| Ziroc |
09-05-2004 03:07 AM |
http://www.sciscoop.com/story/2004/4/19/21246/1592
Vladimir Keilis-Borok of UCLA, after successfully forecasting two earthquakes last year - the magnitude-6.5 San Simeon quake in Central California and the magnitude-8.1 quake off Japan's Hokkaido island, now says there is a 50-50 chance of a magnitude 6.4 earthquake within a 12,000-square-mile area east of Los Angeles by Sept. 5. The area includes the Mojave desert - which also happens to be the launch site for several X prize contenders.
Given the wide parameters, there's a few percent chance Los Angeles could be hit directly. The distinguished Keilis-Borok and his colleagues apparently have other similar forecasts which they refuse to publicly disclose, for fear of "disruptive behavior" while they work out how trustworthy their prediction methods are. The predictions are based on a combination of pattern recognition, geodynamics, seismology, chaos theory and statistical physics arguments. The predictions cover wide areas and time spans, and still are largely untested. But if this actually works, refinements may help them narrow the predictions down better in future.
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