No Sign Yet of Predicted Big California Earthquake (from ATSNN)

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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The clock is running out on a highly publicized prediction that a major earthquake will rip through Southern California by Sunday.



But even if the earth does not move by the weekend, seismologists largely agree that the forecast had done more good than harm by reviving interest in the controversial science of quake prediction.


A UCLA team startled Californians and the wider scientific world in January by predicting there was 50-50 chance of a 6.4 magnitude or larger quake hitting a 12,000 square mile mostly desert area east of Los Angeles by Sept. 5.


They used an algorithm, or mathematical pattern recognition formula, developed by team member Professor Vladimir Keilis-Borok which had already successfully forecast a 6.5 temblor in central California in December 2003 and the 8.1 magnitude quake that struck the Japanese island of Hokkaido in September last year.


The public forecast of a quake in southern California shook up the world of seismology where reliable earthquake prediction was largely discredited after the 1980s when another big prediction embarrassingly fell flat.


But a panel of earthquake experts deemed the prediction valid although too untested to warrant emergency measures in a state which measures up to 60 earthquakes a day -- few of them even rattling a window.




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