The network has also confirmed speculations of giant "upwellings and downwellings some 500 to 2,000 miles inside the earth," Dziewonski says.

The Holy Grail

Although scientists have determined which regions of the earth are statistically prone to earthquakes, Dziewonski says they are far from being able to predict when and where the next earthquake will occur.

"It doesn't do you any great good to be able to say there's going to be an earthquake five seconds from now, or five years from now," Steim says, nothing that the most effective prediction would be to pin-point an earthquake within five days. "The goal of being able to do that with that kind of accuracy is, right now, unachievable."

Most of earthquake prediction programs have been dismantled, Steim says.

The focus now "is to gather basic knowledge of where there might be a like-lihood of earthquakes, but also to have enough instruments deployed so that the exact nature and extent of an earthquake, once it happens, can be accurately assessed," he says.