Reuters/Hazrat Ali Bacha
The threat of earthquakes is just a regular part of life for much of the globe. This was most prominently on display just this past February, when a massive magnitude 7.8 quake struck parts of Turkey and Syria and led to the deaths of nearly 60,000 people, and left 1.5 million others homeless. Tens of thousands of aftershocks—some almost as powerful as the original earthquake itself—plagued the region for weeks.
It’s precisely this type of scenario scientists want to be able to predict beforehand to give people enough warning to find safety and avoid being caught in life-threatening conditions. Unfortunately, there are currently no real methods to predicting an earthquake ahead of time—the best early warning systems so far simply let people know within seconds that an earthquake has begun.
But what if we could forecast a large earthquake will strike with up to two hours of advance warning? A team of French scientists believes they may have stumbled on a method for doing so. And it doesn’t require the development of any new technologies—just leveraging an existing one you’re already familiar with: GPS.