Can Your iPhone Double as a Cutting-Edge Earthquake Detector?

When you grow up in California, “earthquake drills” are as common as fire drills. A teacher announces the presence of a quake. She may simulate, unconvincingly, the shaking of walls and windows and shelves. At that point, and as quickly as possible, you crawl under your desk, crouching into a ball and covering, as much as you can, your head and neck. The idea is to take up as little space as possible so that toppling ceilings won’t topple onto you. The further idea is to use the rest of your body to protect the part of it that is at once the most delicate and the most important: your brain.

The drills emphasize speed above all else, because, of course, earthquakes have a terrible tendency to strike at any moment. “Earthquake prediction” has long been a goal of seismologists; it’s been largely, however, a quixotic one. The new island created in Pakistan last week, and the quake in Sichuan this spring — and, of course, the devastation that struck Haiti and Japan in years past — are, among so much else, reminders of how instant and destructive earthquakes can be. Hurricanes, tornadoes and floods, for all their horrors, at least give some warning of their coming; earthquakes, in general, are guests that are not only uninvited, but unannounced. Read more…

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