- 3 months ago
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Philosophies ancient and modern now on four in the quest to predict earthquakes.
00:07Equinox seeks a sense of disaster.
00:10And the director of tonight's Equinox will be online for a live chat after the program on www.channel4.com.
00:30Equinox.
00:46Every year, thousands of lives are torn apart by the catastrophe of earthquakes.
00:58The only natural disaster, it seems, that we cannot predict.
01:02Yet folk stories from every corner of the world have always told of the Earth giving out messages before earthquakes.
01:09Messages that can be received by plants, animals, even humans.
01:15Now some scientists think it's time to listen to those messages and to ask what forces within the Earth might lead to this sense of disaster.
01:28Welcome to the second hour of Up For Air on 90.7 FM KPFK in Los Angeles.
01:34I'm Marcos Fromer.
01:35And I'm Kathy Gorey.
01:36This morning on Up For Air, we're going to be talking with our resident earthquake expert, seismologist and geologist, Jim Berkland.
01:43The Earth is in constant motion.
01:46In California alone, there are 30,000 earthquakes a year, most too small to be felt.
01:52So we're seeing 5.1s up at Mammoth, and we still are on a green alert there.
01:59Why is that, Jim?
02:00It's a tremendous amount of action since last September, and it popped off with a five magnitude quake.
02:06But they sidestepped that by saying it wasn't really a volcanic earthquake, but a tectonic quake, even though it was within two miles of the old Caldera wall.
02:1342 hours, 34 minutes.
02:16More than a big universal time.
02:19Here in California, earthquake watching is an obsession.
02:26Issuing earthquake predictions, though, is seen by seismologists as pseudoscience, the preserve of cranks or amateurs.
02:34Hi, girls.
02:35Hi.
02:36Down your way again.
02:38Welcome to the seismic signal party.
02:41At Pear Blossom, less than a mile from the San Andreas Fault, a special event is taking place for earthquake prediction's truest believers.
02:48We're actually having the fourth annual Seismic Central Party, and we've got people that do predict earthquakes, and people that are interested in prediction of earthquakes,
03:00just people, friends of ours that have come by.
03:03Yeah, this is a real simple seismometer.
03:06So we have an earthquake, or somebody shakes the table, like, watch.
03:09Whoa.
03:11Whoa.
03:12And I was just mentioning that if we got really fancy, we could have Elvis Presley, instead of the sound doing, all shook up.
03:18So anyway.
03:20Oh, God.
03:21Things are not going to work.
03:23Some people here say they don't need technology.
03:26They call themselves earthquake-sensitives.
03:29They believe their bodies are the receivers, picking up signals from the earth before earthquakes happen.
03:35I'll pick up different types of biological symptoms, ranging in everything from heart palpitations and heart racing, the adrenaline rushes, dizziness, nauseating-type feelings.
03:48This afternoon, I've been having a lot of back of the head, which generally is followed by either a volcanic eruption or by a very deep quake.
03:58This strength of pain in my head, say, migraine, means a 6.0, or, you know, if it puts me into bed, then it's going to be a 7.0.
04:07Ali believes the earth messages she's picking up can come from around the world.
04:13What I've found is I get headaches in the center of the forehead for Southern California.
04:21Over my eyebrow right here would be corrals, Kamchaka, and the further I go out, up into here would be the Aleutian Islands.
04:29My shoulder up in here is for the South Pacific, again, Indonesia, the Philippines area.
04:38My left ear, low-frequency drone, is for the desert region, Barstow, Yucca Valley, Palm Springs.
04:47Well, at first, it is a hard thing to believe or understand, and you have to do some explaining to people.
04:55I do show them my predictions and what quakes have happened, and I run about 83.4 percent acrid.
05:03Folk wisdom has always held that the earth gives signs before an earthquake.
05:08The only difference, Ali's predictions are posted on the internet.
05:12It's just a really good feeling to know that there's other people around, kind of like myself, that, you know, you can relate with and be around,
05:22and we can talk about the same thing and not have people stare at you and think you're crazy or silly or funny or, you know, you're not serious, because it is a serious subject.
05:31Collectively, we may be able to save a city.
05:36Few would want to evacuate a city on the say-so of Ali's eyebrow, but the sensitives do gain a hearing, and not just because they echo ancient folk beliefs.
05:46They fill a vacuum left by science.
05:50Accurate earthquake prediction is seen by mainstream seismologists as a distant dream.
06:02The use of the word earthquake prediction has become very unfortunate.
06:05The science of earthquakes is the science of trying to understand them.
06:09Great earthquakes come hundreds of years apart.
06:11You don't know where they're going to be.
06:12Since you don't know how to predict them, you don't know where to go to look for them.
06:16So how are you going to make measurements of it?
06:18How can you try to predict something that you can't predict?
06:21And the answer is you've got to guess, you've got to be lucky, but most of all, you've got to sort of stick with it.
06:28At the tone, 22 hours, 35 minutes, coordinated universal time.
06:36Earthquake prediction is not a priority at the United States Geological Survey.
06:42It claims about 3% of their budget.
06:45Most of this is spent on assessing long-term earthquake risk.
06:48This is done primarily by determining how much stress is building up along known faults.
06:55The predictions are imprecise.
06:57In 1988, the most precise earthquake prediction scientists could give for the San Andreas Fault, near San Francisco,
07:04was a 1 in 3 chance of a magnitude 7, occurring within the next 30 years.
07:17Big Californian earthquakes often come after a pattern of small quakes, known as foreshocks,
07:23that indicate the release of stress on the fault.
07:26In 1988, a magnitude 5 earthquake rocked the San Andreas Fault, 80 miles south of San Francisco.
07:39Alan Lind made an imminent prediction.
07:42So there was a public warning in June of 1988 that within five days there was a slight chance of a magnitude 6.5 earthquake.
07:49Nothing happened.
07:52This was the first time there ever been a public warning of an earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area.
07:58Fourteen months later, in August 1989, there was another medium-sized earthquake in the same area.
08:08Again, a public warning was issued, but once again no major earthquake followed.
08:14But six weeks later, at four minutes past five in the afternoon of October 17th,
08:21sensors in the city's public transport system detected the primary waves from a major shock.
08:27Twelve seconds later, the earthquake struck.
08:32What happened?
08:44Uh, there's a hell of an earthquake and we've got, uh...
08:47The power lines are swaying.
08:49Windows, everything's going to fall out.
08:50We've got a hell of a test drive.
08:51Did you see any?
08:52The infrastructure have cracked.
08:5435238, we have a major injury accident.
08:57Cypress and West Grand.
08:58They're advising major injuries.
08:59We're attempting to get 1141.
09:01We have a 50 percent...
09:02The epicenter of this large earthquake was on the San Andreas Fault under a mountain called Loma Prieta.
09:08It was 60 miles from San Francisco, but the most dramatic destruction occurred here in the Bay Area.
09:15Sixty-seven people died, and seven billion dollars' worth of damage was done.
09:20I think we did the best we could before Loma Prieta, and so I don't think any of us who tried have any regrets.
09:28The earthquake happened pretty much where some of us thought it was going to happen, and we issued two slight warnings in the two years prior to the earthquake.
09:38It ain't earthquake prediction, but the earthquake didn't just come out of the blue.
09:45Robert Geller is a Tokyo-based geophysicist and expert on the Earth's deep interior.
09:54He is a leading crusader against what he sees as the folly of even mainstream earthquake prediction research.
10:00Why is prediction so difficult?
10:03Well, the reason is, first of all, an earthquake happens very deep inside the Earth.
10:09The Earth is very complicated, heterogeneous.
10:12We don't know the physical law governing the way earthquakes happen.
10:17How is the stress built up inside the Earth?
10:23How much energy is available to be released?
10:27We also don't know how the fall slips.
10:30In view of all of those difficulties, the question is not, why can earthquakes not be predicted?
10:36The obvious question is, why does anyone seriously even think earthquake prediction is worth discussing at the present time?
10:44If there is hope for earthquake prediction, it lies in the study of precursors, those elusive signals the Earth puts out before it quakes,
10:54which the self-professed sensitives believe they are receiving.
10:59The question is, an earthquake is simply slip on a fault.
11:03In the hours and days before that fault slips, does the Earth do something that we can measure that tells you the earthquake is coming?
11:10There's only one way to find out. Listen.
11:13In the last ten years, precursors have been recorded that may yet revolutionize earthquake prediction, some in the strangest of places.
11:22Right now, we're waiting for the geyser to erupt.
11:25But suppose you stand here for two hours and it doesn't erupt, you know definitely that we'll have an earthquake within two to three hundred miles radius of this geyser.
11:39It has been proven that it actually does work that way.
11:48This is Olga Kolbeck's pet geyser, and she's been watching it for 25 years.
11:53There are lots of geysers, but not Old Faithful geysers. To merit the name Old Faithful has to have a regular pattern of interval.
12:02The Calistoga geyser is like a pressure valve in the Earth. Water flowing deep underground meets hot rock, becomes superheated, and is forced upward under pressure with absolute predictability, except before earthquakes.
12:18The geyser erupts on the yearly average for about 40 minutes. However, back on August 1, 1975, I was sitting in the picnic area, and it didn't erupt for two and a half hours.
12:33And I thought that was very unusual. That evening, I listened to the news, and I found out we had an earthquake 100 miles north of here at Oroville, California, 5.9 on the Richter scale.
12:47And so this geyser knew about it before the news media, and that's how I forecast earthquakes.
12:52Since 1980, a computer has tracked the geyser 24 hours a day. Before the Loma Prieta earthquake, the gap recorded between eruptions nearly doubled.
13:06Exactly why Old Faithful is affected by earthquakes is not fully understood, but its 18-year record of constant monitoring provides data for any skeptic to see.
13:16That's going to erupt any minute. I've seen it for some 25 years, and I'm never tired of looking at it.
13:31A general estimate of how many quakes have happened in California during the last seven days.
13:36You get a three-magnitude quake in the Bay Area about every 18 days. You can barely feel a quake of less than three, and they're occurring all the time.
13:50The Earth is not silent. It is noisy with electrical signals. Many are generated naturally. Lightning, solar winds, electrical activity in the Earth's crust.
14:01All were making signals, and so altering the Earth's magnetic field long before man appeared on Earth.
14:08For more than 20 years, Tony Fraser Smith, a New Zealand professor at Stanford University, California, has been doing research for the US Navy into natural electromagnetic waves.
14:20Well, I'm a very unusual radio scientist. I study radio signals that are extremely low frequencies, actually called ultra-low frequencies.
14:31And they occur below the, you'll never get it on your radios. You can dial down the frequency as much as you like. I'm way off the bottom end of the radio dial.
14:40The interesting thing is these signals travel huge distances around the Earth. They can travel all the way around the Earth.
14:48And the Navy is interested in them because they can be used for communicating with submarines. They penetrate deeply down into the sea, and deeply into the Earth, and also out of the Earth.
15:00These signals are at such low frequency that the human ear cannot hear them.
15:06Okay, this is Tony Fraser Smith.
15:08Speeded up 200 times, this is the Earth's secret soundtrack.
15:15Back in October 1989, Tony Fraser Smith was interested in the Earth, but not in earthquakes. His life was about to be changed.
15:25One of his monitors was at the family home of his research assistant at Coralitas, just seven kilometers from a mountain called Loma Prieta.
15:38Well, we had been monitoring the system every few weeks for two years, and had become accustomed to the usual daily rise and fall of the signal, and occasional storms, geomagnetic storms caused by sunspots or other phenomena.
15:55And really, nothing that unusual was going on until the month before the earthquake.
16:16I just went out to check it for no reason. I often did. And there was this totally odd-looking signal that I'd never seen before, and I thought the equipment was broken. I just thought it was a malfunction.
16:37So I called Stanford to let them know that their equipment was not operating correctly.
16:44We often get strange things appearing in our records. Often it's due to pumps or some experiments, something turned on somewhere. It always goes away. So we just waited, waited to see what happened.
16:58Twelve days later, the wait was over.
17:01I heard a deep rumbling sound that was just a couple of seconds before the shock hit.
17:14The ground was heaving and shaking. I could hear Katie screaming. I could hear crockery breaking, windows breaking, the chimney ripping through the roof.
17:23And it was only about a week later that we managed to finally get hooked up again to Koralitos, where the telephone lines had been broken, the power had been cut off.
17:36And then we began noticing some very extraordinary signals.
17:40We'd never heard of or seen signals like this before.
17:43And it would be as if you had a radio in your house turned on for two years and no matter where you tuned, you heard nothing but static.
17:53And then one day you start to hear music. I mean, that's going to get your attention.
17:58It's the one time in my life when I have just been absolutely stunned by something taking place in my measurements.
18:06And as soon as I looked at it, it was absolutely fantastic.
18:12This part of the graph here, for about one, two, three, four days, corresponds to the normal background activity you would record day after day, month after month, and year after year.
18:22Then starting twelve days, it turns out, before the earthquake, which occurred at this point, the activity shot up, you notice, by a very large amount, and oscillated around day by day for about twelve days.
18:34Twelve days warning. Starting in this little period here, the activity again shot up to a very, very high level, huge level, just in the few hours before the earthquake.
18:44And then earthquake occurred right at this point, and there's no signals here, not due to any absence of signals, but due to the fact that we have no electric power and our measurement system is off.
18:56And when I looked at that sequence, it was almost absolutely certain that all of those signals must have been related to the earthquake.
19:06Many seismologists disagreed, though they had to accept that it was theoretically possible for such a signal to be produced.
19:13Pressure building before an earthquake ruptures pockets of water in the Earth's crust.
19:19This movement creates electricity, which could generate the ultra-low frequency radio waves that Tony Fraser Smith recorded at Coralitos.
19:28It's extremely controversial, but obviously, if an earthquake does produce a clearly defined magnetic or electric signal that can be measured on the Earth's surface, then it can be used, ultimately, for prediction.
19:44And I believe that'll prove to be the case with earthquakes.
19:47If every time there's an earthquake, if we saw the same kind of signal before that earthquake, we might say, well, we don't know what it is, but there's something to it.
19:58But if we see it before one earthquake, and we continue the observations, and we do not see the same phenomenon before other earthquakes, then we have, at least statistically, we have an overwhelming likelihood that it was just some sort of random coincidence.
20:14Coincidence?
20:15Earthquake prediction only began 10 to 20 years ago. The technology really has just started to come into place, and since great earthquakes come on hundreds of year cycle, if you're in the game, you've got to be in it for 100 years, 200 years.
20:31One country, unfamiliar to most Western seismologists, already has an entire system of earthquake prediction, based on the routine monitoring of precursors.
20:49Scientists there believe their fusion of modern science and ancient philosophy explains how they have been able to issue predictions and save thousands of lives.
20:59Earthquake prediction scientists believe they owe their success to the way they have combined ancient philosophy and modern science.
21:22Earthquake evidence
21:23Earthquake�
21:44This is Mengliang in the far southwest of China, just 20 miles from the border with Burma.
21:50Burma.
21:56Professor Chen Lida is a celebrity in this corner of China.
22:01For many people here feel they owe their lives to his skill in predicting earthquakes.
22:09American scientists believe those precursors near the epicenter could be the signs of the
22:15earthquake.
22:16We don't think so.
22:18In our culture, we think the sun, the earth, and the atmosphere are one.
22:25It is called di kyu zheng ti guan, whole earth philosophy.
22:31This is a very old philosophy.
22:33In our traditional culture, we think nature and mankind is one.
22:43However romantic the underlying philosophy sounds, China's nationwide system for recording
22:48possible earthquake precursors is rigorous.
22:53Hundreds of observation stations keep a continuous record of signals from the earth.
23:03The power is not a problem in China, and more than 10,000 people work on monitoring and
23:08interpreting earthquake precursors.
23:12Today scientists have access to powerful computer technology to help analyze the data recorded.
23:18they monitor more than 100 different possible precursors from foreshocks to bird behavior.
23:25Every possible precursor is recorded, analyzed, poured over.
23:29In southwest China, Professor Chen has found that clues are in the water.
23:43This is the Munglian hot spring.
23:50Like the Calistoga geyser, this water comes from deep within the earth.
23:59Temperature, water level, and flow are measured here daily.
24:02But most important is the level of radon gas in the water.
24:09Since 1983, we've been collecting the radon level data continuously, so it's been more than
24:1610 years now.
24:17There have been so many big earthquakes in that time that we have found that the radon level
24:22is a very reliable way of predicting earthquakes.
24:27Radon gas seeps into groundwater when rocks in the earth's crust are under pressure.
24:33A sudden increase in the radon level in groundwater is recognized in China as a reliable earthquake
24:39precursor. That's what was recorded here in June 1995.
24:45We already had some successful predictions based on radon levels.
24:49Now the radon level had risen so high, I was sure a big earthquake was coming.
24:59This wasn't the only precursor noted in the region.
25:02Simultaneously, a dramatic electromagnetic signal,
25:06comparable to that recorded by Tony Fraser Smith before Loma Prieta, was recorded 300 kilometers north.
25:13Then in the next 10 days, two medium-sized earthquakes happened over the border in Burma.
25:22Again, Professor Chen drew on Chinese philosophy to make sense of what he saw.
25:29We think everything under the sun is interconnected. Let's say there's an earthquake here.
25:36Something strange might be going on 300 kilometers away. We will think, this strange phenomenon might
25:43have something to do with the earthquake. They are so far away from each other, how can they be connected?
25:49It's just like acupuncture in our traditional culture.
25:55Professor Chen issued a prediction, so precise that the West would be amazed.
26:00A large earthquake would strike this area within three days.
26:06We were told there will be an earthquake and everybody should get ready for it.
26:11This is a minority area. The minorities are not very responsible about saving life.
26:17So to save their lives, we forced them to move out of their houses.
26:21Some of the local people didn't want to move out and we were afraid they would sneak out at night.
26:26So we had to watch them like you watch criminals.
26:34The next day, Professor Chen himself came here to impress on people the seriousness of his prediction.
26:43We went to number two middle school to check out their buildings.
26:46And I thought it was very dangerous because there were cracks on the wall.
26:50So we asked for students to move out immediately.
26:57They didn't have long to wait.
26:59The following morning, a large earthquake hit.
27:13But for once, thanks to the prediction, there was cause for celebration.
27:33Although it was stronger than the Loma Prieta earthquake,
27:36the Monggyan earthquake only killed 11 people.
27:43We prepared very well.
27:45The minority people were very happy because we did a very good job.
27:49They think the government is great.
27:51They think those earthquake experts are like gods.
27:57But even gods can be fallible.
27:59It's difficult to give accurate predictions.
28:05Actually, it's very difficult.
28:07And probably we can't predict most earthquakes.
28:11In China, in some areas, we can predict certain kinds of earthquakes very successfully, like monglian.
28:17It's a very successful announcement.
28:19I haven't seen lately any articles by the Chinese scientists themselves in refereed scientific journals,
28:28explaining in detail exactly how it was they allegedly predicted the earthquake,
28:33what the evidence were, and so on, and so on.
28:36So I'm very, very skeptical.
28:38I think the whole thing is just a kind of relic of the cultural revolution.
28:43Firstly, I think someone who says that doesn't know Chinese earthquake prediction well enough.
28:53This is a misunderstanding.
28:55They think it's luck.
28:57Once might be luck, but twice three times is not luck at all.
29:03We also have a lot of data and theory to support our predictions and our prediction methods.
29:13What are the stories of the Chinese earthquake prediction?
29:15In this society, it's hardly surprising that saving the people through earthquake prediction is given high priority.
29:23But the stories of Chinese earthquake prediction are not always as successful as monglian, nor as straightforward.
29:33The haunting story of an earthquake prediction made in 1976 shows just how difficult it can be.
29:39What are the stories of Chinese earthquake prediction?
29:41At that time, Professor Wang Xiangning was a leading earthquake prediction scientist.
29:50The precursors he looked for would appear in the data from probes that monitored stress in the Earth's crust.
29:56In July 1976, the readings from the northeast began to cause concern, indicating growing levels of tectonic stress.
30:15The data was extremely high and was automatically recorded at that time.
30:19But you couldn't tell how high it was because the needle was off the paper.
30:23In the observation stations in Beijing and Dalian, there was a sudden great change in crustal stress.
30:30This made us think that an earthquake was coming.
30:36He was so worried by the data that on July 14th, he submitted this formal prediction.
30:42A medium-sized earthquake could be expected between July 20th and August 8th,
30:47either west of Beijing, or in this triangle, centered on the industrial city of Tangshan.
30:59I hoped the leaders would pay attention to this document and warn the people,
31:03and make everyone aware about the possibility of an earthquake,
31:06and then you can reduce the loss of life.
31:08Professor Huang could only worry and wait.
31:22Meanwhile, just beyond the Great Wall, a hundred kilometers from Tangshan City,
31:27an eager young civil servant, Wang Chunqing, had just been put in charge of the tiny earthquake bureau
31:34of Qinglong County.
31:39At an earthquake education meeting in Tangshan, he was told about Professor Huang's prediction.
31:46The prediction was for a relatively small earthquake,
31:49but Qinglong County enthusiastically decided to put their earthquake protection program into action.
31:54The ordinary people understood the situation.
32:03When we told them about the earthquake, everybody thought about it.
32:07When earthquakes happen, buildings fall down.
32:10So some people moved out when we told them to.
32:13Others moved out of their own accord.
32:15Before the earthquake, 70 percent of people moved outside.
32:18It was very clear that they had to be identified.
32:22But Qinglong was the only place taking the prediction seriously.
32:26Across northeast China, from Beijing to Tangshan, life went on as usual.
32:31Until July 27th, that is.
32:34And the middle of a very hot summer's night.
32:41My wife woke up first.
32:44What's that noise?
32:45It was deafening.
32:48I'd experienced earthquakes.
32:50And she knew I'd predicted an earthquake a few days ago.
32:55We ran out of the courtyard and looked to the direction of Tangshan and the bright red light.
33:01And then the shaking started.
33:18Professor Huang had been right about time and place.
33:37But his prediction of magnitude was a serious underestimate.
33:40This was no medium-sized earthquake.
33:44It was a devastating magnitude 7.8.
33:47It did more damage than any other earthquake this century.
33:52No earthquake preparations had been made here.
33:54And a quarter of a million people died.
33:57I realized that China had just experienced an earthquake of apocalyptic proportions.
34:10This was not a normal earthquake.
34:18I felt awful.
34:19In Qinglong County, though more than 180,000 buildings were destroyed,
34:31thanks to Wong Chongqing and his colleagues, only one life was lost.
34:35I feel I made a very specific report to the leaders and the leaders took action.
34:43If they hadn't taken action, then Qinglong would have had a lot of deaths and injuries.
34:48I feel I did a very useful job.
34:49Because we did not predict a large enough earthquake, we didn't reduce the loss of life at all.
35:01We, who are responsible for earthquake prediction, feel unbelievable pain.
35:13The Tangshan tragedy led China to increase its monitoring of every possible warning signal
35:19before an earthquake.
35:21Twenty years on, another Asian tragedy would lead some scientists to look at the old belief
35:27that plants, animals and even fish can predict earthquakes.
35:31Japan has the world's most expensive earthquake prediction program.
35:55But it has yet to issue a single prediction.
36:02Buddhist text recorded that it was 400 years since the last earthquake in Kobe.
36:10It was before dawn on a winter's day and the stress that had been building for centuries
36:15was about to give way.
36:16The sky was still pitch black, as if ink had been spilled over it.
36:32Then, in a split second, the sky turned bright red.
36:36Next, the sky turned green.
36:39Simultaneously, the ground moved up and down as the earthquake occurred.
36:43The earthquake was the most damaging to strike Japan for 70 years.
36:52Whole sections of old Kobe collapsed without warning.
36:56More than 6,000 people died.
37:03Japan has always lived with earthquakes.
37:05But the Kobe earthquake provoked a crisis of confidence amongst both scientists and people.
37:16Since 1965, the Japanese government has made its earthquake prediction program a priority.
37:22It employs hundreds of scientists and has cost billions of dollars.
37:28Satellite technology is employed to monitor every movement of the Earth's crust.
37:34Japanese people had believed that before a major earthquake, a precise warning would be given.
37:40People would be evacuated.
37:42No one would have to die.
37:44The system failed.
37:46There was no prediction.
37:48The Kobe earthquake took people completely by surprise.
37:51So, why was the public surprised?
37:57This is telling me that we as a community are not getting the technical facts across to the public.
38:05And one reason is so much time is wasted discussing completely groundless research on earthquake prediction.
38:14Mainstream methods had indeed failed.
38:18But once again, there had been precursors.
38:21Clues that only became clear after the earthquake.
38:25Just as in China, changes were found in the radon level in Kobe's bottled spring water.
38:36Disillusioned with the scientists and their methods,
38:39people in Kobe began to discuss bizarre incidents.
38:43Strange stories of dancing flowers and vegetables,
38:46of stopping clocks and radios in the days and hours before the earthquake.
38:51Messages from the Earth,
38:53which people believed might have enabled them to predict the coming disaster.
39:13One of the people who noticed such strange things was Hatsumi Hiriyama.
39:18Her mother's house was destroyed in the earthquake.
39:20About 10 days before the Kobe earthquake, while having an evening piano lesson,
39:31I looked at the clock and the hand suddenly dropped down.
39:34There were a number of other things.
39:43For example, the air conditioner worked on its own accord without the use of a remote control switch.
39:49On the day just before the earthquake, the moon looked very pink that evening.
39:54That's strange, I said.
39:55After that we returned to the house and switched on the television.
39:59But the TV channels kept switching every so often of their own accord.
40:03There were things like that.
40:04Stories like these came to the attention of a local physics professor.
40:13Many people have reported that some precursor phenomena before the earthquake,
40:21but most scientists just consider them superstition.
40:27But I think that there must be some reasons in those anecdotes and stories.
40:33It was not surprising that people turned to such superstitious myths.
40:43But Professor Ikea, as a physicist, was intrigued by the connections between these stories.
40:49They all involved electromagnetism.
40:54Letters is charged. This leaf is charged.
40:58So there was no wind at all, but suddenly tree leaves rattled and then big shaking came.
41:11That's what happened at the Kobe earthquake.
41:14I think that the same phenomena, you know, same observation can be
41:19duplicated, reproduced by experiment.
41:22And most of them are by electromagnetic experiment.
41:27By using a Van de Graaff generator to create an electrical charge,
41:31Ikea found that he could reproduce the rattling lettuces and dancing begonias that people claim to have seen.
41:39Before the Kobe earthquake, an electromagnetic signal, like the one Tony Fraser Smith picked up before Loma Prieta,
41:44was recorded by a scientist at Kyoto University. But what ordinary people remembered was the blinding earthquake lightning.
41:55This provided an essential link for Ikea.
41:57Earthquake lightning is also caused by the high intense electric feed. And when one thinks that the rock
42:10fractured underground produces electric feed. And under that assumption, we can explain
42:19almost all of the electromagnetic phenomena.
42:23Professor Ikea is not a seismologist,
42:26and his work has been widely criticized. But undeterred, he has begun to look at the folk tales
42:31that exist in every earthquake country, that animals can read the earth's signals.
42:38In Japan, these folk tales tell of catfish thrashing about wildly before earthquakes.
42:44Professor Ikea has shown what happens when catfish are subjected to quite small electrical charges.
42:50A catfish shows some violent movement when we apply four or five volts per meter.
43:01And when I put my finger in, I don't feel anything.
43:06But you can see that movement of catfish when the switch was on.
43:11Professor Ikea has shown what happens when catfish is on the ground.
43:18Stories of unusual animal behavior appear after every earthquake. Kobe was no exception.
43:24So Ikea has shown how to be a catfish.
43:26Ikea has shown what catfish is on the ground.
43:29Around this area, the houses were old, and rats often ran around in the roofs, when it became dark and quiet.
43:36When I thought about it afterwards, I realized the rats had completely disappeared, about a week before the earthquake.
43:44It wasn't just in my house. The neighbors told me it had been the same in their houses.
43:49So I wondered if the rats sensed danger and ran away somewhere.
43:57From about three months before the earthquake appeared, the number of stray cats got less and less.
44:04I thought it was strange.
44:05And just before the earthquake, I saw practically no cats.
44:11Some of the highest numbers of missing animals in the Lost and Lost Sound Column have followed our larger quakes.
44:17But also, almost as high numbers just precede the quakes.
44:22And the question is, what are they detecting there before the ground shakes?
44:25So they're sensing something, possibly.
44:33Earthquakes really disturb the pigeons.
44:36I mean, it shakes them up. They know about it before, and it takes them a while to settle back after.
44:41They know they're coming. I know that sounds crazy to you. Scientists can't figure when they're coming.
44:47I really believe animals know ahead of time.
44:51I'll go back to the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989.
44:55That day, just about an hour before, I turned the birds loose.
44:58I mean, they were extremely shook up, nervous.
45:03You know, the hens were off their eggs.
45:08And I went ahead and released them that day anyway, and they were gone.
45:14And while they were flying, the earthquake hit.
45:18And I had some of those birds didn't come back for two, three days.
45:21If these electromagnetic precursors happen with some regularity prior to great earthquakes,
45:31and if an earthquake could cause some fraction of the population to die or lose fitness,
45:38there's every reason to think that an avoidance mechanism might evolve.
45:43That's not implausible.
45:44If you have evolved a sensory ability that might predict that earthquake.
45:52Joe Kirschvink is uniquely placed to unravel the mysterious reaction of creatures to earthquake precursors.
45:58His work has shown how bees are sensitive to electromagnetic signals from the earth.
46:03The honeybee turns out to be the lab rat for magnetic field sensitivity.
46:13We can train it, we can do experiments on it,
46:16and we can tease out information about their sensory abilities using it.
46:22And in particular, we've discovered that the honeybee is extraordinarily sensitive to weak magnetic fields.
46:28They're basically able to extract minute signals from the noise of the world.
46:36Bees are able to sense the earth's magnetic field by using a highly magnetic mineral in their bodies called magnetite.
46:43Kirschvink has demonstrated exactly how they do this.
46:46And it's basically turned what was once a romping ground for charlatans.
46:51The idea that animals could detect something we don't was absurd.
46:56But it's brought it to a proper neurophysiological basis.
47:00We can identify the cells and the wiring for it.
47:03And we now know that most animals have this sense.
47:09So the whole conclusion of those studies of the honeybee system is a very finely tuned magnetometer.
47:17It detects magnetic fields in the 0 to 10 Hertz range extremely well and falls off rapidly above it.
47:23And 0 to 10 Hertz is exactly the same frequency range as the electromagnetic signals
47:29that Tony Fraser Smith recorded before the Loma Prieta earthquake.
47:37So what we have is actually kind of a unique thing.
47:40a possible precursor to an earthquake which ought to have been detectable by an animal.
47:51Whether it means anything we don't know.
47:56More intriguing still is Kirschvink's latest discovery that magnetite is also present in the human body.
48:02It's a discovery that puts the claims of the earthquake's sensitives in a new light.
48:09It's day two of the seismic central party and they're daring to trek into the San Andreas Fault.
48:15Everybody loves to come up to my house for the party because I live in a very unique location.
48:20I live real close to San Andreas Fault and it's very beautiful here.
48:24Some people call it negative energy, some people call it positive energy.
48:27They just like being so close to Mother Earth and people like the whole area.
48:32Well, it's a very hot day up here today.
48:34I don't know, I'm picking up some energy.
48:39Hopefully not, hopefully not today.
48:41Well, I'm thinking we might have some energy.
48:43You guys picking up anything strange up here?
48:44I'm picking up a lot of adrenaline rushes.
48:46Yeah, that too.
48:48That and a lot of ringing in the air, ringing in the air.
48:51But it's that energy.
48:52It's that energy, yeah.
48:54But like I'm sitting here, it's hot, right?
48:55Let me get goosebumps.
48:58Which is, you know, makes no sense logically, right?
49:03Gee, they keep telling us.
49:04I have read reports of humans that claim to be sensitive to earthquakes.
49:09And some of them are compelling.
49:10On the other hand, there are aspects in some of the stories
49:13where people claim to be able to predict earthquakes in China when they're in California
49:17that at face value do not meet any test's reliability.
49:25On the other hand, if a honeybee or a rodent might be able to predict earthquakes,
49:31there's no reason why humans might not have some vestige of that ability.
49:36And some of them may be able to do it.
49:39But that requires rather rigorous testing.
49:42It's difficult since great earthquakes are rare.
49:45Seismologists are few in number.
49:49Mainstream seismologists are deeply skeptical of what might be learned from listening to the earth.
49:54But with so much at stake, perhaps it's time to start investigating the stories of those who claim
50:02to have a sense of disaster.
50:09I think the hardest thing for a scientist or a human being to remember
50:13is that what we know is this big and what we don't know is this big or maybe this big.
50:18So to rule out earthquake prediction, which today clearly lies in the unknown, is just silly.
50:27Things that we can't imagine today will be discovered in the next hundred years.
50:32I hope one of them is how to predict earthquakes.
50:48There's a full colour Channel 4 booklet with fascinating information about how earthquakes happen
51:13and why they're so difficult to predict.
51:15For your copy, send a cheque or post-loader for £4, payable to Channel 4 television,
51:20to Equinox, a sense of disaster, PO Box 4000, Manchester M60 3LL.
51:27You can't see it. You can't feel it. You can't touch it.
51:32And you don't know that it's got you until it's too late.
51:35We have a cloud 1500 yards off the port bow.
51:39Germ warfare is about to come of age. It will be able to target the rich or the poor.
51:45The black or the white.
51:50Before they find you.
51:52Equinox. Deadly Code. Next Monday at 9 on 4.
Be the first to comment