In 1973 the American Scholz C H et al. published a paper titled "Earthquake Prediction: A Physical Basis" in the journal of Science. However, world studies on earthquake prediction in recent several decades have not authenticated the validity that many kinds of precursors may appear before earthquakes. In 2010 Scholz once more published in Science a paper titled "The Prediction Puzzle", in which he negated the idea on the physical basis for earthquake prediction. In this paper, I discuss why the physical basis they proposed is unscientific.The earthquake prediction studies should be focused on the prediction of large earthquakes. A large earthquake sharply differs from a small one at that the former, after the fracture has initiated, has a long time dynamic rupture propagating process, resulting in a large size quake. For a large earthquake, when fault fracture has initiated, we can not know how long the duration of the dynamic rupture process will be, and how large the final fault size will be. This is just the point why predicting the occurrence of a large earthquake is such a difficult task. Now we have to work out a new physical basis for large earthquake prediction. The author of this paper tentatively propose that, mainly based on geodetic survey and seismicity study, we should find out a few locked sections of active faults as possible locations of coming large earthquakes.%1973年美国肖尔兹(Scholz CH)等在Science杂志上发表了"地震预测的物理基础"一文,近几十年来世界上地震预测研究的实践并未证实该论文的科学性.2010年肖尔兹又在Science杂志上发表了"预测之谜"的论文,指出"现在还不能预报"地震,他本人已否定了以前提出的地震预测物理基础的研究结果.本文分析了肖尔兹等人以前提出的"物理基础"在科学上不能成立的原因.地震预测研究的重点是大地震的预测,本文指出,大地震与小地震的不同之处在于:大地震的初始破裂发生后会有一个长时间的断层动态破裂过程,该过程使大地震的尺度很大.大地震预测的最难之处就在于动态破裂过程开始后,我们无法预测破裂会扩展到多大才会停止,无法预测地震的大小.在由破裂动态扩展形成的大尺度的断层面上,在初始破裂发生前,那里的应力并没有达到当地的静态破裂强度(或静摩擦限),因而那里不会出现由小岩样实验结果所预言的"前兆".鉴于以前关于地震预测物理基础的研究结果不再适用了,我们需要研究新的大地震预测的物理基础是什么.关于这个问题本文提出一点初步思考,主要依据大地形变测量、地震活动及地质断层研究相结合的方法,勘查近期活动断蹭的闭锁段,这是个值得重点研究的方向.
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