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The Discovery Channel has been running programs about tsunamis.
Near the end of one program, they interviewed some big-shot
professor who wanted to reduce the risk by triggering small
earthquakes. He stood on the beach and said into the camera that
you would need 10 or maybe 100 magnitude-3 earthquakes to take the
place of onemagnitude-8 earthquake.
I muttered something like "what an idiotic thing to say." One of my
relatives, who had been watching the program, said she didn't
believe him; specifically, she didn't think he had any way of
actually triggering the earthquakes. I said that's not a strong
argument; that's just your opinion against his; you can't *prove*
there is no possible triggering mechanism.
My point is that there's a much stronger argument -- an irrefutable
*physics* argument -- that *proves* the proposed scheme cannot
possibly work.
This makes an amusing exercise ... definitely not a plug-and-chug
exercise ... definitely not an ACT "science reasoning" question
(i.e. 40 questions in 35 minutes). So, what's the proof?
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