Word: geologist
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...Before two large recent quakes, the government confidently issued public warnings and evacuated vulnerable areas. Buoyed by their rapid progress in forecasting, scientists are already talking about an even more exciting possibility: actually taming the more destructive convulsions of the earth. "We can't start next year," says Geologist Healy, "but it's not a Buck Rogers idea. Every step we've taken encourages...
Long before the plate-tectonics theory was conceived, scientists were aware that rocks fracture only under extreme stress. As early as 1910, Johns Hopkins Geologist Harry Reid suggested that it should be possible to tell when and where quakes were likely to occur by keeping close tab on the buildup of stresses along a fault. But the knowledge, instruments and funds necessary to monitor many miles of fault line and interpret any findings simply did not exist. Earthquake prediction did not draw much attention until 1949, when a devastating quake struck the Garm region of Siberia, causing an avalanche that...
...seismologists felt that they could not be really dependable as a quake-prediction signal without a more fundamental understanding of what was causing them. That explanation was already available. In the 1960s, while studying the reaction of materials to great mechanical strains, a team of researchers under M.I.T. Geologist William Brace had discovered that as rock approaches its breaking point, there are unexpected changes in its properties. For one thing, its resistance to electricity increases; for another, the seismic waves passing through it slow down...
...Chinese, too, were making rapid progress in their earthquake-forecast studies. When a delegation of U.S. scientists headed by M.I.T. Geologist Frank Press toured Chinese earthquake-research centers in October 1974, they were astonished to learn that the country had some 10,000 trained earthquake specialists (more than ten times the American total). They were operating 17 major observation centers, which in turn receive data from 250 seismic stations and 5,000 observation points (some of which are simply wells where the radon content of water is measured). In addition, thousands of dedicated amateurs, mainly high school students, regularly collect...
...since. One of a dozen major volcanoes in the western U.S., the 10,778-ft. Mount Baker is now venting several thousand pounds of sulfurous gases and debris every hour. Right below the mountain's summit, the 1,600-ft.-wide crater is so thick with fumes that geologists can enter only with gas masks. Does this spectacular activity foreshadow the first major eruption in the lower U.S. in a half-century? U.S. Geological Survey scientists refuse to speculate. "Some volcanoes erupt with hardly any warning," explains Geologist Mark F. Meier. "Others puff for a while, then fade back...