A UCLA geophysicist has "set the scientific world ablaze" by predicting that a big earthquake of magnitude 6.4 or greater will hit the Los Angeles area by September 5, 2004. By monitoring precursor seismic activity and applying new pattern recognition algorithms, professor Vladimir Keilis-Borok and his team at UCLA's Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics "accurately predicted a 6.5-magnitude quake in central California last December as well as an 8.1-magnitude temblor that struck the Japanese island of Hokkaido in September". (Via David Solsberg.)