Why might predicting earthquakes be a near impossible goal?

by matty_d95 (student)

Why might trying to predict earthquakes be a near-impossible goal?

Earthquakes are usually caused when rock underground suddenly breaks along a fault. These sudden releases of energy causes there to be seismic waves, which make the ground, shake. When two blocks of rock or two plates are rubbing against each other, they stick a little, and do not pass smoothly as the rocks usually catch on to each other. The rocks are still pushing against each other, but not moving. After a while, the rocks break because of all the pressure that's built up. When the rocks break, the earthquake occurs. Nowadays, earthquakes are killing more and more people than have ever done before, partly due to the increase in population density in most cities. Last year alone, one million people were killed by earthquakes, and with this number likely to increase in the near future, many argue that we should find a way to predict when these earthquakes occur. Arguably, with such high levels of technology that we have, there must be a way to predict when an earthquake will occur; and he development of being able to do this would be a life saver to many in the future. With the ability to predict earthquakes, governments can make sure that people are evacuated before major earthquakes hits, therefore reducing the impact on human life by the earthquake. So even to this day, the question as to why we still cannot predict earthquakes remains.

There have been many attempts by seismologists to predict earthquakes, through the process of mapping fault lines, which are evidently clear after an earthquake occurs. However, although this may seem like an effective way to predict an earthquake, its success has been greatly limited. In theory, this process should be greatly effective, as by mapping out fault lines you can see where the majority of earthquakes occur, and therefore by using this information, it should be clear where the next earthquakes will take place. Unfortunately, this process entails problems which make predicting an earthquake a near impossible goal. For instance, subtle signs of an occurrence of an earthquake, like fault lines, can disappear quickly; sometimes even within six months. With such little time therefore to map these fault lines, many end up going unnoticed or inaccuracies occur during the mapping process. Once more, another problem with such a process as mapping fault lines is the fact that you can do as much research and prediction as you want to predict the next earthquake, but the fact is, it is incredibly hard to do so. Such an example would be in a small hamlet in California, where scientists, using seismometers, creep meters, geochemicals and global positioning systems predicted that an earthquake would occur there in 1993. Even though they had all this equipment at their disposal to predict this earthquake, their predictions were slightly out, as the earthquake did not hit until 2004, which was only eleven years late. Therefore, this shows predicting earthquakes is near impossible, because signs of an earthquake are very subtle and these signs can disappear in a small space of time, meaning it is hard to gauge when the next earthquake will occur.

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Following on, the two prominent methods in predicting earthquakes evolve around the areas of seismic monitoring and statistical analysis. Statistical analysis relates to pinpointing when the next earthquakes occurs, using information of where previous earthquakes have hit. This process had been a prominent feature in the prediction of earthquakes running up to the earthquake which hit Izmit in 1999, as scientist noticed that earthquakes had been occurring along that fault line approaching the city of Izmit, and so the city would be hit next by an earthquake. However, even though scientist predicted that Izmit would be next hit, no warning was given to the city, which is why many people were still killed and damages were on a huge scale. This therefore provides us with the question, which is even if we had the ability to predicts earthquakes, what would we do with it? Many geologists nowadays do not value the ability of prediction, because prediction does not give us the ability to reduce the damage of the earthquake, as it is not possible to evacuate a whole city where the earthquake will occur. It could be argued therefore, that predicting earthquakes is a near-impossible goal, because scientists focus more on enhancing the ways in which earthquakes can withstand earthquakes, rather than predicting them. Furthermore, seismic monitoring along with statistical analysis is also used to predict earthquakes. Seismic monitoring relates to the process of detecting any movement in the earth’s crust, with any movement suggesting that an earthquake will soon hit. A clear breakthrough in this process of earthquake prediction was in San Francisco in 2007, when one of the cities many white boxes which pick up seismic waves, detected signals of an earthquake shortly before it actually hit. This process of prediction is known as ‘Quakefinder’, and compared to most other equipment that is used to predict earthquakes, the technology is affordable. Therefore, we could argue that ‘Quakefinder’ technology can predict earthquakes to a certain extent, by the equipment has to be developed so that it can be more consistent in its predictions of earthquakes.

Lastly, it could be argued that predicting earthquakes is a near impossible goal, because even countries with the most advanced technology in the world, like Japan, do not even have the capabilities to do so. This is shown by the fact that the country’s most recent large earthquake killed 10 people and injured tens of thousands, along with damaging the world’s largest nuclear power plant. Japan itself has one of most advanced and reliable systems of earthquake warnings, and yet it was still not good enough to reduce the severe amounts of damage that the earthquake caused. However, this could be down to the fact that the system only has the ability to predict an earthquake only six seconds before it hits, and arguably this is not enough time for people to prepare for it. However, although there is clear evidence that predicting earthquakes is a near impossible goal, a scientist called Vladimir Boruc believes he has developed a way of doing so, to a decent accuracy. His theory comes from the maths derived chaos theory, which believes there is an underlying order to nature’s most random processes, like weather systems; the way birds flock; and how many leaves there are on a tree. He believes that when the earth is in a chaotic state, there can be features that can be recongnised, and so this could also be the case with smaller earthquakes. However, even with such a developed theory like this, there are still complications involving it, like the fact that an earthquake Boruc predicted would occur in Palm Springs in 2004, never actually occurred. Therefore, we can see that predicting earthquakes is an impossible goal, as even the most scientifically proven and developed theories does not have ability to do it.

In conclusion, although billions of dollars have been spent on technology to predict earthquakes, and many theories relating to predicting earthquake shave been developed, still to this day, predicting earthquakes remains a near-impossible goal. I believe the main reason for this is simply because earthquakes are very complex and complicated, and they are in fact too complex to predict. For one, how can you predict an earthquake when it moves one hundred and fifty kilometres in just five seconds, and a only a tiny slip a plate boundary of two centimetres, can produce an earthquakes of 7.9 on the Richter scale. Earthquakes occur too quickly, and only the slightest bit of movement can cause them to occur, which is the underlying factor why earthquakes are impossible to predict.

Why might predicting earthquakes be a near impossible goal?

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