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Earthquakes' Many Mysteries Stymie Efforts to Predict Them

from the New York Times (Registration Required)

Almost all earthquakes are small. A small segment of a fault, miles underground, jerks a little, the rumble imperceptible at the surface. But with a few quakes, the fault continues breaking, the ground jumps several feet and the world shakes in cataclysm.

How does a rupture go from an inch a year to 3,000 miles per hour in a few seconds?” asked Ross S. Stein, a geophysicist at the United States Geological Survey. No one knows.

This gap in knowledge makes earthquake prediction a frustrating and chancy exercise, and complicates the effort to calculate the risk that a human construction like a water reservoir or a geothermal power plant could inadvertently set off a deadly quake.