Teams work to understand and model what could happen next.

Jeff McGuire says he does not want to be known as the guy who predicts earthquakes. But in September 2008, a magnitude 6.0 quake shook the bottom of the ocean at a fault along the East Pacific Rise — within 10 kilometers from where and within the year-and-a-half window that McGuire and his colleagues had predicted. It is in fact possible to predict a large quake on a short timescale, says McGuire, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution — when the geology is relatively simple, as on a transform fault along the East Pacific Rise. And his year-and-a-half time frame is short compared w... (p. 26)