From one of the provided links:

“Shou’s unconventional theory is as follows: intense heat and pressure at faults, due to friction between sections of crust, enables underground water vapour to collect in cracks around larger faults. These can be released to the surface, where the amount of vapour can indicate the strength, and thus magnitude, of the impending earthquake. Once the vapour is released from the fault, which signals roughly where the epicentre will be, it heats up the surrounding air. This enables it to rise, and, once at a suitable altitude (as is the standard procedure for cloud formation), cool and condense - forming clouds roughly along the fault line, fuelled from the point of vapour release. This release is accompanied by a drop in strength of the surrounding rock, hence making an earthquake likely.”

Or, for a quasi-animated version, skip to 0:48 in the provided youtube link.

You didn’t read any of the links, did you? BTW, this is not Mastadon.

Correction: KZhonghao Shou

My lemmy-age is 1 day (newborn). Serious question… just how old are the lemmy ancients?

Yes… just signed up. I had never heard of Fediverse until 3 days ago. I spent the past 2 days reading up on it and bam, here I am. I remember a lot of chatter about mastodon after Elon stuck his head up his ass but didn’t pay attention. I glad to see a lot of people here (smarter than me) are as confused as I am. This will be so fun to watch this evolve.