Scientists have been developing for quite some time now an extremely sensitive technology that might become the main help in identifying earthquakes several hours before they take full effect, thus allowing a proper evacuation of the endangered areas.

At this point, the most advanced earthquake detection system can only report the event with a few seconds before, being considered rather useless.

The team of seismologists, led by Fenglin Niu, from the Rice University in Houston, Texas, has been working on the technology for many years, and so far, the equipment managed to successfully precede two earthquakes, one around Christmas time in 2005 and the second one five days later. The signals were recorded 10 hours before the first magnitude 3 quake, but more tests are needed to make sure that the two are indeed connected, and were not a coincidence.  

The tool is designed to detect all minor changes in the earth’s crust, thus allowing seismologists to record all anomalies with sufficient time ahead.

"We are very encouraged by these observations, and we are planning for more experiments to confirm whether these changes are part of the general physical processes before an earthquake," seismologist Fenglin Niu, as quoted by Reuters.   

Scientists are eager to move forward with their experiments which will include the insertion of their equipment 10 kilometers into the San Andreas fault. The plan is to see if the results are more accurate than when the device is on land.

One of the most significant boosts received by the earthquake studies in recent days is massive catastrophic quake that hit China’s Sichuan province in May, which led to more than 69,000 deaths.