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Changes In Rocks Noted Before Earthquakes
Smivs writes with this snippet from an article at the BBC, well worth reading: "Scientists have made an
important advance in their efforts to predict earthquakes, the journal Nature says. A team of US researchers has detected stress-induced changes in rocks that occurred hours before two small tremors in California's San Andreas Fault. The observations used sensors lowered down holes drilled into the quake zone. The team says we are a long way from routine tremor forecasts but the latest findings hold out hope that such services might be possible one day."
It would make sense that just before an earthquake the rocks would start to stress, pull and break just before a cascading collapse.
The real question is how much would this system cost?
Yeah, it might save lives, but if an early detection system would cost an area a few hundred million, I'm guessing it won't happen.
They go from stationary rocks to moving rocks.
Nuclear engineers build weapons. Civil engineers build targets.
Rock-paper-scissors is ruined if you can predict rock. Neither player will ever use it, so no one will use paper either. You'll be left doing scissors over and over forever.
Wait, oh, nevermind.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Changes in rolls noticed before bellyaches
"GET DOWN AGAIN!"
steel iron does many things in changes. why choose granite to drill as predictor?
Just like fusion - earthquake prediction is always fifty years away.
Unfortunately for both of us, the powers that be aren't particularly interested in sacrificing now for the sake of later.
a.k.a. The voters -- especially those who are all about tax cuts.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Impose a local surtax, a buck a drink and a buck a plate of food, goes directly to levee repair and reinforcement, and try not to make it top heavy with handling fees and management and governing the money, get it to the engineers and workers who can do the work. Route around the stoopid feds, they have proven to be at best only half way effective, every single time, no matter the situation. The problem is in that cesspool of failure called DC and how money gets allocated, so try and divorce yourself from DC somehow. I mean really, look at how *bad* DC, the actual district, is governed, it is the only pure fed governed area, and people think they can somehow govern and run the whole nation, or even worse let the UN do it globally?? say WHUT? Work local, then you have your own best interests at heart. NOLA still gets enough tourists, even at a buck a whack it own't be that much more they spend, and it goes to a good cause and I bet most of them would understand the fee and agree with it, so they can come back safely again and again for the good eats and partying. That's the only reason they go there in the first place!
*Disclaimer* I live in Oklahoma - I feel your pain, You are preaching to the unaware and clueless sectors here.
The average /.'er has no clue what is involved with with what it takes to get an oilfield 'online'., much less the economics involved.
I have several pumping stations on my property and it is frustrating to 'clue in' the rest of the country in what's involved to get a station 'online'(ie:getting oil out of the ground and to 'something useful')
The whole 'get some money now, and fsck you' and fsck the future attitude is prevalent here with the land owners. It is a difficult hurdle to overcome.
Don't get me wrong, I would welcome any VIABLE alternatives, but until that happens I will support WHATEVER means of PRACTICAL energy we have to utilize.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Cajun's have long used rocks to predict all kinds of natural events.
Rock hot = Sunny
Rock wet = Rain
Rock gone = Hurricane
Rock shake = Earthquake
You have drill a 3 mile hole to get it down into the fault. And take 20 years to convince the NSF to fund it and California regulators to permit it (what the SAFOD project took).
Interesting, and considered the stakes and how few of such methods have had any sort of success, I wish people (governments/universities) would spend more money on that sort of research.
I'm thinking in particular of this technique that relies on electrotelluric signals to predict earthquakes a few hours before they occur. It's been a controversial technique ever since it appeared in the 1980s, and that's the problem, it's controversial. If we had put more effort into investigating such possibilities we would know for sure what it's worth by now.
Earthquakes regularly kill hundred thousands of people, and it's just that sort of technique that could save them. And it's not just people in Asia. The stakes are also pretty high in Japan, Greece and California. So why ain't there any array of electrotelluric signal sensors in California to figure that sort of thing out??
You just got troll'd!