Fact check: Did this strange object in the sky cause the Turkey earthquake

Turkey and Syria have been hit by deadly earthquakes. Since then the internet is abuzz with controversy theories

New Delhi, Feb 11: Turkey continues to struggle with the rising death toll due to the devastating earthquake. The death-toll has crossed 25,000 and unfortunately it looks like it will be higher.

Since the earthquake hit Turkey, the internet is filled with conspiracy theories around the same.

The internet is abuzz with one post which claims that something strange had been spotted in the skies as the earthquake hit Turkey on February 6. People shared a picture of what looked like a jellyfish pattern of lights in the sky that was allegedly seen right before the quakes.

"People in Turkey swathes strange light in the sky right before the earthquakScreenshot 2023-02-11 at 12.51.24 PM.pnge," wrote one user.

"That is the CIA death ray in action. They use it to initiate a shift the earths tectonic plates via an ultra low frequency phase shift induced plasma burst (sic)," said another.

OneIndia has learnt that the claim is fake. It is a video that shows a rocket launch in 2022 not from Turkey or Syria, but from Kazakhstan.

While reverse searching the keyframes from the viral video, we found the same video from September 25 2022, which is now being linked to the Turkey earthquake. TGStat, a Russian firm which provides metrics about Telegram channels had shared the video and written, "Balkash. Saturday." Balkash is a lake in southeastern Kazakhstan.

Catasach, a Twitter user had also posted the same video. The captain said that the location of the video was Baikonur Cosmodrome in southern Kazakhstan.

A report from Kazinform, which is a news agency based NASA had in September 2022 in a blog post said that astronaut Frank Rubio and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin are safely in orbit on the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft after launching at 9:54 a.m. EDT from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan (6:54 p.m. Baikonur time).

Following the launch an optical effect known as Space Jellyfish was reportedly witnessed in the skies during the separation of the stages of the Soyuz launch vehicle. This is a rocket launch-related phenomenon caused by sunlight reflecting off the high-altitude plume gases emitted by a rocket during a twilight.

Hence it is clear that the images being shared with the claim that a rocket caused the Turkey earthquake is false.