Changes In Rocks Noted Before Earthquakes

Smivs writes with this snippet from an article at the BBC, well worth reading: "Scientists have made an important advance in their efforts to predict earthquakes, the journal Nature says. A team of US researchers has detected stress-induced changes in rocks that occurred hours before two small tremors in California's San Andreas Fault. The observations used sensors lowered down holes drilled into the quake zone. The team says we are a long way from routine tremor forecasts but the latest findings hold out hope that such services might be possible one day."

That would make sense

It would make sense that just before an earthquake the rocks would start to stress, pull and break just before a cascading collapse.

The real question is how much would this system cost?

Yeah, it might save lives, but if an early detection system would cost an area a few hundred million, I'm guessing it won't happen.

Re:That would make sense

Well, I'll say that cost of the system isn't the real question because THERE IS NO SYSTEM.

They haven't developed an early warning system. They've just seen some changes in the rock prior to earthquakes which lead them to believe that it might be possible to develop a system of some sort that would provide early warning.

As the summary of the article says:

"The team says we are a long way from routine tremor forecasts but the latest findings hold out hope that such services might be possible one day."

Re:That would make sense

You know how you can tell that an earthquake is going to occur by a city? IT'S BUILT ON A FREAKING FAULT LINE. Wouldn't it just make more sense to make building a bit more earthquake proof? Why do so many people REBUILD by a fault line and then say "ZOMFG I hope another tragedy like this doesn't occur. Might as well douse yourself in gasoline and hope a spark never goes off.

And yet the largest recorded quake in the Southeastern US [wikipedia.org] occurred right in the middle of a tectonic plate...

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FTFWA...

"The earthquake is believed to have occurred on faults formed during the break-up of Pangea. Similar faults are found all along the east coast of North America."

Just because it was in the middle of a modern day tectonic plate, doesn't mean there were no faults there.

Re:That would make sense

No kidding. But when you look at the geologic record, you realize that there are faults EVERYWHERE. So using Hojima's logic, we can't build anywhere....

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Well, not anywhere on the ground, anyway. No earthquakes in space, though.

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holy shit, I am so gonna write that scifi novel!

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Space quake! Staring Kevin Bacon and Alf, two strangers caught in a struggle to remain still. I can see it now!

Alf: We can't leave the ship, it's only six degrees outside! Hah! I kill me!

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The largest recorded quake in the middle of a tectonic plate occurred right in the middle of a tectonic plate? That's remarkable!

Re:That would make sense

How much is it? It costs a lot of money. I work for a Geology company and we had our Geologists out on site during the drilling of the SAFOD project. I was out there for a week relieving the other hands. The main cost of the operation is time. If you want to drill a hole, you have to contract out a drilling rig. That's 10's of thousands of dollars a day. The longer it takes to drill a well, the more it costs.

They were drilling directionally with a 17" bit; that's a huge bit and it costs a lot of money. It's thousands of dollars for one. They used several bits to drill the hole.

Drilling directionally takes a lot longer to do for various reasons. The biggest reason was because they were drilling directly into a Granite formation. Granite is a hard, silica-rich, igneous rock. It does not break apart easily like Sandstone. It takes a long time to drill, when I was there, we were making between 5-10 feet/hour - at that rate, a 5000'-8000' deep hole takes a LONG time to drill, especially with the directional part factored in. And that Granite just chews up those big 17" bits, which means you have to replace them a lot.

Then you have to pay for the mud. The mud was a water-based system designed to lubricate the hole, keep it from collapsing, and use it to treat any problems. Like anything else, the longer they're producing mud, the more it costs. I've seen mud bills over a million dollars on one well before.

Then you have to pay all the people on location. The Company Man, sort of the Foreman of a location, costs at least 2000-4000 dollars every day he's out there. You have to pay the Roughnecks every day they're out there to drill, the mud engineers, geologists, safety guys, etc. And since this was a far more scientifically oriented job than most wells drilled, there was a lot of other cool stuff and personnel that had to be paid.

In the end, we're talking millions of dollars. Millions and millions. I don't really have an exact price to tell you, I was just a contractor on part of the job. But it was a really long job, I feel safe guessing at least 10 million dollars.

And that's just for one hole. If you can streamline the process and figure out where delays happened and if you can fix those delays on the next job, you'll be able to do subsequent wells cheaper.

PC case mod with a dremel tool

*Disclaimer* I live in Oklahoma - I feel your pain, You are preaching to the unaware and clueless sectors here.

The average /.'er has no clue what is involved with with what it takes to get an oilfield 'online'., much less the economics involved.
I have several pumping stations on my property and it is frustrating to 'clue in' the rest of the country in what's involved to get a station 'online'(ie:getting oil out of the ground and to 'something useful')

The whole 'get some money now, and fsck you' and fsck the

Re:That would make sense

Think of the bigger picture man! Millions of dollars in damage could be saved from such a predictive system. A few obvious examples are:
  Any major industrial process that handles dangerous materials - Hello refineries, Natural Gas Providers...
  Museums and Private owners - art and sculptures could be saved
  And the poor china-shop owners!

Fires that result from earthquakes can increase the damages from the quake significantly. By having early warning, measures could be taken to avoid these fires entirely.

Take it from a Californian, we'd really like to know beforehand!

Re:That would make sense

In our sue-happy society, the company or oganization who piloted a system like this would be sued off the face of the planet if they missed one decent quake.

Re:That would make sense

And here in New Orleans we'd love to have some better levees which could've saved us from billions of dollars worth of flood damage. Unfortunately for both of us, the powers that be aren't particularly interested in sacrificing now for the sake of later.

By "powers that be," you must mean...

Unfortunately for both of us, the powers that be aren't particularly interested in sacrificing now for the sake of later.

a.k.a. The voters -- especially those who are all about tax cuts.

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More than 50% of New Orleans is above sea level, including many of the parts that flooded. You know nothing about which you speak.

And thanks for linking it to the ridiculous ID nonsense that is entirely irrelevant. NOLA is one of the most liberal cities in the USA, it had nothing to do with that.

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Fires that result from earthquakes can increase the damages from the quake significantly. By having early warning, measures could be taken to avoid these fires entirely.

Uhhhhhhhhh... How Exactly?

You can't avoid the fire. Buildings can't move. People Can. You can't vent the gas in all the pipe lines either, which would seem to be of primary concern. You would spend millions and millions of dollars trying to vent gas into the atmosphere, which has its own unavoidable complications. Fires happen when gas l

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Who knows what 'this system will cost'?

From TFA: "The team says we are a long way from routine tremor forecasts but the latest findings hold out hope that such services might be possible one day."

When 'one day' happens then ask your asinine question.

That's one of the problems with today's society: when INSTANT gratification is not fast enough.

*stupid git*

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Set up this system in Japan? Some of the densest populations in the world living right on active fault lines. They've done what they could with earthquake proofing, but extra warning certainly can't hurt. Given the sheer density in population and buildings there, spending a couple hundred million (or maybe even a billion) could prove to be a wonderful investment.

system costs 20 million

You have drill a 3 mile hole to get it down into the fault. And take 20 years to convince the NSF to fund it and California regulators to permit it (what the SAFOD project took).

Duh!

They go from stationary rocks to moving rocks.

Not good

Rock-paper-scissors is ruined if you can predict rock. Neither player will ever use it, so no one will use paper either. You'll be left doing scissors over and over forever.

Wait, oh, nevermind.

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From the Seinfeld episode "The Stand-In":
"Rock paper scissors match." - Mickey
"Alright! Rock beats paper!" - Kramer
"I thought paper covered rock." - Mickey
"Nah, rock flys right through paper." - Kramer
"Well, what beats rock?" - Mickey
"Nothing beats rock." - Kramer

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Just use cockroach, shoe, nuclear bomb.

shoe beats cockroach, nuclear bomb beats the shoe, but the cockroach beats the nuclear bomb.

Just like fusion

Just like fusion - earthquake prediction is always fifty years away.