Showing posts with label pseudo science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pseudo science. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Earthquake predictions: is it more a future project or a reality?



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.