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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 61: Jan-Feb 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Celestial Influences The "Mars Effect" refers to the "significant tendency for champion athletes to have been born at the time of either the rise or the upper culmination of the planet Mars." What has the position of Mars in the earth's sky to do with an athlete's prowess? No one knows! And certainly no scientist who wants to remain employed will try to find out. Distribution in 18 Mars sectors for sports champions (top) and ordinary people (below). Solid lines are observed numbers; dotted lines, expected numbers. The two peaks in the graph occur at the rise and upper culmination of ... . We have M. Gauquelin to thank for discovering the Mars Effect. Gauquelin began his research with checking out the claims of conventional astrology. He "found no truth whatever behind certain major tenets of the horoscope, including the alleged influence of the signs of the zodiac, the reality of the astrological 'aspects,' the reported role of the 'houses,' or the prediction of future events." That's the good news, now here's the bad. During his work, he recorded the birth dates of thousands of French men and women who were especially successful in various endeavors, especially sports. These data, easily veri-fied, do seem to demonstrate that the Mars effect truly exists! G. Abell, who was a reknowned astronomer, did not ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 55: Jan-Feb 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Scientific Basis Of Astrology At a recent meeting of the Society for Scientific Exploration, S. Ertel, a German scientist, reported on his inquiry into the so-called "Mars Effect," discovered by Michel Gauquelin. Here are two excerpts from his Summary : "Since 1955 Gauquelin claims to have discovered planetary effects on human births: After rise of a planet and after its crossing of the meridian, birth frequencies of eminent men may either increase beyond or decrease below chance level. .. .. . "In order to find out how clean Gauquelin's database is, the author travelled to Gauquelin's Paris laboratory ... checked the files, including data which had been separated from publication, especially athletes' data. Using all obtainable data, Gauquelin's strongest hypothesis was tested, that planetary effects are more pronounced the greater the person's professional success. This claim was objectified with the help of citation frequencies, a sensitive procedure Gauquelin himself had not yet used. The total of 2089 athletes was subjected to this procedure. The results clearly supported Gauquelin's eminence claim." (Ertel, Suitbert; "An Assessment of the Mars Effect," The Explorer, 4:8 , October 1987.) Comment. Is all this simply astrology with scientific trappings? It certainly sounds likt it is! Debunking groups, such as CSICOP, have spent considerable effort trying to disprove the Mars Effect, ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 113: Sep-Oct 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects An exploded planet and the "face on mars"Between Mars and Jupiter swirls the main main asteroid belt. In the view of many astronomers, including T. Van Flandern, there resides the debris of an exploded planet. Van Flandern has adduced considerable evidence supporting the exploded planet hypothesis, which we will pass over in favor of a look at the possible effects of said exploding planet upon a large but equally hypothetical satellite of said planet. Such a satellite would have been heavily pelted by debris on the side facing the exploding planet. Furthermore, this battered sphere, having lost its gravitational "anchor," would assume a new orbit ... the sun as well as a new orientation in space. Is there any object in the solar system plastered mainly on one side with debris and craters? You guessed it: Mars! What possible connection could there be between this purported cataclysm and the "face on Mars"? The connecting thread is very weak but so beguiling that we must mention it. T. Van Flandern has proposed eight tests for the artificiality of the "face" and its associated "pyramids," "city," etc. One is the three-dimensionality of the "face." Another is the "fractal" test, which is useful in distinguishing between artificiality and naturalness. The "face" readily passes four of the eight tests. A fifth test (bilateral symmetry) cannot be decided until ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 128: MAR-APR 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Fake Needles but Real Knives The effect of a patient's mind in medical procedures can be as powerful as drugs and real surgery. This is the well known placebo effect. But how can doctors differentiate between the healing power of the mind and that of chemicals and scalpels? The logical thing to do is to fake the procedure with one group of patients and compare results with a second group that got the "real thing." Of course, ethical problems come to the fore because doctors are supposed to cure people and not to pretend to. The ethical dimension is accentuated when real knives are employed and real blood flows. Our ... item is not invasive but interesting nonetheless. Placebo acupuncture. Many physicians scoff at acupuncture. Placebo experiments could prove its efficacy. To this end, special placebo needles have been invented. Like the fake daggers used on the stage, the points are blunt and retractable. The acupuncture patient feels a pinprick and thinks he or she sees the needle penetrating the skin, but it's all fakery. At the University of Heidelberg, 52 people with rotator cuff tendinitis were split into two groups; 25 were punctured with real needles, the rest just thought they were. In this experiment, the first group showed much greater improvement than those treated with the fake needles. Real acupuncture was more powerful than the placebo effect. Now if we can only figure out how real acupuncture works! ( ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 122: Mar-Apr 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Bizarre Physiological Effects Of Lightning July 1969. Lawson, Missouri. Lightning is unpredictable and produces many weird effects, but the following case pushes the weirdness envelope. An electrician was driving home through an intense rainstorm that was accompanied by severe lightning. He parked his truck outside his house. Then it happened: "As I started up the drive, I took about three or four steps, and then it was as though I had stepped into a very soft cotton ball. My whole body felt as if my head was behind my shoulders and being pulled down between my shoulder blades." When he awoke, he was about 50 feet ... on the other side of a fence and on his neighbor's property. His boots had been knocked off. The coins in his pocket and his belt buckle had melted. A visit to a doctor proved that he had been struck by lightning, and that his spine had been severely damaged. Much stranger was his reaction to the ambient temperature. He was now impervious to cold. He was most comfortable between -10 and 0 F. His normal body temperature was low, just 95.2 , not terribly far from normal. He just didn't feel the cold. He never wore a coat and was comfortable working that way even at -23 F! The electrician is far from being disabled. He even poses for photographs in the snow wearing just shorts and a ...
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... Their physical appearance; (2 ) Their anomalous behavior; and (3 ) Their unusual talents and faculties. Typical subjects covered: Mirror-image twins * The sacral spot * The supposed human aura * Baldness among musicians * Human tails and horns * Human behavior and solar activity * Cycles of religiousness * Cyclicity of violent collective human behavior * Handedness and longevity * Wolf-children * The "Mars Effect" * Telescopic vision *Dermo-optical perception * Hearing under anesthesia * Human navigation sense * Asymmetry in locomotion * Sex-ratio variations Comments From Reviews: "All I can say to Corliss is carry on cataloging". New Scientist View Cart Buy online via PayPal with MC/Visa/Amex 304 pages, hardcover, $19.95, 52 illus., 3 indexes ... 1992. 548 references, LC 91-68541. ISBN 0-915554-26-7 , 7x10. Biological Anomalies: Humans II: A Catalog of Biological Anomalies Sorry, Out of print The second Catalog volume on human biological anomalies focuses upon the "internal" machinery of the body (1 ) Its major organs; (2 ) Its support structure (the skeleton); and (3 ) Its vital subsystems (the central nervous system and the immune system) Typical subjects covered: Enigma of the fetal graft * Phantom limbs * Blood chimeras * Anomalous human combustion * Bone shedders * Skin shedders * "Perfection" of the eye * Dearth of memory traces * Sudden increase of hominid brain size * Health and the weather * Periodicity of epidemics * Extreme longevity * AIDS anomalies * ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 32: Mar-Apr 1984 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Natural Laser Beacons "It has long been realized that the Earth's upper atmosphere cannot be in thermodynamic equilibrium, and during the last decade astronomers have made telescopic observations of nonequilibrium processes taking place in the upper atmospheres of our Earth-like neighbors, Mars and Venus. A preliminary analysis by Michael Mumma, of Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, and his colleagues. indicated that processes analogous to optical pumping in laboratory lasers were taking place and led to the coining of the term 'natural lasers.' Now, Deming and colleagues from the Goddard team have taken new observations of emission from Mars and Venus at wavelengths near 10 micrometers ... and modelled them to show that stimulated emission -- the effect which makes lasers so powerful -- accounts for up to seven per cent of the total emission. This is not a large amplification factor by laboratory standards, particularly for a CO2 laser. But, the authors speculate that the sheer size of the natural lasers could make them useful tools in the future for communicating with distant civilizations beyond our own planetary system." The atmospheres of Mars and Venus are almost pure CO2 . The CO2 molecules are excited by the absorption of energetic solar photons; then, thermally emitted photons at about 10 micrometers from lower reaches of the atmosphere collide with the excited molecules, stimulating them to emit another 10-micrometer photon, thus doubling the number of photons. This is typical laser action. Deming ...
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... and Persistence of Altruism BHB18 The Evolution and Persistence of Homosexuality BHB19 Unusual Human Sexual Activity BHB20 The Puzzle of Human Handedness BHB21 Handedness and Longevity BHB22 Handedness and Health BHB23 Handedness and Mathematical and Verbal Abilities BHB24 The Uniqueness of Bipedalism BHB25 Human Asymmetry in Locomotion BHB26 Wolf-Children BHB27 Eminence Correlated with Time of Birth BHB28 General Eminence Correlated with Planetary Position BHB29 Eminence in Sports Champions Correlated with the Position of Mars; the "Mars Effect" BHB30 Cultural Creativity Correlated with Solar Activity BHB31 Cultural Flowering Correlated with Climate BHB32 Eminence and Order of Birth BHB33 Periodicity in the Population of Living Eminent People BHB34 Eminence Correlated with Longevity BHB35 Intelligence Correlated with Season of Birth BHB36 Intelligence Correlated with Birth Order BHB37 Intelligence Correlated with Myopia BHB38 A Relationship between Intelligence and Flicker-Frequency Response BHB39 Increasing Intelligence with Vitamin Intake BHB40 ... Intelligences of Identical Twins Reared Apart BHB41 Likelihood of College Matriculation and Season of Birth BHB42 Mathematical Ability: Sex Differences BHB43 Intelligence Correlated with Stature Personality Correlated with Astronomy Inheritability of Intelligence Intelligence and Gender Human Intelligence Affected by Past Natural Cataclysms Economic Activity Correlated with Geomagnetic Field Schizophrenia Correlated with Season of Birth Disturbed Human Activity Correlated with Geomagnetic Field Tickling Phenomena Face Preference Correlated with Menstrual Cycle Curious Crowd Behavior (at Train Platforms) Why Do People Stick Out Their Tongues When Concentrating? Intelligence as a Pathogen Behaviorisms Transmitted by Organ Transplants Meme Phenomena Effect of Music (Mozart's ) on Mental Performance Motherhood Improves Learning and Memory BHC CHEMICAL AND PHYSICAL ANOMALIES BHC1 Electric People BHC2 Magnetic People BHC3 Body Potentials Correlated with Lunar Phase BHC4 Brain Electricity (EEGs) BHC5 Very High Body Temperatures BHC6 Unusual Body-Temperature Cycles ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 56: Mar-Apr 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Large moon essential to the development of life?Even before its well known effect on romance, our moon was the key to the development of life on earth, according to J. Pearson. He ventures that our ponderous moon (much larger than the moons of Mars) was the key to the melting of the earth's core via tidal friction. With a fluid core, the earth developed a strong magnetic field (much stronger than those of the other inner planets) through dynamo action. This field protected nascent life from space radiation -- and here we are! (Hecht, Jeff; "Lunar Link with Life on ... ," New Scientist, p. 40, January 21, 1988.) Comment. Current scientific opinion declares that the moon was captured by the earth -- a rather rare astronomical event. The capture of a very large moon would be even rarer. From this shaky chain of thoughts, we conclude that life in the universe must be exceedingly scarce. However, such long chains of inferences are usually found to be far off the mark. From Science Frontiers #56, MAR-APR 1988 . 1988-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 132: NOV-DEC 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects It Depends on How you Look at It!The "Face on Mars," that is; that eroded hill in the Cydonia region that vaguely resembles a human face. When a recent photo of the "Face" taken by the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) was published far and wide in the science press, we thought the matter had finally been settled. The photo showed a strange hill obviously sculpted by natural forces. No question about it; there was not a soupcon of artificiality. But it now seems that if you look at the "Face" at other lighting angles and process the same data in different ways, ... of under the "chin"; an almost complete lack of contrast; and enough cloudiness to scatter most of the light and eliminate shadows. To add to these difficult circumstances, JPL-MIPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory-Mission Image Processing Laboratory] personnel, apparently judging that the controversy over artificiality would not be ended when the actual photo was released, processed the image through two filters having the effect of flattening and suppressing image details. This step is documented at a JPL web site. Here we do image processing correctly and present the results of computer corrections to compensate for the poor lighting and low viewing angle. The actual image shows clearly the impropriety of the JPL-MIPL actions because the visual impression of artificiality persists. However, appearances after a discovery are not a valid basis for ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 74: Mar-Apr 1991 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Repent! the phase change is coming!The world as we know it may not end in a nuclear holocaust or even in the greenhouse effect. Rather, suggest M. M. Grone and M. Sher, the universe-as-a -whole may undergo a phase change. Such an event has already happened once and it may again. Approximately 10-10 seconds after the Big Bang, the force laws changed discontinuously as the universe cooled. Some models of the cosmos predict that another such phase change may occur when photons suddenly acquire mass. Grone and Sher have sketched the effects on terrestrial civilization: "The most dramatic ... would be the elimination of all static electric and magnetic fields over a range greater than 1 cm, and the elimination of all electromagnetic radiation with frequencies smaller than a few hundred gigahertz. We have shown that there would be relatively little impact on atomic structure and on solar radiation. The absence of electrostatic fields would force a redesign of current power plants (to use smaller solenoids); the absence of radio and television waves would force a much greater use of cables. The elimination of solar and geomagnetic fields would have a significant meteorological impact. The potential ly most devastating effect could be on the propagation of neural impulse along motor neurons; it appears that the effects might be small, but they do depend on the precise value of the photon mass." Crone and Sher conclude that the ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 128: MAR-APR 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects How to Win by Loosing (twice)It's all exceedingly counterintuitive. If you switch randomly between two games of chance, each of which is guaranteed to empty your pockets if played separately, you can actually win. This phenomenon can be proved mathematically, but we will not inflict this upon our readers, even if we understood it. Two games played with coins illustrate the effect. One game employs a weighted coin such that the probability of winning is much less than 50%. If played alone, your capital decreases steadily in a rather smooth curve, with a small win now and then but many small losses. The ... game requires two weighted coins and is also a losing proposition by itself. Here, though, the graph of your assets vs. the number of games played is a sawtooth. There are sharp increases and downturns, but with an average downward trend. Switching between the two games in a random manner has the effect of locking in a win before the next loss comes along. It's a ratchet effect. Your overall capital will rise, at least it does according to the equations, though your intuition cannot help but doubt it. No wonder this Is called Parrondo's paradox! (Harmer, Gregory P., and Abbott, Derek; "Losing Strategies Can Win by Farrondo's Paradox," Nature, 402:864, 1999. Anonymous; "Losing to ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 120: Nov-Dec 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Bye-bye Mercury, and Maybe Mars During the 1950s, the campaign of mainstream science to discredit Velikovsky assured the public that the solar system was the epitome of stability -- wayward planets were impossible. Then along came chaos theory which implied that the flight of a butterfly in Brazil could, in principle, affect weather in Canada. In effect, a slight change in initial conditions could, in the fullness of time, have very large effects. Now, it is generally admitted that the solar system is chaotic after all. Each planet is subject to the tiny, butterfly-like gravitational tugs of the other planets, especially Jupiter ... Given enough time, these gravitational nuances can result in the ejection of a planet from the solar system -- and may already have done so in the past! Mercury and Mars are the most vulnerable on a billion-year time scale. In the case of Mercury, its orbit will become more and more elliptical according to computer simulations. Eventually a close gravitational encounter with Venus is possible. This could send Mercury careening off into deep space. The probability of this happening is only 1 in a 1000 over 5 billion years, but it is not zero. Mars might likewise be ejected by a passing nudge from earth. However, this encounter could go the other way. Depending upon the celestial dynamics of the encounter, Mars might gravitationally fling earth out into the Galaxy, and our ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 86: Mar-Apr 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Geysers As Detectors Of Distant Earthquakes June 1992. Landers, California. An earthquake of magnitude 7.5 shook this small town. In apparent sympathy with the Landers disturbance, seismic activity appeared from one end of California to the other, as well as in Nevada, Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming. The Landers quake stimulated unusual seismicity in the solid black areas. Yellowstone Park, Wyoming. Here, 1100 kilometers from Landers, the geyser Echinus, which had been erupting on a regular schedule of every 56 minutes, went berserk. It didn't settle down for 34 hours. Geyser eruptions are frequently disturbed by nearby quakes, ... least among U.S . researchers, holds that stress generated when a fault slips in an earthquake peters out within a distance equal to a couple of times the length of the ruptured fault. For Landers, where about 70 kilometers of fault ruptured, this would amount to only about onetenth of the observed reach." Seismologists are now searching for ways to account for these unexpectedly far-reaching effects. (Monastersky, Richard; "Yellowstone Geyser Shows Quake Effect," Science News, 142:428, 1992. Also: Kerr, Richard A.; "Landers Quake's Long Reach Is Shaking Up Seismologists," Science, 259:29, 1993.) From Science Frontiers #86, MAR-APR 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 76: Jul-Aug 1991 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology An ancient egyptian ship in australia? THE MEXICAN SELLOS: POSSIBLE EVIDENCE FOR EARLY EUROPEAN CONTACTS The orogrande, nm, site Astronomy Catastrophic flooding on mars? Will earth's rings return? Biology Ants as "excitable subunits" Eight leatherback mysteries FLYING, PARACHUTING, AND FALLING FROGS Geology Baby oil UNDERGROUND CURRENT ELECTRIFIES AUSTRALIA Geophysics Atlantic's waves getting bigger Subterranean "circles" Psychology PSI EFFECTS IN THE SACRIFICE OF MARINE ALGAE Physics COLD FUSION: NEW EXPERIMENTS AND THEORIES NEW INSIGHTS AS TO THE STRUCTURE OF MATTER ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 154: Jul - Aug 2004 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Click-click, Click-click-click, Click, Click-click, Click (Click languages) 200 Mystery Towers Some notes on anomalous early Americans Astronomy Biological Hot Spots on Mars? Could we Really be at the Center of the Universe? The Black Drop Effect Biology Shallow Samples Reveal Deep Ignorance Are Nanobacteria Alive or just Strange Crystal? Geology The Carbonate Columns of Pobiti Kamani Fairy Circles vs Fairy Rings Geophysics Never! Never! Never! The Whymper Apparation Unclassified Sorry Rocks ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 68: Mar-Apr 1990 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Science waits for - almost begs for - refutation Two Japanese scientists, H. Hayasaka and S. Takeuchi, have spun up some gyroscopes, weighed them and - Horrors! - found that they weighed less when spinning in one direction than the other. They admit the heresy of their results: "The experimental result cannot be explained by the usual theories." The gyroscopes employed are small, weighing about 175 grams when not spinning. When spun clockwise, as viewed from above, no weight changes were observed. But rotating at 13,000 rpm counterclockwise, the 175-gram gyroscope lost about 10 milligrams. The balance's ... was 0.3 milligram. This is a very large effect; and the weight loss increased linearly with increased speed of rotation. Obviously, the physicists are most perplexed by this "antigravity" effect. Perplexity has been accompanied by outright disbelief. R.L . Park, a physics professor at Maryland, remarked: "It would be revolutionary if true. But it is almost certainly wrong. Almost all extraordinary claims are wrong." R.L . Forward, an Air Force consultant, con-curs: "It's a careful experiment. But I doubt it's real, primarily because I've seen so many of these things fall apart." (Anonymous; "Anti-Gravity Effect Claim by Japanese," San Francisco Chronicle, December 28, ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 44: Mar-Apr 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Atmospheric Footprints Of Icy Meteors Serendipity triumphs again. From a dayglow experiment aboard NASA's satellite DE-1 (Dynamic Explorer-1 ) comes an unexpected discovery of considerable potential importance. Looking down on the earth, the DE-1 records the light emitted by atmospheric oxygen at altitudes of about 200-300 kilometers -- this is the so-called "dayglow." The experimenters, L. Frank, J. Sigwarth, and J. Craven, all at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, have found that their dayglow images are speckled with transitory dark spots. "According to Sigwarth, each hole expands like ... The Iowa group thinks that the holes or spots are created by meteors hitting the upper atmosphere because the spots follow the same time distribution as meteors. For example, they are more frequent during the well-known meteor showers. The theory is that the dark spots are formed when ice associated with the meteors is turned into water vapor, which reacts with the atmospheric oxygen producing the dayglow, in effect removing temporarily part of the light source. So far, everything seems relatively nonanomalous. But when quantities are calculated, though, jaws begin to drop. The sizes of the spots imply that the average meteor involved weighs 10 kilograms, mostly ice and far larger than has been thought. In fact, they may be characterized as small icy comets; that is, compositionally like the dirty snowballs ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 116: Mar-Apr 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Earthquake Weather Folklore reserves the term "earthquake weather" for the sultry, ominously uneasy period said to precede large earthquakes. Scientists have generally belittled suggestions that weather could have anything to do with the ponderous forces unleashed during a quake. Despite such authoritative pronouncements, many Californians, who have ample experience with seismic events, insist that quakes and weather are somehow connected. They may be right -- at least some of the time. In the five years following the 7.3 Landers earthquake of June 28, 1992, the frequency of smaller quakes has peaked reliably every September. However, before the Landers event, no such pattern is ... . One thought is that the average atmospheric pressure, which is lower in the summer months, reduces the downward pressure on the earth's crust enough to allow easier slippage along fault lines. This sounds reasonable, but why did this effect not occur before the Landers quake? The answer given is that perhaps the Landers event "sensitized" nearby faults! (Monastersky, R.; "California Shakes Most Often in September," Science News, 152:373, 1997.) Since the Landers event, Earthquakes in the weestern U.S . have been following an annual cycle. From Science Frontiers #116, MAR-APR 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 128: MAR-APR 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A Different Sort of Crop Circle Ball lightning reports are very common, but here is one worth recording because of its unusual physical effects. It was investigated and reported by O. Stummer. In May or June of 1988 or 1989 around 2 P.M . CEST, Mr. Alois Fuehrer, a farmer of 38 years from Jungschlag, a small village south of Ottenschlag, northern Lower Austria, 850 meters above sea level, returned early from fieldwork because a heavy thunderstorm moved in from the north-west. Fuehrer stood in the open on a wooden plank at the rear of the diesel tractor driven by his father. The vehicle ... passed the last Ottenschlag houses southbound, when he noticed a falling object. It was round, 20 centimeters across, and "seemed to come down like a toy balloon", vertical, soundless, without rotation. It was brilliant white, a steady light, and had "something like a smoke trail". Only 20 to 30 meters to the right of the tractor and of the road, after 4 to 6 seconds, the object hit the surface of a green summer barley field, flashed up and "exploded with a loud, very high pitched bang". Mr. Fuehrer said "this was no thunder", and noticed no heat or pressure wave. However, what he felt caused panic--a tingling, and his hairs stood on end on his head, ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 56: Mar-Apr 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Wave-bands in calm waters and biscay boils An excerpt from an article in Nature: "There are numerous reports of internal waves being 'made visible' on the sea surface by their effect on the surface-wave field and the production of bands of steeper, often breaking, waves separated by zones of relatively calm water. The effect is sometimes quite dramatic. There are accounts of a 'low roar' as the bands of breaking waves, 'walls of white water,' pass a vessel. The bands are sometimes visible from aircraft, on ships' radar and are observed from satellites. In the Bay of Biscay ' ... ' have been reported on the sea surface in the calm zones, and appear to be related to pulses of nutrients from the thermocline." These surface phenomena are truly delightful and almost always the consequence of internal waves interacting with the surface. The great bulk of the referenced report is concerned with sonar observations of internal waves and their effects along the coast of Scotland. (Thorpe, S.A ., et al; "Internal Waves and Whitecaps," Nature, 330:740, 1987.) Comment. For some remarkable accounts of wave packets, as well as solitary waves, see category GHW in Earthquakes, Tides, Unidentified Sounds. This book is described here . On March 28, 1964, in the Indian Ocean, the R.R .S . Discovery encountered ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 32: Mar-Apr 1984 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Thou canst not stir a flower, without troubling of a star This poetic title from Francis Thompson tries to express the unity of nature from the smallest to the largest realms. One characteristic of the realms even smaller than that of the flower is the quantization typical of the subatomic world -- that is, microscopic nature. At the human locus in the dimensional scheme of things, quantization is difficult to detect outside the physics laboratory. Daniel M. Greenberger, perhaps with the above title in mind, asked whether quantization might not also exist in astronomy and cosmology -- that is, macroscopic nature. He has applied the principles of quantum ... far from atomic nuclei, being vast assemblages of diverse matter. Somewhat surprisingly, his equations are successful in predicting some features of these two macroscopic entities. (Greenberger, Daniel M.; "Quantization in the Large," Foundations of Physics, 13:903, 1983.) Comment. At the very least it is mindstretching to find that complex systems with millions of stars may exhibit quantum effects. With some relief, we note that like microscopic quantization effects, the consequences of macroscopic quantization will be hard to discern in our comfortable "smooth" world. From Science Frontiers #32, MAR-APR 1984 . 1984-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 68: Mar-Apr 1990 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Impact Delivery Of Early Oceans Where did the earth's oceans come from? For decades the stock answer has been: from the condensation of vapors escaping from the planet's cooling crust; that is, "outgassing." The possibility that some terrestrial water might have ar rived from extraterrestrial sources after the earth's formation has been discounted. The major reason behind this neglect was the expectation that the erosive effects of large-scale impacts of water-carrying comets and asteroids would preclude any net accumulation of volatiles, and could even reduce any existing inventories of surface water. C.F . Chyba has recently reexamined this question ... cometary water influx vs. impact-caused water losses using the latest estimates of comet/asteroid fluxes during the period between 4.5 and 3.5 billion years ago, when bombardment of the inner solar system was thought to be especially severe. Rather than the expected net loss, Chyba computes that the earth would really have gained more than 0.2 - 0.7 ocean masses in that billion-year period. Venus would have fared equally well, but Mars, more sensitive to impact erosion, would have accreted "only" a layer of water 10-100 meters deep over the whole planet! (This Martian water is now mostly below the surface supposedly.) (Chyba, Christopher F.; "Impact Delivery and Erosion of Planetary Oceans in the Early Inner ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 98: Mar-Apr 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A Unified Theory Of Geophysics It takes a lot of nerve to propose a theory that can unite such a fragmented field as geophysics. H.R . Shaw makes a try in his new book: Craters, Cosmos, and Chronicles: A New Theory of the Earth . Shaw's ideas have recently been reviewed in Science News and our item is based on that article. Shaw contends that cosmic projectiles -- asteroids and comets -- have controlled almost all features of the earth's evolution. For example: Impacts have determined the positions of the continents. They have controlled the geomagnetic field. They have created volcanoes and massive ... includes the Chicxulub crater (Yucatan), the Manson crater (Iowa), the Avak crater (Alaska), and three more in Russia -- all of which were gouged out about the time of the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K -T ) boundary. Shaw has plotted several other swaths of different ages. The application of chaos theory to solar system debris. Shaw hypothesizes that nonlinear gravitational effects channel asteroids and comets into the inner solar system in intermittent bursts. The bursts are then captured by the earth and other inner planets, with some of these objects grouped in like orbits. Gravitational feedback occurs from earth to orbiting debris. Shaw believes that the uneven distribution of mass inside the earth -- due probably to the impact that created the moon -- influences where asteroids and comets ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 38: Mar-Apr 1985 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Hypnosis And Memory Hypnotic hypernesia is the unusually vivid and complete recall of information from memory while under hypnosis. The present article reviews the extensive literature on the subject and the longstanding controversy as to whether hypnosis can enhance memory at all. One fact does seem clear, hypnosis does not help subjects recall nonsense data or information without meaning, such as random numbers and words. When it comes to meaningful phrases, sentences, paragraphs, etc., hypnosis does aid recall to some extent. If the words evoke considerable imagery, as poetry often does, hypnosis seems to help recall even more. Finally, the recall of meaningful visual images and ... series of images is helped most of all by hypnosis. In fact, there is some evidence that eidetic imagery, that vivid, near-total recall of images, which is almost exclusively a talent of childhood, can be recovered by mature subjects under hypnosis. There do not seem to be any theories that explain all these effects of hypnosis on memory. (Relinger, Helmut; "Hypnotic Hypernesia," American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 26:212, 1984.) Comment. Of course, memory shorn of hypnotic effects cannot really be explained either. The results of Relinger's survey make one wonder whether the human brain is specially "wired" or built to efficiently handle visual imagery that is "meaningful" in the context of human experience and theoretical expectations. This kind ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 128: MAR-APR 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Burps of Death Not only did the poor dinosaurs have to contend with an asteroid impact and a lurch of the poles, but also with the possible ignition of voluminous methane burps. 65-million years ago. This was the time of the well-publicized, but still hypothetical, asteroid impact. It is said to have wreaked havoc on our wounded planet and, especially, the dinosaurs. Volcanos spewed out vast lava fields and filled the air with greenhouse gases and dust. It was a bad time for many life forms. Actually, It may have been far worse than generally advertised. In addition to the volcanic activity and climate ... whimper. (Day, Michael; "Hell on Earth," New Scientist, p. 5, November 20, 1999) 55 million years ago. Ten million years after the dinosaurs may have roasted in a global firestorm, another methane burp may have erupted from the oceans. This burp was slower and did not ignite but was just as lethal. It filled with atmosphere with a highly effective green-house: methane. The result was a pulse of global warming; as seen in a 5-7 -deg C increase in the temperature of ocean-bottom water during that period. Biological evidence for the event occurs in the skeletons of marine animals that litter the ocean sediments laid down in that lethal period. On the land, prior to the methane release, North America ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 104: Mar-Apr 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects An invisible information superhighway?The eclectic nature of anomaly research occasionally uncovers connections between diverse areas of research. We recount one such instance here. On one hand is the neurological research of M.A . Persinger, at the Laurentian University, inquiring into the claimed effects of minute electromagnetic signals, such as those observed in the geomagnetic field, upon human consciousness and perception. On the other hand, we have R.G . Jahn's work in the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) program, which looks into the anomalous information transfer between humans and the environment, as claimed to be seen in psychokinesis and remote viewing experiments ... The research goals and methodologies differ, and the resulting reports couched in different terminologies, but the similarities are what is really important. Both scientists are exploring unconventional information pathways connecting the human brain (consciousness) and the environment. The pathways are open in both directions. First, we quote the summary from a recent Persinger paper. The jargon may be technical, but one can readily visualize the human brain immersed in a sea of signals -- nominally electromagnetic but possibly of other sorts. "Contemporary neuroscience suggests the existence of fundamental algorithms by which all sensory transduction is translated into an intrinsic, brain-specific code. Direct stimulation of these codes within the human temporal or limbic cortices by applied electromagnetic patterns may require energy levels which are within the range of both geomagnetic activity and contemporary communication ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 74: Mar-Apr 1991 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Solar eclipse affects a pendulum -- again!The period of a Foucault pendulum located at Jassy University, Romania, was carefully monitored during the solar eclipse of February 15, 1961. The pendulum's length was 25.008 meters; its spherical bob weighed 5.5 kilograms. The eclipse commenced at 8h 49m 3s and terminated at 11h 16m 50s. Observations are recorded in the table below left: Time Period (sec) 8:49 10.028 0.004 9:13 10.028 0.004 9:43 10.024 0.004 10:00 10.019 0.004 10: ... 10.020 0.004 10:24 10.024 0.004 10:58 10.028 0.004 Effects of a solar eclipse upon a paraconical pendulum. (After M.F .C . Allais). If the above effect of the eclipse on the pendulum period is not strange enough, consider what happened at 10:08, in the chart, above right. "At that moment a surprising fact occurred, the pendulum produced a perturbation by describing an ellipse whose major axis deviated in relation to the initial plane by approximately 15 . The eccentricity of the ellipse was 0.18. At the end of the eclipse the pendulum continued to maintain the elliptical oscillation, but the major axis approached increasingly to its initial plane." (Jeverdan, G. ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 44: Mar-Apr 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The moon, the stars, and human behavior We humans have an inherited penchant for observing the heavens and wondering if the stars can affect our daily lives. Secular humanists hate astrology with a passion because, like Cassius in Julius Caesar, they believe we are masters of our own destinies. Nevertheless, astrol-ogy columns are still prominent in most newspapers. In the scientific press, however, we have to score a big plus for the anti-astrologers. First, Nature has just published a detailed analysis of the predictive power of astrology, and astrology has come up very short. The Nature study is by S. Carlson, ... Despite the fact that we worked with some of the best astrologers in the country, recommended by the advising astrologers for their expertise in astrology and their ability to use CPI (California Personality Inventory), despite the fact that every reasonable suggestion made by the advising astrologers was worked into the experiment, despite the fact that the astrologers approved the design and predicted 50 per cent as the 'minimum' effect they would expect to see, astrology failed to perform at a level better than chance. Tested using double-blind methods, the astrologers' predictions proved to be wrong. Their predicted connection between the positions of the planets and other astronomical objects at the time of birth and the personalities of test subjects did not exist. The experiment clearly refutes the astrological hypothesis." (Carlson, Shawn ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 50: Mar-Apr 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Mind-bending the velocity vectors of marine algae From the referenced paper's abstract: "A consciousness experiment in which the Doppler shift of He/Ne laser light was used to describe changes in the velocity and vector of a marine alga, Dunaliella, was reported by Pleass and Dey in 1985. Because the subject of the consciousness experiment is living, we expect strings of baseline velocity and vector data which are, at some level, inextricably time-variant. This complicates the statistical procedures which must be used to analyze the data. "This paper examines the variation in baseline data strings, and describes two alternative statistical procedures which ... been used to determine the probability of consciousness effects. Two levels of control are applied, allowing global comparison of frequency distributions of experimental scores with similar distributions derived artificially from baseline data. In both cases the null hypothesis is that there is no psi effect. The data quite strongly suggest the rejection of the null hypothesis, although the distributions of run scores contain several values beyond 3 sigma and are nonnormal. This limits the definition of probabilities." (Pleass, C.M ., and Dey, N. Dean; "Finding the Rabbit in the Bush: Statistical Analysis of Consciousness Research Data from the Motile Alga Dunaliella," The Explorer, 3:6 , no. 2, 1986. The Explorer is a publication of the Society for Scientific Exploration.) Comment. Scientifically ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 44: Mar-Apr 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Of Dust Clouds And Ice Ages Ice cores from the polar ice at Camp Century, in Greenland, have been analyzed for the presence of cosmic dust. "It is concluded that on five occasions during the interval 20,000-14,000 years BP, cosmic dust mass concentrations in the solar system rose by one and two orders of magnitude above present day levels. Moreover if the particles found in these ice core samples are indicative of the particle size distribution which prevailed in the interplanetary medium at that time, then it may be concluded that the space number density of submicron sized particles must have uncreased by a factor of 105 or ... . During these times the light transmission properties of the solar system would have been significantly altered resulting in major adverse effects to the earth's climate. Thus it is quite possible that these dust congestion episodes were responsible for the abrupt climatic variations which occurred toward the end of the last Ice Age." Whence these interplanetary dust clouds? The author of this article ruled out terrestrial volcanism (an insufficient source of iridium) and encounters with asteroids and cometary tails (too infrequent to account for the long periods of high dust levels). Rather, the dust source may have been the same event that created the recently discovered dust ring between Mars and Jupiter, which is believed to be only a few tens of thousands of years old. The nature of the "event" is not specified ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 128: MAR-APR 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Archeometeorology (Top) Even with hazy viewing, the six brightest Pleiads are usually visible. (Bottom) With good seeing more of the stars come into view. Ancient farmers the world over counted off the seasons and fixed planting times by watching the stars and the sun. But the stars can also help forecast the weather, even though they have no influence over it. We'll call this unique sort of archeoastronomy: "archeometeorology." Farmer-astronomers in the drought-prone regions of the Andes learned how, after what must have been centuries of sky-watching, to wring rainfall predictions from observations of the Pleiades. ... Andean farmers knew from experience that an El Nino was on the way. This betokened reduced rainfall and told them to postpone the planting of their potatoes by 4-6 weeks for best yields. The critical observations were made between June 13 and 24, when the Pleiades shine brightly just before dawn over the northeastern horizon. At this low angle, the presence of the subvisual cirrus has an obvious effect on the brightness of the stars in the cluster, as indicated in the figure. Some of the lesser stars seem to disappear altogether. The visibility effect itself is rather subtle. It is remarkable enough that it was noticed at all by ancient peoples, much more so was their making the obscure connection to future weather. (Orlove, Benjamin S., et al; "Forecasting Andean ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 62: Mar-Apr 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Visual Sightings Of Vortices In Britain Of late, the cereal fields of Britain have been visited by a phenomenon which flattens the crops in nicely geometric circles, rings, and even patterns of circles. The meteorologists attribute these circles to unseen vortices in the atmos phere; more radical speculators invoke UFOs and mysterious Russian weapons. Pertinent to the explanation of this phenomenon are recent sightings of vapor vortices in regions where crop circles are common. While no one has yet seen these vortices gouging out circles, these visual manifestations betoken strong circular winds in the proper locations. Here follows a recent account: "Looking across the field of winter wheat to the ... ..., he suddenly noticed at a distance of 80 metres... what he took to be a large puff of white 'bonfire smoke' rising to 15 feet (5m) maximum height. The outer part of this 'smoke' column was scarcely rotating but the middle part, which was too thick to see through, was spinning rapidly. In a couple of seconds the effect had ended; the spinning central column had gone and the residual 'smoke' or cloud of fog drifted gently in the prevailing light north-east wind towards the southwest and dissolved after going several yards. He used the word smoke out of convenience but said that the effect was more likely caused by water vapour, cloud droplets or fog. He further emphasized the swiftness of the appearance and ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 134: MAR-APR 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Water Signposts, Ritual Paths The high, desloate, and sere plains of western South America are an ideal medium upon which to inscribe immense pictographs. Die-straight lines several miles long and a few yards wide were made centuries ago on Peru's Nazca Plain by simply removing off to the side the rocky veneer of the plain's surface. Less than an inch of rain falls each year there -- not enough to wash out of word of what was written 2,000 years ago. Actually, no words as such are inscribed, rather there are huge biomorphs (for example, a pelican 1,000 feet long ... oriented parallel to the flow of surface water. Seashells and ceremonial drinking vessels have been excavated near the trapezoids, suggesting water-connected rituals. Fossil footpaths follow many of the Nazca lines. Accumulating evidence has led many archeologists and anthropologists to conclude that some of the Nazca lines are ritual pathways, meant to be walked upon and to lead processions to spots where prayers for more water would be most effective. The geoglyphs, however, remain mysterious. (McClintock, Jack; "The Nasca Lines Solution," Discover, 21:74, December 2000.) Comments. The Nazca lines have not been neglected in past newsletters. See SF#47 and SF#63. Ritual processions like those hypothesized for the Nazca Plain resemble thosethought to have taken place along Avebury's avenue, ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 74: Mar-Apr 1991 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Eel Oddities Garter snakes are reknowned for their habit of congregating in large, writhing masses, but we never heard of "eel balls" until A. Gardiner mentioned them in a recent issue of the Fortean Times. "These [eel balls] are recorded in Christopher Moriarty's excellent Eels: a Natural and Unnatural History (David and Charles, 1978). Moriarity cites Pliny as the earliest historical reference. According to him, Eel Balls occur in Lake Garda, Italy, when it has been storm-tossed by the effects of the October 'Autumn star'. Smitt in his Scandanavian Fishes (1895) says that eels ... themselves together in bunches 'up to a fathom in circumference' and are seen rolling along the stream beds, or, strangely, resting in this position. On 17 August 1935, fishery scientist J.C . Medcof observed, in the outflow of Lake Ainslie in Nova Scotia, 'three splendid clumps of Eels, half a metre in diameter, 30 to a clump, knotted tightly and remaining motionless in the rushes.' Medcof mentions that Eel Balls are sometimes free floating on the surface, which suggests formation with an air pocket or some communal control of air bladders. He says that this behavior occurs before eels 'silver' prior to the spawning migration. The record of Eel Balls in Nova Scotia proves that this behaviour is not confined to the European Eel." (Gardiner ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 80: Mar-Apr 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Archaea: the living ancestors of all life forms Life's place of origin may soon shift from that long-favored "warm little pond" to undersea hydrothermal vents. "Important new discoveries on the properties of the early earth and atmosphere, including the frequency and size of bolide impacts, have strongly implicated submarine hydrothermal vent systems as the likely habitat for the earliest organisms and ecosystems, while stimulating considerable discussion, hypotheses and experiments related to chemical and biochemical evolution. Some of the key questions regarding the origins of life at submarine hydrothermal vent environments are focussed on the effects of temperature on synthesis and stability of organic compounds and the characteristics ... the earliest organisms on earth. There is strong molecular and physiological evidence from present-day mircoorganisms that the earliest organisms on earth were capable of growing at high temperatures (about 90 C) and under conditions found in volcanic environments. These 'Archaea', the living ancestors of all life forms, display a variety of strategies for growth and survival at high temperatures, including thermostable enzymes active at temperatures about 140 C. Further molecular and biochemical characterization of the presently cultured thermophiles, as well as future work with the many species, particularly from subsurface crustal environments, not yet isolated in culture, may help resolve some of the important questions regarding the nature of the first organisms that evolved on earth." (Baross, J.A .; "Hyperthermophilic Archaea: Implications for the Origin ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 80: Mar-Apr 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Concentric, rotating luminous rings seen in sweden On an evening in late January, 1991, near Borlange, Sweden, four observers watched what seemed to be a system of luminous rings for about 15-20 minutes. The rings were estimated to be 2-5 kilometers away and 10-30 meters in size. E. Witalis has provided a direct translation of their report. "The light phenomenon, which was strongly luminous, consisted of scintillating, rotating rings arranged as a system of plates (small rings in the centre and increasingly large ones towards the edges). The rings seemed to consist of sparks running around in a circular ... to location, and the sparks moved in a pattern without spreading out at the edges. It seemed that strong force was controlling the event. The sparks looked like having a core and a 'tail' behind. They looked like being able to crackle but no sound was heard, perhaps because of the distance. It was interesting to note that the rings were spinning in opposite directions. The effect clearly illuminated the surrounding air space. The whole light phenomenon took place with knifesharp edges in clear weather (temperature between -1 and -3 deg. C." (Witalis. Erik; "An Air Plasma Whirl, Seen in the Atmosphere, Sweden, January 1991," Journal of Meteorology, U.K ., 16:273, 1991.) Comment. Of course ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 86: Mar-Apr 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects An Electrical Virtuoso August 12, 1992. Conwy, Wales. Here is carefully observed case of ball lightning with rather spectacular side effects. Mrs. P. Stafford was looking through her front window: ". .. when she saw what she first thought was a 'ball of white fire', larger than a football, about 20 to 30 feet from her, travelling horizontally at a constant height up her drive. There was very heavy rainfall, perhaps with some hail, but no lightning or thunder. The ball was seen against the background of other houses and her view of it was not interrupted. It was round, ... and predominantly white with some yellow, and surrounded by a blue, irridescent halo. She said it was reminiscent of a meteor or comet and the light from it was like that from a fluorescent tube. It was bright enough to be clearly visible in daylight and appeared to be spinning or rotating. It hit the oak tree, perhaps 12 or 13 feet away, in Mrs. Wignall's front garden, with a terrific crack and explosion. "The ball was in sight for about 10 to 15 seconds, and its appearance did not change until it struck the tree, whereupon it became smaller. It hit the trunk about half way up and split the bark and trunk, showering splinters of wood over a distance of about 50 yards. As it did so, it rolled ...
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... earth's orbit (its "obliquity"). The well-known result is our yearly procession of seasons. Without the steadying effect of the moon, however, the earth's obliquity would probably have swung chaotically over much larger values. Such extreme changes would have been inimical to the development of life, particularly advanced life. As a case in point, the polar axis of Mars, with only two tiny moons to dampen its spin excursions, seems to have gone through many wild swings, as indicated in the figure. What deadly climatic changes must have wracked our sister planet! (Touma, Jihad, and Wisdom, Jack; "The Chaotic Obliquity of Mars," Science, 259: 1294, 1993. Also: Laskar, J., and Robutel, ... now that we are doubly lucky! Computer runs demonstrate that the presence of our large moon has stabilized the earth's spin axis down the eons. Presently, the earth's spin axis makes an angle of 23.5 with the plane of the earth's orbit (its "obliquity"). The well-known result is our yearly procession of seasons. Without the steadying effect of the moon, however, the earth's obliquity would probably have swung chaotically over much larger values. Such extreme changes would have been inimical to the development of life, particularly advanced life. As a case in point, the polar axis of Mars, with only two tiny moons to dampen its spin excursions, seems to have gone through many wild swings, as indicated in the ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 98: Mar-Apr 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The earth has recently been swallowed by a cloud of inter-stellar gas Using cosmic-ray data and stellar spectra gathered by seven satellites, P.C . Frisch, at the University of Chicago, has constructed a cosmic scenario that reminds us of F. Hoyle's science fiction tale, The Black Cloud . According to Frisch, until just a few thousand years ago, the solar system was cruising through interstellar space that was almost devoid of matter. Then, perhaps within historical times, 2,000-8 ,000 years ago, the solar system plunged into an interstellar gas cloud. This cloud is believed to be ... ," Science, 265:1423, 1994. Also: Peterson, I.; "Finding a Place for the Sun in a Cloud," Science News, 146:148, 1994.) Comment. Note that the 2,000-8 ,000-year span brackets many key developments in human civilization. Also, see under ARCHEOLOGY in this issue. For a potentially serious effect this cloud may have on carbon dating. Getting back to Hoyle's "black cloud," we recall that his molecular cloud was sentient and intelligent, being a form of gaseous-phase life. Did our real gas cloud, now seemingly mute, communicate with ancient humans? "Clouds of the Gods." Sounds like a good book title! From Science Frontiers #98, ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 98: Mar-Apr 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Arp banished, but not redshift anomalies Several years ago, H. Arp, a noted American astronomer, moved to Europe to continue his research because, in part, of the hostility of American astronomers to his discoveries. The problem was (and still is) that Arp found galaxies that seem to be physically interacting and, therefore, at the same distance from earth, but yet have radically different or "discordant" redshifts. Since redshifts are supposed to be a measure of distance from the earth, an anomaly comes into focus. This anomaly; that is, the credibility of the redshift distance scale, challenges the ideas of an ... alone brings into question the interpretation of cosmological red-shift for all galaxies." (Moles, M., et al, including Arp; "Testing for Interaction between the Galaxies NGC 450 and UGC 807," Astrophysical Journal, 432:135, 1994.) But discordant redshifts are not limited to distant galaxies. "In the Milky Way, the so-called "K -effect" shows that hot, young stars seem to be exploding away from us in every direction (i .e ., they have an excess redshift right here in our own galaxy). If this had been heeded when first discovered, the expansion of the universe might never have been promulgated." (Arp, H.; "Companion Galaxies: A Test of the Assumption that Velocities ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 122: Mar-Apr 1999 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology The mosier mounds El nino -- bueno? The black pyramids Astronomy Our lucky star Ghost galaxies Is a singularity worse than a spinning cosmos? Biology Are we running on martian time? Another skin shedder A GENETIC DISCONNECT Another sucker Geology The earth hums more loudly in the afternoons Geophysics Bizarre phsiological effects of lightning Unusual wave Psychology Exceptional human experiences A FEW POTENTIAL EHEs Unclassified A REALLY MEANINGFUL COINCIDENCE Ach du lieber himmel Now we know why! ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 32: Mar-Apr 1984 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The 'great silence'; or why aren't aliens landing on the white house lawn?It is anomalous that despite the widespread belief that other civilizations must abound "out there," not one has yet contacted us. G.D . Brin has conducted an analysis of this puzzle and has come to these conclusions: "The quandry of the Great Silence gives the infant study of xenology its first traumatic struggle, between those who seek optimistic excuses for the apparent absence of sentient neighbors and those who enthusiastically accept the Silence as evidence for humanity's isolation in an open frontier. "Both approaches suffer greatly from personal bias ... from lack of detailed comparative study. In this article we have attempted to deal with a subject that, for all of its great importance, is almost ghostly in its intangibility. We have broken the subject into its logical elements and attempted a morphological discussion of the possibilities. Table I [not reproduced because of its size] presents an overview of many of the ideas discussed here and their respective effects on the equations.... "Some of the branch lines discussed here serve the optimists, while others seem pessimistic to an unprecedented degree. We have laid out only the outline of a full analysis of the problem. Further work should consider every experimental test that could be applied to this fundamental question of humanity's uniqueness. "This survey demonstrates that the Universe has many more ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 44: Mar-Apr 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Squirrels As Measures Of Geological Time Over a century ago, when the truth of biological evolution via natural selection was hotly debated, the proponents of Darwinism were delighted when the geologists presented them with almost endless periods of time in which evolution could progress in small steps from species to species. Now, in a strange turn-about, a creationist writer is using evolutionary theory to infer a very short history for the formation where geologists want a good deal of time. We quote from the conclusion of J.R . Meyer: "If any group of animals were ever going to undergo significant degrees of evolution from parent stock and obtain resultant ... wherein lies the fault. Is it in the violation of the Hardy-Weinberg concept, or is it in the time alloted for gene pool changes to occur?" Meyer answers his questions by stating that the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium concept seems reasonably well-founded, so that the problem must lie in the length of time estimated for the Kaibab squirrel's isolation from surrounding populations. In effect, Meyer concludes that the Grand Canyon is much younger than generally supposed. (Meyer, John R.; "Origin of the Kaibab Squirrel," Creation Research Society Quarterly, 22:68, 1985.) The Kaibab squirrel is isolated in the Kaibab Plateau (60 x 35 miles in extent). South of the canyon and elsewhere, the similar Albert squirrels may be found. ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 134: MAR-APR 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects I Must Go Down To The Goo Again!With apologies to Masefield for mangling a line of his poetry. it really is tine to go down to the sea and examine its microstructure. The ocean is not what it seems. When you snorkel in crystal-clear Caribbean waters, you do not sense that you are swimming in a very thin jelly. In reality, ocean water is filled with a complex tangle of microscopic strands and particles of gel. According to F. A zam , an oceanographer at Scripps: It's not in the textbooks or in the classical explanations. The gel's existence fundamentally changes our ideas ... the microcosmos in which sea organisms live. It has added another layer of complexity that people are only now starting to consider in the context of whole ocean systems . . Gel is like the dark matter of the sea. While sea gel does not impede the snorkeler, . it does herd microbes into clumps or microniches . which we cannot see either. These microbes. in effect, exist in a tangled. 3-D mesh that affects not only their movements but also those of their prey and predators. A few statistics confirm the amazing complexity of the seawater microcosm and its incredibly high microbe population density. The long strands in the oceanic gel are mostly crosslinked polysaccharides. If the polysaccharides in 1 milliliter of seawater could be placed end-to-end, they would stretch out to ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 56: Mar-Apr 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects How To Be Unfamous In Astronomy When Sky and Telescope devotes almost five full pages to a new book, you may be sure that something important has happened. The book is H. Arp's Quasars, Redshifts, and Controversies . We know that we have perhaps overplayed the shakiness of the redshiftdistance hypothesis and the fizzling of the Big Bang, but our whole cosmological outlook is at stake. Now, rather than review again the scientific pros and cons (you can read Arp's book for that), we will be content here with a few comments about how science has failed to work well in Arp's case. ... telescope time! Arp now lives in West Germany. (Burbidge, Geoffrey; "Quasars, Redshifts, and Controversies," Sky and Telescope, 75:38, 1988.) Comment. More political details may be found in Arp's book. Is Arp a martyrin-the-making? You bet he is! Burbidge, an admitted Arp sympathizer, suggests that the "Arp Effect" is only the tip of the iceberg. In closing his review, he invokes the ghost of Alfred Wegener, who had the temerity to suggest that continents could drift. From Science Frontiers #56, MAR-APR 1988 . 1988-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 50: Mar-Apr 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Quantized Galaxy Redshifts "The history of science relates many examples where the conventional view ultimately was proved wrong." Tifft and Cocke begin their article with this sentence. Wisely, they followed with the tale of how vehemently the quantization of the atom was resisted earlier in this century. They were wise because without such a reminder to be open-minded, many astronomers would automatically toss their article in the wastebasket! In fact, when Tifft's first paper on redshift quantization appeared in the Astrophysical Journal, the Editor felt constrained to add a note to the effect that the referees: "Neither could find obvious errors with the analysis nor ... that they could enthusiastically endorse publication." Even today, after much more evidence for redshift quantization has accumulated, scientific resistance to the idea is extreme. We shall now see what all this fuss is about. Tifft first became suspicious that the redshifts of galaxies might be quantized; that is, take on discrete values; when he found that galaxies in the same clusters possessed redshifts that were related to the shapes of the galaxies. The obvious inference was that the redshifts were at least partly dependent upon the galaxy itself rather than entirely upon the galaxy's speed of recession (or distance) from the earth. Then, he found more suggestions of quantization. The redshifts of pairs of galaxies differed by quantized amounts (see figure). More evidence exists for galactic quantization, but this ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 68: Mar-Apr 1990 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Periodical Invasions Of Aliens Forget those contemporary tales of UFO landings and human contacts with their alien navigators. Aliens have been land-ing here and mixing with the human populace for centuries. In fact, their traffic peaks about every 11 years, just when the solar cycle reaches its maximum. By now, you've probably guessed that F. Hoyle and N.C . Wickramasinghe are again talking about flu pandemics and sunspots. You must admit, however, that their correlation is becoming more and more convincing. Yearly means of daily sunspot numbers correlated with dates of flu pandemics First, we have their graph covering the past 70 years ... so, how do they ride in to afflict us on the peaks of the solar cycle? Here's how, in their words: "In conclusion, we note that electrical fields associated with intense solar winds can rapidly drive charged particles of the size of viruses down through the exposed upper atmosphere into the shelter of the lower atmosphere, the charging of such particles being due to the photoelectric effect. This could define one possible causal link between influenza pandemics and solar activity." (Hoyle, F., and Wickramasinghe, N. C.; "Sunspots and Influenza," Nature, 343: 304, 1990.) Reference. Periodic epidemics are cataloged in BHH3 in: Biological Anomalies: Humans II. To order, visit: here . From Science Frontiers #68, ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 98: Mar-Apr 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A Yagi Watches A Solar Eclipse During the partial solar eclipse of July 11, 1991, D. Emerson had his Yagi antenna pointed in the direction of the phenomenon. His receiver was tuned to 145.8 MHz. The sun is always emitting radio noise, and one would expect that the moon passing in front of the sun would gradually cut off most, but not all, of the radio noise picked up by the antenna and, after the eclipse's midpoint, the noise would increase back to normal levels. Instead of the expected: Radio noise power measured during a partial solar eclipse. The arrows indicate the stages of ... eclipse "There was no radio evidence of any effect of the solar eclipse until 1822 UTC, 58 minutes after the start of the eclipse. At that point, all detectable solar emission disappeared within the space of about nine minutes. The emission did not start to reappear until 72 minutes later, at 1943 UTC, and was fully restored by 1951 UTC, 13 minutes before the end of the eclipse, which occurred at 2004 UTC. "The fact that radio emission disappeared and reappeared fairly abruptly part way through the eclipse indicates that most of the radio emission was occurring from one discrete point on the sun's surface rather than from the entire solar disc." (Emerson, Darrel; "Radio Observations of Two Solar Eclipses," QST , p. 21, February 1995. ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 122: Mar-Apr 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A Genetic Disconnect Bandings on chromosome 9 from humans (H ), chimpanzees (C ), gorillas (G ), orang-utans (O ) If human and chimpanzee nuclear DNAs differ by only 1.5 %, why are the two species so profoundly different in anatomy and behavior? The obvious external differences are body hair, the use of language, the method of locomotion, and of course culture. Less well known is the fact that humans are more susceptible to diseases like as cancer and AIDS. Apparently, superficial comparisons of DNAs slough over genetic details that result in major differences in the living animals. Some of the ... :1432, 1998.) Comments. It is easy to see how gross comparisons of DNA might miss important details. The popular "DNA-hybridization" method simply mixes together strands of DNA from the two species being compared. These are allowed to combine, and then they are heated to see how much temperature is required to force them apart. Chromosome numbers and bandings have little if any effect on these crude comparisons of the bare DNA strands that have been stripped from their genes and chromosomes. The significance of all this transcends the comparisons of humans and chimps. Modern taxonomy of all life forms depends increasingly upon DNA comparisons rather than upon morphology. If DNA comparisons can be as misleading as they are in humans and chimps, those textbook family trees that are supposed to tell us how ...
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