The Moroccan, Abdel Latif, was sitting in his house, but suddenly everything changed: the house collapsed, and he quickly escaped death, so he went out injured, searching for someone to help him.
Abdellatif, and everyone who lived through the trauma in the Moroccan village of Tamzgart, may ask: How did this happen? Is there a way to predict a disaster before it happens?
A young man from the Moroccan village of Tikht cries amidst the rubble
In fact, scientists agree that they cannot predict earthquakes, however A report A specialist published by the Scientific American website says that this does not prevent the existence of two main camps arguing about this matter.
The first camp says that earthquakes are caused by a complex series of small impacts, a delicate chain reaction of sorts that occurs deep within a fault in the Earth. In geology, faults are cracks in the Earth’s crust, so an earthquake is inherently unpredictable and will always remain so.
The second camp is more optimistic about the future, and includes some geophysicists who are convinced that humans may one day reveal the key to prediction, if only they can find the right signals to measure and gain sufficient experience.
Prediction key
Science has not yet found a way to rely on measurable predictions that would serve as clues that tell humans precisely about the place, time, and strength of an earthquake, providing advance notice worth paying attention to. Earthquake prediction capabilities are still general and unhelpful.
To take an example, if scientists predict that California will have an earthquake in 2023, this will certainly come true, but it is not useful, because California is exposed to many small earthquakes every day.
Areas in northwestern Syria were severely damaged by the earthquake
Let’s imagine that scientists predicted an earthquake of magnitude 8 or greater would occur in the Pacific Northwest. This is almost certainly true, but it doesn’t specify when, so it’s not useful new information.
Where is the dilemma?
Earthquakes occur because slow, steady movements of tectonic plates cause stresses to build up along faults in the Earth’s crust. Faults are not actually lines, but rather planes that extend for miles into the Earth. Friction resulting from enormous pressure due to the weight of the overlying rock binds these cracks together.
An earthquake begins in a small spot on the fault. Here pressure overcomes friction, and the two sides then slide past each other, with the rupture spreading 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, similar to the circular ripples in a pond where a stone has fallen, and it is these waves that shake the ground and cause damage.
Most earthquakes occur without warning, and the reason is that the faults are stuck, closed and stable, despite the stress of the moving plates around them, and therefore they are silent until this rupture begins.
This is a very complicated matter, and seismologists have not yet found any reliable signal to measure these movements in the ground fault that precede the earthquake.
The February earthquake caused massive destruction in Turkey – an archive photo. Indicators preceding the earthquake
Out of every 20 devastating earthquakes, only one had preliminary tremors detected, alerting people before the disaster struck. This is a very low percentage, and indicates the difficulty of the task.
However, these small tremors, by scientists’ definition, are not an indication of a larger earthquake. This explains why humans cannot build a useful prediction system.
There have been a number of large earthquakes of magnitude 8 or greater, including the magnitude 9 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and a magnitude 8.1 earthquake in Chile. Interestingly, these large earthquakes seem to have shown some prior signal, either in the form of a series of small tremors, detected by seismometers, or accelerated movements of the nearby Earth’s crust, detected by Global Positioning System (GPS) stations, called ” Slow glide events.
The death toll in Morocco rose to 1,305 people
These observations suggest that precursor signals for at least some large earthquakes may already exist. The sheer size of the ensuing earthquake may have made imperceptible changes in the fault zone before the main event more detectable.
The problem is that very few earthquakes have a magnitude greater than 8, so scientists do not have many examples that would allow testing hypotheses using statistical methods.
Realistic prediction
While scientists are seeking to achieve a “useful prediction” that tells humans where and how strong an earthquake will be before it strikes, the idea may seem unreasonable and impractical, and will face many dilemmas.
First, it is often said in the field of seismology that earthquakes don’t kill people, it’s buildings that do. Scientists are already convinced that the best course of action is to redouble efforts to build or upgrade buildings, bridges and other infrastructure that are safe and resilient to ground shaking without collapsing.
Second, earthquakes are so rare that any early methods will inevitably have uncertain accuracy. In the face of such uncertainty, who will call for major action, such as the evacuation of an entire city or region? How long should people stay away from their homes if an earthquake does not occur? What if people responded to evacuation orders and the earthquake did not happen? Will they respond next time? How do officials balance the risks posed by the chaos of a mass evacuation with the risks posed by the earthquake itself? So the idea of creating useful, completely and reliable forecasting technology is a mirage.
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2023-09-12 01:34:24
