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The Gutenberg‐Richter power law distribution for energy released at earthquakes can be understood as a consequence of the earth crust being in a self‐organized critical state. A simple cellular automaton stick‐slip type model yields D ( E ) ≈ E −τ with τ≈1.0 and τ≈1.35 in two and three dimensions, respectively. The size of earthquakes is unpredictable since the evolution of an earthquake depends crucially on minor details of the crust.
Bak et al. (1989) studied this question.