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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to sign Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. I'm

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Speaker 1: hoor Chimp. And today we are answering the question can

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Speaker 1: we predict earthquakes? What are ways humans have tried to

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Speaker 1: get a heads up on when the ground is gonna shake?

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Speaker 1: Do animals have a sixth sense about it? Or can

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Speaker 1: AI see things in the data that we cannot. We're

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Speaker 1: gonna sit down with two earthquake scientists who are going

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Speaker 1: to explain that we can actually predict earthquakes, just not

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Speaker 1: in the way you expect. So hold on to something

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Speaker 1: because we're taking a dive into the earth shaking science

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Speaker 1: of earthquakes. Enjoy. Hey everyone, all right, Here are the

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Speaker 1: top three most destructive earthquakes in recorded history, according to

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Speaker 1: the US Geological Survey. In two thousand and three, a

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Speaker 1: magnitude six point five earthquake happened in bomb Iran, which

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Speaker 1: killed more than forty thousand people and collapsed eighty percent

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Speaker 1: of all buildings. In nineteen seventy six, a seven point

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Speaker 1: eight magnitude earthquake struck Tangshan, China, and it's said to

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Speaker 1: have killed between two hundred and fifty and eight hundred

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Speaker 1: thousand people, mostly from the collapse of unreinforced brig or

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Speaker 1: concrete homes. The deadliest earthquake ever is thought to have

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Speaker 1: happened in fifteen fifty six in Shangxi, China, which killed

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Speaker 1: about eight hundred and thirty thousand people. It had an

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Speaker 1: estimated magnitude of eight and reportedly leveled mountains, redirected rivers,

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Speaker 1: and caused flooding and fires. The strongest earthquake ever recorded

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Speaker 1: happened off the coast of southern Chile in nineteen sixty

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Speaker 1: and had a magnitude of nine point five. About sixteen

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Speaker 1: hundred people were killed, mostly from the giant tsunami to

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Speaker 1: earthquake cost which had waves reportedly as high as eighty

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Speaker 1: feet or twenty four meters. Clearly, earthquakes can be major

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Speaker 1: natural disasters, and it would be great if we could

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Speaker 1: predict them. So to learn more about the science of

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Speaker 1: earthquake prediction, I decided to take a field trip to

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Speaker 1: a major city that is fairly close to a huge

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Speaker 1: fracture in Earth's crust that has caused several major earthquakes

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Speaker 1: in the last century. Now, luckily I didn't have to

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Speaker 1: travel very far because that city is Los Angeles, and

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Speaker 1: that's where I live, which maybe is not so lucky

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Speaker 1: here in La. The threat of a big earthquake happening

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Speaker 1: is something you just kind of learned to live with.

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Speaker 1: The good news is this is a good place to

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Speaker 1: live if you're an earthquake scientist. So to learn more

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Speaker 1: about today's topic, I drove over to the headquarters of

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Speaker 1: the Southern California seis PIC Network, which is a joint

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Speaker 1: project between Caltech and the US Geological Survey or USGS. Now,

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Speaker 1: the first thing I asked him was this, how likely

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Speaker 1: is it that an earthquake will happen during this interview?

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Speaker 1: And this is what they said during this interview.

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Speaker 2: So this interview is maybe an hour or so, probably

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Speaker 2: a pretty high likelihood, and in California even probably quite

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Speaker 2: a high likelihood.

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Speaker 1: So at the end we're going to find out if

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Speaker 1: there was an earthquake during our interview, and spoiler alert,

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Speaker 1: there was. Okay, let me take a step back. I

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Speaker 1: went over there to talk to my friend doctor Alan Husker,

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Speaker 1: the professor at the Seismological Laboratory at Celtech and the

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Speaker 1: manager of the Southern California Seismic Network, and he introduced

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Speaker 1: me to doctor Elizabeth Cochrane, a researched geophysicist with the

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Speaker 1: US Geological Survey. So here's my visit to the hub

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Speaker 1: of earthquake research in Los Angeles. Hey, I'm walking through Caltech.

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Speaker 3: Now here we go.

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Speaker 1: Hello, how are you good to see? Thank you for

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Speaker 1: letting me crash your meeting? No problem, fun well, thank

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Speaker 1: you doctor Husker, Thank you Doctor Cochran for joining and

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Speaker 1: talking with me here today.

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Speaker 4: Happy to be here.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks for having us.

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Speaker 1: Can you please tell us would you do what your

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Speaker 1: every day like?

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Speaker 2: So, typically most of my days are spent looking at

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Speaker 2: seismic wiggles, so trying to understand what happens when an

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Speaker 2: earthquake occurs and the effects on people and things around us.

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Speaker 5: I spend a lot of time managing so budgets, people,

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Speaker 5: making sure equipment gets out to where it's supposed to

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Speaker 5: be in the field. And then I'll have a grad

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Speaker 5: student who's looking at moonquakes.

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Speaker 1: Oh wow, okay. I started by asking them to give

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Speaker 1: me a rundown. The way people have tried to predict

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Speaker 1: earthquakes starting with animals.

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Speaker 5: So people think that animals can predict earthquake. It's a

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Speaker 5: very common. Most people do actually this, well, a lot

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Speaker 5: does that learn. So some people just think that their

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Speaker 5: dog or whatever has extra senses that humans don't have,

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Speaker 5: and so they can sense when something's going to happen

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Speaker 5: before it happens, because of better vision or hearing or

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Speaker 5: maybe a sixth sense, that kind of thing. There was

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Speaker 5: a study a while ago where they had people actually

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Speaker 5: fell out cards about how their dog was acting and

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Speaker 5: to mail it in, and what they found was people

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Speaker 5: observe their pets after an earthquake, and then the amount

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Speaker 5: of them sending the cards would die off over time.

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Speaker 2: So it's kind of like your pet acts odd a lot,

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Speaker 2: and then if an earthquake happens after that, you attribute

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Speaker 2: the odd behavior that day, do them knowing an earthquake

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Speaker 2: is happening, when in fact, you know five days out

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Speaker 2: of seven they're doing something odd. So there is a

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Speaker 2: really nice video from one earthquake in Seattle in two

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Speaker 2: thousand and one that happens to be focused on a

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Speaker 2: dog that's sleeping on the floor, and.

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Speaker 4: The dog gets up, runs.

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Speaker 2: Away, and then you sort of clearly see that building shaking,

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Speaker 2: But it turns out that in fact, if you actually

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Speaker 2: look very closely, the building does start shaking when the

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Speaker 2: dog gets up the dog noticed the first seismic wave

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Speaker 2: to arrive, and you know, because they're laying on the floor,

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Speaker 2: they felt that vibration, were startled by it and got up,

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Speaker 2: and then the stronger wave arrived. Then that's when people

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Speaker 2: noticed and started moving around.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, according to our experts, there's no convincing evidence dogs

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Speaker 1: can predict earthquakes, but it has to stop people from

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Speaker 1: trying other animals.

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Speaker 5: There was one experiment I heard about that happened in

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Speaker 5: China where they put electrodes on goats nipples, Oh, if

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Speaker 5: they could predict earthquakes or whatever.

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Speaker 3: Barently nothing came out of There was.

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Speaker 2: Also a different experiment that was done similar thing, where

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Speaker 2: someone kept tanks of these eels. And because one of

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Speaker 2: the ideas are some sort of electrical signal as the

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Speaker 2: rocks are breaking, and you get some electrical signals that

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Speaker 2: animals that are sensitive to that would be able to

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Speaker 2: detect it, it didn't work.

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Speaker 1: Now, to be fair, scientists have tried more serious ways

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Speaker 1: to predict earthquakes. For example, they've looked to see if

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Speaker 1: the ground expands or swells right before an earthquake, or

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Speaker 1: if there's an extra amount of radon gas that comes

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Speaker 1: up from the ground right before an earthquake hits, but

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Speaker 1: none of these studies have found anything that can be useful.

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Speaker 1: Scientists have even looked to the sky for signs that

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Speaker 1: predict earthquakes, specifically a layer of our atmosphere called the ionosphere.

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Speaker 5: So people have looked for other things after really really

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Speaker 5: big earthquakes, like magnitude eight point five and above. It's

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Speaker 5: so big that it can sometimes see in a signal

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Speaker 5: in the ionosphere. So there are all sorts of different

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Speaker 5: agnotometers and other equipment on satellites around the Earth all

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Speaker 5: the time. So they tried to look for changes in

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Speaker 5: the iosphere that what happened beforehand, and it hasn't worked either.

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Speaker 5: I would say I'm on the skeptical side.

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Speaker 1: Okay, the I in the sphered doesn't quite work either.

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Speaker 1: How about using AI?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think most of the studies that have

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Speaker 2: suggested that earthquakes might be predictable using sort of deep

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Speaker 2: learning AI techniques are applied to laboratory data, so those

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Speaker 2: I think potentially are successful. Boothquakes are quite a bit

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Speaker 2: different than earthquakes.

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Speaker 4: In the lab.

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Speaker 1: The ones in the lab are more predictable.

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Speaker 4: Because they're more predictable.

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Speaker 5: The other thing that I've seen with some of these

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Speaker 5: AI techniques is they'll say that they get ninety percent

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Speaker 5: prediction rate, which is great, but ninety percent of the

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Speaker 5: earthquakes don't matter.

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Speaker 3: The ones that matter are the big ones.

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Speaker 5: So there was a kind of a prediction conference in

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Speaker 5: China where if they can predict an earthquake using AI.

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Speaker 5: So they said that all their predictions were doing really well.

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Speaker 5: There was a nineteen six point four that actually occurred

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Speaker 5: during the conference that none of them predicted.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so apparently dogs can't predict earthquakes, and neither can

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Speaker 1: goats or eels, or studying the ground or analyzing the

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Speaker 1: gases emitted underground or measuring the Earth's ionosphere, and not

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Speaker 1: even AI can predict when the next earthquake is going

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Speaker 1: to happen. So does this mean it's impossible. When we

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Speaker 1: come back, we're going to ask our experts why it's

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Speaker 1: so hard to predict earthquakes and how in some cases

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Speaker 1: we totally can predict them. Also, we're gonna find out

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Speaker 1: if there was an earthquake during the interview, So keep

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Speaker 1: your feet on the ground, stay with us. We'll be

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Speaker 1: right back and we're back. Okay, we're asking the question

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Speaker 1: can we predict earthquakes? And I already said the answer

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Speaker 1: is yes, sort of. But first I wanted to know

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Speaker 1: why earthquakes are so hard to predict. I mean, we

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Speaker 1: can predict hurricanes, tsunamis, even solar storms. Why is predicting

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Speaker 1: the ground right under our feet so tricky? We'll ask

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Speaker 1: our experts this question, but before that, here's a quick

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Speaker 1: two minute crash course on what earthquakes are. You might

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Speaker 1: remember from school science that the Earth is made up

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Speaker 1: of layers, that the topmost outer shell of the Earth,

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Speaker 1: the crust, is actually made up of pieces called tectonic plates.

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Speaker 1: These hard, brittle plates are sort of floating on top

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Speaker 1: of softer, harder, flowy rock. It goes up and down,

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Speaker 1: sort of like a lava lamp the size of a planet.

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Speaker 1: But because these tectonic plates, which is what we're all

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Speaker 1: standing on, are floating, they tend to move. You can

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Speaker 1: think of them like giant sheets of ice floating on

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Speaker 1: a crowded pool. The tectonic plates are all crowded together

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Speaker 1: and they push on each other as some of them

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Speaker 1: grow or get sucked back into the Earth due to

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Speaker 1: the motion of the flowy rock below them. Now, imagine

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Speaker 1: two big rocky tectonic plates nice to each other, and

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Speaker 1: they might be pressing against each other, or they might

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Speaker 1: be going in different directions, in which case it might

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Speaker 1: be pressing and rubbing against each other. Or one of

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Speaker 1: them might be trying to slide under the other one,

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Speaker 1: in which case they might be pressing, rubbing, and lifting

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Speaker 1: or sinking each other. The point is that you have

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Speaker 1: two giant bodies of rock and they're pressing against each other,

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Speaker 1: and all that pressure creates a lot of stress, and

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Speaker 1: at some point something gives the two rocks can slip

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Speaker 1: past each other suddenly, either sideways or one under the other,

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Speaker 1: and that sudden slip is what an earthquake is.

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Speaker 4: So an earthquake is a rapids breaking.

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Speaker 2: Or slip along a fracture on the Earth. So basically,

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Speaker 2: stresses build up in the earth and they're released really

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Speaker 2: rapidly during an earthquake.

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Speaker 1: Now, according to our experts, there are two things that

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Speaker 1: make earthquakes so hard to predict. The first is that

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Speaker 1: it all happens miles under the ground.

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Speaker 2: So most of the earthquakes happen sort of five to

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Speaker 2: ten miles deep.

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Speaker 3: Oh, in subduction zones.

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Speaker 5: It's much deeper because it's between where the two plates

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Speaker 5: are rubbing against each other, deep underneath the earth, so

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Speaker 5: it might be like fifty miles.

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Speaker 1: Here's an interesting fact. Earthquakes happen at very specific depth

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Speaker 1: depending on how the rocks are rubbing against each other.

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Speaker 1: Earthquakes don't happen deeper because the rock gets hot, which

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Speaker 1: makes it flow instead of crack, and they don't happen

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Speaker 1: above about a mile or so down because the rock

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Speaker 1: there is too loose or crumply. But the ones that

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Speaker 1: do happen still happen about ten to fifteen miles under

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Speaker 1: the ground, which makes them hard to study.

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Speaker 3: Well.

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Speaker 5: It's difficult to predict earthquakes is we can't see, like there's.

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Speaker 4: Rock in the way, so a nice analogy.

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Speaker 2: It's quite difficult even to predict what the weather's going

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Speaker 2: to be like tomorrow, and in that case, there's all

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Speaker 2: kinds of information about the pressures in the atmosphere, the

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Speaker 2: temperatures across a whole three D volume, and even then

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Speaker 2: our weather forecasts are not exact.

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Speaker 3: Right.

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Speaker 2: In this case, we're trying to do the same thing,

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Speaker 2: except buried under miles of rock, where we don't have

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Speaker 2: any or many measurements of exactly what the temperatures are,

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Speaker 2: exactly what the pressures are.

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Speaker 1: We're kind of blind. Yeah, So the first reason earths

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Speaker 1: are hard to predict is that they happen ten to

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Speaker 1: fifteen miles and sometimes fifty miles under ten to fifteen

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Speaker 1: miles or fifty miles of rock. We don't have a

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Speaker 1: direct view or even a way to directly measure what's

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Speaker 1: happening down there. Scientists have to infer what's happening from

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Speaker 1: what we can see and hear on the surface from

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Speaker 1: up here and from satellites and kind of guess what's

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Speaker 1: going on. Now, we can drill holes to see what's happening,

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Speaker 1: but apparently that's expensive, so we.

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Speaker 4: Have drilled into faults.

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Speaker 2: For example, there was a hole that was drilled across

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Speaker 2: the San Andreas fault perpendicularly through the fault, and if

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Speaker 2: not that deep, so it's down I think it was

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Speaker 2: two kilometers three kilometers, and from that one hole, we

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Speaker 2: have so much more information about exactly what those materials

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Speaker 2: look like, what the stresses are in that one hole, right,

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Speaker 2: So it's just sampling that one point. But we haven't

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Speaker 2: trailed a bunch of holes because each one of those

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Speaker 2: holes cost millions of dollars and we don't have that

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Speaker 2: much money.

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Speaker 3: All right.

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Speaker 1: The second reason earthquakes are hard to predict is that

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Speaker 1: earthquakes happen basically without warning. Remember I said that earthquakes

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Speaker 1: happen because two rock plates are pressing on each other,

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Speaker 1: and they're pressing really hard, and at some point something

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Speaker 1: gives and the plates slip past each other or one

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Speaker 1: goes under the other. Well, that give is really hard

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Speaker 1: to know when it's going to happen. It's kind of

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Speaker 1: like when you're standing on ice and you're pressing down

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Speaker 1: on the ice. It's really hard to tell when exactly

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Speaker 1: you're going to slip. Or one analogy or experts like

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Speaker 1: us is bending a stick until it breaks.

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Speaker 2: An even simpler example is it take a stick and

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Speaker 2: you start to bend it. Can you even exactly when

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Speaker 2: that stick is going to break before it snaps in half?

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Speaker 2: And so this is kind of the same thing except

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Speaker 2: in the earth.

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Speaker 1: Okay, this is something you can try at home. Rub

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Speaker 1: a stick or a wood pencil, or better yet, a

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Speaker 1: single stick of uncooked dried spaghetti and start bending it

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Speaker 1: as you put more bend into it. You can feel

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Speaker 1: the stresses building up in the stick or pencil, and

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Speaker 1: at some point you can't predict it's going to snap.

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Speaker 1: The same thing happens with these tectonic plates. They press

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Speaker 1: on each other, the stress builds up, and at some

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Speaker 1: point they crack and slip, and that's an earthquake. Now,

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Speaker 1: it's not always totally unpredictable. Sometimes an earthquake will give

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Speaker 1: you some warning. It'll give you four shocks. You might

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Speaker 1: have heard of after shocks. Those are smaller earthquakes that

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Speaker 1: happen after a big one. A four shock is a

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Speaker 1: smaller earthquake that happens before a big one. Now you

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Speaker 1: might think, wait, are smaller earthquakes that happened before the

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Speaker 1: big ones. Doesn't that mean the big ones are predictable.

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Speaker 1: Not quite. Only some of them give you four shocks,

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Speaker 1: which means it's still unpredictable.

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Speaker 5: About ten percent of the time is a four shock,

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Speaker 5: but it's most of the time there isn't.

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Speaker 2: Although we've gotten really good at detecting really small earthquakes,

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Speaker 2: we still don't necessarily see a lot of four shocks.

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Speaker 2: In addition, there's nothing different about a foreshock. It doesn't

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Speaker 2: look different. There's nothing that we can when an earthquake happens.

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Speaker 2: We can't be like, oh, this is a foreshock.

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Speaker 1: You can't take the difference between a four shock to

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Speaker 1: a big one and just a regular, smaller earthquake, right, Okay,

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Speaker 1: So that's why earthquakes are hard to predict. They happen

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Speaker 1: ten to fifteens, sometimes fifty miles under solid rock. It's

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Speaker 1: a process that happens, usually without warning, just from the

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Speaker 1: physics of it. Now, again, does that mean it's impossible

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Speaker 1: to predict an earthquake. Well, it turns out there are

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Speaker 1: two ways in which we sort of can predict earthquakes.

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Speaker 1: So when we come back, we're going to learn what

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Speaker 1: those two ways are and what we can do with

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Speaker 1: that information. Stay with us, we'll be right back, Welcome back, Okay.

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Speaker 1: At the beginning of this episode, I asked our experts

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Speaker 1: what the chances are that an earthquake would hit during

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Speaker 1: our interview, and we're going to find out at the

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Speaker 1: end here. But first I promise there were two ways

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Speaker 1: in which we can predict earthquakes. The first is that

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Speaker 1: we can cause earthquakes.

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Speaker 2: All right, So a fault basically is stuck for most

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Speaker 2: of the time, right, And the reason it's stuck is

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Speaker 2: because the forces pushing the fault together are higher than

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Speaker 2: the forces trying to move it sideways. And so if

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Speaker 2: you change how much fluids are in the fault, you

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Speaker 2: change if you put a bunch of water in, you're

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Speaker 2: effectively reducing that stress that's holding the two sides.

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Speaker 4: Of the fault together.

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Speaker 1: I see, you're making it slippery, or.

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Speaker 2: You're making it easier for the stresses to be larger

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Speaker 2: than the stress is holding.

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Speaker 3: The fault together.

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Speaker 2: So it's like if I was pushing down on the

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Speaker 2: table super hard, it makes it really hard for me

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Speaker 2: to move my hand sideways.

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Speaker 4: But if I.

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Speaker 2: Put a bunch of water in here, it's pushing back

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Speaker 2: on my hand and making it so it's then easier

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Speaker 2: for my hand to move. So one idea is that, well,

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Speaker 2: if we could trigger an earthquake, uh huh, then we

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Speaker 2: would actually be able to study in detail what happens.

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Speaker 1: Yes, that's right. Scientists have actually considered drilling holes and

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Speaker 1: pumping a lot of water into a fault in order

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Speaker 1: to start an earthquake.

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Speaker 2: So this is not just a of idea that we

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Speaker 2: came up with today.

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Speaker 4: Right, There was actually a meeting.

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Speaker 2: A few years ago of folks working on earthquake physics

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Speaker 2: where we actually talked about whether it would be possible

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Speaker 2: to have an earthquake experiment where we actually would create

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Speaker 2: an earthquake.

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Speaker 1: It just seems like a terrible idea.

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Speaker 2: Most of the workshop consisted of people talking about where

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Speaker 2: we would do this because it had to be away

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Speaker 2: from people, right.

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Speaker 5: I think ideally we would want to have like a

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Speaker 5: ranch of magnitudes, Like we're talking about a three or four,

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Speaker 5: but if we could create a six or seven, that'd

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Speaker 5: be great. Like, there's plenty of earthquakes that happened really

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Speaker 5: far away from more people are and like nobody feels them,

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Speaker 5: so like it'd be like one of those like.

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Speaker 1: Well wait, this is just an idea, right, they haven't

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Speaker 1: actually done it, have they.

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Speaker 5: Well, yes, I know, we've started lots of little ones.

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Speaker 5: Oh yeah, well, I mean the geo thermal regions and stuff.

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Speaker 5: They're doing it all the time.

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Speaker 2: And there was a purposeful experiment a KTB borehole in Germany.

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Speaker 2: So this was think in the nineties where a deep

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Speaker 2: borehole was drilled and then they injected fluids and they

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Speaker 2: triggered a number of earthquakes, small earthquakes. These were kind

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Speaker 2: of magnitude one to two.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, So the idea would be to create an

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Speaker 1: earthquake in order to get more data and understand them better.

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Speaker 1: But we also talked about starting an earthquake to make

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Speaker 1: it more predictable.

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Speaker 5: Another thing along those lines, if you wanted to say

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Speaker 5: we can't predict earthquakes, but we could generate one. Let's say,

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Speaker 5: if we think we could generate a magnitude seven or

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Speaker 5: eight on the San Andreas. Essentially we would kind of

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Speaker 5: speed up the clock for when it would happen.

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Speaker 1: What our experts are saying here is if we can

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Speaker 1: induce earthquakes, and it looks like we can, then maybe

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Speaker 1: for a region like Los Angeles where we know a

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Speaker 1: big earthquake is coming, the best thing to do is

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Speaker 1: to get it.

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Speaker 5: We're with and so we could, you know, evacuate LA

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Speaker 5: for a while, pump it as hard as we could,

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Speaker 5: and see if we can create a giant earthquake on

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Speaker 5: the San Andreas fault, uh huh, and then we've alleviated

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Speaker 5: it now for a while, and so people can move

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Speaker 5: back into La and like feel safer.

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Speaker 1: In other words, we could potentially schedule earthquakes. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it doesn't get more predictable than that. Of course, there

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Speaker 1: are a few problems with this idea.

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Speaker 2: The problem with that is that every large earthquake is

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Speaker 2: then followed with many, many aftershocks. So and typically the

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Speaker 2: largest aftershock is about only one magnitude unit less than

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Speaker 2: the main shock. So if we trigger an eight, we're

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Speaker 2: then going to have a magnitude seven aftershock. Plus you

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Speaker 2: know many six's, hundreds of five, you know, thousands of fours,

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Speaker 2: So how long four years? So in general, aftershock sequences

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Speaker 2: can go on for decades, and so just alleviating the

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Speaker 2: stress means that you're then stressing all of the other

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Speaker 2: faults around it in new ways, and so then those

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Speaker 2: can have their own earthquakes. And so maybe it's maybe

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Speaker 2: it's not the best.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, let's think about that one a little more, all right.

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Speaker 1: And then the other way in which earthquakes can be

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Speaker 1: predicted is if you consider the timescale of your prediction.

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Speaker 1: Remember the analogy of bending a stick and not knowing

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Speaker 1: when it's going to break, Well, that's not quite true.

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Speaker 1: You do have some sense of when it's going to snap.

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Speaker 5: You have a general idea of on that timescale. It

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Speaker 5: might not happen instantaneously, but there's a within a few

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Speaker 5: seconds you can make it happen.

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Speaker 1: Right, Meaning like if I start bending it stick, I

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Speaker 1: sort of know within a few stens of seconds when

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Speaker 1: it's going to snap exactly.

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Speaker 5: And so like we're actually really really accurate in predicting earthquakes,

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Speaker 5: but it's on the Earth timescale, right, So the Earth,

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Speaker 5: the Earth is you know, billions of years old, and

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Speaker 5: can say there's going to be an earthquake, you know,

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Speaker 5: at the San Andreas in the next hundred years, and

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Speaker 5: you're like, oh, that's really good, right, But no, it's

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Speaker 5: not useful for humans.

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Speaker 2: It is useful to forecasts in that way because that's

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Speaker 2: how we develop building codes, right. Our buildings last for

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Speaker 2: hundreds of years sometimes, and so we develop these earthquake

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Speaker 2: forecasts so that we know how to build the buildings

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Speaker 2: to withstand the likely events that those buildings will see.

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Speaker 1: So we may not be able to predict earthquakes down

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Speaker 1: to the minute or hour or even month or year,

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Speaker 1: but through some amazing science by awesome scientists, we can

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Speaker 1: somehow see beneath miles of rock and have a sense

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Speaker 1: of when big earthquakes can occur, which maybe is enough.

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Speaker 1: It can give us guidance about building codes and put

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Speaker 1: people unnoticed to be prepared. And speaking of being prepared,

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Speaker 1: let's find out if there was an earthquake during our interview.

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Speaker 1: All right, well, thank you so much for talking with me. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: let's go check to see if an earthquake happen.

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Speaker 3: Let's do it.

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Speaker 1: So where are you taking?

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Speaker 3: Just right? Monitor? Yeah?

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Speaker 1: What is it?

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Speaker 5: This is data coming from the Southern California sized network.

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Speaker 5: This is a monitor that we're collecting all the four

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Speaker 5: hundred stations.

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Speaker 2: So we're obviously not showing all of the different centers,

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00:25:21,840 --> 00:25:24,760
Speaker 2: but they're all across Southern California and listening to all

443
00:25:24,760 --> 00:25:26,959
Speaker 2: the little events happening on the faults nearby.

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00:25:27,160 --> 00:25:29,880
Speaker 5: But most of this is just noise. But this line

445
00:25:29,920 --> 00:25:32,680
Speaker 5: right here, this flat line, that's an earthquake. Whow So

446
00:25:32,680 --> 00:25:35,040
Speaker 5: at about twelve to ten there was an earthquake. It's

447
00:25:35,080 --> 00:25:37,120
Speaker 5: probably an aftershock of the ridge gross earthquake.

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00:25:37,400 --> 00:25:40,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, or there's a little swarm of events happening right here.

449
00:25:40,760 --> 00:25:41,840
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, there too.

450
00:25:42,160 --> 00:25:46,399
Speaker 1: Okay, So at twelve ten pm Pacific time, there was

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00:25:46,840 --> 00:25:50,440
Speaker 1: an earthing and we were talking, Yes, how was this earthquake?

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00:25:50,760 --> 00:25:53,600
Speaker 3: It was been tiny, maybe like a magnitude one or two, and.

453
00:25:53,560 --> 00:25:57,359
Speaker 1: It's telling you, hey, there was something yep, okay. The

454
00:25:57,440 --> 00:26:00,400
Speaker 1: last question I asked doctor Husker and doctor Cochrane whether

455
00:26:00,440 --> 00:26:03,880
Speaker 1: it would matter if we could predict earthquakes.

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00:26:04,600 --> 00:26:07,439
Speaker 2: You know, there's also questions of sort of if we

457
00:26:07,520 --> 00:26:09,919
Speaker 2: had predictions, what would we do with it? If I

458
00:26:10,160 --> 00:26:14,040
Speaker 2: knew half an hour before a magnitude eight on the

459
00:26:14,080 --> 00:26:15,280
Speaker 2: San Andreas, what.

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00:26:15,240 --> 00:26:17,359
Speaker 4: Would we do right?

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00:26:17,640 --> 00:26:17,920
Speaker 1: Right?

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00:26:18,040 --> 00:26:21,640
Speaker 2: So you couldn't evacuate Los Angeles in half an hour? Right?

463
00:26:21,680 --> 00:26:23,880
Speaker 2: It takes half an hour to get ten miles down

464
00:26:23,920 --> 00:26:26,800
Speaker 2: the road on any given day, just two to traffic.

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00:26:27,920 --> 00:26:30,280
Speaker 1: So I asked them what would you do if you

466
00:26:30,320 --> 00:26:34,119
Speaker 1: could predict earthquakes at different timescales? Like what if you

467
00:26:34,200 --> 00:26:36,960
Speaker 1: knew an earthquake was likely to happen in the next

468
00:26:37,000 --> 00:26:40,320
Speaker 1: ten years, or the next month, or in the next

469
00:26:40,480 --> 00:26:41,480
Speaker 1: five minutes.

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00:26:42,680 --> 00:26:45,200
Speaker 2: I mean ten years would be helpful if we knew

471
00:26:45,640 --> 00:26:50,840
Speaker 2: which fault and how big, right, because that would be

472
00:26:50,840 --> 00:26:53,720
Speaker 2: a specific scenario that we could plan for. A lot

473
00:26:53,760 --> 00:26:57,159
Speaker 2: of our water comes across the San Andreas fault, A

474
00:26:57,160 --> 00:27:00,400
Speaker 2: lot of our electricity are you know, so you could

475
00:27:00,440 --> 00:27:03,560
Speaker 2: imagine if you had ten years and you knew that

476
00:27:03,760 --> 00:27:06,320
Speaker 2: this pipe was the one that was going to be broken,

477
00:27:06,840 --> 00:27:10,320
Speaker 2: you would spend that ten years hardening that pipe. You know,

478
00:27:10,680 --> 00:27:14,320
Speaker 2: all of those supply lines cross the San Andres.

479
00:27:14,440 --> 00:27:16,800
Speaker 5: A month is still really long, but you could start

480
00:27:16,840 --> 00:27:19,680
Speaker 5: to prepare. From the governmental point of view, from a

481
00:27:19,800 --> 00:27:23,080
Speaker 5: fireman FEMA, these kind of things like you, okay, let's

482
00:27:23,119 --> 00:27:26,159
Speaker 5: get water, large tanks of water everywhere. If it was

483
00:27:26,200 --> 00:27:28,600
Speaker 5: of magnitude eight long San Andres, is it going to break?

484
00:27:28,680 --> 00:27:31,359
Speaker 5: The I five and I ten those are the major

485
00:27:31,480 --> 00:27:33,880
Speaker 5: arteries that leave Los Angeles, so people won't be able

486
00:27:33,920 --> 00:27:37,200
Speaker 5: to leave the county. So then like, okay, we know

487
00:27:37,280 --> 00:27:38,800
Speaker 5: this is going to happen, Like what can we put

488
00:27:38,840 --> 00:27:41,240
Speaker 5: in place to get ready for this that we have

489
00:27:41,280 --> 00:27:43,600
Speaker 5: it bridges up quickly and to get people out and

490
00:27:43,600 --> 00:27:44,600
Speaker 5: also supplies in.

491
00:27:44,920 --> 00:27:47,960
Speaker 2: Warning of five to ten to thirty minutes could be

492
00:27:48,080 --> 00:27:51,880
Speaker 2: very useful. So we know that there's a number of buildings,

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00:27:52,080 --> 00:27:55,800
Speaker 2: for example, in Los Angeles that have not been fully

494
00:27:55,880 --> 00:27:59,600
Speaker 2: retrofit to with stand earthquakes. These are older buildings, they

495
00:27:59,600 --> 00:28:03,040
Speaker 2: were built well before we knew the full earthquake hazard,

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00:28:03,119 --> 00:28:05,440
Speaker 2: and so you could evacuate those buildings.

497
00:28:05,600 --> 00:28:07,879
Speaker 1: Oh, I see, it might give you some time, right,

498
00:28:08,920 --> 00:28:14,359
Speaker 1: all right, So to recap can we predict earthquakes? Well,

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00:28:14,480 --> 00:28:17,800
Speaker 1: they're unpredictable. They happen deep in the earth where you

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00:28:17,880 --> 00:28:21,040
Speaker 1: can't see them, and they happen because of rocks pressing

501
00:28:21,119 --> 00:28:25,400
Speaker 1: on each other and slipping without warning. Despite that, science

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00:28:25,440 --> 00:28:29,080
Speaker 1: can observe the general movement of tectonic plates and build

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00:28:29,160 --> 00:28:32,040
Speaker 1: models that can give us some estimates of when they're

504
00:28:32,160 --> 00:28:35,720
Speaker 1: likely to occur. And the more money we put into it,

505
00:28:36,200 --> 00:28:39,200
Speaker 1: the shorter the time skill of that prediction will be.

506
00:28:40,120 --> 00:28:42,640
Speaker 1: So the next time you talk to your government representative

507
00:28:42,760 --> 00:28:48,000
Speaker 1: or official, try to shake them for more earthquake science funding.

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00:28:48,800 --> 00:28:54,840
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, See you next time you've been

509
00:28:54,840 --> 00:28:59,160
Speaker 1: listening to Science Stuff. Production of iHeartRadio written and produced

510
00:28:59,160 --> 00:29:03,520
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511
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