In 1985, the Soviet geophysicist forecast that a quake would strike in the near future along the San Andreas fault. The Soviets were so bullish on the information that during a summit in Geneva that year, General-Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev mentioned it to President Reagan.
On Oct. 17, 1989, the earth moved, interrupting a World Series game at San Francisco's Candlestick Park, collapsing a freeway in Oakland and leaving 63 people dead. Had Keilis-Borok and his team achieved one of the great quests of science, truly predicting an earthquake?
As it turned out, he has spent the ensuing 30 years ? with Ahab-like determination, some say ? trying to better what he considered a breakthrough.
"This is his white whale," said Thomas Jordan, director of the Southern California Earthquake Center and a professor of geophysics at USC. "There's something epic about struggling with earthquakes."
Now 90 and a UCLA professor emeritus of statistics, Keilis-Borok has never wavered in his belief that quakes can be predicted. He still feels, he said recently, an acute of sense of duty ? that science should be able to warn people of looming disaster.
"My main trouble," he said in his thick Russian accent, "is feeling of responsibility."
Much, if not most, of the seismic community remains extremely skeptical that quakes can be forecast in any practical way. Critics argue that what some tout as accurate predictions are more like strokes of luck or educated guesses.
Susan Hough, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, said Keilis-Borok represents a certain breed of scientist: the unswerving true believer.
"They're just so emotionally invested in the success of their method," Hough said. "They're dogs with bones."
::
Keilis-Borok is far from alone in trying to predict quakes, but he's been at it longer than most.
Born in Moscow, he grew up the only child of Russian Jews. His father was a merchant, his mother a secretary.
During World War II, with the Germans invading Russia, Keilis-Borok and other electrical engineering students were sent to the front to install communication lines.
"They were exposed like hell, running from one place to another, and the attrition rate was tremendous," said John Filson, a USGS seismologist who heard Keilis-Borok's war stories when the two spent time together after a devastating Armenian quake that killed more than 25,000 people in 1988.
"After a while," Filson said, "they figured out his talents could be better used looking for oil, so they sent him to eastern Russia.... That's how he got interested in geophysics."
(These days, Keilis-Borok doesn't see the point in discussing his family or how the war influenced his life and his science. Science was a tradition among many Russian Jews, he said with a wave of his hand.)
In the 1960s, during the Cold War, Keilis-Borok studied seismic waves from underground nuclear explosions and compared them with those of earthquakes.
Then, in the 1970s, interest in quake prediction took off. With the right amount of funding, some scientists said, a sure-fire method could be just around the corner.
mardi gras fun. hepatitis c symptoms david bradley david foster wallace pinterest attwireless
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.