last updated 10 September 2023
The planet Mercury can be found in planetary conjunctions most often near the time of major earthquakes. Of course, Mercury has the highest orbital velocity and moves about 4° per Earth day in its orbit around the Sun. It is therefore the planet that most often forms a conjunction with the Sun and other planets. Still, in the case of major earthquakes, a clustering of two or more planetary conjunctions is often observed. This is the typical clustering of planetary conjunctions near the time of major earthquakes. More interesting is the presence of Venus in planetary conjunctions, specifically with outer planets, near the time of major earthquakes.
For this analysis we selected earthquakes with magnitude ≥ 7.5 since 2015. The EMSC database lists 42 events, 3 of which with 2 events in the same region on the same day. Therefore, the statistics below are based on 39 cases. With each case we determined if Venus was in a conjunction with an outer planet (excludes conjunctions with the Sun and Mercury) up to 4 days before and 2 days after the seismic event. The data used can be downloaded here. We encourage researchers to carefully study these data and do similar research.
From the 39 cases, we determined that in 5 cases Venus was not in a conjunction with an outer planet. That is 12.8%. This means that 87.2% of earthquakes with magnitude ≥ 7.5 occurred near the time that Venus was in one or more conjunctions with an outer planet.
In total, 46 Venus-conjunctions with an outer planet occurred near the time of 34 earthquakes, whereby 32 conjunctions occurred within 2 days (+/-2) of an earthquake. 35 conjunctions occurred before an earthquake and 11 conjunctions occurred up to 2 days after an earthquake.
Table 1 shows the occurrence of Venus-conjunctions in days before (B) and after (A) an earthquake:
| 4B | 3B | 2B | 1B | 1A | 2A |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | 4 | 10 | 11 | 9 | 2 |
Out of 35 cases that includes any Venus-conjunction (including conjunctions with the Sun and Mercury), in 1 case only 1 conjunction occurred. In all other cases, a convergence of 2 or more conjunctions occurred. Table 2 shows the total number of planetary conjunctions (1-6), within 3 days before and 2 days after an earthquake that is or includes a Venus-conjunction:
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6 | 8 | 10 | 8 | 1 | 2 |
In 4 cases there was no Venus-conjunction. Table 3 shows the total number of planetary conjunctions (1-6), within 3 days before and 2 days after an earthquake that is not or does not include a Venus-conjunction:
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
The majority of earthquakes with magnitude ≥ 7.5 occurs near the time of a convergence of 2-4 planetary conjunctions, one or more of which include Venus with an outer planet. Thus, by tracking Venus-conjunctions with outer planets, in particular those conjunctions that converge with one or more planetary conjunctions that include Mercury, like on 4-5 February 2023, it is possible to anticipate major earthquakes. It does not always reach magnitude ≥ 7.5 however, like on 2-4 March and 4-6 September 2023, when the magnitude did not exceed 6.9. But the combination of Mercury and Venus with outer planets, even in a single conjunction like on 20 January 2018, can be extremely critical. The actual seismic response to these planetary conjunctions appears to be determined by the condition of Earth's crust, i.e. the stress levels along a fault section; if a larger section has not reached its strain budget, then no major earthquake occurs, but an obvious clustering of stronger earthquakes (≥5.6) is usually observed. It warrants an earthquake warning in all cases when planetary conjunctions with Venus and Mercury in combination with outer planets converge. This also includes their conjunctions with Earth, like on 26 December 2004 (M9.3) and 24 May 2013 (M8.3). This analysis includes only 42 earthquakes (39 cases), but based on other research and observations, we are confident that any selected time-period will yield similar results.