Reader Responses to Fault Tolerance

This is a tribute as well to Jim Rice’s work in previous years at Brown and the development of the classical J-Integral, which included a stronger focus on mechanical engineering and materials physics. J-integral was later developed to include plate tectonics and seismic activity. Hopefully along with Blanpied’s work, more accurate models of “glacial isostatic adjustment” such as we are witnessing in Iceland, along with earthquake swarms in Alaska and improved AI models, will help lead to improved predictions.

Dr. Blanpied admits that scientists have not found any signal from the Earth that might help to predict earthquakes. Maybe he’s looking in the wrong place. I have seen surprisingly accurate earthquake predictions based on planetary and lunar alignments (and their gravitational forces) online—which of course are pooh-poohed by scientists making a living looking elsewhere. Dr. Blanpied is welcome to comment, but it seems some credibility is due to this method that has at least occasionally proved accurate.