Toads warned of impending quake in Sichuan province on Saturday

Toads warned of impending quake in Sichuan province on Saturday

The world’s first seismography was a Chinese invention about 2000 years ago. It used the figure of toads with there mouth open to catch a ball that would be dislodged. Thereby the direction of the earthquake could be determined, and aid sent sooner.

A replica was made and exhibited in San Francisco in the late 1980’s as part of the Chinese exhibit for a Technologies development convention.

I am guessing that toads were observed before as an indicator direction or impending earthquake. Hence the Chinese Engineers were given a task to predict earthquakes.

Amphibians such as toads and frogs reflect general health in ecosystems

~galljdaj+;82061:
The world’s first seismography was a Chinese invention about 2000 years ago. It used the figure of toads with there mouth open to catch a ball that would be dislodged. Thereby the direction of the earthquake could be determined, and aid sent sooner.

A replica was made and exhibited in San Francisco in the late 1980’s as part of the Chinese exhibit for a Technologies development convention.

I am guessing that toads were observed before as an indicator direction or impending earthquake. Hence the Chinese Engineers were given a task to predict earthquakes.

Pollution and disasters effect them first and very noticably.
All animals are very in tune with what’s going on around them.
Frogs and toads are some of my favorite critters.

[URL]http://www.amphibianark.org/indicators.htm[/URL]
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Quake warning possible...
:cool:
A New Clue in Predicting Earthquakes
Friday, Jul. 11, 2008 - An accidental discovery has brought seismologists one step closer to being able to predict earthquakes.

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As part of an unrelated effort to measure underground changes caused by shifts in barometric pressure, a team of researchers found that increases in subterranean pressure preceded earthquakes along California’s San Andreas Fault by as much as 10 hours. If follow-up tests advance the findings, seismologists may eventually be able to provide a few hours' notice for people to find safe haven prior to quakes. As the horrific images from China demonstrate, the effort is well worth the alternative. “Predicting earthquakes is the final goal for seismologists," says Fenglin Niu, the research team’s lead author and a Rice University seismologist. “This is a start."

Reporting in the July 10 edition of the journal Nature, researchers used a high-tech equivalent of a stereo speaker lowered into a bore hole near Parkfield, Calif., a half-mile deep and five yards from a measuring device. For two months beginning in late 2005, researchers transmitted pulse signals three times per second, from the speaker to the measuring device, calculating travel time between the two stations. Surprised scientists learned the seismic waves slowed dramatically on only two occasions: two hours prior to a magnitude-1 temblor, and a startling 10 hours before a magnitude-3 quake.

The research team theorizes that the immense amount of pressure building along the fault causes small cracks within the rock during the final hours before an earthquake, increasing rock density and slowing the transmission signals. “The more cracks you have, the slower the seismic velocity," says study co-author Paul Silver, a geophysicist with the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Still unknown is whether there is any significance to the fact that the magnitude-3 quake had a much longer pre-seismic signal than the lower-magnitude quake, or whether it was simply because its magnitude was larger and its epicenter closer to the sensors.

More [url:
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1822144,00.html[/url]