Why the earth quake canot be predicted ?

                      Can we prevent Earth quakes?   Is it possible to predict it?                            With sufficient  accuracy  If No why? 

       These are questions, we would like to address now  Earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes are just some of the deadly hazards ,we are exposed to, on Earth. These events shape our planet and affect, where and how we live. Can we prevent Earth quakes ,or can it  be predicted if no why? These are the questions we would like to address now

What is an earthquake?

An earthquake is the shaking and vibration at the surface of the Earth caused by energy being released along a fault plane, at the edge of a tectonic plate or by volcanic activity.

Earthquakes are caused by the movement of Earth’s outer layer (the crust and a portion of the upper mantle). The outside layer of Earth is split intotectonic plates,which are moving slightly due to the movement of magma in the layer below. This causes plates to squeeze together, move apart and slide alongside each other. Earthquakes are classified into two types: 

1.Interplate earthquakes

These earthquakes occur on tectonic plate boundaries where the tectonic plates are moving towards each other or sliding alongside each other. If the United States which

are located on tectonic plate boundaries. Large earthquakes are usually interplate earthquakes.

2.Intraplate earthquakes  

These occur in the middle of tectonic plates on fault zones where the pressure of the tectonic plate being squashed and forced to move builds up and is released through the cracks in rocks associated with fault zones, resulting in an earthquake.

The largest recorded earthquake in the world was a magnitude 9.5 in Chile on May 22, There were attempts to correlate it with phases of the Moon? With seasons ,weather Sunspots and solar cycles? . Every prediction method makes lucky hits, but none of them really worked .Lay people reinvent these hypotheses anyway.

                                    Scientists have moved on to more sophisticated guesses, but with little more success. It doesn't matter, for instance, how long it has been since the last earthquake along a particular stretch of geologic fault. It doesn't matter what fluid pressures underground are doing—rising, falling, or fluctuating. It doesn't matter what the electrical conductivity of the ground is doing. The behaviour of earthquake faults is a stubborn mystery. Seismologist Yan Kagan of UCLA said a few years ago, "It may require the development of completely new mathematical and theoretical tools.

A team of Greek seismologists, known as the VAN group after the names of its leaders (Panayotis Varotsos, Kessar Alexopoulos, and Kostas Nomicos of the University of Athens), has long claimed to make useful predictions from a complicated network of signal detectors in electric power lines of many kilometres length. But a dedicated group of critics has kept the VAN group on its mettle. The debate was formalized in 1996 in Geophysical Research Letters. The VAN group responded to each of 16 Comments with a formal Reply. In some cases the exchange continued further, a sign of strong disagreement over basic matters. These days their work seems to be ignored generally, although Seiya Uyeda continues similar research with his group in Japan.The overwhelming consensus of the meeting was that earthquake prediction, in the popular sense of deterministic short-term prediction, is not possible at present. Most of the participants also agreed that the chaotic, highly non-linear .The word "chaotic" is significant, because the mathematics of chaos is a step forward. The pattern of earthquakes along a fault resembles other chaotic phenomena like the avalanching of a sand pile under a random rain of sand grains—while each individual occurrence is unpredictable, the bulk result can be modeled quite precisely. In the case of the sand pile, the bulk result is a cone with sides at the angle of repose. For earthquakes it is an overall level of energy release that matches the tectonic movement of the earth's plates. From that information we can confidently map the expected long-term hazards for a region—that is, we can construct long-term forecasts. This is vitally useful for planners, emergency agencies, and designers of buildings and other structures.

                                                 Because we don’t know enough about plate tectonics. “We basically have a 50-year-old science, compared with most other sciences, which are hundreds of years old,” says Chris Goldfinger, director of the Active Tectonics and Seafloor Mapping Laboratory at Oregon State University. By SCIENCE most us inclined to think about 'the systematic and objective study ' which has developed during Renaissance -Deterministic and reductionistic approach -with the backing of celebrated 17^th Century mathematics-known now as Cartesian determinism . Development of quantum mechanics , non-linear dynamics ,chaos and collective phenomenon and Self Organised Systems[SOS] has brought a paradigm shift to the basic concepts -still Newtonian mechanics is applicable as valid approximation -stretching beyond its domain of applicability gives erroneous results.

                                                Chris Goldfinger's optimism stems from that tradition, the sacrosanct principle was casualty-which entails that there is a cause to every effect – applying the method of reductions a single cause- to a single effect was attributed – a close look at any physical phenomenon reveals another aspects .There are multiple causes known and unknown -same is the case with effects there will be cascading effect of multiples causes and precise prediction is impossible – it just a hope that more development in science and technology will make precise prediction possible . Every answer to a problem bring more questions as well . Leaving all these philosophical and technical details let us consider a simple example take a wooden meter scale ,bend it by applying torque at both ends it may brake if the torque is sufficient- can we predict exact spot in which it will break ,if we repeat the experiment with another wooden scale -what about the shape of the broken boundary -it looks just like the boundary of a cloud or snow flake – Three-body problem by Henri Poincaré in 1890. He later proposed that such phenomena could be common, for example, in meteorology. In 1961, Edward Lorenz coined the 'The butterfly effect' and proved how precis prediction of weather is impossible 

 

                                      It is interesting to note the case of , Italian courts convicted six scientists and a government official—all members of the National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks—of manslaughter for giving "incomplete, imprecise and contradictory" information in the days leading up to an earthquake that struck L'Aquila on April 6, 2009. Tens of thousands of buildings were destroyed, 1000 people were injured, and 308 people died, and the courts believe it was because scientists didn't do enough to warn civilians of the risk of a devastating quake.

Unpredictability -self similarity ,fractal nature in space and time are common features of  all self organized  systems .These are classic examples of  open systems, takes inputs from outside -cascading effect of multiple causes takes away the deterministic trajectory . In sociology and politics it is  much more visible as the smallest component  participating in the structure formation is the individuals -we people .How many of us were able to predict  the exponential growth of a  political party known as AAP in India.Even its strongest opponents was not able to foresaw its fall from height of high morality, ethics and propriety . The sudden growth of civilization in Greece,renaissance -rise and fall of Hitler and Stalin   and History as an open book will teach us more .