Can earthquakes be predicted?

Earthquake prediction is still an exploratory research project, especially the medium, short-term or imminent earthquake prediction is still in the exploratory stage, far from being practical. Some scholars are skeptical about the realization of earthquake prediction and have reservations about organizing earthquake prediction by administrative means.

The scientific premise of earthquake prediction is to understand the physical process of earthquake preparation and occurrence, including the abnormal changes of physical and mechanical properties of the earth medium. However, human beings still know little about the causes and laws of earthquakes, mainly because earthquakes are large-scale and deep-seated changes in macro-nature, which are different from sample tests conducted under simple and controllable conditions in the laboratory. The influencing factors are too complicated, and there may be unknown factors. What people can do is to observe some physical quantities on the ground, which are usually incomplete and imperfect. Under the condition of modern science and technology, people can't go deep into the earth to directly or indirectly observe the physical state of the deep medium, because the measurement process itself will break the original state. However, it is not clear whether the observed abnormal changes of physical quantities are really related to the occurrence of earthquakes. This is the real reason for the slow progress of earthquake prediction research.