Question: When will the next earthquake occure in Istanbul ?

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  1. Hi dogan8b,

    It is really, really, really tough to tell when exactly an earthquake will occur. A lot of people have tried to predict earthquakes and all have failed. Because the Earth is so complex it might be that we will never able to predict earthquakes.

    Scientists are pretty sure about that another big earthquake will hit Istanbul, because they have intensively studied the North Anatolian Fault. Some scientists have also calculated “recurrence intervals”, which is the time between two earthquakes. But these are estimates. When we scientists say that an earthquake will happen on a fault every 500 years for example, then the next one could happen after 480, 490 or 540 years. And even more coplicated, no earthquake scientist would be really surprised if the earthquake occured after 600 or 700 years.

    And this is similar to the situation around Istanbul. We know a lot, but are far from saying when exactly the next earthquake will happen.

    All the best,
    Andi

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  2. Andi is totally right. In fact if somebody could predict earthquakes definitely that person could do a lot of money!

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  3. I agree with Andi and Daniel! You can study earthquakes and try to understand them, but it is almost impossible to know exactly when or where an earthquake might happen next. Some scientists were arrested in Italy recently for murder because they tried to predict an earthquake and got it wrong so people died! That is really scary as they were trying to help and instead they were punished because the earthquake happened differently to how they imagined!

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Comments

  1. Thank you very much for your answers

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