A doomsday prophet has been busy since April 29, 2015 stirring the mass hysteria pot with bizarre claims that the positions of the planets and a Nostradamus prediction indicate that an apocalyptic earthquake will hit the U.S. West Coast on Thursday, May 28, 2015.
The clip, titled “Global Coastal Event on May 28, 2015,” posted to YouTube on April 29, 2015 by Ditranum Media has received nearly 700,000 viewers and has been shared widely on conspiracy theory, doomsday websites, and discussion forums.
According to the Dutch narrator, identified as Frank, spirits warned him in August 2013 that Thursday May 28 will be a “key earth date.”
“The 12th of August, 2013, I received an important message. Well, for me it felt important. I explained that I felt that it came directly from Spirit. And this message, what it told me, what I was being told, is that there would be a very very large earthquake or some kind of major event with very much energy release..”
Frank explains that on May 28, “toward the end of the day UTC time, and continuing on May 29” alignments between the Sun, Mercury, Saturn, the Earth, and Moon on Thursday, May 28, will somehow cause a magnitude 9.8 quake that will devastate major cities of the West Coast, such as Los Angeles and San Francisco.
With the aid of a computer simulation of the solar system, the narrator demonstrates the alleged alignments that will cause a monstrous magnitude 9.8 quake at about 4 p.m. local time.
He explains in the video, “This is a very, very important update. If the prophecy is correct Los Angeles will go into the sea and Japan will be affected by terrible tsunamis. On August 12 2013 I received a message directly from spirits that a very, very large earthquake would happen on the west coast of America. Now I believe I know when it is exactly going to be. I hope I am wrong.”
He seeks to support his claim by citing coincidence with a “mysterious quatrain by Nostradamus” which predicts the planetary alignments and the resulting earthquake.
He quotes the prophecy by Nostradamus.
“The trembling so hard in the month of May, Saturn, Capricorn, Jupiter, Mercury in Taurus: Venus also, Cancer, Mars, in Virgo: Hail will fall larger than an egg.”
Even as the prediction spreads alarm among susceptible audience on several conspiracy theory websites, Scott Sutherland, a meteorologist and science writer on the website The Weather Network, dismisses the “prophecy” as a hoax. He notes that the model of the solar system alignment that the “prophet” presents in the video, using the online simulator Solar System Scope, is flawed due to deliberate exaggeration of the size of the planets ( see below ).
As shown in the “Realistic” view of the simulation below, there will be no alignments between the Sun, Mercury, Saturn, the Earth, and Moon on May 28.
Sutherland also debunks the claim by the narrator that an April 25 alignment between Mars, Mercury, Earth, and Moon caused the Nepal earthquake, pointing out that the “Realistic” size model of the simulation shows no alignment.
No number of alignments is capable of causing an earthquake because the gravitational forces involved are too weak, Sutherland explains further.
The science writer and meteorologist also points out that the so-called quatrains of the Nostradamus prophecies are subject to different translations and thus different interpreters can derive different meanings.
Phil Plait, an astronomer who runs the blog Bad Astronomy and writes for the New Scientist , also described the prediction as “baloney.”
Although Plait believes that the “prophet” is sincere in his belief, he insisted there will be no alignment of planets with Earth on May 28. Plait said that even if alignments occur, it cannot affect the Earth because the combined gravitational influence of planets is too weak, weaker than the gravitational influence of the Moon.
“Alignments of the planets have no effect on us at all. They can’t make you float, they don’t cause earthquakes – the ‘supermoon’ doesn’t either – and don’t even get me started about astrology.”
“I think that many people who turn to pseudo, and outright anti, science may do so because they feel that things are out of their control. [But] That’s too bad, because – even though it may not seem like it at first – when you begin down the path of studying science, of becoming a critical thinker, these tools actually help you to be more in control of your life, not less.”
“Take control. Think critically. And that goes doubly so when you’re reading stuff on social media.”
The idea that planetary alignments cause devastating earthquakes is not new. The 1974 book Jupiter Effect by John Gribbin and Stephen Plagemann warned that planetary alignments would cause devastating earthquakes in 1982, but nothing happened.
Earthquakes happen all the time and one might even happen on May 28, but the notion that earthquakes are caused by planetary alignments has no scientific backing.
[Images: YouTube via The Weather Network]