Why are earthquakes so hard to predict? - Jean-Baptiste P. Koehl

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日前,四川宜宾的地震再次让地震这个自然灾害成为了热门话题。在祈祷灾区人民平安的同时,这次地震中,地震预警系统的成功预报一夜刷屏,令各方赞叹不已,但仍有科学家表示,地震预警依旧是一个世界性难题。那么大家知道为什么地震如此难以预测吗?和我们一起来了解一下吧!

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In 132 CE, Chinese polymath Zhang Heng presented the Han court with his latest invention.

This large vase, he claimed, could tell them whenever an earthquake occurred in their kingdomincluding the direction they should send aid.

The court was somewhat skeptical, especially when the device triggered on a seemingly quiet afternoon.

But when messengers came for help days later, their doubts turned to gratitude.

Today, we no longer rely on pots to identify seismic events, but earthquakes still offer a unique challenge to those trying to track them.

So why are earthquakes so hard to anticipate, and how could we get better at predicting them?

To answer that, we need to understand some theories behind how earthquakes occur.

Earth's crust is made from several vast, jagged slabs of rock called tectonic plates, each riding on a hot, partially molten layer of Earth's mantle.

This causes the plates to spread very slowly, at anywhere from 1 to 20 centimeters per year.

But these tiny movements are powerful enough to cause deep cracks in the interacting plates.

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