Predicting the power of an earthquake and the tsunami that may be created can sometimes take several hours, with the risk of underestimating the magnitude of the phenomenon. A new technique, based on changes in the gravitational field during the earthquake, seems promising. She could deliver her results in just a few minutes.
Since the work of the pioneers of seismology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the Earth has covered seismometers and geophysicists, whether seismologists, geomagnetists or gravimetric specialists, have made enormous progress. Unfortunately, it is still impossible to predict earthquakes, although scientists better understand the mechanisms that produce them, as well as the reasons for their location. Progress in the computing power of computers, and also in that of artificial intelligence, with the famous "deep learning", may perhaps allow us to progress, but this remains to be demonstrated.
There are parts of the globe where earthquakes are particularly deadly, indirectly. We still remember the terrible tsunami of 26 December 2004 in Sumatra, Indonesia, and its impact on Thailand. He would have made at least 220,000 dead. If we can not predict this type of disaster, it is nevertheless possible to detect the occurrence of an earthquake, to evaluate its power and to alert populations to a few thousand kilometers to evacuate in case of danger.
Unfortunately, refining the assessment of the power of an earthquake may take several hours, which may suggest that the danger is low when it is not. However, an international team of researchers from the CNRS, IPGP, Paris-Diderot University and the famous Caltech of Feynman and Thorne, California, published in Science an article mentioning a remarkable discovery.