Foreshocks?

Question

I've recently become pretty interested (maybe obsessed) with researching earthquakes. I've found little information on foreshocks, but I was wondering how common are they and are they usually very small in comparison to the actual size of the quake? I know they don't ALWAYS occur before a quake..I also know the great Chilean earthquake had a foreshock of about 7.9, but that quake was a 9.5. Say for about a 6-7 quake? It might be impossible to answer, as I know the predictability of earthquakes in general are already vague. Any info at all--even pertaining not directly to my questions would be nice. Thank you.

Answer 1

You might start here. This should start to provide some info.  You could always become a geologist.  there is quite a demand for them.

http://www.usgs.gov/hazards/earthquakes/

http://geology.com/

http://geology.about.com/

http://www.geologynet.com/geologylinks.h...

Answer 2

Dear friend. I am doing research on early warning systems from the past seven years. I have designed a simple earthquake alarm in the year 2001.Its usage was not accepted by our meteorological department. It gave the warning for the total time of 12 minutes 2 hours before Tsunami struck our coast. I have alerted the people at local T.V.Stations ,they refused to believe my warning. The fore shocks differ from case to case. When several earthquake came all of a sudden there was one incident that was on 24th July 2005 I sensed the very feeble earth quake at 3.30 P.M at Indian std time. After 6 hours I sensed the major signal at 9.30 p.m. The earthquake struck the place called Andhaman about 1400 k/m distane from our place at Richter scale 7.6. But this can not be considered as reqular warning.It differs from one insident to other.