The massive earthquakes that hit southern Turkey and northern Syria on February 6 caused devastating structural damages and claimed over 11,000 lives as of February 8. Rescuers continue to search through the rubble to uncover victims and hopefully save lives. Thousands were wounded, hospitals were destroyed, and people are fending for themselves in the freezing cold.
The earthquakes destroyed buildings as far as Syria, and people in Lebanon and Israel felt the rumble that occurred in the middle of the night, local time.
The catastrophe was no surprise to Dutch researcher Frank Hoogerbeets from the Solar System Geography Survey (SSGEOS). He predicted something like this would happen when it did and he was pretty right on.
Just three days before the monumental quakes and strong aftershocks took place, Hoogerbeets posted on Twitter, warning that an approximately 7.5 magnitude earthquake was likely to occur soon in the region of South-Central Turkey, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon.
The tweet went viral with over 48 million views.
The SSGEOS, is a research facility that monitors the geometry between celestial bodies in relation to seismic activity on Earth. On February 2, the SSGEOS forecasted that intense seismic activity could occur from February 4 to 6, and possibly a larger earthquake around February 4.
Hoogerbeets’ predictions and the SSGEOS’s theories are not widely accepted. The Caltech Science Exchange rejects Hoogerbeets’ methodology and insists that it is not possible to predict when and where an earthquake will occur and what the magnitude will be. The US Geological Survey (USGS) says that it is not possible to predict massive earthquakes, and they can only predict a probability of an earthquake within a time frame of years, not days.
Hoogerbeets admits that the exact time and place of an earthquake is difficult if not impossible to predict. He acknowledges that most scientists do not take him seriously.
The viral Twitter post has sparked a debate on the ability to predict earthquake activity.
