Earlier this year, a
Russian geophysicist
named Vladimir Keilis-Borok, who currently works at UCLA, shook up the scientific world by
predicting
that a major earthquake will hit southern California before Sept. 5, 2004. Ordinarily, such claims are dismissed out of hand by the scientific community, but Keilis-Borok's team successfully predicted two other major earthquakes in 2003. Then in March, the California Earthquake Prediction Evaluation Council (CEPEC) issued a
report
which states that, while not yet fully substantiated, the methodology behind the prediction is legitimate, and the results are provocative. CEPEC recommended that all existing earthquake preparedness plans be reviewed.
Since the announcement of his "major breakthrough" in earthquake prediction, Keilis-Borok has received a lot of attention in the press, with all of the sensationalism and doomsaying that you might expect, but not much detail. His technique for making these predictions is usually described with a paragraph or two, as being based on identifying patterns of small tremors, with an occasional short reference to something called
"chaos theory".
Now, one
popular analogy
for chaos theory in action involves a butterfly flapping its wings in South America resulting in a hurricane on the east coast of the US. One might then wonder if perhaps a big rock which crumbles 15 miles underground in Mexico might lead to a bunch of new oceanfront property in Arizona...
Well, read on before you contact your realtor.
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