologists are as much at the mercy of the elements as the rest of us, waiting for the Big One to arrive. That's why so much earthquake science has tended toward the practical: framing stronger building codes, for instance, so that when a quake comes, fewer houses will fall down. It's hard to argue with this kind of thinking, because the one thing we know in Southern California is that earthquakes are in our future, even if we can't pin them down.
All the same, I'd be lying if I said a building code could comfort us, at least in the way a legend can. Faced with the uncertainty of an earthquake, we need the myths, the stories, the larger frame of reference that speaks to our imagination and our fears. We need, in other words, to make sense of the incomprehensible, to come to terms with seismicity by giving it a context we can recognize.
Not that any of this will protect us. But in the buildup to the next earthquake, it may provide a measure of solace, a strategy for coping, not all that different from listening to the birds.
----------------
David L. Ulin's "The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction, and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith" has just been published by Viking. |
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ulin9aug09,1,6530989.story |
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| Mighty_Emperor Divine Wind
Joined: 18 Aug 2002 Total posts: 19943 Location: Mongo Age: 42 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 10-08-2004 02:38 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Icelandic water gives clues about quakes
Chemical levels rose weeks before tremor
By JOHN VEYSEY
jveysey@journalsentinel.com
Posted: Aug. 8, 2004
An Icelandic hunch, some good luck and a 1 1/2-mile-deep well might lead to a new way of predicting earthquakes.
Advertisement
Two geologists studying water drawn from deep beneath Iceland have discovered that underground chemistry can change many weeks before a major earthquake arrives.
If confirmed, their work suggests a new approach to predicting and understanding earthquakes: See what's happening deep underground, don't just wait for small tremors to reach the surface.
"I think this is definitely an exciting potential tool in earthquake prediction," said John Valley, a geologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Volcanic Iceland is speckled with deep wells, which are used for heat and geothermal power. Lillemore Claesson and Alasdair Skelton, geologists from Stockholm University in Sweden, figured they could use these wells to see how underground chemistry changed when an earthquake struck.
"But the biggest problem with earthquake prediction studies is that you don't know when there'll be an earthquake," Skelton said.
The Swedes followed a hunch from Icelanders and chose one of their sample wells in the northern part of the island. Just 10 weeks after they began work, a major 5.8-magnitude earthquake hit the area.
This good luck led to Skelton's observation: the concentration of several metals in the water samples peaked weeks before the earthquake arrived. The Swedes' findings are reported in the August edition of the journal Geology.
The idea that geochemical changes could accompany earthquakes isn't new. "There have been chemical tests made before, to predict earthquakes, and it's a very sound approach," said Valley of UW-Madison.
"I'm a long way from saying this is our idea," Skelton said. But the closest anyone had come to catching an earthquake was a clever team that looked at bottled spring water produced before and after a 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan.
"That's where we were really lucky," Skelton said.
Metallic change
In the Iceland study, he collected water samples once a week for 10 weeks before and one year after the earthquake from a well about 60 miles away from the quake's center. Using sensitive instruments that can detect concentrations of a few parts per billion, Skelton looked at 48 different chemicals before, during and after the earthquake.
Five metals appeared in unusually high concentrations in the weeks preceding the quake. Copper peaked one week in advance, zinc two weeks, and chromium and iron peaked at least 10 weeks earlier. This pattern could foreshadow an earthquake.
Skelton thinks he can explain the results.
"Being Iceland, it gets hot very quickly when you go down," Skelton said. The stress and pressure that cause an earthquake might allow water to seep up from the depths. Deeper underground, water is in contact with hot basalt, the volcanic rock that built Iceland. At these high temperatures, water can dissolve the metals in the rock.
This explanation agrees with experiments.
"We put a lump of basalt in hot water, and you get the elements we observed," Skelton said. "It couldn't be better. And you get them in the same order."
But Iceland has a relatively simple geologic structure, and Skelton cautioned against reading too much into his results. In the short term, he simply wants researchers to pay attention to chemical changes in addition to tremors and seismic waves, which geophysicists study.
"I'm hoping that geophysicists will take geochemists more seriously," Skelton said. "We simply need to communicate with each other, and not be in competition to be the person to predict earthquakes."
But until they are repeated, Skelton's results can't predict anything. "The statistics show us that the peaks we observe are real peaks," Skelton said. "But they don't tell us that the peaks would occur before another earthquake."
Unfortunately, scientists rarely have a mile-deep hole and an earthquake in the same place. This summer, while Skelton is waiting for the next earthquake in Iceland, National Science Foundation researchers began drilling a 2-mile-deep bore hole into the San Andreas fault in California.
The drilling is one part of the 0 million Earthscope project, which aims to understand the geologic structure of North America. According to Stanford geophysicist Mark Zoback, a leader of the drilling, the project will build a seismic observatory deep within the fault to measure what happens before, during and after earthquakes.
Zoback explained that small, magnitude-2 earthquakes occur near his project every couple of years. With the drilling well under way, researchers might not have to wait long for the first results.
Zoback's project will look at vibrations, rock chemistry and "pore fluids" - water that permeates underground rocks.
"The origin of the pore fluids is something we're very curious about, and there are all sorts of hypotheses," Zoback said. "By extracting fluids, we can use the chemical signature of those fluids to track where they come from. If they really are coming out of the Earth's mantle, that may have something to do with what triggers earthquakes."
This would agree with Skelton's ideas, and maybe even with folk wisdom.
"You always have to be very careful about listening to the public, when people talk about funny tastes and smells," Skelton said. "If there's a lot of iron in the water, you'd sure taste it." |
http://www.jsonline.com/alive/news/aug04/249223.asp |
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| waitew Great Old One Joined: 15 Apr 2004 Total posts: 301 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 31-08-2004 02:15 Post subject: |
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| I was going to write in & say it looks like this earthquake prediction is destined to fail with only 5 days left.......but I just looked at USGS real time earthquake map & we've had two magnitude 4 earthquakes in southern California today.Maybe the guy's right & it's getting ready to go!We'll see. |
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| waitew Great Old One Joined: 15 Apr 2004 Total posts: 301 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 02-09-2004 02:56 Post subject: |
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| Two days left!!Looks like it's gonna fail! |
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| waitew Great Old One Joined: 15 Apr 2004 Total posts: 301 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 04-09-2004 01:58 Post subject: |
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| One day left....all most certain to fail!! |
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| waitew Great Old One Joined: 15 Apr 2004 Total posts: 301 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 04-09-2004 19:09 Post subject: |
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| Failed!!Back to the drawing board. |
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| waitew Great Old One Joined: 15 Apr 2004 Total posts: 301 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 05-09-2004 16:57 Post subject: |
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| Say,shouldn't you change the name of the thread to 'Earthquake prediction DOESN"T advance'? |
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| Mighty_Emperor Divine Wind
Joined: 18 Aug 2002 Total posts: 19943 Location: Mongo Age: 42 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 09-09-2004 00:08 Post subject: |
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| waitew wrote: |
Say,shouldn't you change the name of the thread to 'Earthquake prediction DOESN"T advance'? |
Apparently* 
| Quote: | Wednesday, September 8, 2004
From the Los Angeles Times
THE NATION
Science Is Left a Bit Rattled by the Quake That Didn't Come
By Hector Becerra
Times Staff Writer
September 8, 2004
Seldom has an earthquake gotten so much attention for not happening.
Earlier this year, an international research team led by 83-year-old UCLA professor Vladimir Keilis-Borok had forecast that a moderate quake would rattle the California desert before Sept. 5 and, for the last week, the state's earthquake experts had anxiously watched their seismometers to see if he would be correct.
"One doesn't hope for an earthquake. That sounds awful. But part of me hoped it was true," said Lucy Jones, who is in charge of the U.S. Geological Survey's Pasadena office.
"I've spent much of my life looking at some aspects of quake prediction, and looking at whether it's possible," she said. "I don't see how his technique is useful as a form of prediction, but if he was right, it would be scientifically important as something to look out for."
This time he wasn't right.
For years, seismologists have sought some method for predicting temblors. After Keilis-Borok predicted — albeit in a general way — the Paso Robles quake last December and one in Japan a year ago, his method had captured the imagination of many skeptics.
Now it appears to be just one more in a long line of prediction methods that haven't worked reliably — to the disappointment of many.
"It's a little less promising than it looked six months ago," conceded John Vidale, a UCLA professor of geophysics and interim director of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics.
Like many other scientists, Vidale was hoping the ground would shake. He even bet another UCLA seismologist, David Jackson, that the latest prediction would come true.
"I paid it off an hour ago," he said.
Keilis-Borok insisted that his methodology remains sound. He has always said that up to 50% of his predictions would turn out to be false alarms — and this was simply one of them.
"Famous American saying, 'That is the way it goes,' " Keilis-Borok said in his Russian accent. "We made three predictions. Three predictions, and two were correct and one was wrong."
The scientist, who in his spare time tries to predict the popular vote in presidential elections, then added: "To quote Churchill, 'This is not the beginning of the end, it's the end of the beginning.' "
Still, some colleagues said the failure has to be something of a letdown for a scientist who was treated like a rock star at an earthquake convention this summer in Palm Springs.
His speech at the Seismological Society of America drew the biggest audience. Afterward, he was mobbed by journalists and fellow scientists interested in his prediction techniques.
UC Irvine earthquake scientist Lisa Grant said Keilis-Borok displayed courage by going public with his prediction, knowing it could turn out to be incorrect.
"Why did all of us sit there, including me, glued to the screen?" Grant said. "Because whether we agreed with his method or not, there was just a curiosity about someone sticking their neck out and doing this publicly."
Keilis-Borok, who emigrated from Russia four decades ago, has been working on ways to predict temblors for years — a quest he has called "the Holy Grail of earthquake science."
He is not alone: Scientists across the globe — notably in China and Japan — have been working on similar projects.
Keilis-Borok, a seismologist and mathematical geophysicist, thought he and his international team of scientists had found the magic bullet last year. The team examined "precursory chains" of small quakes that had occurred in the past to develop predictions about larger quakes that would occur in the future.
The Keilis-Borok team does not predict the date, place or magnitude of a quake. Rather, it uses general times and locations.
For example, the team forecast in June 2003 that a quake of at least 6.4 would hit the California coast somewhere between Fort Bragg and Cambria — a 310-mile-long area. They said the quake would occur sometime before March 2004.
On Dec. 22, 2003, a 6.5-magnitude temblor struck six miles northeast of San Simeon, on the southern edge of the team's boundary. The quake killed two people in Paso Robles and caused 0 million damage.
In January, Keilis-Borok predicted an earthquake of at least 6.4 magnitude would occur by Sept. 5 in a 12,000-square-mile area in the Mojave Desert. Unlike his previous predictions, he made this one public.
One reason his early success generated so much excitement is that the scientific community has become so doubtful that quakes can be predicted.
"We're more pessimistic about quake prediction now than we were 40 years ago," said Clarence Allen, a professor emeritus of geology and geophysics at Caltech.
So many theories have come and gone without advancing the cause, Vidale added: Does the chemistry of water change just before a quake? Do pets and other animals run away because they can sense one coming?
After years of writing off quake predictions as "hopeless endeavors," Vidale said it was refreshing to see that scientists were open-minded — and in some cases even excited — about Keilis-Borok's prediction.
"To really know how well this works, it will take 10 trials," Vidale added.
As for Keilis-Borok, he said his team's research will continue, but probably with less public scrutiny. He said future predictions will be relayed only to "professionals in the field" and not to the news media.
"Predictions may cause anxiety in the population," he said.
Copyright © 2004, The Los Angeles Times |
http://www.newsday.com/news/health/la-me-quake8sep08,0,3767807.story?coll=ny-health-headlines
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* Although to be a pedant the 'advances' in the title is a noun not a verb :p
Also negative results are still results so either way we can deem this a step forward in our understanding. |
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| Mighty_Emperor Divine Wind
Joined: 18 Aug 2002 Total posts: 19943 Location: Mongo Age: 42 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 29-09-2004 02:42 Post subject: |
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Too little too late?
| Quote: | Strong Quake Rattles Tiny California Town
1 hour, 54 minutes ago
By Dan Whitcomb
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A strong earthquake and over 200 aftershocks struck central California on Tuesday, rattling a large chunk of the state along the San Andreas Fault, but causing little significant damage.
The quake, registering magnitude 6.0, was centered near Parkfield, a tiny town of about three dozen people known to geologists as the earthquake capital of California. The quake was felt across much of the state, from San Francisco to Los Angeles.
The temblor was the largest to hit California in 10 months, jangling nerves and prompting school evacuations, though there were no reports of injuries or significant damage. The U.S. Geological Survey (news - web sites) recorded about 220 aftershocks and said there was a 5 percent to 10 percent chance of another large quake in the next two days.
"We did have quite a shake. It was a real significant jerk and then a slow roll and of course we evacuated all of the children," said Judy Price, a spokeswoman for the Shandon Unified School District, which encompasses Parkfield.
Price said students at a one-room schoolhouse in Parkfield that teaches kindergarten through sixth grade were sent home for the day at the request of parents, but children in surrounding communities returned to their classrooms.
Parkfield, which straddles California's famed San Andreas Fault, has been shaken regularly for centuries and intensely studied by scientists for the past several decades. According to its Web site, Parkfield hosts the largest array of earthquake monitoring equipment in the world.
In fact, scientists predicted that a magnitude 6 earthquake would strike Parkfield around 1988 and since then have been waiting and monitoring the San Andreas Fault in that area.
"This looks like the Parkfield event we've been waiting for," Hough said.
Residents take the town's reputation in stride, boasting that no one has ever been injured in a Parkfield quake. The town's lone restaurant, the Parkfield Cafe, has a sign that reads: "Eat Here When It Happens."
The quake did not disrupt operations at oil refineries or the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, which is about 50 miles from the epicenter. Kinder Morgan Energy Partners L.P. said it briefly shut down two pipelines as a precaution.
Paso Robles, 17 miles from the epicenter of Tuesday's quake, was hit by a magnitude 6.5 temblor in December. Two people died and several buildings were wrecked, including a clock tower that toppled into the street. |
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&ncid=578&e=1&u=/nm/20040928/ts_nm/quake_california_dc |
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| Anonymous |
| Posted: 29-09-2004 02:49 Post subject: |
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We felt that one here in the Bay Area. About 20 seconds or so of mild rolling movement.
Hardly enough to take notice of.  |
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| waitew Great Old One Joined: 15 Apr 2004 Total posts: 301 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 29-09-2004 05:06 Post subject: |
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| Too liittle,too late & outside the area he predicted!Actually,this quake was predicted & expected...15 years ago!So,yes,it's a little late. |
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