No evidence Myanmar earthquake caused by HAARP research facility

Social media posts earlier this year claimed that an earthquake that occurred in Myanmar in March was caused by a research project studying the Earth’s atmosphere.

Posts shared to Facebook linked the natural disaster that killed more than 3,500 people to the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) in Gakona, Alaska.

But there is no evidence to support this idea, and experts have assured fact checkers that this wouldn’t be possible in the first place.

Speaking to Logically Facts last month, Lucy Bloor, communications and media manager for the British Geological Survey (BGS), said: “BGS has no reason to believe the recent earthquake in Myanmar was anything other than a naturally occurring event.”

Experts told the Science Media Centre at the time that an earthquake in the region was not unexpected.

Prof Bill McGuire, Professor Emeritus of Geophysical & Climate Hazards at University College London, said: “Myanmar is one of the most seismically active countries in the world, so this quake is not a surprise. It looks to have occurred on the major Sagaing Fault, which marks the boundary between two tectonic plates.”

When HAARP was similarly linked to an earthquake in Turkey in 2023, Rachel Abercrombie, a seismologist at Boston University, told fact checkers at USA Today that “nobody has the ability to intentionally create a large earthquake with any degree of certainty”, adding: “Various human activities—such as building large water reservoirs and fracking and waste-water injection related to hydrocarbon extraction and geothermal energy projects—can induce earthquakes, but never as large as this.”

Jonathan Stewart, an environmental engineering professor at the University of California in Los Angeles, also reportedly told USA Today that induced earthquakes do not reach magnitudes above the mid-5 range.

The earthquake in Myanmar in March reached 7.7.

Conspiracy theories about HAARP, which often accuse governments of using it to secretly alter the weather or cause natural disasters, have been circulating for more than a decade.

What is HAARP?

HAARP is a high-frequency transmitter, operated by the University of Alaska Fairbanks, which is used to study the higher layers of the Earth’s atmosphere, known as the ionosphere and the thermosphere, which start at an altitude of around 60 km.

It is designed to transmit radio waves into the ionosphere to cause electrons to move in waves and uses these to create small disturbances, similar to those that occur in nature, so they can be studied in detail.

Responding to similar claims linking HAARP to the 2023 earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, HAARP program manager Jessica Matthews told fact checkers at Politifact: “The research equipment at the HAARP site cannot create or amplify natural disasters.”

Misinformation about significant weather events and natural disasters often spreads quickly on social media, so it’s important to consider whether what you are seeing is genuine before sharing.