Radon 'prediction' of earthquake rattles local scientists

摘要

"There are always people who say they had predicted every earthquake," says Tom Jordan, director of the Southern California Earthquake Center in Los Angeles. But the city of L'Aquila, Italy, had a particularly troublesome claimant this spring in amateur seismologist Giampaolo Giuliani.rnAfter an earthquake devastated the town on 6 April, the international media coveredrnGiuliani's lament that Italian authorities had ignored his prediction of a big quake centred on Sulmona, a town some 60 kilometres away, at the end of March. Giuliani, a technician, had been tracking radon emission from the ground with a device he had patented.