An employee of a research institute predicted the Turkey earthquake.
An expert considers this "impossible", as he says in an interview with the editors.
Ankara - Early Monday morning, two severe earthquakes struck southeast Turkey and the border region in Syria, killing more than 1,500 people. However, the extent of the total damage still cannot be estimated.
Now an employee of a research institute is causing a stir, who apparently predicted the earthquake three days ago.
Turkey earthquake predicted?
Researchers predict seismological activity
The earthquake hit the region on Monday with a magnitude of 7.8, entire blocks of flats collapsed, as a local German left-wing politician reports.
This event does not appear to come as a complete surprise, at least not for Frank Hoogerbeets from the Dutch research institute "Solar System Geometry Survey" (SSGEOS).
In a video from February 2 (Thursday) he talks about possibly strong seismological activity in Central Asia and west of it.
Again and again he emphasizes that the estimates cannot be exact, they are only "rough classifications". Accordingly, "heavier seismological activities" could occur between February 4th and 6th.
However, he is still talking about the Central Asian region here and also leaves the exact point in time open.
Earthquake in Turkey and Syria: Researcher attributes catastrophe to planetary constellation
A day later, he corrected his assessment on Twitter and predicted that "sooner or later" there would be an earthquake with a magnitude of around 7.5 in the region around southern Turkey, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.
The tweet comes from Friday afternoon, Monday morning the earthquake actually happened in the border region between Turkey and Syria.
Sooner or later there will be a ~M 7.5 #earthquake in this region (South-Central Turkey, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon).
#deprem pic.twitter.com/6CcSnjJmCV
— Frank Hoogerbeets (@hogrbe) February 3, 2023
Both his video and the tweet have since gone viral.
Hoogerbeets and his institute themselves attribute the earthquakes to a "critical planetary geometry" as it currently exists.
However, seismologists question the probative value of such a method, as Gernot Hartmann from the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR) confirms to
Merkur.de from IPPEN.MEDIA
.
Turkey earthquake predicted?
BGR expert disagrees
Accordingly, there is no scientific evidence whatsoever for the geometry of the planetary constellation, i.e. any results are not causally related to the position of celestial bodies and, above all, are not reproducible.
Gernot Hartmann therefore considers it "absolutely impossible" that Hoogerbeet's estimate can be scientifically substantiated and sees his forecast as "a coincidence."
According to Hartmann, the tectonics are responsible for such severe earthquakes.
This event is also roughly due to the collision of the African and Arabian continents with the Eurasian tectonic plate, as another expert confirmed to
Der Spiegel
.
We know of the tensions that have built up between the plates over the centuries.
However, the timing of such an earthquake cannot be reliably predicted.
Nonetheless, Hoogbeert's forecast was surprisingly accurate, leading at least his Twitter followers to believe in the scientific nature of the geometry of planetary constellations in relation to seismological activity.
What has been announced by several institutes: The earthquake in Turkey has led to a tsunami warning in Italy.
(mef)
Rubric list image: © Screenshot Youtube @SSGEOS
