Chile is a south-american country that characterizes for being seismically active; thousands of earthquakes occurs in this area annually. Fortunately, most of them are practically imperceptible for the population, but history has shown us that some of the most violent and destructive tremors in the last century took place in our territory: Valdivia (1960) and Constitucion (2010.) For those reasons, it has become the subject of research for many international scientists and other amateur investigators interested in the topic of quake predictions.
After February 27, 2010, many geophysicists, seismologists, and even structural engineers decided to come to visit the place where the epicentre of the disaster was located since they saw there a great opportunity for collecting crucial data that in a future might help them to develop a system for the prediction of precise Earth movements. In this sense, Dr. Jeff Genrich, a professor at California Institute of Technology, explained that nowadays, quake scientists are able to make predictions of seismic movements, but they can ensure the level of certainty of them.
However, early this year, a group of four Brazilian publicists called Quake Red Alert appeared in our national scenery claiming that they had developed an effective formula based on algorithms that helps them to foresee where and when an event will happen. They used the media to forecast their finding, specially TV programs and Tweeter. The popularity of the team did not stop increasing after they succeeded in some of their predictions. Equally, they were received lots of experts'critics since nobody already knows how their method works; consequently, it is not possible to prove it empirically
Probably, neither scientists nor the Salfate's friends are convincing enough since there is no strong support for saying that it is possible or not to predict an earthquake. So it is just a matter of beliefs. The only thing that I can assure is that Chile will follow shaking, so it is important for you to have a plan in case of emergency since prevention is the only way to save lives. In this web page, you can find some pieces of advice that will help you to get prepared in case of a new quake.
It is true that earthquakes are unpredictable, and that we do not have any kind of effective method to predict them. Therefore, the appearance of pseudo scientists, such as the Quake Red Alert, is natural; and since people in Chile are quite gullible, they will believe anything that a super mysterious group of people tells them. In the end, it is up to each individual to be serious about the topic and take measures.
ReplyDeleteYou are really right, Joaquin since it is absolutely true that we all should know that as we live in a seismic country, am earthquake is likely to occur soon, so the best thing we can do is to have a plan in case of emergency.
DeleteWe all agree with the idea that Chile is a seismic country, and most of the tremors that have affected our country have not been detected. However, an Earthquake protection system has been created in United States and it has been used in many seismically countries in the world (United States, Russia and Turkey for example). The idea is to use it in Japan, but what about Chile? I think it would be a good place for proving new technology to save lives.
ReplyDeleteYes, Miguel. Chile is the best place for studying earthquakes and new technology associated to them due to our intensive seismic activity. Fortunately, international experts have also noticed that, and they are regularly visiting our country for doing their research on earth movements; the idea is to observe what happens here so that in the future they could be able to predict one of those events.
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