Bigger Earthquakes Expected

[PeteC]

More to worry about. Pete

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/home/20 ... 32700.html

[sandman67]

utter bloody drivel and ill informed pseudo science

[pharvey]

After the earthquake that hit close to Chengdu (Sichuan Province) and around 200Km from us in May 2008, there were a number of "predicted" quakes to follow - one I remember being ''7.0 at midnight", and this made on national television!! Absolute cr@p obviously as I tried to explain to my wife and Mother-in-law..... If they could predict a future quake with such accuracy, why the **** didn't they warn us about the one that hit (8.0 at the epicenter, 5.9 estimated in Chongqing), killing some 68,000.

Coming on national television, this "prediction"caused absolute bloody chaos with people sleeping out on the streets, people trying to get out of the city (Chongqing is rather large), even stories of people sleeping close to the runways at the airport to keep away from buildings!!! I hope those responsible for the announcement were advised against such future announcements.............

My poor bloody dog (due to the wishes of she who must be obeyed) had his harness and lead on for 3 days whilst sleeping next to the front door (along with medical kit, water and food) in readiness for a quick escape!! I on the other hand was expendable and allowed to sleep alone in the bed........

EARTHQUAKES CANNOT BE BLOODY PREDICTED!!!

[richard]

SM and PH

I agree with you both.

They can identify the fault lines and that's about it. How nature is going to react is not known and never will be. Historic info means FA so we just have to go with the flow (lava) and take it as it comes

Aw well, back to building my ark (kontiki)

[pharvey]

I wonder if Coral would offer odds?

Sorry......

[pharvey]

Some interesting, useful and quite frankly disturbing info/data can be found here http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/qed/

[PeteC]

We can't forget the below. Little comment back on June 12 as the thread was buried in 'news of the weird'. Perhaps just dumb luck on their part but they did predict, and it did happen. Pete

Meteorological Dept denies speculation of massive quake, tsunami

BANGKOK (NNT) -- The Meteorological Department warns people not to panic about a speculation of an impending powerful earthquake and tsunami, which may hit Thailand tomorrow.

The Meteorological Department yesterday announced that none of the disaster-monitoring centers worldwide had issued any warning about a major quake which, as rumored, would occur on 12 June 2010. The statement said that no one could predict as to where or when an earthquake would take place.

The Meteorological Department assured that a quake, if occurring in the Andaman Sea, would have little impacts on Thailand. A tsunami, if occurring in the Pacific, can only be caused by the movement of the underwater fault line lying west of the Philippines. In that case, it would take around 14 hours for a massive wave to travel over thousands of kilometers before reaching Thailand.

The quake rumor spreading on the Internet has caused quite a stir among the public. It warned people not to travel to the seaside and to expect a major quake and giant waves to hit Thailand this weekend.


-- NNT 2010-06-11

Some voodoo going on here. There was indeed a 7.6 quake the night of June 12 and a tsunami warning which has now been downgraded for everywhere here except India. Maybe these people know their stuff concerning planet alignment. Pete

[pharvey]

Meteorological Dept denies speculation of massive quake, tsunami

BANGKOK (NNT) -- The Meteorological Department warns people not to panic about a speculation of an impending powerful earthquake and tsunami, which may hit Thailand tomorrow.

The Meteorological Department yesterday announced that none of the disaster-monitoring centers worldwide had issued any warning about a major quake which, as rumored, would occur on 12 June 2010. The statement said that no one could predict as to where or when an earthquake would take place.

The Meteorological Department assured that a quake, if occurring in the Andaman Sea, would have little impacts on Thailand. A tsunami, if occurring in the Pacific, can only be caused by the movement of the underwater fault line lying west of the Philippines. In that case, it would take around 14 hours for a massive wave to travel over thousands of kilometers before reaching Thailand.

The quake rumor spreading on the Internet has caused quite a stir among the public. It warned people not to travel to the seaside and to expect a major quake and giant waves to hit Thailand this weekend.


-- NNT 2010-06-11

Some voodoo going on here. There was indeed a 7.6 quake the night of June 12 and a tsunami warning which has now been downgraded for everywhere here except India. Maybe these people know their stuff concerning planet alignment. Pete

[/quote]

Got to say Pete that certainly goes into the realms of "Ripley's Believe it or Not"!! There are certainly some weird and wonderful things out there!

There are several stories of earthquake prediction around, the most common to me being "there will be a quake of x magnitude within the next x months/years in area x"....... this is purely mathematical probability based on prior events......... again, horseshit really .

When I was working in India some years ago, there was a group of scientists who insisted they had predicted correctly some 20 odd earthquakes of varying magnitude some weeks or months before the actual event. A British or US television crew followed them (and their predictions) around for several months...... strangely enough the end result was zero correct predictions.

I'm firmly on the science side of things and stick by the fact that earthquakes cannot be predicted by humans..........

I say humans, because a good minute, possibly 2 before the earthquake hit Chongqing in 2008, my dog was going absolutely ape-shit. Granted, not a prediction as such or even a great warning..... but what the hell had he sensed?

[hhfarang]

We lived in California during the big quake of '89 and my cat disappeared hours before the quake and didn't come back for two days. He was an older neutered male and normally never left the house or yard...

[charlesh]

I predict there will be an earthquake somewhere in the world every day this week !
Don't ask me where or how large!

[Korkenzieher]

errm - sorry R 7-9 in Thailand. I mean, he is giving a range there for 4 earthquakes 7+ and one of 8+ to 9. The largest earthquakes in history barely struggle to 9 and they are on active plate margins. On which faults is he predicting activity? I can only assume NASA stands for the North Asian Sewage Authority in this case, because he is talking garbage.

Want some Science? Take a look at IRIS the academic monitoring site http://www.iris.edu/dms/seismon.htm

Click on the coloured rings alongside where Thailand is on the world map.

A second window should open showing recent earthquakes (colour and size of rings gives time since, and magnitude). Purple dots are sites of historic earthquakes. Look at Thailand. Try to find the purple dots. Don't strain yourself - theres one. Count that again. One. 1. Uno. Eins.

Thailand just ain't that seismically active.

An as for prediction. Well, in principle it is possible - I did some work on it once in a previous life as a Geologist, using radio wave bursts and electric discharge from piezo-electric activity at depth. As far as warnings go, the lead time is something like "uh oh - hang on!"

[Terry]

Taiwan is a very active seismic region.
Between 2000 and 2003, I was working on the design and construction of the Taiwan High Speed Rail (THSRC).
This passed through and crossed, many fault lines that traverse the island.
Some of the structures were built with extremely high earthquake tolerant designs, so much so that despite many daily 'rumbles' there has been only one major disruption to the train service since it opened 6 years ago. (Top speed is 315 Km/hr).

I worked alongside a German Engineer who had a Doctorate in Volcanology!

There was precious little that he did not know about earthquakes, and he would describe the detailed analysis of the one felt the night before - quite often

He always told me that despite all the fancy technology, it was easy to predict that a quake would occur in a certain place - BUT NEVER THE TIME, with San Francisco being the obvious candidate for a big one long overdue.

I asked him about my adopted home of Thailand

His reply - "The biggest quake you will feel in Thailand is after a crate of Singha and two dollies from Nana Plaza"

There's wisdom for you.

[Korkenzieher]

And he's right.

If you look at the Iris site (Iris is academic; USGS [which carries largely the same data] is government) it is pretty clear.

Again, for the scientifically minded:

Most major quakes are associated with plate boundaries (subduction...) or the accomodating transfer faults. The San Andreas is a buried transform fault. It comes off a subducted spreading ridge, largely now consumed but still visible in parts of the gulf between Baja California and the Mexican coast. It is a biggie mainly because of a feature called 'The Big Bend' which is exactly what it says it is. A big curve in the trace of the fault where it has cut through the brittle over burden to the surface. San Andreas, like most fault zones, can be characterised by their size to frequency relationships. That is x Richter Scale 1 events in a certain time frame, y Richter Scale 2 in another time frame, and so on. It is this (power law) curve relationship that has people jumping periodically in California, because the SA should produce a mag 8 approx every 22 years. It is a relationship which holds over hundreds of thousands of events, and hundreds of thousands of years. The simple fact that the SA hasn't had a Mag 8 on the main fault since 1906 means that every multiple of 22 years since then people get a bit leery. It might not happen for 3 or 400 years, but then you might get 3 in a week. In 1978, the Coal Valley Fault produced an 8. It isn't even close to the main SA (it is a spur off the big bend), but of course lots of peudoscientific observers determined 'OK, that's it for another 22 years'. So when 1990 came around, same noise. Guess what will hit the headlines in 2012!

The transform faults accommodating the convergence south of Sumatra, on which the main events from the Tsunami were located, are clear to see in the seismic info on Iris. The fault, though structurally similar to the SA is different - firstly it is entirely intraoceaninc. That means it is only about 6Km deep (the thickness of the Oceanic crust) - there is no 60-70 Km of largely brittle continental crust over it which is obviously a lot more 'rumbly' when it gets smashed up; and secondly, the fact that it lies under deep water means that it shifts water when it moves - not the surface, resulting in the Tsunamis. The 2004 event was only 1.8 metres vertical displacement (or less) in largely a scissor type movement, over most of the length - but it displaces the *whole* ocean by that amount. At the subducting margin, the big events ar emainly to do with separation of subducted slabs at depths of 70 to 200Km+, but you get lots an lots of smaller adjustments (compare Japan).

Other major faults include particularly the East and North Anatolian (Turkey), which are the eastern extremities of faults curving through (and largely locked by) Italy and the Atlas Mountains; The Alpine and Frazer Fault systems in New Zealand, which are the left hand side of the SA movement and represent the largest known seismic gap, and the fault systems in China on which Harbin stands (no name here, sorry). Convergence wise, the major zones are Chile, Alaska and Indonesia. Plenty of others, but they are the big ones.