Is earthquake prediction just literature?
Why can’t scientists warn us about earthquakes such as the one that struck in Gujarat, western India, killing possibly as many as 100,000 people? Why is it – if astronomers can see nearly to the edge of the universe and biologists can clone living organisms – that the science of geophysics cannot tell us when and where the earth will start shaking? What is most peculiar about this situation is that the basic earthquake process is conceptually simple. The continental plates are great fragments of the earth’s crust which float on a liquid mantle like gigantic rafts. Wherever two of these rub shoulders – as they do all along the San Andreas fault in California, for instance – they tend to stick together. But slowly, as continents drift, the rocks get twisted out of shape and, when the stress builds up beyond a certain threshold, something finally gives and there is an earthquake. So, it seems, it shouldn’t be too difficult to tell where and when the big events will take place. This isn’t
