The Telegraph - Calcutta : Nation

hennai, Dec. 14: Patterns in the distant skies do have a link with tumults deep down in earth.

In the wake of the confusion over the recent quake alert in Upper Assam, researchers in Madras University’s department of applied geology today said planetary configurations could be “definitive means of earthquake prediction”. The researchers, led by N. Rajeshwar Rao and N. Venkatanathan, claimed that based on planetary alignments, tremors could be predicted “with fair accuracy” at least a month in advance.

It was Venkatanathan’s paper on this topic at a conference in Hyderabad that had triggered the alert, making thousands of Upper Assam residents camp outdoors at night two days ago.

Rao and Venkatanathan today told The Telegraph that in 1974, US astrophysicist John Gribbin had explained this concept in his book The Jupiter Effect. Gribbin, they pointed out, had said that when two or more planets “aligned more or less in line with the earth”, the latter was “caught in the middle of a huge gravity struggle between the Sun and the planets, especially the giant planet, Jupiter”.

Three planets — Uranus, Neptune and Pluto — were not taken into consideration as they were farthest from the earth.