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The paper analyses the article “Expecting the big one” by Simon Winchester in New Your Times January 14, 2010.
The main topic of the article is the evidence that crustal plates are in constant motion – as the ice on the surface of the water – and the geological map shows clearly that, for example, in California, the situation is extremely dangerous.
The topic of the Earth’s plates motion, which leads to earthquakes, is very hot and actual, because for example the tragedy in Haiti has shaken and shocked many people, and the worst was the suddenness of the earthquake and that people were unprepared to it. Indeed, scholars unanimously say that an earthquake is very hard or can not be predicted with such accuracy to organize the evacuation. Nevertheless, modern techniques make it possible to identify potentially dangerous places on Earth where geological rocks exposed to stress and create prerequisites for earthquakes.
Thus, an example can be California: here is a great transform fault with the length of 1300 kilometers, which “cuts off” the California peninsula from the mainland. Along it lies a large fold of geological rocks, broken breaks and displacements. Also, an article in the new issue of the journal “Science” calls attention to a fairly high voltage, accumulated in these folds.
Scientists when studying the internal structure of rocks – breaks and bias – have found that the earthquakes in this region were much more regular than it was previously thought. Minor earthquakes are just fixed with special appliances and we usually do not notice them, and they do not have much impact on our lives. But in the rupture of the San Andreas at the moment is accumulated a strain sufficient for a relatively large earthquake. (Winchester 2010)
In fact even you and I when looking at a tectonic map of the world can easily identify the areas of potential earthquakes, or, to call it scientifically, seismic hazard zones. In fact that the earth’s crust is not homogeneous: it consists of some huge blocks, called tiles. Plates are in constant motion, because they lie in the viscous and denser mantle, which have mixing processes, and plates “float” on the surface of the mantle like ice on the surface of water. We do not notice the movement of plates, since in comparison with human life these movements are extremely slow, they are calculated in centimeters per year. But we can well understand the basic processes when using a map.
The most famous in the world “seismic laboratory” – that is the San Andreas fault in California – has presented to historical scholars surprise. It turned out that this fault is characterized by not rare powerful tremors, and, on the contrary, more frequent and weaker. So seismologists took a step back towards the prediction of earthquakes. The recent devastating earthquake in Haiti, and suddenly the subsequent strong aftershocks once again showed that seismologists are still separated from our understanding of the formation of earthquakes and their prediction of a long scientific path. As it turned out, even one of the most extensively studied seismically active zones – the San Andreas fault in California – can present scientific surprises.
The main claim of the article is that “if the geophysicists at the University of California at Berkeley, the United States Geological Survey, the California Institute of Technology and the Scripps Research Institute one day detect a sudden swarm of nonvolcanic tremors, would they call the mayor of San Francisco or Los Angeles and issue a warning?” (Winchester, 2010)
That is an interesting question, because it relates to a variant of mass evacuation of people from the region, but also there can be a variant of mistake.
The conclusion of the author is that seismology that deals with prediction is of course better nowadays, than it was in the last century, but still people can not be sure of right predictions. But that scientific researches of earthquakes are vitally important, till people can never feel safe in such regions, that was proved in the example of the unfortunate people of Haiti.

 
Works cited

Winchester Simon. “Expecting the big one”. New Your Times, January 14 2010.