Why Can't We Predict Earthquakes?
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| Subjects: Disaster Preparedness, Earth Science, Earthquakes, Geology, Science | ||||
It’s a problem that affects parts of every continent –particularly the United States and Asia – and billions of dollars, yen and yuan are being poured into researching these hazards. A major earthquake striking Los Angeles – the so-called ‘Big One’, expected anytime soon – would cause over $200 billion in property damage. And yet, remarkably, when earthquakes hit, they invariably take us by surprise. This film asks the question that is bugging geologists, seismologists, town planners, big businesses and ordinary people alike, in seismic zones all over the globe; how can we predict an earthquake? Travelling into the high-stakes world of seismic research, we meet the men and women trying to answer this question and the extraordinary experiments that are pushing the limits of this fast-moving science. From mud to maths; rocks to clouds; cats, dogs and snakes – it’s all part of the quest to discover what many are calling the ‘Holy Grail’ of Earth science. Visiting China and the site of the devastating earthquake that struck Sichuan Province in May this year, we meet the people who saw strange lights in the sky; a geologist who can ‘see’ quakes buried in the metres of mud beneath the floor of the Atlantic Ocean and visits the little village of Parkfield, CA – known as the ‘earthquake capital of the world’, because it’s been struck by quakes so many times. Finally the film goes underground with the San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth where they’re drilling a borehole more than two-and-a-half miles deep into the heart of an active earthquake zone, to try and understand how and why quakes behave as they do. |
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