The media reported that yesterday night, on 17 December, an earthquake gently shook Kikinda. At the same time, a bit stronger earthquake was recorded in Durrës, an Albanian city hit by a dramatic series of quakes in late November and early December, which claimed the lives of 50 people. The rest of the region has not been tranquil either – quakes were recorded multiple times in Turkey, Greece, Italy, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina…
These circumstances led many people to consider that this coincidence was by no means coincidental and that one can learn what is coming from the deep below from the previous quakes. However, can earthquakes really be predicted?
Unfortunately, in contrast to various other equally dangerous disasters, such as hurricanes, storms or floods common to our region, earthquakes cannot be recorded in advance by any kind of device or observed before they occur. Despite all quakes being monitored constantly in seismological stations, and there are the so-called non-seismological events preceding them, the quakes occur due to tectonic plates’ movements, i.e. the impact time, epicentre and the true strength of an earthquake are difficult to hazard.
Most scientists nowadays believe that technology or a method which we have not adopted yet does not present a problem, but that it is not theoretically possible. The British author Robert Matthews in a 1997 paper wrote that ’in any practical sense, it is impossible to predict earthquake occurrence.’ It is widely believed that this phenomenon belongs to the so-called self-organized criticality (which physicists, intrigued by unpredictability, have passionately been studying in recent decades), whereby a series of smaller mechanical events at a mathematically unpredictable point suddenly become an avalanche.
However, in the 1970s, a completely different view prevailed among numerous seismologists – that earthquakes were possible to predict and that in 10-years-time it would be possible to develop a reliable alert system. Anyhow, later research, various failures in predictions, as well as the controversy surrounding the China earthquake in 1975, which had been predicted to happen a year earlier, led to this view largely being dropped in the 1990s.
Nowadays, particularly in faulty regions, various fast alert systems have been developed to react as soon as possible when an earthquake is observed. Furthermore, an entire scientific field sprang out that tackles earthquake risk assessment. Yet, a method which can pinpoint the exact time, place and strength of the upcoming earthquake does not exist.
Scientific findings, physics development, and especially the development of meteorology, have contributed to us predicting nature-induced hazards, even though sometimes we are unable to stop them. This type of modern comfort excludes genuine uncertainty connected to natural disasters, so the public and decision-makers find it increasingly difficult to accept that there are still such terrible threats which are ’inherently unpredictable.’
On one occasion, this issue ended in court. After the L’Aquila earthquake, seven seismologists were found guilty of not alerting the public about an upcoming deadly earthquake following a series of small foreshocks. Quite the opposite, they believed there was no danger, and the population was not evacuated. The court trial attracted a lot of attention and reactions from scientists across the globe. In the end, in the proceedings before the higher court, the scientists were acquitted.
S.B.
Illustration: TopVectors (Depositphotos/69207769)