Earthquake-predicting device launched in Russia

Russian scientists have set an underwater seismic station at the bottom of the world’s deepest lake Baikal in Siberia. With the help of this station, scientists will be able to predict earthquakes several dozens of hours before their beginning.

The station is set about 1.5 kms deep in the lake. Its super-precise electronic devices can react on very small changes in the Earth’s electric field.

Russian physicist Nikolay Budnev narrates:

“Theoretically, some time before the beginning of an earthquake, certain changes in the Erath’s electric field take place. One of the components of an electric field, the so-called vertical component, is very hard to be measured with any devices. To measure it, one should have a vertical device more than one kilometer high that would work in a homogeneous environment. However, it has turned out that such a device can be built in Baikal, because the lake is more than 1.5 km deep, and the device would work in a homogeneous environment – water. In fact, Baikal is the only place on Earth where such a device can be built.”

The idea of such a device has been put forward by scientists from the Russian Institute of the Earth’s Physics. Later, a pilot device was built in Lake Baikal. In 2007, this device “predicted” an earthquake several days before its start.

Here is Nikolay Budnev again:

“This experience helped scientists to understand that before an earthquake, certain changes take placed in the vertical component of the Earth’s electric field. Taking this into account, we created a new, more advanced device for measuring these changes. On March 26, we set it in the lake.”