Earthquake Alchemy

As the dust settles after Central Virginia’s virtually unprecedented 5.8 magnitude tremor, I’d say it’s high time we started talking about earthquakes.

A couple of weeks ago my wife and I visited the epicenter of the quake, located in Louisa County, near the tiny town of Mineral.  I was shocked.  While the earthquake had done nothing more than give us a minor case of the shakes over in Charlottesville, we discovered that the quake had wrought devastation in Louisa County.  Walls collapsed, chimneys fallen, buildings condemned.  Nothing short of a tragedy.

As we speak, six seismologists are on trial in L’Aquila, Italy.  Their charge?  Manslaughter, for failing to predict a 6.3 magnitude earthquake that killed 309 people in 2009.  According to the prosecution, the defendants gave a “falsely reassuring statement” to the public after analyzing hundreds of small tremors that had rocked the city prior to the quake.

If only it was so easy to predict an earthquake.  But alas, in its current state, the science of earthquake prediction is little more than alchemy.

Of course, there are many things that might precede a quake.  When rock begins to fracture under stress, radon gas is often released, and increased radon levels tend to accompany earthquakes.  Fracturing rocks also cause disruptions in groundwater flow, since fractures increase the amount of pore space between rocks.  Unfortunately, these telltale signs of an impending earthquake may occur too early, too late, or not at all.

The seismologists on trial in Italy were members of the Serious Risks Commission, a government panel assigned to monitor the ongoing tremors in the L’Aquila area.  After assessing the situation, the panel reported that there was “no reason to believe that a series of low-level tremors was a precursor to a larger event,” but that it was “not possible to predict whether a stronger quake would occur.”

The panel, in essence, was reporting that they had no idea what was going on in the rocks beneath the city.

As world populations continue to soar past seven billion, more and more people will come to live in large, earthquake-prone cities.  Earthquake prediction is going to need to improve.  It seems to me that rather than putting scientists on trial, we might want to think about investing in seismological research instead.  Because it’s not a hopeless cause: while successful earthquake predictions are extremely rare, they are not unheard of.  The 1975 earthquake of Haicheng, China, a 7.5 magnitude monster, was predicted one day before it struck.  Countless lives were saved.

After all, alchemists struggled for centuries to turn lead into gold…and today, modern physicists transmute elements on a regular basis.  What’s to say this isn’t the future of earthquake prediction?