Earthquake Early Warnings

Though there are earthquake early warnings systems in place in Japan, China and Mexico, among other countries, the United States doesn’t yet have one.

That may change soon, however, as a prototype of an early warning system that tweets and posts alerts to Facebook has been successfully tested in California. The system, called ShakeAlert, works by watching for short seismic P-waves that are often followed by more powerful and often dangerous S-waves.

Read more at Discovery.