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Financial_Nebula t1_itvu26v wrote

Reply to comment by HiFiGuy197 in Android phones offered early US quake warning, beating iPhones to the punch | Google's earthquake detection network turns Android phones into seismometers, and it paid off yesterday. by chrisdh79

Not true. Large earthquakes are often preceded by smaller ones and geologists can use this information to anticipate an impending earthquake.

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Raging-Fuhry t1_itvw2ij wrote

>often preceded

There are no guarantees in seismology, what may be "often" true is very different from "always" true. Large Earthquakes also often come without warning, and small earthquakes often don't precede anything. It's not reliable enough data for prediction and geologists (at least in Canada/States) aren't able to do much with it.

A technique seismologists do use is to examine the historical record and try to make empirical predictions from the frequency of large Earthquakes, but again this is an entirely empirical method and has very large error.

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Dragonfruit-Still t1_itwynlg wrote

More sensors, more data, and An AI to learn it all would be an interesting possible predictor.

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Moonkai2k t1_itw5f63 wrote

First off, "often" is not always. Usually it means about half the time.

Second, common sense says if I feel a small one, a bigger one may be coming. That isn't exactly stellar praise for the existing detection network.

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