Is the Big One upcoming in Rome?

Di cassioli in , 8 Maggio 2011

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Scaring news have circulated for some weeks among various blogs and discussion forums: a big earthquake will hit Rome on may, 11th 2011.
Is that true?
The only possible answers is: who knows?
Current scientific knowledge does not allow any kind of earthquale forecast. Several different studies have been carried on over the years, especially by Ouzounov (who is said to have foreseen the quake which hit L’Aquila in 2009), resulting in possible correlation between big quakes and thermal anomalies recorded on the surface during previous days, but currently available data are not yet enough do determine by sure if the correlation does exist.
AVHRR instrument onboard NOAA satellites, together with instruments onboard MODIS satellite, can be used, if you have needed skills (and if you’re lucky and no clouds are covering the area) , to check if thermal anomalies are happening (almost in real time) in a specific area. On Geospazio site some ready-made data can be downloaded, although the algorithm used to calculate them is not specified.
Future plans of scientist include sending in space some new, dedicated satellites, carrying specific instruments to help determining if such a connection between thermal anomalies and big quakes does exist.
But if earthquakes cannot be foreseen, where did the news about 5/11/11 quake come from? Maybe from date “symmetry”, being it written in Italian style looking like “11/5/11”? Weak hypothesis. Maybe some weird sky event? Quite possible….
Here it is indeed how sky will look like at 09:00 PM on May 11th, 2011:

Even 4 planets will be very close one to the other: Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter. This is by itself a weird (although harmless) phenomenon. But that’s not all: Venus and Jupiter have the strongest gravitational effect on Earth, as this graph shows:

And that’s not all yet: this weird planets grouping will be completed after an even weirder “dance” of the planets in preceding days, as you can see in the following video; it rather looks like planets are chasing each other til they reach the final 11/5/11 configuration:

In this zoomed video you can also see that the closest approach will happen around 09:00 PM:

But actually all these events, although weird and unusual, are completely harmless: first of all because planets are not “close” at all, they just look close, being actually several million miles apart. But above all their gravitational pull on Earth is incredibly low if compared to Moon’s and Sun’s:

Above chart shows how insignificant are planets gravitational pulls if compared to Sun’s one. This is because Sun is much bigger than any planet (its diameter is 1 million kilometers, compared to o,14 million kilometers for Jupiter, and its mass is 1000 times Jupiter’s), and also much closer.
So it’s really hard for Jupiter and Venus to have much influence on Earth.

The astronomical event will be visible from Rome just before the dawn, as the sunrise is at 05:56, but the 4 planets will rise at around 05:00 o'clock, so they could be visible for a few minutes.

If such a planet alignment was foreseen by somebody several years or centuries ago (planets movements can be precisely foreseen hundreds and thousands of years in advance), it may be possible that this guy used his fantasy to associate these data: Venus and Jupiter biggest gravity pull among all planets, and they will be close to each other, and even close to Mars and Mercury, on 11/5/11, then a quake will happen.
Why it should happen right in Rome, though, it’s yet to be understood.

References:
Sunrise/Sunset time: http://www.nautica.it/info/sole.htm

AVHRR instrument: http://legacy.ingv.it/labtel2/avhrr/avhrr2/sensore.htm

Study on thermal anomalies (PDF): http://www.nat-hazards-earth-syst-sci.net/11/1099/2011/nhess-11-1099-2011.pdf

L’Aquila earthquake forecast: http://www.abruzzo24ore.tv/news/Il-...essere-previsto-cinque-giorni-prima/13634.htm

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