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Related Experiment Videos

Do earthquakes exhibit self-organized criticality?

Xiaosong Yang1, Shuming Du, Jin Ma

  • 1State Key Laboratory of Earthquake Dynamics, Institute of Geology, China Earthquake Administration, Beijing, 100029, China.

Physical Review Letters
|July 13, 2004
PubMed
Summary

Earthquakes may not follow self-organized criticality (SOC) principles. Rearranging earthquake data changed statistical properties, challenging the idea that SOC invalidates earthquake prediction efforts.

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Area of Science:

  • Geophysics
  • Complex Systems Science
  • Statistical Physics

Background:

  • Self-Organized Criticality (SOC) theory proposes that complex systems, like earthquakes, exhibit statistical properties invariant under random rearrangement.
  • This invariance is a key characteristic used to test SOC models in various natural phenomena.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether earthquake time series exhibit the statistical invariance predicted by Self-Organized Criticality (SOC) theory.
  • To determine if SOC theory is a valid framework for understanding earthquake behavior and its predictability.

Main Methods:

  • Analysis of the Southern California Earthquake Catalog.
  • Random rearrangement of the earthquake event time series.
  • Comparison of the first-return-time probability distribution (PM(T)) before and after rearrangement.

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Main Results:

  • The first-return-time probability PM(T) was found to change significantly after the random rearrangement of the earthquake time series.
  • This observed change indicates a lack of statistical invariance, contradicting a core prediction of SOC theory for earthquakes.

Conclusions:

  • Earthquakes are unlikely to be phenomena of self-organized criticality (SOC) as currently modeled.
  • The findings suggest that SOC theory should not be used to argue against the possibility or efforts of earthquake prediction.