The Tohoku earthquake of the Japanese coast on March 11, measured 9.0 on the Richter scale.

That's the fourth biggest recorded earthquake in the world since 1900, the worst in Japan

since modern instruments were first used 130 years ago.

The earthquake and the tsunami at Triggered led to shocking damage, loss of life, loss of property,

all sorts of aftermath issues.

But as shocking as the damage has been, the earthquake itself wasn't all that surprising.

Sizemologists, the scientists who study earthquakes, they know a great deal about where they're

likely to occur and how serious they're likely to be.

The fact is that according to the USGS, that's the United States Geological Survey, several

million earthquakes happen around the world every year.

Only a select few make a sit up and take notice.

Japan, unfortunately, is one of the places where those select few tend to occur.

So how good are we at predicting the next big earthquake?

How good are we at prediction in general?

That's the theme of an hour long special we're producing right now to air later this year

in public radio stations.

Seeing the future is almost impossible. That said, human beings are practically addicted

to prediction.

With something as serious as earthquakes, we can't blame them.

That's what the Japanese earthquake sounded like, as recorded beneath the ocean's surface

by Japan's agency for marine earth science and technology.

Back in the fall, I visited the USGS office in Menlo Park, California.

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