"Over the next few days there is a high probability of thunderstorms, the pollen count will be low and the chance of being shaken by an earthquake will be moderate." Such a forecast might seem like a stretch of the imagination, but in California it isn't. From now onward, the people of that state will indeed be able to check their daily earthquake forecast on the internet, at a new website: http://pasadena.wr.usgs.gov/step. The science of predicting earthquakes-that is, saying in advance precisely when they will occur and how powerful they will be-has been about as successful as the alchemists' search for the philosopher's stone that was supposed to convert base metals into gold. Instead, seismologists have focused on the less precise goal of forecasting the probability of a quake happening in a given period of time, based on past occurrences. Until now, however, the time-frames of such seismological forecasts have tended to be measured in decades, rather than hours.
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