Imagine a world where we knew about earthquakes before they strike – days before a potentially lethal event. A world with an early warning system that would give us time to evacuate vulnerable buildings, to activate civil defence organisations, to minimise the loss of life and reduce recovery costs. Although the dream of earthquake prediction has been on people’s minds for centuries, it is dismissed by most seismologists and geophysicists ­­as a pipedream. However, all that could change dramatically, thanks to Professor Friedemann Freund at the NASA’s Ames Research Center.