Earthquakes, Critical Phenomena, and Percolation

Abstract

Earthquakes are one of the most complex phenomena in nature. Their occurrence, especially when their magnitude is large, has important economical and societal consequences. Thus, understanding factors that contribute to an earthquake and predicting when and where it may occur have been problems of fundamental importance for hundreds of years. But, although the first documented earthquake occurred in 1177 B.C. in China, it was only in the nineteenth century that an understanding of how earthquakes develop and occur began to emerge.