A few days back, Frank Hoogerbeets, a self-proclaimed seismic researcher who runs the website 'Ditrianum', had predicted that a powerful earthquake measuring 8 on the Richter scale will jolt the planet from February 19 to 22. Shockingly, a strong earthquake that measured 7.5 on the Richter scale hit Equador last Friday. Even though the quake did not inflict much damage in the country, several experts claim that these tremors may be foreshocks before a potential megaquake.
Now, Frank Hoogerbeets has made another prediction, and this time, he claims that a more powerful earthquake will hit the planet from February 24 to 26. The seismic researcher revealed that these quakes are actually caused by a rare planetary alignment.
"On the 24th the Moon lines up with Mars while Mars is in alignment with Mercury, the Sun and Jupiter. This geometry is similar to that at the time of the largest earthquakes on record in 1960 and 1964. A seismic increase as a result of this geometry depends entirely on the condition of Earth's crust, whether or not there is a fault line that has reached the limit of its strain budget. The specific geometry on the 24th could trigger larger seismic activity from the 24th to the 26th," Hoogerbeets wrote on his website.
In his website, Hoogerbeets revealed that he is making these predictions using a sophisticated system named SSGI (Solar System Geometry Index). The earthquake researcher believes that planetary alignments have direct impacts in determining potential quakes on earth, and certain alignments are capable of destabilizing the tectonic plates.
Even though most of the predictions made by Hoogerbeets used to turn true, experts argue that these are mere coincidences. As per these sceptics, no technology is capable of predicting earthquakes with such precision, and they believe that Hoogerbeets is making these predictions just for the sake of publicity.
