What are some facts about mitochondrion???

1. A Mix of Science and Astrology

Predicting the future does not sit well with most earthquake scientists, including Charles Richter, quoted above. Yet if earthquake research is to truly benefit society, it must lead ultimately to prediction, no matter how elusive that goal may be.

Society asks specialists to predict many things, not just earthquakes. How will the stock market perform? Will next year be a good crop year? Will peace be achieved in the Middle East? The answers to any of these important questions, including the chance of a damaging earthquake near you in the near future, depend on complex bits of information. For each question, experts are asked to predict outcomes, and their opinions often are in conflict. Mathematicians tell me that predicting earthquakes and predicting the behavior of the stock market have a lot in common, even though one is based on physical processes in the Earth and the other is not.