Reproduction of mimosa and clock anomalies before earthquakes : Are they“Alice in the Wonderland Syndrome”?

概要

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Some earthquake precursor phenomena told as legends or reported retrospectively for the 1995 Kobe earthquake have been reproduced by laboratory experiments. Mimosa placed on the high voltage sphere of a Van de Graaff electrostatic generator closed its leaves and bowed on charging and air-gap discharging, presumably due to the current induced in its stem. Air-gap discharging caused sudden movements of eels in a nearby plastic aquarium. Eels moved also on applying a pulsed electric field of less than 0.5V/m, while catfish responded only at around 5V/m. The higher sensitivity of eels to electric field than that of catfish is consistent with the story in the Ansei Chronicle that a man could not find eels in a river but only catfish in violent movement before the earthquake. Eels might have already hidden themselves in panic. Rapid rotation and stopping of the second hand of a clock, which were observed before the Kobe Earthquake like in the“Alice in the Wonderland”, have also been reproduced by exposing clocks to electromagnetic waves generated by air-gap discharging. Reported malfunctioning of home electronic appliances before the earthquake would have been due to some natural electromagnetic disturbance at the epicenter.
日本学士院の論文