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Is This The Big One?

Posted by timothy on from the shaky-ground dept.

Quivering Coward writes "There has been a marked increase in seismic activity in southern California in the past several days," pointing to this map from Caltech Earthquake Net, including a 5.2 and 3.6 this morning (2004/06/15). "Could this be the big one? Is 'the big one' ever going to happen? NASA is doing their part to predict the future of Earthquakes."

5 of 151 comments (clear)

  1. Belive it or not... by Repran · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...but a russion scientist actually predicted this would happen.

    --

    -- Contradictions only exist in thought - not in reality.

  2. Not Southern Cal by sfjoe · · Score: 4, Informative


    Many researchers believe the next major earthquake will be in northern California, not southern California. One reason is that the San Andreas fault 'creeps' in the south, slowly releasing energy (so the theory goes). In the north, the San Andreas is locked and last moved in 1906, when it released all its energy at once, devastating San Francisco.

    --
    It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
  3. No It's not the one. by EvilTwinSkippy · · Score: 3, Informative
    Wrong fault line. (The 5.5 Earthquake was out in the Pacific.)

    In fact, the earthquake patterns on the map show that today is a pretty ho-hum day.

    Nothing to see here. Move along.

    --
    "Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
    --Dr.W.Edwards Deming
  4. Re:Yeah, sure.. by Pi_0's+don't+shower · · Score: 3, Informative
    Exactly. As every goephysicist knows, you cannot predict earthquakes! We just don't know enough about the Earth's interior, including all the fault lines and their details to be able to do it. The best we can do, as far as I know, is to detect tremors and give a few minutes warning. From the article above, here's what Arthur Smith has to say:
    Scientists cannot predict earthquakes - otherwise we would not have so many where hundreds or thousands of people get killed, like the recent one in Japan. After an earthquake has happened there are various things geologists look for in the "fault" associated with the earthquake to give some idea of how long it will be till the next one. The "fault" is the part of the earth's crust where two sections are sliding against one another in some fashion. To make real predictions would require knowing the location of all these faults (some kind of map), knowing at what stage each of them is (how much tension there is and what kind of things are preventing the fault from slipping) and how they interact with one another. Even for very carefully studied regions like southern California, we have only a very small fraction of the information that would be needed for true prediction.
  5. Re:Why, a quake goes off, of course. by TwP · · Score: 3, Informative

    NONE of you have ever wondered why the moon only shows us one face? What're the odds?

    The moon is gravitationally locked to the Earth's rotation. Tidal forces from Earth's gravitational field have induced a bulge in the moon; this buldge always points along the line from the center of the Earth to the center of the moon. At one time the moon was rotating faster then it is now, but the moon had to bend and flex as this bulge shifted around. Energy was lost to friction (rocks grinding against one another), and the moon's rotation slowed until it was gravitationally locked to the Earth.

    But don't take my word for it, I'm just a rocket scientist.