DigitEye India Fact Checkers
A tweet by Twitter handle @JayasreeVijayan on June 26, 2019 left a volley of retweets and online debate among the well-wishers for a sort of rain machine. It claimed, “Rain clouds generator engine developed by NASA. See where the world is moving.”
Rain clouds generator engine developed by Nasa. See where the world is moving…#Amazing…! @ShashiTharoor pic.twitter.com/7jFXpnq3vd
— JayasreeVijayan (@JayasreeVijayan) June 26, 2019
While the tweet went viral online, with more than 6,000 times, the re-tweet of the same by Bollywood’s top actor Amitabh Bachchan helped it reach tens of thousands, say more than 22,000 in a short period. The message along with the video shows white fumes in large quantity, emanating from a machine.
Later, one person in the video, claiming to be from BBC, says that it would bring rain and shows it too when drops of water fall on him. Titled “Artificial Cloud for Rain”, it was originally posted by Civil Work on April 1, 2018 and so far, it received 43 million views.
… can we get one in India .. I mean right now .. RIGHT NOW .. PLEASE !!?????? https://t.co/pTRI8r4VsK
— Amitabh Bachchan (@SrBachchan) June 26, 2019
The video has also been posted on Facebook.
[https://www.facebook.com/CivilWork/videos/1897494576990174/]Digiteye India took it up for fact-checking and found out that the news was partially true, though the outcome was tweaked as a rain cloud generating machine. Here’s the truth that was the outcome of Google historical search:
The smoke was actually coming from a NASA facility at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi where the US space agency was testing the RS-25 engine on February 21, 2018 for its new space shuttles. It has been a longtime test facility for such engines and often generated “fake news” over the years.
A NASA press release said:”The exhaust from the RS-25 is primarily water vapor because the engine burns liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.” When they combine, you get H2O or water. The “clouds” in the video are a by-product of this scientific process. As the water vapor condenses, it forms into water drops and fall as “rain”.
Conclusion: The video was true but the claim was not. It was not a cloud generating machine. Our rating of the claim is Mostly False ????
