Large Earthquakes Broadcast Dire Warnings But Is Anyone Tuning In To Listen
Pastor Dale Morgan
Large Earthquakes Broadcast Dire Warnings But Is Anyone Tuning In To Listen*
This technique will probably only yield results for earthquakes of
approximately magnitude 7 or higher, because background waves from the
atmosphere will tend to mask any smaller signals. But these are the
quakes people are most concerned about anyway, from a safety and damage
point of view.
by Staff Writers
Stanford CA (SPX) Dec 14, 2007
Like geological ninjas, earthquakes can strike without warning. But
there may be a way to detect the footfalls of large earthquakes before
they strike, alerting their potential victims a week or more in advance.
A Stanford professor thinks a method to provide just such warnings may
have been buried in the scientific literature for over 40 years.
In October, Japan instituted a nationwide earthquake warning system that
heralds the advance of a big earthquake; its sophisticated machinery
senses the shaking deep in the earth and transmits a warning signal that
can beat the tremors to the surface by seconds.
Antony Fraser-Smith, professor emeritus of electrical engineering and of
geophysics, has evidence that big temblors emit a burst of
ultra-low-frequency electromagnetic radio waves days or even weeks
before they hit. The problem is that nobody is paying enough attention.
Fraser-Smith has been interested in electromagnetic signals for decades.
Most of these waves come from space, he said, generated in the upper
atmosphere by the sun and then beamed down to Earth.
In 1989, Fraser-Smith and his research team were monitoring
ultra-low-frequency radio waves in a remote location in the Santa Cruz
Mountains as part of a long-term study of the signals reaching Earth
from space. On Oct. 5, 1989, their equipment suddenly reported a large
signal, and the signal stayed up for the next 12 days.
At 2:00 p.m. on Oct. 17, 1989, the signal jumped even higher, about 20
to 30 times higher than what the instruments would normally ever
measure, Fraser-Smith said. At 5:04 p.m. the 7.1 magnitude Loma Prieta
earthquake hit the Monterey Bay and San Francisco Bay areas, killing 63
people and causing severe damage across the region.
Fraser-Smith originally thought there was something wrong with the
equipment. After ruling out the possibility of technical malfunctions,
he and his research team started to think the Loma Prieta quake had
quietly announced its impending arrival, and that their equipment just
happened to be in the right place at the right time to pick up the message.
"Most scientists necessarily make measurements on small earthquakes
because that's what occurs all the time," Fraser-Smith said. "To make a
measurement on a large earthquake you have to be lucky, which we were."
Along with Stephen Park, earth sciences professor at the University of
California-Riverside, and Frank Morrison, professor emeritus of earth
and planetary science at UC-Berkeley, Fraser-Smith continued to study
the phenomenon of earthquakes emitting electromagnetic waves through a
study funded by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
When the USGS terminated the funding in 1999, he decided to move on to
other things. But he was recently drawn back into this issue by a local
private company that wanted to use his methods to develop earthquake
warning systems.
"I took a new look at the measurements, concentrating entirely on large
earthquakes," Fraser-Smith said, "and all of a sudden I could see the
forest through the trees."
He found three other studies describing electromagnetic surges before
large earthquakes, just as he had found at the Loma Prieta site. The
earliest report was from the Great Alaska earthquake (M9.2) in 1964. Up
until now, most of the focus for earthquake warnings and predictions has
been on seismological studies, but no seismic measurements have ever
shown this kind of warning before a big quake, Fraser-Smith said.
This technique will probably only yield results for earthquakes of
approximately magnitude 7 or higher, because background waves from the
atmosphere will tend to mask any smaller signals. But these are the
quakes people are most concerned about anyway, from a safety and damage
point of view.
Some seismologists are suspicious that these results are real,
Fraser-Smith said. But it would take little effort to verify or disprove
them. He is calling for federal funding for a mission-oriented study
that would place approximately 30 of the ultra-low-frequency-detecting
instruments around the world at hotspots for big quakes. It would cost
around $3 million to buy 30 of these machines, he said, which is cheap
compared to the cost of many other large studies.
Every year, there are on average 10 earthquakes of magnitude 7 or higher
around the world. So within just a few years, he said, you could
potentially have 10 new measurements of electromagnetic waves before big
quakes-surely enough to determine whether the previous four findings
were real.