Free Republic

Roger Bilham, a geophysicist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, informed that, in this year, the planet would face more powerful earthquakes and the magnitude level will be 7.0 or more. It can even reach 9.0. He stated that the number of earthquakes could reach up to 20 in 2018. The published report says, when the planet will enter in to slow rotation period, that will decrease the centrifugal force and tighten the planet’s equator. After that, the tectonic plates will crush with each other. The force that will erupt from this event will start super earthquakes on Earth. The...

IN the aftermath of the earthquake at L’Aquila, Italy, on Monday that killed nearly 300 people, splashy headlines suggested that these victims didn’t have to die. An Italian researcher, Giampaolo Giuliani, began to sound alarm bells a month earlier, warning that an earthquake would strike near L’Aquila on March 29. The prediction was apparently based on anomalous radon gas concentrations in the air; the region had also experienced a number of small tremors starting in mid-January. Mr. Giuliani was denounced for inciting panic by Italy’s Civil Protection Agency, and he was forced to take his warning off the Web after...

RENO, Nev. (AP) ― Scientists urged residents of northern Nevada's largest city to prepare for a bigger event as the area continued rumbling Saturday after the largest earthquake in a two-month-long series of temblors. More than 100 aftershocks were recorded on the western edge of the city after a magnitude 4.7 quake hit Friday night, the strongest quake around Reno since one measuring 5.2 in 1953, said researchers at the seismological laboratory at the University of Nevada, Reno. The latest quake swept store shelves clean, cracked walls in homes and dislodged rocks on hillsides, but there were no reports of...

California - land of sun, beaches and earthquakes - faces an almost certain risk of being rocked by a strong temblor by 2037, scientists said Monday in the first statewide forecast of the seismic threat. New calculations reveal there is a 99.7 percent chance a magnitude 6.7 quake or larger will hit the Golden State in the next 30 years. The odds of such an event are higher in Southern California than Northern California, 97 percent versus 93 percent. The last time a jolt this size rattled California was the 1994 Northridge disaster, which killed 72 people, injured more than...

Curious cloud formations linked to quakes 11 April 2008 From New Scientist Print Edition. Lynn Dicks CAN unusual clouds signal the possibility of an impending earthquake? That's the question being asked following the discovery of distinctive cloud formations above an active fault in Iran before each of two large earthquakes occurred. Geophysicists Guangmeng Guo and Bin Wang of Nanyang Normal University in Henan, China, noticed a gap in the clouds in satellite images from December 2004 that precisely matched the location of the main fault in southern Iran. It stretched for hundreds of kilometres, was visible for several hours and...

Coast2Coast with George Noory. Listen and comment. First news story - an upcoming earthquake in Japan

PASADENA, Calif. - California residents wondering if tomorrow's forecast will be sunny now can find out if there's also a chance of afternoon tremors. For the first time, they can check a daily earthquake forecast on the Internet just as easily as they check the weather. The Web site, maintained by the U.S. Geological Survey, is updated hourly and calculates the probability of strong ground shaking at specific locations over a 24-hour period. The program is not meant to predict when the "Big One" will occur nor serve as a warning signal for residents to evacuate. Most of the maps...

Scientist foresaw Sumatran quake Research showed area was ripe for temblor By Kimm Groshong , Staff WriterArticle Published: Sunday, March 06, 2005 - 8:25:08 PM PST PASADENA -- When the magnitude-9.0 earthquake and resultant tsunami devastated Sumatra and much of the Bay of Bengal on Dec. 26, Kerry Sieh's premonition became a nightmarish reality. The Caltech geology professor had studied the history of giant earthquakes just south of the epicenter for about a decade and knew full well the damage such a major quake in that part of the world could inflict. He had tried to get the word out...

BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) -- Scientists believe they have detected a pattern in earthquakes occurring along the San Andreas Fault, a finding that eventually could help predict them. The study, by seismologists at the University of California, Berkeley, looked at small, recurring quakes along a section of the fault and found they tended to follow a three-year cycle. Meanwhile, the scientists found that larger quakes in the area studied tended to occur at the beginning of the cycle, when the small quake activity was on the upswing. The research could be a key development in achieving more precision in forecasting, although...