Earthquake Prediction Months In Advance 297
eegad writes "A UCLA seismologist named Vladimir Keilis-Borok claims earthquakes can be predicted months in advance. In the article at the University of California Newswire, he claims that the "team including experts of pattern recognition, geodynamics, seismology, chaos theory, statistical physics and public safety ... has developed algorithms to detect precursory earthquake patterns." It also says "the team's current predictions have not missed any earthquake, and have had its two most recent ones come to pass." They predict "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." We'll see if they're right."
so... (Score:4, Funny)
Yep (Score:5, Insightful)
As in, hey two weeks from friday, leave the area for a day or two.
I think he did (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, I imagine if this sort of thing holds up, authorities will. Although this warning is so vague, it's only enough to get people to load up on emergency supplies, and possibly local governments to review disaster policies. Not that that accomplishment should be minimized, but something more certain a day in advance would be great.
Re:Yep (Score:5, Funny)
As in, hey two weeks from friday, leave the area for a day or two.
Dear Greater Los Angeles Metro Area ,
It has come to our attention that there is a high risk of an earthquake of magnitude 8 or greater strking the Greater Los Angeles Metro Area in the next 24-48 hours. While we understand you may be concerned about the prospect of this earthquake, rest assured that the vast majority of earthquakes that strike the Greater Los Angeles Metro Area region are no greater than magnitude 5 , and we do not expect this magnitude 8 earthquake to cause any unusual disruption to your daily schedule. In general, we only advise evacuation in the event of a magnitude 7 or greater earthquake. This magnitude 8 earthquake is certainly no cause for alarm.
Once again, thank you for subscribing to our automated Earthquake Alert Service, Greater Los Angeles Metro Area !
Re:Yep (Score:4, Interesting)
Earthquakes (in modern cities like LA, for example) cause far more damage to property than to people.
[Of course, the recent earthquake in Bam was an exception to this in that property was destroyed *and* people were killed, both because of the magnitude of the quake and the fact that most of the city was built without much insight into earthquake engineering.]
Advice like leaving the city for a day or two won't do much to mitigate the effects of a major quake in a modern city, I'm afraid. It would actually probably make things worse (for the most part) by adding traffic snarls on broken roadways to the list of post-quake problems.
Belloc
So that means... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So that means... (Score:3, Informative)
Dec. 26, 2003: Southeastern Iran, magnitude 6.5; at least 20,000 killed.
June 22, 2002: Northwestern Iran, magnitude 6; at least 500 killed.
May 10, 1997: Northern Iran, magnitude 7.1; 1,500 killed.
June 21, 1990: Northwest Iran, magnitude 7.3-7.7; 50,000 killed.
Sept. 16, 1978: Northeast Iran, magnitude 7.7; 25,000 killed.
That assumes... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well *I* can predict tides! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
In 6-9 months there will be an earthquake within 310 miles of San Francisco of at least 4.0.
This is fun!
Re:Well *I* can predict tides! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is fun!
Not to ruin a joke, but there are roughly 14,500 4.0+ earthquakes every year. By contrast, there are an average of 134 earthquakes between 6.0 and 6.9, and a whopping 17 between 7.0 and 7.9.
If they are on to something, this could be huge. Imagine that you're in charge of running a major international relief organization. Think of how useful it could be even to have this degree of earthquake prediction, considering that today you basically need to wait for a city to collapse before you can even begin the logistics of sending aid. If this team turns out to be on to something, odds are they'd be able to further hone their simulations and predictions to the point where you could have, say, a 200-mile radius and a 3 month 'window'. Given this window, you could take care of a lot of preparation, not the least of which is dealing with the politics of an international aid operation. Add to this the ability to 'beef up' aid agencies in the region, and you've got a lot better emergency response before the thing ever even hits...
Re:Well *I* can predict tides! (Score:2, Insightful)
Imagine that I'm in charge of a large earthquake insurance company.
Seriously though, this does pose many any questions.
Re:Well *I* can predict tides! (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, how many earthquakes do they miss? What's their accuracy rate? There is a lot of power is claiming to predict catastrophe, but it only takes one public slip up to stain the entire operation.
At this accuracy it might help larger organizations, but I wouldn't sell my house on their advice.
Ergo, their system is little more impressive than mine in respect to the common man, because everyone knows where quakes hit. (if they predict every major quake like this for two years, I'll change my tune.)
USGS Earthquake Reference Site (Score:2, Informative)
Incidentally, I'm posting this because I want to test the load bearing of this server, one of the ones I take care of here at work. So click away.
(anon to avoid karma-whoring)
Re:USGS Earthquake Reference Site (Score:2)
Re:USGS Earthquake Reference Site (Score:2)
Re:USGS Earthquake Reference Site (Score:5, Informative)
Reasonably flexible and GPL'd.
Re:USGS Earthquake Reference Site (Score:2)
Re:USGS Earthquake Reference Site (Score:4, Informative)
My university had the complete USGS survey book, the big thick one with maps of everything anyone ever tracked, from climate to weeds. (Wonderful resource, that book.) I remember the earthquake details as compiled up thru 1958, and that if you want a quake-free location, the closest to that is North Dakota (only 3.n magnitude or less on the map). And it's amazing how many major metro areas are planted directly atop historical large-quake clusters.
I can see it now... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I can see it now... (Score:3, Funny)
PBS (Score:5, Informative)
Re:PBS (Score:5, Interesting)
Which is why I am confident we will someday find a way to predict ( with 100% accuracy ) weather patterns.
Re:PBS (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is why I am confident we will someday find a way to predict ( with 100% accuracy ) weather patterns.
My god, are you channeling Von Neumann? He said the same thing about weather and predicted 100% accurate prediction "very soon now" for quite a while. The problem is, "most of" the variables isn't enough, and there's no way to get all of the variables exactly right. Even if you had (say) a temperature sensor for each cubic inch of air space in the atmosphere, the temperature variations between the sensors will make any model you base off your sensor readings deviate from reality after a relatively small number of iterations. Complex iterative models are often insanely sensitive to initial conditions. There will never be 100% accurate weather prediction.
Re:PBS (Score:2)
Re:PBS (Score:5, Insightful)
What could conceivably happen is that we start manipulating weather on a large scale, and we might learn how to bend weather to our will. We'd need essentially random corrections due to the forces of chaos, but conceivably with enough control, we could say "It will rain 3 inches on this site three years in the future" (with the implicit assumption the weather control grid will still be working, i.e., no major nuclear war, no nearby supernovas, etc.).
But that's not prediction, that's control, and there's a big difference. The unpredictability of the system would still manifest itself as a complete inability to predict in advance what inputs to the system would be necessary to maintain the states we desire; we'd have to correct dynamically and in the short-term. So, even this doesn't solve the "predictability" problem, it just pushes it out one meta-level; the fundamental unpredictability remains.
Seriously though, we may not be able to imagine how it will work, or the solutions we can imagine don't work at all, but I'm confident it will happen, both for earthquakes and weather and anything else overly complex. Note that I did not say sometime soon, although I would like to see that too, I understand the technology and science we need just isn't up to par yet.
"Science" has proven that it can't work. Making those things work requires that the impossible be done. Arguments of the form "If an impossible thing happens, another impossible thing can happen" are trivially logically true, but not relevant in the real world.
Before you continue to assert how I will eventually be "proven wrong by the unbounded and unimaginable progress of humanity!!!1!!", please study the computer science concept of reduction; any solution to the weather prediction problem reduces to a method to penetrate the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle fog, which would cause the complete collapse of particle physics as we know them (and remember, advances historically speaking refine past theories, not destroy them). If you still believe at that point that we might get past it, at least then you'll have some vague glimmering of the magnitude of power you are claiming we can obtain; I get no sense that you realize how scientifically and mathematically silly you're being from your current messages.
While you're at it, might want to study Godel's Incompleteness Theorum too, and the Halting Problem; there are just some limits we aren't going to go past, and as science gets more refined it can define them more and more completely.
Re:PBS (Score:5, Informative)
Re:PBS (Score:2)
It might be safer to say "never" if you qualify it with "using contemporary methods and technology".
People who say never about things (space travel, e.g.) are often proven wrong later (sometimes *much* later) because they were thinking in terms of contemporary methods and technology.
That said, I tend to agree with you. If not never, then not for a very long time.
Belloc
Re:PBS (Score:2)
Take a dice. Arrange a way for you to drop that dice exactly same way many times. Notice how the result is still totally random as long as the dice bounces at least a few times when it hits a surface. Weather is like that dice, we can't possibly know everything that affects the result, since if you get fancy enough to measure individual air molecules and atom-size bumps on surfaces, your measureme
Re:PBS (Score:2)
If you compare this to weather forecasting, the time scales are quite long, which gives more time for calculations. I think there must be less variables too, and they interact much more slowly. So forecasting earthquakes months before might have about as much inherent uncertainity as predicting wea
There's been other studies (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, 30-odd years ago, some school did research looking in newspapers of the last 30 days before an earthquake for missing dog reports. Their results showed a large increase right around the time an earthquake happened in the area of the quake.
Blogzine [blogzine.net]
Re:There's been other studies (Score:2, Informative)
Anyone heard of Kushida in Japan? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Anyone heard of Kushida in Japan? (Score:2)
Actually one thing that bothered me about it was that loads of international news agencies covered the prediction itself, but then when the earthquake happened
There's a downside to this (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There's a downside to this (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the real disaster for a local economy is when thousands of people hang around, and are buried alive because they weren't told to clear out. People can always come back to town after the quake hits, and return to their land and repair their buildings.
Re:There's a downside to this (Score:3, Interesting)
Assuming that they can afford such repairs without insurance. If these guys are onto something and can forecast large earthquakes at least several months in advance, and I'm an insurance company, I will not renew policies on buildings in those areas. Same kind of ethical problem that comes out of our increasing understanding of the human genome -- "Your genes make it quite probable that you wi
Re:There's a downside to this (Score:4, Insightful)
If an entire country will be asked to pay for disaster relief, I think it behooves the entire country to keep a cap on construction in known disaster prone areas.
Right ..... (Score:3, Insightful)
You remind me of my brother. Pisses and moans about paying for hurricane victims in Florida, then wanted a dam built to protect his house from a 100 year flood that he bought knowing it was in a flood plain.
Re:There's a downside to this (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, back to the geographic locale's state. Sucks to be them economically, but let's say you had the choice of having equal chance at having investments near your house, or knowing that in ~3 months, a catastrophic quake that could kill you is extremely likely. The economic problems are both temporary and offset by the value of increasing awareness to save lives. 4 months later after the quake happens, no further risk is seen and companies are already lined up to do reconstruction of whatever was destroyed. 3 months of warning allows a community to do a lot to protect investments from harm and prepare a rapid recovery plan for high-risk, high-value structures that may be destroyed. So while in the short term economic conditions are potentially bad, having 3 months warning provides better long term economic circumstances.
Re:There's a downside to this (Score:5, Insightful)
Who mods this stuff?
Would you hang around or invest in a place where there's a big quake known to be coming in the next few months?
Apparently the answer is Yes. California--with the earthquakes, fires, mud slides, Bonos and Schwarzeneggers --is the most populous state in the union. So people do hang around despite imminent doom.
And it's not just the nuts on the west coast. Idiots from Florida to the Carolinas continue to build houses in the ocean. Sure it looks like dry land today, but wait until the next hurricane comes through. Just like the California quakes it's a question of 'when' not 'if'.
So how can better predictions be bad for the local economy? Is there going to be a mass exodus? "Oh no! There's going to be an earthquake, let's all move to South Dakota!" If it hasn't happened yet, I doubt it's going to happen. And I'm sure SD prefers to be left alone anyway.
So rather than scaring off residents and business, maybe better predictions will help reduce damage and injury, which might help reduce insurance rates and costs of doing business in diaster-prone areas.
So if this turns out to be true, not only would it not be a disaster to the economy, it would be a huge asset.
Although it helps you prepare, life can't be normal after that.
Have you watched the news lately? Do you know the supreme executive of the state is 'Hercules in New York'? I would guess a life most of us would consider normal is not something most Californians need to worry about.
Re:There's a downside to this (Score:4, Insightful)
Pfft (Score:2)
Bosh. There's an enormous difference between "maybe" there'll be an earthquake and "definitely." While there might not be a mass out-migration, people will be reluctant to build, start new businesses, visit as tourists, buy stocks in businesses based in the region, issue insurance, etc. We've become a world of
Re:Pfft my ass. (Score:4, Interesting)
But as another poster points out, to some degree the rest of us pay for all this, primarily with increased insurance rates. Shoddy construction in Florida results in houses being blown away -- funny how a much bigger hurricane can hit Halifax and do far less damage! (And ordinary winter winds on the Great Plains are routinely hurricane force, yet houses don't fall over there.) Turns out building contractors in Florida often (illegally) use staples instead of nails, and staples pull out when stressed, so in a high wind these houses literally fall apart. But meanwhile, insurance skyrockets for everyone, deserving or not.
Here in California, you can no longer always get private homeowner's insurance if you're in a severe wildfire or earthquake zone, but you can get federally-funded (ie. taxpayer-paid) insurance.
No good answers, just a pile of observations.
And remember.. the four California seasons: Fire, Flood, Riot, and Earthquake!
There is no downside (Score:3, Interesting)
If this turns out to be true, it would be a disaster for the economy in an area.
Bzzzt. Wrong. Thank you for playing. Not only would more accurate and more precise prediction of earthquakes reduce loss in the affected areas, it could potentially create a whole new tourist trade.
Have you ever felt the effects of an earthquake? I have, and it's pretty cool. The earth quakes. It's better than any roller coaster ever made. And I was i
Re:There's a downside to this (Score:2)
Don't get me wrong, predicting earthquakes is a good thing, but in the same regard I agree with your poing 100%
Re:There's a downside to this (Score:2)
The movie was good, but the conclusions they jumped to about causality, fate, and choice were bullshit. When you can know the outcome of an action and can change it, you have _more_ freedom to choose, not less. You can track the outcome of basically every possible decision, including goofball ones you'd never think to do. Case in point, the entire movie; he knew what was going to happen and could alter it far more elegantly and efficiently than if he'd been working blind.
For instanc
Preparation is the key (Score:3, Insightful)
Well I do. I've grown up in Wellington, New Zealand, which is on a major fault line and expecting a significant chance of a big earthquake some time in the next 20 years. The city would originally have been built about 20 kms to the north, except in the mid-1800's, another big earthquake majorly changed the s
let's hope (Score:3, Funny)
C'mon schwartz.... c'mon schwartz!
they've been making these predictions 20 years (Score:5, Informative)
The method may work, but it has not yet passed the scientifically required of repoducibility by scientists outside the Russian research group. Several leading US seismologists have tried reproducing this analysis method without success. Either the method is devilishly difficult to reporduce, important details have [perhaps intentionally] not been published, or it really doesn't work. Furthemore, you dont see the US results in press, because people generally dont publish negative results. Hopefully the reproducibility issues will be resolved and there will be a successful prediction method.
(Read my lips: cold fusion)
A related effort that could really help (Score:5, Interesting)
What would really help is a preparation protocol that can be syncronized more accurately with risk. If an earthquake could be predicted with a graduated probability, then gradually more disruptive preparation steps could be taken as the risk rises.
Knowledge - Will it change much? (Score:5, Interesting)
One thing bothers me, however. Okay, so we know that there's going to be an earthquake somewhere in the world. The question is, what can we do?
In an affluent country/county, with educated individuals and a well organized emergency response force, there are several things to be done. First, evacuation procedures are begun. Secondly, the rescue and medical teams can be put on standby. Many similar actions can be taken.
However, the vast majority of the world that experiences earthquakes with some consistency can't do quite as much with such foreknowledge. First, most of their buildings are not specially enhanced to survive earthquakes (witness Iran, an extreme case of unpreparedness I admit but it serves my pont). Secondly, the population is highly dense and these people don't necessarily comprehend the danger, making evacuation procedures much less effective. Thirdly, the emergency police/medical presence in such areas is pitiful. Finally, the state itself does not have the necessary resources to carry out effective measures - they have to wait until foreign aid pours in. Now, the question is, will the U.S. grant emergency aid to, say, Iraq, because someone predicted that an earthquake would occur? Not likely. And if they don't get the money, these emergency operations don't get underway in any meaningful manner.
It seems to me that the focus has been diverted from building the infrastructure necessary to cope with earthquakes (in terms of buildings as well as emergency care) to instead predicting them in advance. As I said, if predicting them won't do too much good, why are we concentrating more in that area than in the one that actually WILL make a difference.
Hell, its probably the same deal as with research in diseases. The people with the money to conduct research don't have the same priorities/problems as those for whom research could benefit most.
Maybe I'm just pessimistic.
Re:Knowledge - Will it change much? (Score:5, Funny)
Bubble wrap! Miles and miles of bubble wrap.
Re:Knowledge - Will it change much? (Score:3, Insightful)
What evidence do you have in support of that statement? This article is about a presumably small team of Russian scientists' work for 20 years. Maybe a few other seismologists worldwide watching and potentially trying to reproduce their research. How is that a shift in focus? What would these seismologist
Where is said prediction? / Why it can't work (Score:5, Insightful)
It is apparently now possible to locate the epicenters of tiny earthquakes ("microquakes") that occur very often, and they found that these often occur in the same spot, which would tell us that that location is a place where no bigger Earthquake could happen, as the tension is released often.
Even if we assume that we can conclude the other way round (saying, if the microquakes cease for a while, the probability of a bigger quake right in that spot would rise - which is probably true sometimes), still there would be no information about when the bigger quake would occur or how much bigger it was.
Sure, one could estimate the energy buildup (maybe, in some way), but the time when the bigger quake happens is still unknown. Also, the absence of microquakes is just telling that no more of these are happening - noone can know if this is because tension is building up or if for some reason this place is now lubricated better and tends not to lock anymore.
What one would need is a reliable way to measure the tension underground, and still it wouldn't be possible to know when a big quake happens. It would give a result like "Uh this tension is really high. Better we leave right now and dont come back until the big quake happened."
So far, the only sensible protection against Earthquakes is either buildings that withstand earthquakes (or dont kill people when they collapse... well the first approach sure is favoured ;) or not building at all where quakes happen.
Hey, I can do that!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
The point is, that only claimed that that had no false negatives. But they didn't discuss another critical aspect: how many false positives they had, and how tight their specificity is.
Without those details, you miss a lot.
local economies (Score:5, Insightful)
If earthquake prediction became the norm, imagine the damage to local economies here in the US!
Imagine this scenario...
"Earthquake, 2 months from now, Seattle area".
Ok, what do you, a business owner, do? Pack up and get out. Hell, you've got 2 months to do it.
Ok, what do you, a would-be tourist on vacation, do? Pick an alternate destination.
Ok, what do you, a local citizen, do? Panic. Perhaps pack the family and leave. Perhaps stay and stockpile supplies if your employer hasn't left yet.
I think it's very obvious that natural disaster prediction would be devastating for local and regional economies. In the big picture, as local economies start their own self-destruction, it'll have a bigger effect on the nation as a whole.
Re:local economies (Score:4, Insightful)
Not likely in America! There are plenty of people who won't leave when a level 5 hurricane is howling outside so what makes you think anyone will do anything when there's a whopping two months to go on an earthquake warning? At most, you'll:
1. Make sure your earthquake insurance is paid up, and
2. Maybe call a building inspector to double-check the structural integrity of your shop.
That's about it.
Re:local economies (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would earthquakes be any different?
Example: we've been hearing about the "Big One" for California. But last I checked, California's population was still growing.
--RJ
Re:local economies (Score:2)
The reality is, people who live in earthquake zones already know they're likely to be hit by an earthquake. Having the ability to know when a quake is likely to hit just means you'll be able to take precautions to lesson the impact (no pun intended).
Re:local economies (Score:3, Insightful)
Seems a little short-sighted, and, well, greedy . . .
Re:local economies (Score:2)
Heh - you economists, always going ass-backwards... this is the same reasoning that makes oil spills a good thing for creating lots of jobs mopping up slicks and squeegeing seabirds.
Imagine how good it would be for local economies to mine a lot of iron, chop a whole bunch of trees down, build a huge housing complex, and then have it sink into the swamp (metaphorically and monty-pythonaically) as soon as the ea
Re:local economies (Score:2)
"This new learning intrigues me, tell me again how sheep's bladders can be used to prevent earthquakes."
Re:local economies (Score:2)
-B
DUH!! (Score:5, Funny)
Unfortunatly, the original research was destroyed in an earthquake in 1987.
Predicting....or causing?? (Score:3, Funny)
Richter scale... (Score:5, Interesting)
It all depends on where the earthquake takes place.
You should use an estimate on the Mercalli scale [berkeley.edu]. I find it more relevant.
Richter scale is all about energy released, Mercalli scale is all about damage/lost of lives which really is what matters.
Re:Richter scale... (Score:5, Informative)
Using the Mercalli scale is much more difficult, as it is not quantitative. Mercalli intensity is a qualitative description of the amount of shaking felt and the amount of property destruction. Plus, Mercalli intensity is not a single value, but rather may be different at every location. Nevertheless, the USGS has been working on a product called ShakeMap that can estimate Mercalli intensity within a few minutes of a quake. However, constructing these maps requires extensive local seismic networks. For an example of a ShakeMap, see this link [usgs.gov].
Predicting the shaking from a given quake (e.g. mag. 7 and 15 km depth in a particular location) before the fact for planning purposes is also done. Small variations in the earthquake parameters (location, direction of slip, depth, etc.) may significantly affect the shaking felt at a given location. Local geology also has a big effect on the amount of shaking experienced. So, it's a tough problem that requires lots of data.
Remember Iben Browning? (Score:5, Interesting)
San Jose early 90s (Score:5, Funny)
probably the same number of seismologist that knew an earth quake was coming.
BTW, the conference was cut short.
the most important prediction method (Score:5, Informative)
The United States Geological Survey has spent a lot of effort [usgs.gov] predicting maximum forces. this is based on the location of previous large earthquakes and local soil conditions among other factors. This has resulting in relatively low death rates of quakes of similar size. For example last month's central California quake and Iranian quakes were about the same size with death tolls of 3 and 30,000. Ditto 1994 Northridge and 1995 Kobe Japan with tolls of 55 and 6,000.
Pattern Recognition (Score:4, Funny)
Wow, I knew grep is powerful, but not that powerful;-)
Insurance? (Score:5, Insightful)
But a smarter insurance company might decide not to sell any more quake insurance until after the deadline if you live in that area.
So now we know they are coming but can't do much to protect ourselves other than getting out of the area.
Re:Insurance? (Score:2)
Re:Insurance? (Score:3)
Something to think about if we start getting really good at predicting disasters. The insurance industry would have to be allowed to react to the prediction in some way, as stated by the parent, or they'd just go out of business.
Re:Standard practice (Score:2)
Peer Review (Score:2, Interesting)
Skeptical this really is news (Score:3, Insightful)
This article is extremely vague about the accuracy or precision of the method, and limited to small test areas.
Don't get me wrong, I'd like us to be able to predict devastating earthquakes to help minimize casualties, but this is way too early to call it news.
I R'd the FA... (Score:3, Interesting)
-Carolyn
Predictions improved (Score:3, Funny)
I predict that:
I'll be more impressed if they can predict a quake on the less-active, but violent, New Madrid fault [memphis.edu].
100% percent accuracy? (Score:3, Insightful)
What next? Predicting Global Climate Changes? (Score:2)
Using highly advanced techniques I predict... (Score:4, Insightful)
What's really informative about all of these models is that they pretend to model chaotic events. The lessons taught by Dr Lorenz fall on greedy ears.
They can go around predicting earthquakes, but miss just one and their creditbility, and funding, dry up. And miss one they will. These boys need to move their focus to modeling ground water movements. There's government money to be made doing that, or you can supress property rights or free enterprise, and no one will get a chance to criticize your work because the government and the biggest special interest groups are behind it. So, how do you avoid the strange attractor and arrive at previously determined conclusions? Simple. You use the big, second order differential equations as eye candy to blind the ignorant, then you substitute linear equations, disguised with a lot of greek letters, super and subscripts, amid a flood of jargon. Then you run your model backwards! Yup! You start with your desired conclusion and run your model backward to a set a 'inputs', adjusting co-efficients along the way to help out. It doesn't take long to find those 'inputs' in the huge pile of 'data' you've collected. That makes it easy to avoid the insensitivity, nonuniqueness and instability that is common in non-linear systems. Non-linear? That's what the atmosphere, ground water and earth movements are. That they could be accurately and fairly modeled by what are essentially y=mx+b (linear) equations is foolish, if not dishonest.
http://www.pha.jhu.edu/~ldb/seminar/butterfly.h
Of course, that doesn't stop some people from claiming that all they need to do to circumvent Chaos is discover more 'accurate' models. These folks also while away the hours inventing perpetual motion machines or over-unity power sources. Why not? They spent the better part of 50 years writing papers based on the Piltdown Man. http://www.clarku.edu/~piltdown/pp_map.html
And what did they do after the hoax was discovered? They claimed they knew it was a hoax all along! In the meantime, over 500 'learned' papers were written using the Piltdown Man as proof of all sorts of Evolutionary theories. Who knows how many Doctorates were handed out on the basis of that scam. But, who cares? Lots of grants were given, salaries funded and careers made using those phony bones. The scams are the same, the bones have changed.
Re:Using highly advanced techniques I predict... (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, though I'm no expert in the field, my impression is that chaos theory tells us that while we may not be able to make precise predictions with imperfect data, it is possible to discern patterns in data that are very sensitive to initial conditions. Thus "strange attractors" and the like. I don't know if the Russian/UCLA group is on to anything or not. I believe that most workers in earthquake seismology feel that precise prediction of earthquakes is impossible (e.g., magnitude 7.3 in LA on March
Broad range (Score:2)
My prediction (without being a scientist and without funding):
Between now and Dec '04, SCO will release another press release
Sheeps' bladders (Score:2)
Science again addresses the wrong problem. (Score:2)
The problem is idiots keep building massive structures over PROVEN ACTIVE faults. Even after whole cities are destroyed MANY TIMES OVER the lemmings among us rebuild. Look at Baam in Iran. This anchient city has been flattened and rebuilt on a regular basis. I don't speak the local language, but where did they get the name "Bam"???? from eyewitnesses to the FIRST QUAKE????? Another example is California, which is p
Doom 3 release? (Score:2, Funny)
Predicting earthquakes is easy. I'd like to see them predict the release date for Doom 3. Then I'll be impressed.
what to do? (Score:3, Interesting)
Probably would have stocked up on batteries - maybe even splurged and bought a diesel generator. Bottled water too. Definately. (a few broken water mains around here - Paso Robles has a ruptured municipal water storage tank, so everybody there will have to cut back for a few months).
If I worked in a high-rise, I absolutely would not have gone to work that day.
On the other hand, if they can't give a precise time of the event, or magnitude, that's less useful. I mean, if it could have been a much stronger quake, I would definately have bought earthquake insurance.
I would have taken down the shelving units in my garage, next to my car. (in addition to all the other stuff), and maybe even get some structural reinforcement done to my home.
But with a vague event time, I might have actually gone to work (assuming I worked in a high-rise) -
so accuracy is a very important factor. If they gave like a two month window for the event, I could imagine something like that could be absolutely devestating, economically. Businesses would shut down. People would leave. Just on the possibility that it could be an 8.0 at any given time. If I wasn't convinced that a strong quake weren't unlikely, I don't think I'd stay here.
This 6.5 was "the big one" for the next 50 years or so. I'll trade that for Tornadoes any day.
Re:what to do? (Score:2)
It's been a big issue for years (and years and years and decades) so most buildings have been retro-fitted to be able to survive large earthquakes. Your hypothetical high-rise would give you a nice roller-coaster ride...and that's about it. For the most part, I doubt any
Digital Nostradamus (Score:2, Funny)
For Mojave: "Beneath the sands in the month of Labor a great movement will startle those not of the slashed dot"
Even better if they did this on television wearing period clothing and staring into a crystal ball or caldron of some sort. It could be quite dramatic.
Riiight (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately either that x is too low, or the method questioned, or worse discredited, by fellow seismologists.
You see this field of science is quite possibly the one where most backstabbing for funding takes place. The stakes are very high and so is the money and the fame if someone gets it right.
Right now, the world's most advanced state in seismic/disaster protection and planning, Japan, is looking at at least 3 schemes I've heard of...
So the question is. What's so special about just another possibly valuable, higly unlikely to be accurate prediction scheme?
What about earthquake prevention? (Score:3, Interesting)
Earthquakes are after all about relieving pent up pressure between the plates. I don't know how you could do it, but they might find a way to releive that pressure before a big quake is needed to release it. If you have three months warning, that might be enough to plan for and execute a pressure release!
Earthquake alarm systems (Score:3, Informative)
The traditional alarm methods listen to several stations in order to block out non-earthquake events and triangulate the location. But this takes 2-5 minutes waiting for enough information. Some research is going towards single-station, first couple second analysis, which may be useful for Los Angeles.
Re:How useful is this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How useful is this? (Score:4, Interesting)
The only long term solution is to depopulate the vulnerable areas, locating all industry and housing in stable regions. The earthquake zones are OK for agriculture, provided the small number of buildings needed are properly designed.
Does anyone ever wonder why, in spite of many historical disasters, the US population in the principal earthquake regions continues to grow? Who profits from this? And who will benefit by allowing a situation lie this to continue, despite the certainty of there being 7-digit (yes, I mean 7-digit, a million or more) casualties in a major city within the next 50 years?
Look elsewhere, to Naples, and you will see the potential, indeed the certainty, of a million or more casualties if Mt. Vesuvius enters a new eruptive cycle, the first eruption of any cycle being likely to be massive, and pyroclastic. The time to evacuate the population is several days, from nothing to a much bigger than Mt. St. Helens eruption, only a few hours. Yet people live there... (In fairness to the Italian government, they are trying very hard, but have so far failed to slow down the population growth).
I ask myself why, when there are better places to live. Governments, including the US, should be planning a phased withdrawal from earthquake zones, instead they encourage the setup of vital industries in these regions. The Japanese are no better, remember the semiconductor shortage because one factory in the whole world that made a certain epoxy resin was situated in Kobe, and was out of action for many months? It all makes no sense.
Nor will the actions of the local government when a quake is predicted on the west coast of the US. Sadly, we will not have to wait long to find out how irresponsibly it will be handled.
Having said all this, my mother has recently moved house and lives on a fault line, the mighty Ochil Fault in Central Scotland. The vertical displacement of this fault is at least 5km (yes, really, over 3 miles, vertically, maybe a lot more, because even the coal mining industry has never bored deep enough to find out) at its maximum, and at least 3km wher it passes within 100 metres of the house. But, and it is a very big but, the last quake was about 2 on the Richter scale, way below the threshold where damage occurs, a few years ago. It is a very old fault, dating from the Carboniferous era or maybe before, and nowhere near a modern plate boundary. However, if that region did revert to its original level of activity, life would not be possible within 200 miles, or maye even nowhere in the UK, as there would also be massive pyroclastic volcanism. But, reactivation of such regions is unlikely, and certainly does not happen within a human time scale. However, it does make one think....
Re:How useful is this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Robert,
That's like saying, for example, that just because working perpetual motion machines haven't been made in the past doesn't mean they won't be made in the future.
Such a statement does not take into account the physical reality of the Three Laws of Thermodynamics. 1) You cannot get more energy out of a process than you put into it. 2) Not only can you not get more out, you can't even get out what you put in. 3) To get out all of what you put in, your process must vent waste energy to ZERO degrees Kelvin, which is impossible to reach... hence, you can't get out of the game.
As far as weather, water and earth... energy inputs to those systems cannot be mapped to specific output results.... they are not deterministic! Small changes in inputs can result in wildly different outputs (insensitive to initial conditions), or a given input doesn't always give the same output (nonuniqueness) or the system goes into wild oscillations (instability). Man HAS NO CONTROL over how much energy is put into these systems, even if he could measure them, and their models cannot reliability make any predictions as to the result of those inputs. It doesn't matter if they are considered linear or nonlinear systems. The best one can do is graph the strange attractor that resides behind a particular system. For a given input, the longer the process is allowed to continue, the more unpredictable the results will be. The best weather "models" can only go about 10-14 days into the future, and the results are given only in percentages in an area. They do that by running the same data in several different models and averaging the results. And, although they may "predict" a 30% chance for rain in your area, you have no assurance that it will rain at all on your house, your block or your city. Perhaps not even on your county or that area of your state.
It is intersting to note that the stock market is a chaotic system too. That's why you don't see any models predicting the price of Gold or any other stock on January 12, 2005 at 1:43 PM to within ten cents per ounce... or even a dollar per ounce. He who can do that rules the market. If these people truely had the ability to create models which accurately predict the dynamics of chaotic systems they'd test them first in the stock market. That they don't says volumes.
I hate to call #6400 a troll, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's like saying, for example, that just because working perpetual motion machines haven't been made in the past doesn't mean they won't be made in the future.
No it's not. Predicting earthquakes is not known to be impossible, whereas perpetual motion machines are.
As far as weather, water and earth... energy inputs to those systems cannot be mapped to specific output results.... they are not deterministic! Small changes in inputs can result in wildly different outputs (insensitive to initial conditions), or a given input doesn't always give the same output (nonuniqueness) or the system goes into wild oscillations (instability).
This isn't true... the system is deterministic, disregarding quantum effects. It is chaotic, which means, as you said, that small changes can result in wildly different outputs. You also don't cite any evidence that earthquakes are highly chaotic. Given that many of the effects leading up to an earthquake take place on long timescales, chaos isn't so much of an issue as in weather prediction. Also, the amount of energy involved could make it like predicting a hurricane. You know there will be hurricanes in the Carribbean when the energy is there, and once one starts forming, you can tell approximately where it will hit. And unlike weather, the stress patterns that control earthquakes don't move much at all.
What's more of a problem is getting the data. It's hard to tell the stress on the rocks several miles beneath the surface, so a detailed model that allows computation of these stresses from other data is key.
If these people truely had the ability to create models which accurately predict the dynamics of chaotic systems they'd test them first in the stock market. That they don't says volumes.
Err? What are you talking about? You can't take a model for one chaotic system and port it to another, entirely dissimilar one (except for a few error-bounding theorems and the like). The forces in the market are entirely different from those under the earth, and modeling one does not mean you can model another. Furthermore, the market is a minority game, so any improvement in modeling has a tendency to cancel itself out as more people begin using it.
need to be like bad weather predictions (Score:3, Informative)
An earthquake prediction is considered successful in the scientific sense if it beats background chance. (Backround chance is computed by counting space-time windows through seismic catalogs). Earthquakes are so rare, e.g. large ones in tens of thousnds of days in C
Re:An Earthquake in California? (Score:2)
Re:They Knew! (Score:2)
"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 postdisaster services, Keilis-Borok said."
Besides,