I would suggest that this would be a very big high for any doctoral candidate. I just hope that there is really something to this. The number of hits they got on this one event (time, location, magnatude) really raises the optimism factor.

[edit on 04/12/29 by GradyPhilpott]

Originally posted by GradyPhilpott
On December 6th, these scientists predicted an earthquake that would occur on December 12th, based upon their studies of planetary alignment and shifts in the earth's mass that stimulate tectonic activity. The coordinates that they predicted were 26.910 North latitude and 94.49 East longitude.

Venkatanathan, said, 'we predicted that the disaster will occur on 26 December 2004 at 00:30 (GMT) with 3.54 N latitude and 97.17E longitude, which is located near the coast of Banyak Island, Sumatra, Indonesia, with a magnitude at around 6 to 7. The actual calamity occurred on 26 December 2004 at 00:58 (GMT), with 3.298 N latitude and 95.779 E longitude, located off the west coast of northern Sumatra'

There seems to be a discrepancy in the dates predicted between the two articles. I have been unable to access indiadaily.com to verify Grady's date of the 12th. Two weeks is a window that would reduce the effectiveness of prevention/avoidance, if the 12th was the original prediction.

Eaglewings, two weeks is incredible accuracy in the world of geologic events, especially since I have seen and heard countless professionals and reporters say in the last few days that predicting earthquakes is impossible. Even a window of two weeks could put people on the alert to be ready for warnings when the event actually occurs. Experts suggest that the public has from twenty minutes to two hours to evacuate once the event occurs.

I would say the jury is still out on this prediction, but it will surely, I hope, get the attention of every geologist on the planet.

A prediction like this could serve as an earthquake watch, just as we have both storm watches and storm warnings.

Where's the proof? Many people, including "mystics," claim to have predicted quakes _after_ they happen. There are also people who are making several predictions per day about quakes, covering most of the area of the tectonic plates within a week. The accuracy of their predictions can be traced to probability.

If you read the material provided in the links provided in this thread, you will not find proof, but you will find credible evidence that the men predicted this event before the event before the event. The presented a paper on December 22nd with their final figures and those are the one that were so accurate.

If anyone here expects to the minute accuracy, I think you are being unrealistic. The weather is far more predictable now than it has ever been, but look at how wrong meteorologist can be so often.

While i appreciate this is not an exact science, and it looke like these guys were onto or close to making a bonafied prediction, i question this statement

We never expected the consequent tidal waves that would have such a devasting effect on the coastal areas of Tamilnadu, admitted Rajeshwara Rao.

So while these guys were able to make a reasonably accurate assesment of the tectonic activity in the region,
HOW could they have not also forseen the resulting energy of the earthquake translating into tsunami? That would seem like a basic idea in geologic studies.

Perhaps they were too focused on the minutia of the study and forgot about the hydrodynamic and energy transferal process associated with tsunami?

Originally posted by CazMedia
So while these guys were able to make a reasonably accurate assesment of the tectonic activity in the region,
HOW could they have not also forseen the resulting energy of the earthquake translating into tsunami? That would seem like a basic idea in geologic studies.

Wouldn't an answer be that because most earthquakes don't produce tsunamis, and it usually takes a substantial displacement of surface area on the sea floor to initiate an earthquake-based tsunami? While they may have something with the planetary alignment theory, predicting the exact hardcore effects of what the earth will do, or how many feet it may move is unrealistic. The theory would most likely develop into its own methodology that could tell us that planetary forces are favorable for seismic events at an approximate time and place.

indeed most earthquakes do not produce tsunami,
but
I believe that almost ALL seaquakes will produce some type of displacement of the ocean, its just a matter of scale, in combination with the topography of the sea floor and the magnitute and type of quake.

even if the energy released along the fault is a slip motion instead of a thrusting over/under action...energy waves will travel into the water and create waves...truthfully im think that a slip fault would produce less tsunami capasity than a thrust fault as the motion is more linear and less up/down.

It is all good and well being able to roughly predict when and where an earthquake is going to hit, but what the hell do you do about it. In the places hit there is no real infrastucture to deal with major emergencies. Evacuate people maybe? But where to and who will do it? There are a million homeless right now, with no cooking facilities, all there clothing gone, no house and no insurance. In this case prediction is about as useful as a chocolate teapot.

Originally posted by GradyPhilpott
N.Venkatanathan, N.Rajeswara Rao, K.K.Sharma and P.Periakali of the Department of Applied Geology, University of Madras, recently proposed a theory and created a software program to predict earthquakes. On December 6th, these scientists predicted an earthquake that would occur on December 12th,

This is not the quake that occured recently tho, the tsunami producer.

based upon their studies of planetary alignment and shifts in the earth's mass that stimulate tectonic activity. The coordinates that they predicted were 26.910 North latitude and 94.49 East longitude.

Did they publish these results before or after the earthquake? Why didn't they predict the more recent earthquake?

If their theory is correct, more of the same is on the way.

Not for nothing, but more of the same is allways on the way. When are they actually saying the next one is?

Notice, the theory does not predict 99% of earthquakes, i think its just that when there are such and such alignments, 99 percent of the time there is an eartquake.

their theory
In order to trigger an earthquake in one particular place, two conditions should be satisfied. They are a) distance of epicenter from the planet position and b) Direction of force acting at the possible epicenter. From the analysis of “Most significant earthquakes” over past 100 years, it is inferred that the latitude, longitude and magnitude of the tremor is related to the distance from the planet and direction of planetary forces acting at any particular point. So the planetary positions can be used to predict the earthquakes in long term prospect and then by correlating the planetary positions and their forces with geology of that area, earthquakes can be predicted with fair accuracy with regard to latitude, longitude and magnitude at least a month before

They don't infact seem to have published this theory before hand. Personally, I find it rather hard to beleive, but a few tests of the theory should dispel that. Such tests would be predicting the locations and magnitudes of some more earth quakes. And, again, i have to wonder, why are they saying it predicted the tsunami making quake, but not the extremely large earthquake that occured shortly before it? They should've been able to.

Clearly, the whole world was caught off guard, except for the scientists at the University of Madras.

I find it difficult to beleive that they were sure that the method was effective but didn't make a big fuss about it . Ironically, if the indian scientific community wasn't spending time researching astrological alignments, they might've had an indian ocean tsunami monitoring system, and avoided much of the destruction caused.

they said more are on the way. when and where? let's track their latest predictions.
daved

[edit on 12/29/2004 by Dasher]

A lot of people with various academic degrees are working to predict earthquakes accurately, and the work continues.

This is an interesting story, but even if everyone in the world believed these predictions without question, there is very little that could have actually been done.

For example, evacuating the coast of the Indian Ocean for a couple of weeks would have itself had significant negative consequences, including a lot of deaths and outbreaks of disease in refugee camps.

Even with the best of preparation, disasters like these are going to kill people. It's really that simple. We can of course hope that people will work to better prepare themselves for future disasters, but we can't do that for them.

At least, there is now talk of implementing an early warning system for cases like this one, and that's a good thing. But in light of how many people are dying every day in these same areas from far less exotic causes, I can understand why they may not have seen a disaster type that occurs perhaps once in several decades as a top priority.

In the case of this article, the claim that "if only they would have listened to us" smacks of hollow, tasteless opportunism.

Instead of hindsight, here's hoping more foresight will be applied to the problem.

You're right very little could have been done, because earthquake prediction is "impossible" and the theory and model designed by the Indian researchers is new. It is not surprising that no one listened, but the fact is that they were pretty much on the money.

The other failure is that as tsunamis are rare in the Indian Ocean (the researchers themselves did not predict the results) that there is no early warning system such as exists in the Pacific Ocean.

But, now that someone has used scientific data in a way that has been shown to be accurate not only in this case, but when applying the model to past events, it would seem prudent to set up a system of watches and warnings based on predictive data and real time monitoring.

This is new territory, scientifically, and naturally, such a system will be incredibly expensive, but it seems evident that the process will begin now.

And for those who have not bothered to read the source material, the researchers presented their data on December 22nd at a seminar. Being only one of several dozen such presentations, I doubt that it raised many eyebrows.

What I am noticing from some of the posters, what almost seems to be blame. Blame directed at the researchers who made this prediction. Well, I don't think that you can blame them for not forseeing the tsunami. First off, if I read it correctly, they though the quake would be in the 6 ot 7 range on the richter scale. It's my understanding for some of the things I have read recently that a 7 or greater only will produce a tsunami. So while they had the magnitude wrong they weren't able to forsee the events that unfolded.

Also if I remember correctly, the 9.0 that hit Sumatra was less then a week after an 8.1 that was southwest of New Zealand. So really there was 2 very significant earthquakes in that region. A region that is not a part of the so called "Ring of Fire". You would think that if they were going to "invent" a prediction using an educated guess, they would have put it along the Pacific plate, not the little known Amandan(sp) plate.

I predict earthquakes all the time...
I have a running prediction.

Every Full moon, and every New Moon. (within 2 days of each)

It's called a syzygy. When we are lined up like that. It's related to tidal effects. Chances are greater, when the moon is closest in it's orbit during the New or Full phases.

BUT, the location of the quake is the hardest part to predict, I don't think we'll have this ability ANYTIME in the near future.

Jim Berkland, a geologist, is the person who put this theory forward.
It seems to be fairly accurate.