Hi All,

Science sometimes is just a method of making something less clear, very clear. Dr. Leon Knopoff shared a very simple example in describing how fault asperities break before an earthquake. He said to imagine two combs and as the combs were under stress in time the teeth on the combs (asperities) would break until there were no longer enough teeth (asperities) to keep the postion of the combs together ie: fault slip.

So, let us view this from the sense of a person hearing those asperities (teeth) breaking away. We who hear these fault sounds often find no matching quakes emerge, so why not? Simply, as the teeth or asperities are breaking they would not be sufficient to cause an earthquake, so you only hear one part of the process.

When we compare that to data collected by San Juan Bautista dilational strain meter, it will take a rise from normal, then drop and resume its normal position before an earthquake actually occurs. It may be an indicator of an impending quake, but as to the magnitude of the quake, it says nothing.

There is nothing parapsychological about either one of these examples, nor should there be. Inasmuch as science funding only goes to mainstream science projects, there is no money for prediction in the US, other than the Parkfield Project. Nor do I feel there should be any money invested in this kind of research at this time. This board provides ample space for posting ear tones, or any other kind of prediction, so why throw money at something that's in a good test location anyway.

As for worldwide notification of impending quakes, why not send an e-mail with a link to this board? Any predictions posted here are catalouged, they are evaluated and cannot be changed once posted, unless an addendum is made.

We have to be honest about newpaper publications, these days most of them have little interest in earthquake forecasts. They've lived through Gordon Michael Scallion and a host of others with less than positive results, thus they are not likely to want to hop in there and do it again. Besides which, they would like to see a track record before they jumped on the bandwagon and for right now, only a very limited few could say they had any. Should we all remember how many psychics would issue their annual forecasts and include a large earthquake for California each year? They don't do that anymore either. The failure rate was to high.

Therefore, from what I can see on this board or out in the world, there is no hocus pocus going on and the field of parapsychology has no place in earthquake prediction research.

Petra