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Article: Good vibrations: will an early-warning system alert Californians in time when the next big earthquake slams the state?(EARTH)
- Article from:
- Current Science, a Weekly Reader publication
- Article date:
- October 3, 2008
- Author:
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The Big One. That's what Californians call the huge earthquake they expect someday. Earlier this year, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) estimated the chances to be almost 100 percent that a large, damaging earthquake will shake California in the next 30 years.
Will the quake happen tomorrow or decades from now? No one knows. Scientists still can't predict earthquakes days or weeks ahead of time. But recently, they learned how to tell when a damaging quake will hit within a few seconds.
Japan has already installed an early-warning system. Why not California?
ROCK AND ROLL
California lies along the ...