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Anticipating Earthquakes
dnahelix writes "Science @ NASA reports 'High above Earth where seismic waves never reach, satellites may be able to detect earthquakes--before they strike.'"
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I just heard some sad news on talk radio - movie review writer The Filthy Critic was found dead outside the Arvada Tavern last Thursday. He died the way he lived--wobbling aimlessly in the slow lane. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.
Is that @ really necessary? You save almost no space, and still have to press two keys.
Is it just me, or has Slashdot become very California centric lately?
Nobody else in the US cares about either the californian governor elections nor earthquakes.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
These quakes are like, sooooo psychadelic, man.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
We had a small earthquake a while ago, and about a minute before it happened my miniature pinscher jumped on my back and woke me up. If a single minpin can predict an earthquake a minute before it happens then a beowulf cluster of 1024 minpins could give people several hours notice.
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
Am I the only one who this reminds of Conspiracy Theory's quirk about lets-kill-the-president-with-an-earthquake?
August 11, 2003: For many people, earthquakes are synonymous with unpredictability. They strike suddenly on otherwise normal days, and despite all the achievements of seismology, scientists still can't provide warning of an impending quake in the way that weathermen warn of approaching storms. Although earthquakes seem to strike out of the blue, the furious energy that a quake releases builds up for months and years beforehand in the form of stresses within Earth's crust. At the moment, forecasters have no direct way of seeing these stresses or detecting when they reach critically high levels. Above: A 3-D visualization of seismic energy during the 1994 Northridge earthquake in California. Credit: Kim Olsen, University of California, Santa Barbara. [more] Sign up for EXPRESS SCIENCE NEWS delivery That may be changing, however. Satellite technologies being developed at NASA and elsewhere might be able to spot the signs of an impending quake days or weeks before it strikes, giving the public and emergency planners time to prepare. "There are several satellite-based methods that show promise as precursors to earthquake activity," says Jacob Yates, a researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "One method is Interferometric-Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR). Basically, InSAR is when two radar images of a given tectonic area are combined in a process called data fusion, and any changes in ground motion at the surface may be detected." This technique is sensitive enough to detect slow ground motions as tiny as 1 mm per year. That kind of sensitivity, combined with the landscape-wide view that satellites can offer, lets scientists see the tiny motions and contortions of land around a fault line in more detail than ever before. By watching these motions, they can figure out where points of high strain are building up. Below: An InSAR image showing the shift in the ground height due to the 1999 Hector Mine earthquake. The radar data were acquired by the European Space Agency ERS-2 satellite on September 15 and October 20, 1999. [more] A group of NASA and university scientists led by Carol Raymond of JPL recently studied the feasibility of forecasting earthquakes from space. Their report, which was released in April, outlines a 20-year plan to deploy a network of satellites--the Global Earthquake Satellite System (GESS)--using InSAR to monitor fault zones around the world. With some practice, says Raymond, scientists eventually should be able to use the InSAR data to infer when stresses in the Earth's crust have reached a dangerous level, issuing a monthly "hazard assessment" for a given fault. Forecasters might report that the likelihood of having a major quake on, say, the San Andreas fault during the coming month is 2%, or 10%, or 50%. Current methods are less certain. For example, the US Geological Survey recently released an updated assessment of the earthquake risk in the San Francisco Bay Area based on the seismic history of the area, its geology, and computer models. The study reported a 62% chance of a major quake (magnitude 6.7 or greater) hitting the area sometime within the next 30 years--not exactly something to plan your day around. Breaking new ground InSAR is one way to forecast quakes, but perhaps not the only one. While InSAR satellites merely improve the data available to orthodox seismology, there are other techniques that break with orthodoxy. One of these ideas is to look for surges in infrared (IR) radiation. Friedemann Freund, adjunct professor of physics at San Jose State University and a scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center, explains: "In the 1980s and 90s, Russian and Chinese scientists noticed some strange thermal anomalies associated with earthquakes in Asia--for example, the 1998 Zhangbei earthquake near the Great Wall of China. This earthquake occurred when ground temperatures in the region were around -20o C. Just before the quake, thermal sensors detected temperature variations as large as 6o to 9o, according to Chinese documents." Satellites equipped with IR cameras could
And they didn't manage to predict that *BSD is dying
I predict a earthquake in Utah near end of the SCO/IBM trial and some company there will be completely dusted.
Sure, if you detect an earthquake before it strikes you could get lots of people out of say a city in danger. That still wouldn't prevent the city itself though. And with most people away from town, bad guys could break in to a lot of stores and so on, with little risk of being caught. Or perhaps there could be panic situations with riots where people get robbed, injured or killed when everybody finds out about the earthquake. It's a nice technology, but there are many questions around it that need to be solved.
Martin
Ever heard about the Northern Appalachian Seismic Zone?
It's just not as densely populated as California.
"...with a likely chance of showers. Tomorrow's forecast also includes a 20% chance of EarthQuakes on the 7.0 scale. Watch out Los Angeles, you could have a shaky morning. Phil." "That's right Tom, and speaking of shaky mornings, here's Wolf with the sports..."
Jason Lotito
I'll start this time with Green Park.
It's like when your friend sitting down the bench lets you know he's about to rip a huge fart. Then he lets one fly that vibrates the hell out of the whole thing and you fall to the ground.
Earthquakes serve as a population control mechanism, and have been for all of time.
Advanced humans (Americans, etc.) need to stop messing with Mother Nature and just let things run their course.
Why does Science always have to rear its ugly head? Just let things be.
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
Who knows when the next Quake is coming? What will probably happen is that they'll predict a date but when the date arrives the Quake will be nowhere to be seen and then the Quake people will announce another date that may or may not be accurate.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
it's won of the known ways to disempower unprecedented evile.
you can anticipate all you want. our advise is to be as far away from the walking dead contingent as possible, when the big flash occurs. you wouldn't want to get any of that evile on you.
as to the free unlimited energy plan, as the lights come up, more&more folks will stop being misled into sucking up more&more of the infant killing barrolls of crudeness, & learn that it's more than ok to use newclear power generated by natural (hydro, solar, etc...)methods. of course more information about not wasting anything/behaving less frivolously is bound to show up, here&there.
cyphering how many babies it costs for a barroll of crudeness, we've decided to cut back, a lot, on wasteful things like giving monIE to felons, to help them destroy the planet/population.
no matter. the #1 task is planet/population rescue. the lights are coming up. we're in crisis mode. you can help.
the unlimited power (such as has never been seen before) is freely available to all, with the possible exception of the aforementioned walking dead.
consult with/trust in yOUR creator. more breathing. vote with yOUR wallet. seek others of non-aggressive intentions/behaviours. that's the spirit, moving you.
pay no heed/monIE to the greed/fear based walking dead.
each harmed innocent carries with it a bad toll. it will be repaid by you/us. the Godless felons will not be available to make reparations.
pay attention. that's definitely affordable, plus you might develop skills which could prevent you from being misled any further by phonIE ?pr? ?firm? generated misinformation.
good work so far. there's still much to be done. see you there. tell 'em robbIE.
the rest of the wwworld is laughing/crying at/for US in sympathy/disgust, as we fall/jump into the daze of the georgewellian corepirate nazi life0cide, whilst criticizing their ip gangsters, which are also members of the walking dead.
as for va lairIE's patentdead PostBlock(tm) devise, a 'product' of the SourceForgerIE(tm) hedgemonIE no DOWt, it just doesn't work.
'High above the internet where packets never reach, satellites may be able to detect the slashdot effect--before it strikes.'
It is my view that we shouldn't try to meddle with nature, because everytime we do she kicks us in the ass.
If the TV comes on with the news, and the reporter says, "NASA has recored that we are goning to enter a 6.0 sized earthquake in 1 hour" everyone is going to panic. Then criminals know that people are going to run away from there home. So they go and steal. As all the scared people run (because they a lot of trust in NASA) they get in traffice jams, there are tons of car crashes, roits start on the road, and then people start to fight. But wait! NASA was mistaken. There new system had a little flaw in it..oops
they can also predict the slashdot effect then ?
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
Note that there might be some practical considerations having a cow in, say, L.A.
The earthquake detects YOU.
:)
I guess everyone has to troll at some point...
So suppose you get a day's advance warning of an earthquake hitting a major city, and put a warning out? Do people get into leave the city in a calm and orderly fashion or perhaps get to some sort of earthquake shelter? Or does half the populace jam the roads, trying to take every last one of their belongings with them as flee the city, while the other half go on a looting spree?
I know which one my money's on.
Any resident of California could tell you that...
I guess with the current state of affairs, any progress would be good
Makes me think, though. Ability to detect variations of 1mm over the course of a year? How do they account for, say, a satellite drifting slightly (gravity, solar wind, whatever)? How do they measure that? What are their tolerances, a few angstroms?
(Not trolling, just asking)
Have EVDO, will travel.
You could always use sheeps bladders...
- m4. f0x
"Don't let your schooling interfere with your education." -Mark Twain
"The satellite earthquake forecast shows low to normal risk, with no critical crustal stresses or infrared signatures around the San Andreas fault."
Critical Crustal Stresses? Did that make anyone else laugh out loud? "Today's CCS Index has been brought to you by your good friends at Entenmann's. Experiencing Critical Crustal Stress? Satisfy your craving with Entenmann's Ultimate Crumb Cake, available now at your neighborhood supermarket."
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -Douglas Adams, THHGTTG
19:21 12/8/2003
...
...
funny nasa develops the technology
and not the insurence companies
well i guess they don't care until
it's proofen the predicion works and
then the price of your insurance will
go up (WHAT?)
i really shouldn't have missed
corruption-class, er... i mean
MBA
I wonder if similar technology can be used to predict impending volcanic activity?
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -Douglas Adams, THHGTTG
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - horror/fiction writer Stephen King was found dead in his Maine home this morning. There weren't any more details yet. I'm sure we'll all miss him, even if you weren't a fan of his work there's no denying his contribution to popular culture. Truly an American icon.
"One example happened during the Loma-Prieta earthquake that devastated San Francisco in 1989."
Devastated? Since when...
...before they strike.
This is a follow up to a previous program that was predicting them after they struck. Just last year they managed to predict the 1906 San Francisco Quake with amazing accuracy, and results like that are money in the bank for further research.
"the Global Earthquake Satellite System (GESS)"
If I want money from Congress to deploy a constellation of satellites to detect earthquakes, would calling it GESS be my first choice?
Mayor Of Los Angeles: Hello?
Voice On Phone: This is NASA! You're about to have-
(Five minutes of rumbling, cracking and breaking glass and then silence).
--- Ban humanity.
The nice moire pattern in the photo showing changes in elevation was from after the quake. It does a nice job of showing how the stress along the fault was released at this point during a quake, but isn't directly a lot of help in predicting anything. However, one would assume that if you looked at similar photos along a known fault for long enough, there would be areas that did not show any colorfull moire patterns, surrounded by lots of color (indicating movement in the fault). Pretty cool, but I think most of the major faults already have this information from ground measurements.
The "60% chance of earthquakes in the next two days" portion of the prediction seems to rely on some piezo electric effect detected via magnetometers and thermal imaging. This has been speculated about for at least a couple of decades now, but I guess the signal to noise ratio is pretty bad since they haven't declared success yet. Maybe QuakeSat, mentioned at the end of the article, will provide enough comprehensive data to make some useful predictions. Predicting 12 out of the last 3 earthquakes isn't going to win you any friends!
I read about a system very similar to this before in a book called, of all things, The Illuminati, by Larry Burkett. Burkett didn't go into the science behind it, but one of his characters utilizes satellites and their orbits to monitor seismic anomolies. By working in gravity and nice computer simulations, he is able to predict earthquakes several months in advance. Of course, no one listens to him, so its usefulness is somewhat mitigated by human stupidity. At any rate, I thought this a very interesting article.
Yeah, an early warning system for earthquakes sounds all well and good, but how exactly do you go about warning the public? If you go on TV and say "tomorrow there will be a 7.5 Earthquake under downtown Los Angeles", you run the risk of causing a panic in which people will die trying to get out of the city in what could only be described as the traffic jam from hell to get west or north.
If the earthquake occurs, you're a hero; you saved the lives of hundreds if not thousands. If the earthquake doesn't, or is much smaller than predicted, you caused lots of people to die for no apparent reason, and you've lessened the public?s readiness to believe you the next time you make an earthquake prediction like this.
This is nothing like trying to evacuate the shoreline of a major city for an approaching hurricane, because when those evacuations are issued they are in fact for the shoreline. You would be, in theory, proposing the evacuation of an entire metropolis, which no city in this country, or the world for that matter, has the proper infrastructure to handle such an evacuation unless you gave a lead time of a week or so.
SecondPageMedia - Wha
The world needs braces to stop earthquakes!
"High above Earth where seismic waves never reach..." ...except perhaps for the solar ones.
Only two weeks ago my current boss invited me to accompany him to an evening lecture... on solar seismology! Turns out the guy is not just a paper pusher but actually has some serious qualifications in nuclear physics (of the solar, not bomb, sort - albeit a fine line between). Gave me a fascinating insight into more of the complexities of our sun, how its quakes make ours seem like mere trembles and its potential effects on us.
Unfortunately, coming to Oz from an eastern european country meant he had little opportunity to use those skills, so now he's a frustrated project manager - there ain't no justice, eh?
Go permanent? In your dreams and my worst nightmares.
I've always wondered why there hasn't been more research into piezoelectricity generating output which could be picked up by radios (or some other equipment) due to the sheer stress.
Sort-term earthquake prediction- hours to weeks- is pyschologically comforting, but not that important in saving lives or property. One needs to predict the maximum likely earthquake force in a neighborhood in order to properly contruct buildings and roads to last for at least 30 years and save lives. In this area the USGS and State Geologic Surveys have made great progress. Case in point: The 1994 Northridge, California earthquake and 1995 Kobe, Japan were the same magnitude, yet the second killed ONE HUNDRED TIMES more people than the first. The success of the Northridge quake was partially attributed to luck and partly to that Los Angeles had more newer buildings than Japan that had implemented the more serious construction codes. It is tragic that M5 quakes that barely spill coffee in San Jose, California, but level mud-brick buildings and kill hundreds in some third world country.
I've been in three near M7 quakes in California and I can testify how psychologically traumatic a sudden quake is. Short term prediction would be comforting. It would also save some lives in large buildings like schools and stadiums (even though the 1989 San Francisco quake happended during a Wolrd Series baseball game without fatallity). And in reving up rescue crews.
Short term earthquake prediction (hours to weeks) has not been unsuccessful due to lack of effort. After some promising hints in Russia and China in the early 1970s, scientists around the world looked for a systematic precursor. All kinds of things happen before A COUPLE of large quakes: well-level changes, radon gas burps, scared animals, magnetic anomalies, heat anomalies, foreshocks, and so on. The problem has been they have not been systematic and repeatable. Is is not clear whether a GENERAL THEORY OF PREDICTION is even possible then. One hypothesis is that each seismic region may have its characteristic precursors. However, even the most active seismic areas like the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles experience large quakes tenty years apart, so its not easy to these this second hypothesis.
reminds me of Under Siege 2 and that satellite that could start earthquakes
Meterologists have found that people ignore tornado predictions until they got into the 20% range for a couple hour, single county window. Before that the citizenry would treat these predictions as spam. Now the warnings are good enough to save lives.
Californians are very blazee, and would ignore predictions of low probability. Scientists are happy if they can beat random probablity, which is about 1 in 20,000 of a destructive quake happening on a given day in Los Angeles. This is a far cry from a 1 in 5 that meteorologists have discovered necessary to get people to react.
You hit it on the nose. After any large quake a hoarde of people come out the woodwork from astrologists, to psychics, to pet-owners, and an occasional scientist claiming they've predicted the quake. This is routine in Usenet sci.geo.earthquakes.
Mexico City is both cursed and blessed by its earthquake situation. It is built on old lake mud which amplifies seismic waves, making buildings collapse. However, the worst quakes occur on the west coast, which takes seismic waves about five minutes to propagate through the rocks to Mexico City. They've used this delay to install a siren warning system for quakes, so people could leave buildings and turn off power. The first few years it issued too many false alarms, but has worked OK for recent west coast quakes.
A siren system would not work that well in California quakes, because the cities are too close to the earthquake faults for a general warning. However, refineries, power plants, subways, and computer disk farms, all which could react to a 10-30 second warning, are connected to an automatic warning system run by a jopint government corporate progam.
The ailing SOHO satellite in a parallel orbit to the earth measures vibrations by the Doppler method at 700,000 solar locations several times a minute. This is over a hundred times more locations than earth-based seismographs, where the oceans which make it hard to measure 65% of the earth's surface.
Solar data is "cleaner" and more complete than earth measurements. They dont have soil-coupling problems, nor man-made noise interference. The mathematics of solar seismic waves is the same as earth seismic waves.
They can even see new sunspots forming on the back side of the Sun through helio-siesmology tomography (www.spaceweather.com). Sunspots are cooler than than rest of the Sun's surface and slow down solar seismic waves. This is useful, because it takes up to two weeks for the sunspot to become visible on telescopes. In the meantime it may be causing solar flares that could interfere with earth-based electronics.
If you are interested in knowing more about earthquake hazards, but you're not a seismologist, check out Earthshaking Science by Susan Hough. She works for the U.S. Geological Survey. She first discusses the basics of determining earthquake hazard, then discusses the currently estimated hazard in various regions in the United States. She's not optimisitic about specific earthquake prediction, but she thinks that we can improve our estimates of longer-term hazards. These estimates are critical for guiding hazard-mitigation efforts (building codes, for example).
Here's a quote from the article...
"Slashdot effect?"
"Yes Captain... back in the late 20th century spanning to the early 21st century, a web news site called Slashdot...."
"Get to the point Data..."
"Yes Captain... if we overload the Borg's systems with excessively massive activity... it might, in theory, cause their servers to melt into charred silicon...as the venacular went."
.unsigged
... since there are several hundred earthquakes (and aftershocks) everyday. Like in the SoCal-NV area, there are dozens quakes just today. Yes, we get that many quakes and everyone is very much blase about it since it is much ado about nothing. :-)
... We are less prepared than those in the East Coast who have to deal with tornadoes, storms year in and year out :-) (Sorry folks)
They can prove if the system works (or not) in no time. The interesting is how the organization of evacuations and prepareness can be trickled down to people. Truth to be told, many SoCal residents still do not know that to do when an earthquake hits. Many homes do not have quake prepared kit. Water, foods, tools etc.. are lacking