Scientists have reason to believe that solar flares may be somehow linked with the "starquake" solar phenomena occasionally experienced by our solar system's sun. Images taken from the ESA-NASA SOHO spacecraft may give some clue to the long-standing mystery behind the sun's interior make-up. You can read more about the details of this study in our full article.

California has always been prone to earthquakes since it lies in the path of the San Andreas Fault, but once in a while you get the big one. As in BIG. According to new data from the Californian authority on earthquakes, the big one has a 99.7% chance of hitting within the next 30 years. More details after the "read more" link.

The Sumatra-Andaman Earthquake of 2004 left a lot of damage to the world. Also known as the Indian Ocean Earthquake of 2004, the event was a great undersea earthquake of Magnitude 9 (M9), that triggered a series of devastating tsunamis and killed a great number of people around South and Southeast Asia.

No one ever predicted this earthquake. As a matter of fact, the area where the earthquake occurred was thought to be one of the least likely area that an M9 earthquake could happen. This is why in the March 23 issue of the journal Science, a geophysicist from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute urges the public and policy makers to consider previously thought M9 earthquake-free areas to be as dangerous as those labelled M9 earthquake-prone.

Robert McCaffrey, the said geophysicist, has been tracking the movement of the earth under Sumatra through Global Positioning System since 1989. He noticed as early as then that the area was already loaded for a potential great earthquake.

Geophysicists have previously predicted the possibility of M9 earthquakes happening by studying records that go as far back as 100 years. M9 earthquakes occur at boundaries called "subduction zones", where one teutonic plate is gently slipping another plate, causing friction and lifting of the plates. Slips lengthy enough to cause an M9 occur only every 200 to 1,000 years.

McCaffrey says that:

Now is the time to use the knowledge that we have gained and work to save lives should another M9 hit tomorrow or hundreds of years from now. Many didn’t know about tsunamis before the quake; we must make sure that now they never fail to remember their destructive force.

When earthquakes strike, one of the more present dangers occurs not above, but below ground (hope your pet can detect it).

Seismic shock waves hit the sandy soil often found at a building's foundation, turning it into quicksand slush that proves disastrous for the building's frame. Enter Bacillus pasteurii - a soil bacteria undergoing experiments in potentially ground-breaking (no pun intended) research that hopes to minimize the said liquification process.

To get the petrification process started, the bacteria is first injected into the targetted sandy soil along with nutrients and oxygen. As the bacteria digests the oxygen and nutrients, they generate calcite (calcium carbonate), which binds sand particles together, forming a natural cement that doesn't leave any toxic residue like its chemical counterparts. Imagine the sort of images they've been picking up on Mars, and you get the picture (once again, no pun intended)

"Starting from a sand pile, you turn it back into sandstone," said Jason DeJong, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Davis. The bacteria's applications are currently in small-scale lab tests, although Prof. DeJong and the rest of the team are planning to up-size their experiments to the point of using the earthquake-simulating centrifuge at UC Davis' Center for Geotechnical Modeling.

Does the Earth hum? Scientists say it does. In 1998, researchers in Japan detected a mild, rumbling sound in the lithosphere even when there aren't any earthquakes detected. 

To test this yourself, try holding your ear close to the ground and listen- do you hear a sound that goes "thump, thump, thump?" If you can, seek medical help because something is very wrong with you. Either that or you were somewhere in Kenya with gazelles stampeding in the distance at the time you were doing the test.

That's because the earth's hum, although very real, is well below the hearing range of humans. Detectable only by the most sensitive seismometers, the hum is only about 10 millihertz in frequency.

The researchers who made the discovery hypothesized that the rumble may not actually coming from the earth itself, but from the force of air downdrafting on soil and pounding it to create the steady rhythm. However, American scientists recently concluded an elaborate research suggesting that the thump emanates from waves in the coastline hitting the shores and not from wind. Barbara Romanowicz, from the University of California at Berkeley, spearheaded the American research team and deployed seismometers worldwide to determine the source of the rumbling.

Meanwhile, Goran Ekstrom demonstrated in 2005 in Columbia University that the amplitude of the rumbling coincided and showed correlation to the energy picked up at coastlines worldwide. Now, Spahr Webb, a colleague of Eksrtom, says that he can demonstrate how exactly the ocean waves drive the humming. Webb says that when two waves of the same frequency travel at different directions, they alternately (the waves amplify and cancel each other out) create a pattern in which the surface of the sea becomes wavy, then flat, then wavy again. The motion creates a standing wave and ultimately, the thumps.

The waves then double in frequency, generating the humming of the earth from the seabed to the continents. That coincides with the Berkeley research which also noted that along coastlines, the hum signature is at its strongest, most notably in Vancouver right off the Canadian coast.

Webb also points out that Mars may have a hum similar to Earth's but, due to the absence of oceans in the red planet, the hum is most probably caused by "Marsquakes."

New York is set to have a ring of sensors to warn them of nuclear and biochemical attacks. On the other side of the world, Japan is doing kind of the same thing but they are up against a force stronger than any manmade bomb or weapon - Mother Nature's wrath. Recently, Japan has launched a satellite-based alert system that will instantly send warnings of tsunamis and updates on volcanic activity to help speed-up evacuations.

The earthquake-prone country experiences roughly 10% of the world's magnitude 6 or greater earthquakes. And because of its location on the Pacific Ring of Fire, they are also prone to strong underwater quakes which could trigger tsunamis. Aside from that, the country is home to 108 active volcanoes.

The system, called J-ALERT, will activate communication devices in the regions connected to the system. This will set off sirens and voice advisories via radio. For now, J-ALERT will be implemented to just 10 state governments and four cities.

Who needs machines to measure the activity going on underground when you've got snakes to do the monitoring for you? That's right. Scientists in China rely instead on snakes and their behaviour to predict if there's an earthquake coming.

Over at the Nanning earthquake bureau in southern Guangxi province, experts keep a close watch on their local snake farms through 24-hour internet video links. Why did they choose the snakes? Well, for one, "Of all the creatures on the Earth, snakes are perhaps the most sensitive to earthquakes," explains Jiang Weisong, director of the bureau.

They are so sensitive to it that they can sense a quake from as far as 120km (75 miles) away, and up to five days before it happens. Now, that's really preemptive. Apparently, the snakes act erratically when they feel one coming. In response to the vibrations they feel, the snakes then smash their heads into walls into an effort to escape.

Hmmm...well we do hope those snakes have insurance for hemorrhages.

You win some, you lose some. And when it comes to Mother Nature's wrath, you definitely lose a lot. We can't help it if super volcanoes erupt, nor can we try to stop earthquakes from happening. It's nature's course in action.

Take for example Thera. Some 3,600 years ago, Thera (near Greece) exploded in what was termed as the Bronze Era's "single, most famous Aegean event before the fall of Troy." And in the whole of human history, this volcanic eruption was coined as the second most powerful.

In examining the ocean floor of the Mediterranean, especially around the island crescent of Santorini, researchers are currently led to believe that Thera blasted out 60 cubic kilometers of magma out of its crater - that's half again as large as it was originally thought to have exploded.

The ash in itself would have plunged the whole area (around 300,000 square kilometers) in total darkness, and the tsunamis that followed would have devastated seaports and coastal areas lining the Mediterranean.

With this research, some scientists are now suggesting that the eruption could be connected with the decline of the Minoan people, an ancient, sea-faring civilization on Crete. Some even tried to link the eruption to the legendary disappearance of Atlantis.