2023-07-24 01:51:54
The paradox comes from the fact that two French researchers, who publish this July 20 in the American journal Science, retroactively analyzed data from GPS satellites, at 5-minute intervals during the 48 hours preceding 90 major earthquakes that have occurred over the past 20 years. They found that where the data was most accurate, tiny shifting of tectonic plates might actually be detected: on average, two hours before the earthquake is detectable by seismographs. For now, alerts are measured in minutes at most.
The downside is that the level of precision required is far superior to what is traditionally expected of GPS: it should in theory be able to detect movements of the order of a tenth of a millimeter.
History also teaches caution, recalls seismologist Roland Bürgmann in a comment accompanying the article: the past has been marked, since the 1970s, by numerous attempts to detect “precursory signs” of earthquakes. The problem has always been that these warning signs might rarely be clearly distinguished from the normal seismic “background noise”.
What Quentin Bletery and Jean-Mathieu Nocquet of the Côte d’Azur University in Nice are proposing – an analysis of the “sliding” of tectonic plates – might however turn out to be a “signal” different from the others. But if it turns out at the same time that the level of precision required is so high, the technology for such detections is not yet within our reach…
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