NEW DELHI: Predicting earthquakes has always been an iffy science but a group of Indian experts claims to have found a possible way out. They have come up with a list of “earthquake-sensitive” days for 2016 and even claim that their predicted quake dates for January have been validated.
A study by Jeganathan Chockalingam of the Birla Institute of Technology at Mesra in Ranchi and two co-authors found that there is very clear evidence of planetary configurations creating orbital perturbations on the earth, which finally results in an earthquake.
Motivated by astrology, Chockalingam and his team wanted to test whether there is any possible link between earthquakes and planets.
They started their observations seriously after the 2004 tsunami which killed thousands of people in India, Indonesia and Sri Lanka to understand planetary configurations and major earthquakes.
The study says gravitational interactions among the bigger planets such as Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune create invisible resultant gravity vectors (IRGV) that act as an imperceptible planetary force when an inner planet crosses them.
“Whenever our Earth crossed these IRGVs, there invariably were major earthquakes. Other inner planetary crossings showed similar results as well,” says the study published in the latest issue of the International Journal of Advances in Remote Sensing, GIS and Geography.
Even simple two-planetary alignments were checked out for their contribution to earthquakes, the study said, adding that the researchers consistently identified a link between a particular planetary configuration and earthquakes.
“Overall, the explanation capabilities of each possible configuration were critically cross-checked and we hope that the study will give a new dimension to the field of earthquakes, gravity anomalies and their prediction. Finally, the study predicted the sensitive days for 2016 and researchers may validate our concepts and results based on actual ground shaking,” said Chockalingam.
The authors visualised the solar system as a gravity lake having a lot of gravity waves (big and minor just like ocean), and that every planet travels across these waves during its orbit round the sun just like a ship travelling in the ocean. According to their assumption, these gravity waves can increase and decrease spatially and temporally.
“All spatial locations of resultant gravity vectors (RGVs) resulting from all combinations of major planets were identified. The study revealed that whenever a planetary vector crosses those RGVs, a gravity ripple is created and it perturbs the earth’s orbital path and hence alters the movement pattern on the surface of the earth as well as underground,” the study said.