There's a great set of research coming from Alexis Cartwright Taylor's lab showing that it's quite possible that large fractions of fracture mechanics information is not transmitted acoustically. For example grain boundary rotations and change the stress field without releasing acoustic energy as they are typically elastic. This would indicate that even the very idea of what seismology has been the last 60 years, acoustic detection of earthquakes, does not produce enough information for understanding the earthquake process and thus prediction would not be possible using only data from seismometers. Of course, Gutenberg Richter b value people will tell you that's not true. But they seem to be a dying breed.
Earthquakes might not be able to be predicted accurately, but some recent research 'claims' there some physical signs that can comes before earthquake comes. E.g. : helium and radon gas. Research related to 2011 Tohoku earthquake also reported that there is some magnetic anomaly before the earthquake.
People that noticed these anomaly, however, cannot correlates these anomaly to the necessary parameter that is really required for true earthquake prediction: Magnitude, Location, and Time. Without saying what is the magnitude and location, you cannot estimate the earthquake damage. Time limit is also important.
There are claims and anecdotal reports but (caveat that I'm not an earthquake scientist lol) doesn't seem to have expert consensus and I'm not seeing anything that passes the bar of not being able to be explained by people who've heard that animals predict earthquakes retroactively blaming any behavior they noticed on earthquake awareness.
Is it possible they're just hearing the sound of them (you can often hear the sound they're making a few seconds before it hits where you are - I live in NZ) before us due to their much better hearing?
hey, i predict 99.7% chance of a 8 magnitude or greater quake along the san andreas (or related faults) within 200 years. now don't complain of a lack of enough advance warning.
I've read that there is a strong correlation between the timing of earthquakes and the volume of gasses like hydrogen and methane leaking out of the earth. The volume of gas can change very significantly before and after an earthquake. There is newfound attention on this topic because there is a race to discover and harvest natural geologic hydrogen (look up latest news about "natural hydrogen").
I found this research pretty mind blowing and took these notes to highlight this topic.
Hydrogen is associated with Earthquakes and can maybe even predict them!
In areas with recent tectonic activity: “Higher hydrogen concentrations were observed,” and “hydrogen gas was observed in ground water.” [pg 20]
“[Correlated with earthquakes,] hydrogen concentrations measured at continuous monitoring sites show abrupt changes in concentration over several orders of magnitude, up to 10 times, in a short period of time.” [pg 40]
“Indeed, at epicenters of large earthquakes a reduction in the ozone layer above them has been observed.” [pg 40]
“A systematic study of hydrogen in aquifers shows that H2 concentrations are in- versely correlated with the age of the area's last tectonic activity.” [pg 41]
“Another study shows that hydrogen concentrations in earthquake-associated faults are usually much higher than concentrations in non-earthquake faults.” [pg 41]
‘During earthquakes hydrogen concentrations in fault zones have been shown to increase by several orders of magnitude.” [pg 41]
“Numerous articles discuss hydrogen as a good earthquake indicator and the possibility of monitoring hydrogen for the prediction of seismic events.” [pg 41]
More detail below
despite all the claims to the contrary https://www.youtube.com/@dutchsinse manages to predict earthquakes. (with some variability of course)
seems to offend scientific types and be shunned for some reason, and yet the video evidence is there of his forecasts being correct, and his methodology is documented.
Can you give a couple of examples of earthquakes he predicted and link to the exact place or video passage where these predictions happened? Forgive me for not watching hours upon hours of youtube videos, on the off chance that this is true.
Earthquakes have what are called primary (P) and secondary (S) waves. The primary is a sharp high frequency wave and the secondary waves are a lower frequency rumble that you feel as the earthquake. The P wave propagates faster so if you're distant from the epicenter the P waves might arrive fractions of a minutes earlier. That's what you see in videos of dogs jumping up and running off or birds taking flight "right before" the earthquake.
That explains detection seconds before the main tremors, but there's some evidence that some animals change their behavior hours before the actual earthquake, before there are any measurable tremors, so there might be other mechanisms at play.
Your link fails to establish that. The main problem with animal behavior surveys is that they tend to report good results when you start with a known earthquake, and then look backwards to find unusual animal behavior before the earthquake. If you instead try to define objective criteria on animal behavior and then use that as a signal to predict earthquakes, the quality of animal behavior as a predictor turns to crap. In a nutshell, unusual animal behavior precedes most earthquakes... and many more events that turn out not to be earthquakes!
That's a fair point; a detector that reliably detects impeding once-in-a-century strong earthquakes as well as every wolf or bear wandering too close to some herd of goats is probably not that useful.
No, earthquakes cannot be reliably predicted with current technology. However, some animals can predict seismic activities. So, perhaps we can observe their behavior and, based on it, make some predictions
Fracking does this on a small scale. I had an excellent geology professor, Donald Prothero, who argued manually triggering earthquakes could be a much better idea in high tension areas than waiting for them to happen organically, as we could prepare, and the triggered earthquakes wouldn’t be as bad as waiting for them to happen. But the paperwork would be a nightmare(:
It would be preferable, but a litigation nightmare. If 100 houses fall down due to a natural earthquake, no one gets sued. If 2 houses fall down in a "prescribed burn" earthquake, now the entity that caused the earthquake can be sued.
It's actually impossible to know for certain how much and what size of land you're destabilizing. Duration of expected destabilization is also varying I guess and at least 1 year.
> "Exponential relationship between the total number of earthquakes and the number of wells in the Texas during the study period
1998–2018 with correlation R2=0.726."
It's not fracking itself but actually wastewater injection has a bigger influence in triggering bigger earthquakes according to what I've read. Moreover, it's also known that dams have a significant impact:
> "The devastating earthquake in Sichuan, which took at least 69,000 lives in May 2008, may have been unleashed by the huge Zipingpu Dam. New scientific evidence suggests that the filling of the Zipingpu reservoir may have activated a dormant fault line near the dam site."
Shallow faults are definitely activated. Probability of deep faults activated through full destabilization of a region? Unknown for now.
It's much easier to cause something than to predict when it will happen naturally. As Alan Kay famously said, "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
There are also reports of pretty interesting/odd electromagnetic phenomena reaching up to the ionosphere, which might be what animals are ultimately sensing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_light
A lot of these videos might be transformers blowing out or swinging power lines touching, but given the ubiquity of surveillance cameras and dashcams, we're fortunately getting more and more data. If there's something there that can be used for prediction better than seconds ahead of the earthquake, the value would obviously be immense.
It might of course be that animals are reacting to something else, like sulphuric gases being released from the ground, infrasound of early earthquake acitivty etc. – we just don't know enough about it yet, but the fact that there's correlation between animal behavior and seismic activity seems worth studying.
Tension rods, logical idea, never seen before.. and ugly like hell, or do you hide them?
All I find quickly is about tension rods for curtains. How common are they? Pluses no need to drill and would work for freestanding, more over just securing with screws to wall?
