Hi All - Here's some info. from Nature's Debate ('99)...more like questions awaiting answers....

Mechano-chemistry

Earthquakes are indeed very poorly understood. The standard theory is based on the rebound theory of earthquakes formulated by Reid in 1910 which was later elaborated as a friction phenomenon by Brace and Byerlee in 1966 with many recent developments using Ruina-Dieterich-type laws. This textbook picture still poses many fundamental paradoxes, such as the strain paradox1, the stress paradox2, the heat flow paradox3 and so on4. Resolutions of these paradoxes usually call for additional assumptions on the nature of the rupture process (such as novel modes of deformations and ruptures) prior to and/or during an earthquake, on the nature of the fault and on the effect of trapped fluids within the crust at seismogenic depths (see ref. 4 and references therein). ==>There is no unifying understanding of these paradoxes.

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Paradoxes:

-the strain paradox1,
-the stress paradox2,
-the heat flow paradox3 and
-so on4.

Others have also been listed in previous posts.

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A rather to the point description by:

DIDIER SORNETTE

Predicting earthquakes requires an understanding of the underlying physics, which calls for novel multidisciplinary approaches at a level never yet undertaken. Notwithstanding past efforts in several countries in the last decades, I fail to see that the scientific community has used the full potential of artificial/computational intelligence, statistical physics, super-computer modelling, large scale monitoring of a full spectrum of physical measurements, coupled together with more traditional seismological and geological approaches to make a dent in the earthquake problem. What we have learned is that past failures in earthquake prediction reflect the biased view that it was a simple problem.

• DIDIER SORNETTE - Nature's Debate