UCLA prof: 6.4 by September 5*

From SpaceDaily, via Boing Boing (which got it from somebody else):

Russian-born University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) professor Vladimir Keilis-Borok says he can foresee major quakes by tracking minor temblors and historical patterns in seismic hotspots that could indicate more violent shaking is on the way.

And he has made a chilling prediction that a quake measuring at least 6.4 magnitude on the Richter scale will hit a 31,200-square-kilometre area of southern California by September 5.

The team at UCLA's Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics accurately predicted a 6.5-magnitude quake in central California last December as well as an 8.1-magnitude temblor that struck the Japanese island of Hokkaido in September.

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But researchers still point to the fact that the science of earthquake prediction has been notoriously inaccurate and the geographic area targeted by the UCLA team for an imminent quake is very large.

"It is not specific," said Susan Hough, a seismologist for the US Geological Survey based in Pasadena, near Los Angeles. "They've made three predictions and two of them have been borne out."

At a gathering of seismologists this week in Palm Springs, a University of Oregon professor is also to present findings showing the San Andreas is "about to enter a new and violent period of shaking." Have a good summer!

* Sunday update: Kenneth Reich reports in the Times that Keilis-Borok was the star of the seismology conference, where the scientist stressed that his prediction is that there is a 50% chance of such a quake.