There Is No Such Thing As Short-term Earthquake Prediction

According to an article in the
Nature journal, scientists have failed to devise a system that can accurately predict earthquakes. Moreover, the likelihood of making such a system in the nearby future is dim.

This conclusion was reached by a top-notch research team made up of seismologists from the US Geological Survey in California and several of universities. Their goal was to predict when an earthquake would occur near the ranch town of Parkfield on the San Andreas fault in California.

"We knew it was going to happen and we knew how big it would be, we just didn't know when," said Robert Nadeau of the University of California, Berkeley.

The scientists fitted the fault line with a network of sensors capable of detecting small movements, but they failed to predict last year's earthquake.

"Even with such a well monitored area, we weren't able to tell that it was coming. There was nothing that might have been useful in predicting it," said Dr Nadeau, whose study appears in the Nature journal.


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