John,

You were abundantly clear. Whatever is in Parkfield is inadequate. That's exactly the bottom line.

These remarks are not acceptable: Karma? Telepathy? Planetary alignment?

As I am not a sound recording expert I cannot give you a definitive answer as to what sound the research group is hearing. It could be infrasound. But no good geologist refutes the fact that when rock breaks it emits an electrical signal. It can be detected in a labortory. It is not foreign or unidentified, is it? The equipment that detected Loma Prieta just moments before it happened was probably not recording what we hear either, because we hear it long before the last few seconds.

Good science and good research takes the unknown and attempts to understand it. That is what I am doing. Trying to understand what this sound is. But I already know it has a use and that use one day, can save someone's life. I shall not be so frivilous and uncaring to take HOPE and throw it away because there may not be something that can identify a particular sound today.

As Alan Lyndh said, "before the discovery of the Rosetta Stone no one could decipher Egyptian Heiroglyphys, but upon find it suddenly they could." So one day I suspect that someone, perhaps not in geosciences, but perhaps in electronic recordings may discover what this sound is, how to record it and in time an instrument could do what people in my research group do today.

As the late Robert Kennedy so aptly said, "Some people dream of things that are and ask why, I dream of things that never were and ask, why not?" Was he a visionary? Intuitive? Should we attempt to discredit this man for this statement?

The future of planet Earth dictates that it will continue to have earthquakes and for those who live in places which have them, some will die. But it doesn't mean that we should throw up our hands and say, "I'm sorry, I can't help you and there is no hope." There is hope and my research clearly shows part of the answer is already here. You should be excited about this development; but I see you are not.

Is it not exciting to understand that every single earthquake fault has it's own signature sound? These are the very fingerprints of every earthquake fault! Did you ever think it was possible to understand that? This is no longer an unknown. Tell me what scientist would not be proud to have discovered that? If this were just a psychic thing, it would not have taken me six years to figure it out. I would have already known. I have to do my research one sound at a time, just like scientists have to measure them one at a time.

In the end, I may get there before you or some of your colleagues and I will have worked three or four times as hard to get the answer because I didn't have a group of people to help me; perhaps better computer programs to work with or what-have-you. It doesn't matter. Only results count and I see them every week. I'm not in the forest of life throwing rocks at the Moon, I'm rolling up my sleeves every night to do my research and no one is paying to do it. To have gotten this far is a miracle, all things considered. But as they, "Miracles happen every day, you just have to learn to look for them."

Petra