Just like in the bloody old times of the Roman Inquisition, some Italians are trying to blame scientists for the 300 victims of the 2009 L’Aquila earthquake today. How this stupidity has reached trial is beyond me.
Whenever there’s an earthquake you’ll hear all over the media that it’s “(blank number) on the Richter Scale”. Surprise, the Richter Scale was abandoned years ago because it was inaccurate. Today we use the moment magnitude scale, or the MMS.
In an article originally published March 14th, New Scientist explains why earthquakes are so hard to predict, how seismologists have tried to foretell quakes in the past, and what promising approaches may lead to successful prediction in the future.
In the wake of the massive 9.0-magnitude earthquake that has devastated Japan, an obvious question arises… why didn’t we see it coming? The fact is that earthquake prediction has long baffled scientists, and the current consensus is that it’s actually impossible.
