The “Devil’s Staircase” Shows Why Earthquakes Are Hard to Predict

[@EverythingScience]

I love the fast facts and questions answered series, they're like the perfect size for a 'daily dose' of science.

[@quahntasy]

Hello, you beat me today

[@lialialia1]

I agree. ;)

[@Call-me-Al]

Especially since I watch all the different scishow channels episodes released in a single block, except the scishow kids. I keep forgetting it exists.

[@thesoliloquist1940]

For this vid they might want to look at japanese researchers discovery of electron plumes in the atmosphere over faultlines about to fall..

[@ThrottleKitty]

"Devil's Staircase" sounds like an AC/DC song, it kinda looks like the tempo graph for one too.

[@lyndsaybrown8471]

"About 16 each year", please, don't tempt 2020

[@Axodus]

Superstitious.

[@RamonInNZ]

We've already had a 7.4 in New Zealand :-D Luckily it was a little south of the Kermadec Islands...

[@lucrisia_molyneux]

@@Axodus no it's called "joke"

[@likebot.]

@@lucrisia_molyneux That's good because it's bad luck to be superstitious. Boomer emoji alert--> >

[@avariceseven9443]

Please, powerful earthquake is just a fart as to what 2020 WILL offer us. I suggest 2020 to give us a really big one like a 9.5 or higher.

[@datemasamune2106]

"Powerful earthquakes are relatively rare" Me: Oh, that's good. "On average, there are about 16 each year." Me: *_Come again?_*

[@hauntedshadowslegacy2826]

Well, not all in one place, brochacho. There are some in fairly remote regions, so the big-channel news stations don't give a damn about those. All we tend to hear about are the ones in urban or publicized-3rd-world regions.

[@dannybau]

It's like the series of quakes that occurred around Ridgedale, CA in 2019. Considered a major quake at about 7.1 iirc, it was in the middle of nowhere between LA and Las Vegas. Vegas felt the quake and its aftershocks. The aftershocks (including one of similar magnitude) at first were frequent- something like 1-2 per hour. The last aftershock was about 10 or 11 months later. Interestingly enough, Nevada is one of the most seismically active states- beating California and Alaska many years.

[@nothuman3083]

4-5 big ones on land mostly around the Pacific rim

[@harshbarj]

Rare has to be put in context of all earthquakes. Each year there are around 13,000 earthquakes. So only about .12% of all earthquakes are called powerful.

[@rmsgrey]

It also reminds me of what happens near the end of fairly long queues - the front can be moving pretty steadily, but at the back, you get long static periods, then large advances, either as one leap, or as several steps in quick succession - the key mechanism is that each person in the queue has a different size gap they'll wait for before moving forward (and a different gap they'll close to when they do move).

[@Tymeshifter]

In addition to the front does not move steady at all because not all individual needs the exact amount of time to process.

[@mkupcha3184]

Not gonna lie when I saw devils staircase I thought it was like an evil naturally formed staircase

[@himanbam]

There's a place in Australia called the Devil's Staircase. Apparently it inspired the book Tomorrow When the War Began.

[@lonestarr1490]

So how on Earth could some that formed naturally be evil?

[@Jasonwolf1495]

So you could say we're finding "The fault in our stairs"?

[@christelheadington1136]

OK! That beats "The fault is not in our stars", that I was going to say.

[@Nice-Lemonade]

Lol and this guy is actually john green’s brother, so that makes this comment even funnier

[@shieh.4743]

That's a winning comment! Well done!

[@benwisey]

I was going to say The Faults in our Crust.

[@lohphat]

Get out.

[@vicenteroj]

Love how he is so confident in the words he says. . .and then he reminds you he actually knows nothing so dont quote him.

[@keritaylor1231]

I recently discovered you on tic tok and I just... I just can’t look at you the same way. Love the tic toks, keep making them!

[@cvrajendra]

Well presented Hank!

[@Starfals]

Devil’s Staircase sounds like a good guild ;p might have to borrow it ;p

[@kimsmoke17]

Awesome well researched. Hank’s delivery rocks. I learned a couple thing. Keep up the good work.

[@kameroncochrane5345]

I can’t stop watching your videos.

[@jessjitsu86]

You should see dutchsinse. There is a method. If you get an earthquake deeper than 300 km... Within 7 to 10 days you are going to see another on that fault line quite a ways away. Then, you will see multiple earthquakes of roughly the same magnitude pop up in between where the two deep earthquakes happened. One plate also shakes another. I wish people would take Dutch more seriously. He forecasted a quake within 50 MI yesterday. Is probably about 70% accurate. The man has a formula that I don't understand... But it has a decent success rate

[@ProfezorSnayp]

If you factor in all the quakes that didn't occur this prediction falls below 45%. About as much as you get from a random number generator on Twitch. 😂 But of course you don't check his data and believe his 'predictions' are accurate. That's why it is a stream on Twitch and not real scientific model.

[@jessjitsu86]

@@ProfezorSnayp weird... But not really... if you aren't looking at the actual forecasting from specifically deep earthquakes. He may not have spot on indications for every magnitude, but there is definitely something to his formula. Then comes the opinion of a accuracy. What is accurate? 5 km, 10 km, 50 km, 100 km? Giving credit where credit is due is very important in this world, and they feel as though people can be staring the truth right in the face... 70% of it that is oh, and their predisposition will keep them from looking around. Stay frosty and keep crunching those numbers :-) waiting for the USGS to try to forecast anything for my safety though

[@jessjitsu86]

@@ProfezorSnayp I don't really understand where this whole prediction concept comes from. no one thinks he's psychic... he doesn't say he's psychic, nor do I ever hear him say the word predict. It's forecasting... Like the weather... do you dismiss weathermen, and even satellite predictions, when something doesn't happen the way that they forecasted?

[@preets0sweet]

Wow... Have been subscribed for years... Haven't seen any presence of your channel in like a year and more. This video just magically showed up today. Wow youtube doing good job not showing good channels 😑

[@porkeyminch8044]

If you're relying on the home page to show you videos from people you're subscribed to, you're doing it wrong. You should use the subscription feed here instead: kzbin.infosubscriptions If you're already using that then big oof

[@likebot.]

@@porkeyminch8044 Clicking subscriptions works 100% of the time. I have no idea if any other way works at all.

[@richardhaselwood9478]

As a geologist, this seems episode seems to be missing some important details. An earthquake is essentially the point at which tectonic stress/strain overcomes the tensile strength of the material/rock and you get movement along a 'fault' plane which relieves the tension. As such predicting the exact point in time and space where such an event will happen is very complex. Hence, why you are at best making a prediction about the likelihood of such an event happening in any given location over a time period (which is what they are sort of going on about). More to the point, when you get one big quake, you almost always get a bunch of smaller (parasitic) quakes/movements along the fault plane soon after. Admittedly, it makes sense, when you get strain build up, you will start getting lots of micro events that are likely indicators of something big coming (and again, applicable to lots of other fields), but, like I said, there are a few missing details that would help me understand things. Also, I think Australia has had one Magnitude 6 quake in the last 30 years (in Newcastle).... My old structural geology lecturer was pretty convinced that the stress that caused it hadn't been fully relieved by that quake, and as such he felt there was the possibility of another event happening.

[@thedarkdragon1437]

He is kinda right. But it would require a small quake on the fault line to trigger another bigger earth quake near australia

[@lurking_silhouette5802]

You're expecting him to explain such an elaborate detail? You sound like someone who is overly proud of the title he has. Every other physicists, biologists, chemists or mathematicians can give the same nit-picking statement as you did in every other episodes of this channel, but they don't. r/IAmSoSmart

[@dyafyfriyy9883]

Ikr, he should've explained that. We LOVE tedious and complicated long episode. After all, this channel is all about Geology. /s

[@alexlandherr]

“The Devil’s Staircase/Cantor Function” seems to apply for most couch potatoes.

[@Anadorablekiwi]

I’d love to see a video about “The Big One” building up in California. I’ve heard it referenced a bunch but not much about it or what we know about it so far. Plus, within the last year there’s been two earthquakes large enough that it was noticeable where I live in the Central Valley, which is about 2 hours from San Francisco and about 6 hours from Los Angeles. (Note that we don’t really get earthquakes here very often at all)

[@admiralpaco507]

I would love to see a video on it as well. But if you are interested in some quick info on "The Big One", it basically references the next expected large quake along the San Andreas Fault. By "large" scientists mean a quake around 7.7 to 8.0 magnitude which is strong enough to cause significant damage to buildings a hundred or more miles from the epicenter. We don't really know when the next large quake will strike, but whenever it does it will likely cause hundreds of billions of dollars in damage. The last earthquake of this scale along the San Andreas fault was in 1906 with the previous one being in 1857. From what we can tell based on archeology and computer simulations, the San Andreas produces a "Big One" type earthquake on average once every 150 years. So while the last two were unusually close together in time (only spread by 49 years), that doesn't mean the next one will be 250 years later to average it out. Each quake happens in its own time from when enough stress happens to snap, but we at least have a starting point for preparing for the next one to hit. As for the quakes that you felt in the central valley, I was able to find at least one 5.5 magnitude quake that would likely have been able to be felt in rough area of where you describe being from. If you are close to the epicenter, quakes as small as a 3.0 are commonly felt but my source didn't have listed below a 4.0. Either way, to put in perspective with what people are concerned about when the talk about "The Big One", the 5.5 magnitude quake is more than 100 times weaker than the feared 7.7-8.0 quake. I hope this was of interest to you. I know I'm no Hank Green when it comes to presenting information. Hopefully the SciShow crew does a video on this eventually with more pictures and better words than I did!

[@fransiscozip1459]

I was in san fran.. A 4.5 quake hit..i was on a buss.i didn't notice..nobody noticed..till the 6 oclock news..a window fell from the u.s. mint/ treasury....i think alaska 1964 was a 9..a movie theater marquee was level with the street.after..say 10 foot displacement...small single story homes ..few folks. Per square mile..it could have been much worse..l.a.s due for a 9-10...50/50 it will snap in 25 years or less..same odds as 1984...the odds havent changed

[@dominicmariano9201]

Transverse faults like the San Andreas are less likely to have massive quakes like those that occur every few hundred years in Japan, Indonesia, Chile, and Alaska. That said, 'less likely' does not mean there can't be 9.0 quake in Los Angeles tomorrow. I don't know any California geologists who lose sleep worrying about "the big one" because the risk of dying in an earthquake is less than driving a car or going skiing.

[@hauntedshadowslegacy2826]

@@fransiscozip1459 I... Wh-... How?????? How did you not notice??? Seriously, a 4-point-somethin' woke me up a while back in the very early morning. Then again, I live in an area with train tracks and an airport, so my first thought was somethin' like 'okay, what just blew up?'. Still, you must've been wearing headphones on a not-so-smooth road to not notice a 4.5 quake.

[@Celestyal22]

@@hauntedshadowslegacy2826 I lived next to an airport and tracks as well. A 4.5 at 5ish in the morning just basically woke 90% of the town up. The only reason I woke up was because my cats scattered on hardwood flooring, lol. Then of course I was awake and tending to freaked out kitties. I would also like more info on earthquakes in general.

[@funkyflames7430]

I was just watching PBS Infinity’s video on the devil’s staircase

[@sagacious03]

Neat! Thanks for uploading!

[@LAB360]

This is very interesting. we have similar one about volcanoes.

[@manishapritmani2666]

Volcanoes are scary

[@jasper3706]

Scishow and eons uploading at the same time? Damn!

[@PaulPaulPaulson]

And SciShow Space

[@deceasedbrandon8915]

when the stairway to heaven wasn’t enough

[@ConsoleHandheldGamer]

What goes up must come down.

[@clericneokun]

I saw this on my feed just before experiencing a 4.8 magnitude earthquake. Go figure.

[@CailisCritterCrib]

Dutchsinse has been forecasting earthquakes for years, now. He doesn't predict a precise point but a small area where it will happen within about a week and it's estimated magnitude. He has been right more than 80% of the time.

[@skippy9214]

Cool, I can do it too. “There will be an earthquake on Mt Hood, off the coast of Chile, and off the coast of Sumatra.” The problem here is that earthquakes are really common in these locations. Extremely common. Multiple a day common. So, if I predict a magnitude 3 for each location, there’s usually one every few days there.

[@goodboid]

Hank, congrats on your new book!

[@oliverwilson11]

0:05 Explaining and predicting in science aren't two separate things. The process of gaining knowledge is using explanations to make predictions, testing those predictions, then deciding whether to keep or change the explanation. "Explanation" without prediction is just mythology.

[@Bbonno]

Simple earthquake model: straight, flat rubber mats on a table, pushed into and along each other until they slip. Better earthquake model: jagged rubber mats expanding and shrinking in sunlight, where each mat i the size of a football pitch...

[@oBuLLzEyEo1013]

Congrats on the new book and I hope it does well...

[@Jay-ln1co]

"Hey, we got this big fancy mathematical function." "What should we call it?" "Lets name it something about the Devil." "People love that stuff!" "People love the Devil!"

[@1TakoyakiStore]

That mathematical devil's staircase looks like the fault line of the mid ocean ridge.

[@jobriq5]

Im having flashbacks to my real analysis classes

[@dianewallace6064]

Wait for iiiiit! Hank's Pun at the end.

[@golddee2040]

Never saw that mole on Hank's neck before. Can't unsee it now!

[@RaymondLo84]

Hope this is just a prediction ... 2020 anything can really happen.

[@TheJunky228]

I subscribe to the thought that nothing is *truly* random, but subject to so many known and unknown variables(which we know about but don't have the capacity to track or measure) (and other variables that we don't even know exist)that we just don't have the capacity or knowledge to understand or compute yet. I don't know if we will ever be able to, but I do think that such a thing would be possible.

[@jakobraahauge7299]

Hank is the only one who hosts KZbin videos I don't mind moving so much about - but after having smacked me in the face with a book it did make me feel a just a little worried today! But being so cute I'll let Hank get away with it - and I do understand the excitement! 🤗

[@mandipowell7797]

Your researchers missed the mark

[@jokerace8227]

Yes, in my own 20 year ongoing daily observations it's definitely there.

[@love196627]

Can you guys do a show on why some people don't get sick often or have much shorter illnesses than average people?

[@veggiet2009]

I wonder if something like a recurrent neural network could be brought into play in predicting when an event is likely to occur. If you could treat the whole earth as an image map and then plot the geological readings from each point on the map... Train it on each time stamp, and then forecast it into the future.

[@tokresaliali3805]

Devil's Staircase sounds like a stand.

[@SeeTheWholeTruth]

Dutchsinse: Hold my beer.

[@ProfezorSnayp]

Geologist: sure, let me hold it while you provide detailed scientific explanation and evidence.

[@itsjustlukeRevive]

Hello, and this is *your* daily dose of science.

[@Kamel419]

3:20 "powerful earthquakes happen in bursts" lol excellent out of context quote :P powerful earthquake: i'm gonna shake you real hard real fast in a burst weak earthquake: i'm gonna shake you just a little bit in a burst confused earthquake: i'm gonna swing you up and down real high but real slow, like a seesaw

[@Beryllahawk]

For some reason my mind connected "short bursts of activity" with "cascade effect" except I suppose we don't know for sure if a quake in one fault actually causes a quake nearby? or even, not nearby... or maybe just because my eyes turned the Cantor graph upside down and went "look! waterfall!" i may not have had enough coffee this morning...

[@andyd8370]

When I learn a skill, etc, I feel as if my ability/knowledge progresses as a Cantor function. Anyone else get this?

[@hauntedshadowslegacy2826]

Same, yo. I'm learning UE4, and the occasional catching point leaves me stuck for days or even weeks.

[@tren-y2m]

Is that pfp from ingress?

[@OliveAmanita2682]

Now all we need is a Highway to Heaven

[@ModestMang]

Take bong hit every time he say devil. 😂

[@Vikash137]

Looks like bifurcations occurring in some dynamical system which can be approximated by Cantor function

[@tomf3150]

Exactly what they said, thank you Captain Obvious.

[@michaelelbert5798]

I see what you're saying about quakes following other quakes. I once predicted a quake in the Hati area about twenty years ago. L had just begun studying earthquakes, and it was obvious that ....

[@ksavierkrajewski716]

Hank is GREAT

[@DS-gr3mq]

The Devil's staircase is in fact a special case of a doubly stochastic process known as a Markov Modulated Poisson Process (MMPP). Various latent states exist that each produce arrival counts according to a Poisson Process or inter-arrival times according to an Exponential Process. Only one latent state can be observed at a time. This observation transitions according to a continuous-time markov process. In the case of the devil's staircase, we have two states: one has Poisson rate parameter of zero as it produces no activity while the other states has a positive rate. This is the Interrupted Poisson Process. It has interesting properties such as producing self-similarity (burstiness) which is why it is often used to model the arrival of data packets or bursty urban traffic. It has similar algorithms related to Hidden Markov Models (generally used to decide genome sequences or speech signals) in that it can also decode hidden states. It is a model that is good at telling you what happened and where you are know as well as what the single next step might be. It is not great for multi-step look ahead predictions though.

[@ncrdisabled]

i lived in CA for 2 years and went thru 3 earthquakes it was scary .

[@GZxuanChannel-nx9vi]

AWESOME Video, @SciShow

[@estrellamelgar]

Could you please explain the situation around the mystery object that was swallowed by the black hole?

[@nerdlingeeksly5192]

Nothing is ever truly random, merely misunderstood

[@kameroncochrane5345]

Can you guys do a video on how hurricanes can be predicted or if they can?

[@dougaltolan3017]

I think your reference to fractals is mistaken. For the curve to be fractal you would expect a zoomed in view to appear similar to the complete view. In your example the pattern was repeated along the curve, not at zoomed in views. What you showed was 3 way linear symmetry (repetition), not fractal.

[@Shaden0040]

DutchSense on Twitch can and has predicted arthquakes. I dare you guys at Sci show to interview him and whatch his shows. I don't think he has it all figured out correctly and he is a pit paranoid against theUSGS, but the USGS ignoring his ideas completely is just as insane. He is on to something and more openminded people need to listen to his working theory.

[@donethos]

You beat me to it. That man is the one person on the planet that actually can accurately predict earthquakes within a 200 mile radius, often to the exact magnitude, the majority of the time.

[@hiimjustin8826]

He seems like a pseudoscience peddler for profit to me idk. I do hope that the larger scientific community has at least noted what he's published to check the validity, but his persona creeps me out

[@RandyJames22]

Hopefully we'll be able to predict earthquakes reliably to a fault.

[@scottmacs]

I watched this the day after reading about how Mandelbrot used a Cantor set to explain noise in electrical transmissions in James Gleick's book "Chaos." COINCIDENCE? Yes, yes it is a coincidence.

[@d.lawrencemiller5755]

Hey. Fractal doesn't mean self-similar. It means that the number of dimensions something occupies is not a whole number.

[@vaga4239]

This is concerning because BC has been having a number of earthquakes in the past year.

[@canis2020]

I feel like Earthquake prediction is more material science than geological. For example different minerals have different tensile strength. Couldn't a large earth core sample range map and pressure density map give the best predictions? If not when, where it's most likely?

[@Cliff425]

This is the earliest I’ve come I swear

[@shiftyproduct9013]

Dutchsinse does a pretty good job....

[@ProfezorSnayp]

*Scamsinse sure does.

[@aniksamiurrahman6365]

Damn, is that the same George Cantor who tamed infinity?

[@naveenagarwal4260]

Here in Delhi we have had about 13-14 tremors in last 4 months. Biggest of which went upto 5.2 on ricter scale. Maybe it's the devil's staircase. A big one is coming and North India is not prepared for it at all.

[@ivani7976]

Watched yesterday "San Andreas" for the firs time. Nice coincidence.

[@hiimjustin8826]

Not as good as Vice City but solid nonetheless

[@tortex1]

I doubt it's helped by the fact that earthquakes happen deep in the earth where it's hard to actually measure anything. Sure, models can be made, but it's much easier to measure light intensity for example rather than strain in the earth.

[@SuperHddf]

It is time for 4k science!

[@GajanaNigade]

Doesn't shock me as much though. What I really want find out is what happens if I install devil's staircase in a public place and ask people to climb up and down blindfolded.

[@coltafanan]

“Devil’s Staircase” my new band name

[@djayjp]

If we could actually see the tectonic plates and their underlying activity then it wouldn't be such a mystery or seem so random.

[@Sorngard13]

The devil's staircase is well named. It's not just a shitty staircase, if you work out its derivative, it is zero everywhere. And yet the function clearly increases.

[@bencesarosi7718]

Q: Why are earthquakes hard to predict? A: Yes.

[@its.cassie]

I have watched Suspicious0bservers for years, and they are able to often predict earthquakes, if you know what you are looking for (hint: sun & cosmic influences)

[@patrickfort4467]

Human's aren't equipped to deal with random events. There has to be a reason or pattern, even if there isn't.

[@Ganara426]

Must be a bug in programming

[@sammckay1307]

Most "random" events are chaotic not random. Quantum Mechanics is only the realm that appears to have true randomness, and I'm not convinced it isn't chaotic.

[@95TurboSol]

Something else not mentioned, the largest earthquakes tend to happen when coronal holes on the sun go past the earth facing region, it's speculated it has to do with magnetic connection and disconnection. Something related that is pretty cool, the earths magentic poles used to move very slowly in one direction, but in 1859 when the carrington event happened (a massive CME from the sun) the poles changed direction 180 degrees and started accelerating the other way. Just goes to show how much effect the sun has on earths inner workings.

[@ProfezorSnayp]

[Citation needed]

[@Rainefaelyn]

I was surprised to see Australia included in this. Since earthquakes happen but really infrequently. I would have thought New Zealand would have been a better measure for this theory?

[@3800S1]

And most are really tiny, not even felt by most people. Apparently I have had a few quakes in my area over years but they were too small that I didn't even notice not one. NZ on the other hand.

[@Rainefaelyn]

@@3800S1 Never experienced one myself. When I got up this morning I did think I would be researching earthquakes in Australia today. But here I am.

[@TomsBackyardWorkshop]

Never successfully predicted one? July 4th 2019 there was a 6.4 earthquake in Ridgecrest California. That day they were reporting that there was high likelihood I think the woman said 80% of a second larger earthquake withing the next few days. A little over 24 hours later there was a 7.1 earthquake in the same fault system. I would call that a prediction.

[@FuzzyFirechu]

Wait, so, does Cantor's Function actually lend itself to be the foundation of a new, more intricate and nuanced model for earthquake predictions? Or does it only serve as an insightful analogy to the situation and on its own does nothing more than point researchers in a new direction to look?

[@shickakaper8028]

😳 thanks.

[@jasongrig]

as a researcher doing earthquake forecasting noone in the field is using this observation. we have known that earthquakes forms clusters in space and time for decades... this isn't new nor radical

[@complex314i]

I've always liked the Cantor set. Uncountably infinite, measure of 0.

[@bloomindoom]

Hella cool. Math strikes again

[@Zaznin]

I come here for good science, and bad puns.

[@bradbrown8759]

I got a devils staircase in my mind. A devils staircase in my mind. Look up devils causeway. There's an impossibly natural devils staircase right there.

[@rogaineablar5608]

Punctuated equilibrium has been a thing in evolution for decades.

[@joette5333]

check out DUTCHINASE he follows quakes and fault lines magnitude direction time frames he is surprisingly accurate in his predictions

[@Harlekijn1982]

So in effect, the Devil's Staircase is the sinusrythm of the earth.

[@nato7.62mm4]

You can goto suspicious observers and download Ben Davis' earthquake prediction app. It predicts with 80 % accuracy.

[@jaredwfrick]

Given your proximity to Yellowstone, I think you'd be more concerned about the due date for the next Yellowstone eruption.

[@CaptainMisery86]

So they discovered that the ground shifting can cause more nearby ground to shift...

[@JamesSpeiser]

before you said devil's staircase & cantor I knew it would be fractal!

[@123FireSnake]

i feel like that(bursts of strong quakes in a given region) would be a trivial thing to spot if one actually has a look at the data in an ordered fashion, seems to me that seismologist should take a few more statistics classes :D

[@lucidmoses]

So your suggesting we can get rid of earth quakes by putting in an elevator? :p

[@pierrevillemaire-brooks4247]

Haven't we scanned all of our planets crust or was this scan made just for its surface ? Mapping this inside of the crush might turn out to be a bit more complicated than expected given most of this survey would have to be made under water :-l Or a new satellite might be able to do this with much more leisure and potentially keep track of the ongoing changes :-) Maybe the crust holds a few secret mega-caves containing cities which we aren't allowed to be made aware of yet :-P

[@iino27ii91]

Why haven’t we built a giant drill and went and watched one happen

[@glifosfato]

eyes open. no fear

[@twocvbloke]

Theories like this always seem to be on shaky ground ........................ I'll get my coat... :P