The Moroccan, Abdel Latif, was sitting in his house, but suddenly everything changed: the house collapsed, he quickly escaped death, so he went out wounded, looking for someone to help him.

Abdellatif and all who lived through the shock in the Moroccan village of Damskart can ask: How did this happen? Is there a way to predict disaster before it happens?

In fact, scientists agree that earthquakes cannot be predicted A statement This does not preclude the existence of two main camps arguing about the matter, says an expert published by the Scientific American website.

The first camp says that earthquakes are caused by a complex series of small shocks, a subtle chain reaction that occurs deep within a fault in the Earth. In geology, faults are cracks in the Earth’s crust, so earthquakes are inherently unpredictable and always remain so.

The second camp is more optimistic about the future, and includes some geophysicists who believe that humans may one day hold the key to prediction, if only they could measure the right signals and gain enough experience.

Prediction key

Science has yet to find a way to rely on quantifiable predictions that act as clues that tell humans precisely about the location, time and strength of an earthquake, providing early warning worth paying attention to. Earthquake forecasting skills are still general and unhelpful.

For example, if scientists predict that an earthquake will occur in California in 2023, this will certainly come true, but it will not be useful, because California is prone to many small earthquakes every day.

Let’s imagine that scientists predict an earthquake of magnitude 8 or greater in the Pacific Northwest. It’s almost certainly true, but it doesn’t say when, so it’s not useful new information.

Where is the glitch?

Earthquakes occur because the slow, steady movements of tectonic plates create stresses along faults in the Earth’s crust. Faults are not really lines, but planes that extend across the Earth for miles. Friction resulting from the tremendous pressure due to the weight of the overlying rock binds these cracks together.

An earthquake begins at a small point on the fault. Here the pressure overcomes the friction, and then the two sides pass each other, and the rupture propagates at a speed of one or two miles per second.

The friction of the two sides of the fault against each other sends waves of rock movement in every direction, like circular ripples in a rockfall pond, and it is these waves that shake the ground and cause damage.

Most earthquakes happen without warning, and the reason is that faults are stuck, closed and stable, despite the pressure of the moving plates around them, so they remain silent until this rupture begins.

This is a very complicated matter, and seismologists have yet to find a reliable signal to measure these movements on a pre-earthquake fault.

Pre-Earthquake Indicators

Of every 20 catastrophic earthquakes, only one detected preliminary tremors, warning people before disaster struck. This is a very low percentage and indicates the difficulty of the task.

However, this small tremor is not, by scientists’ definition, a sign of a major earthquake. This explains why humans cannot develop a useful prediction system.

There have been 8 or more major earthquakes, including the 9 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan and the 8.1 magnitude earthquake in Chile. Interestingly, these large earthquakes seem to have shown some early signals, such as small tremors detected by seismometers, or rapid movements of the nearby Earth’s crust, known as “slow motions” detected by Global Positioning System (GPS) stations. Slide events.

These observations suggest that precursor signals for at least some large earthquakes may already exist. The sheer magnitude of the subsequent earthquake may have caused imperceptible changes in the fault zone before the main event was detected.

The problem is that very few earthquakes exceed magnitude 8, so scientists don’t have many examples that allow them to test hypotheses using statistical methods.

Realistic prediction

As scientists seek to achieve a “useful prediction” that tells humans where and how strong an earthquake will be, the idea can seem illogical and impractical, and faces many dilemmas.

First, it is often said in the field of seismology that earthquakes do not kill people, but buildings. Scientists already believe the best course of action is to redouble efforts to build or improve buildings, bridges and other infrastructure.

Second, earthquakes are so rare that any preliminary methods will inevitably have uncertain accuracy. Faced with such uncertainty, who would call for such a major move as evacuating an entire city or region? How long should people stay away from their homes if there is no earthquake? What if people respond to evacuation orders and an earthquake doesn’t occur? Will you reply next time? How do authorities balance the risks posed by the chaos of a mass evacuation with the dangers posed by an earthquake? So the idea of ​​creating an effective, complete and reliable predictive technology is an enigma.