Reproduction of mimosa and clock anomalies before earthquakes: Are they "Alice in the Wonderland syndrome"?

Abstract

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 0.5 V/m, while catfish responded only at around 5 V/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.