STRANGE electromagnetic signals were detected two months before a major earthquake hit Japan. The signals support controversial work by Greek researchers, who say they could one day be used to predict earthquakes.
For several years seismologists have intensely debated whether or not you can forecast earthquakes by the electromagnetic signals emitted by rocks under stress. Proponents of the idea—known as the VAN method after the initials of the Greek researchers who developed it, Panayiotis Varotsos, Kessar Alexopoulos and Konstantine Nomicos, all of the University of Athens (New Scientist, 1 March 1997, p 34)—maintain that electrical and magnetic activity…
