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Not really. (Image via HuffPo)
An ominous warning about an impending earthquake shook up the Twitter community last night as the message sent shock waves of fear around the world in just a few moments.
"MAJOR EARTHQUAKE WARNING; 6.0 to 7.0 earthquake likely in S California; Sep 30. Foreshocks Sep 27-28: Please Retweet." was one of principle Tweets heard 'round the world, shaking people hard enough to make them forget that earthquakes are, essentially, unpredictable. Similar Tweets issued from the Quakeprediction account over the next several hours warned of the quake's arrival in 80 hours, then 60 hours.Plenty were fooled, however, as the messages were re-Tweeted, as instructed, hundreds and hundreds of times over. This included people with tens of thousands of followers, and a medical degree, like Dr. Drew Pinsky, who seems to have shaken his common sense loose.
"You can't predict earthquakes, idiots," scoffs Gawker, who found out that Quakeprediction is the work of "a California idiot named Luke Thomas." Our sister site, SFist, in fact, has a nickname for Thomas: The Quake Quack. The Quack--err, Thomas, rattled nerves with a prediction for a 6.0 in March 2009 that never happened.
Despite advancements in the field seismology, we still cannot predict earthquakes, guys.