Science Frontiers
The Unusual & Unexplained

Strange Science * Bizarre Biophysics * Anomalous astronomy
From the pages of the World's Scientific Journals

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About Science Frontiers

Science Frontiers is the bimonthly newsletter providing digests of reports that describe scientific anomalies; that is, those observations and facts that challenge prevailing scientific paradigms. Over 2000 Science Frontiers digests have been published since 1976.

These 2,000+ digests represent only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The Sourcebook Project, which publishes Science Frontiers, also publishes the Catalog of Anomalies, which delves far more deeply into anomalistics and now extends to sixteen volumes, and covers dozens of disciplines.

Over 14,000 volumes of science journals, including all issues of Nature and Science have been examined for reports on anomalies. In this context, the newsletter Science Frontiers is the appetizer and the Catalog of Anomalies is the main course.


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Compilations of back issues can be found in Science Frontiers: The Book, and original and more detailed reports in the The Sourcebook Project series of books.


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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 Two Snowflake Anomalies Rarely is there anything in the scientific literature suggesting that anything about snowflakes could possibly be mysterious. Surprisingly, two articles on snowflake anomalies have appeared recently. To form at all above -40 F, snowflakes supposedly require a solid seed or nucleus around which ice can crystallize -- or so scientists have assumed for many years. It was long believed that airborne dust, perhaps augmented by extraterrestrial micrometeoroids, served as the necessary nuclei. But cloud studies prove that there are about a thousand times more ice crystals than dust nuclei. Now, some are convinced that bacteria blown off plants and flung into the air by ocean waves are the true nuclei of atmospheric ice crystals. Remember this the next time you tast a handful of snow! (Carey, John; "Crystallizing the Truth," National Wildlife, 23:43, December/ January 1985.) Comment. The possibility that the fall of snow and all other forms of precipitation is largely dependent upon bacter-ia brings to mind the Gaia Hypothesis; that is, all life forms work in unison to further the goals of life. The second item is from Nature and is naturally more technical. After reviewing the great difficulties scientists are having in mathematically describing the growth of even the simplest crystal, the author homes in on one of the fascinating puzzles of snowflake growth: "The aggregation of particles into a growing surface will be determined exclusively by local ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 57: May-Jun 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Unusually Large Snowflakes In a recent review of records of falls of very large snowflakes, W.S . Pike lists eleven instances where flakes more than 5 centimeters (2 inches) in diameter have been observed. Of these, we have already cataloged six in GWP2, in Tornados, Dark Days, Anomalous Precipita tion, including the prize of the lot: the 15-inch snowflakes that parachuted down on Fort Keough, Montana, on January 28, 1887. Five of Pike's cases that we did not catalog have diameters of "only" 5 or 6 centimeters. The sixth uncataloged observation would certainly have been worth including if we had known about it: March 24, 1888. Shirenewton, England. "Snowstorm with extraordinary flakes, some were 3 3/4 in. in diameter, yet only in. thick, falling like plates. The storm lasted only 2 minutes but in this short period the ground was covered 2 in. deep." The quotation is from British Rainfall, 1988, as requoted by Pike. In all cases, huge snowflakes are really aggregations of many thousands of individual flakes. Observers have thought that the big flakes attract individual flakes. (Pike, W.S .; "Unusually-Large Snowflakes," Journal of Meteorology, U.K ., 13:3 , 1988.) Comment. Could electrostatic forces be involved? Reference. The catalog Tornados, Dark ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 97: Jan-Feb 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Football-sized snowflakes "Now accepted as fact in the weather records was the report that the Siberian town of Bratsk in the winter of 1971 got snowflakes as big as footballs." (Anonymous; San Francisco Chronicle, September 25, 1994. Cr. J. Covey) Comment. Many such reports crop up in the weather journals. See GWP2 in our catalog: Tornados, Dark Days, Anomalous Precipiation. (Description here .. Bear in mind that these "giant" snowflakes are really aggregations of thousands of normal-size flakes. From Science Frontiers #97, JAN-FEB 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... a pale violet glow extending in 'spokes' of 10 cm in length from the round end of the lever which was about 3 cm in diameter. "There were six individual and uniform spokes shot through with brighter purple and white bolts resembling lightning. Over the noise of the wind a sharp crackling and hissing sound could be heard coming from the phenomenon. "The seaman was called to have a look at the light, he attempted to touch it but the light receded as his finger approached within 3 cm of it. The effect died away at about 2340 as soon as rain started to fall." (Smedley, R.; "Corposants," Marine Observer, 69:55, 1999.) Comments. The corposant's six-fold symmetry is like that of snowflakes. Strange as it may sound, they may be a connection. First, recall what J. Maddox once wrote about snowflakes in Nature. "But the symmetry of the whole crystal, represented by the exquisite six-fold symmetry of the standard snowflake, must be the consequence of some cooperative phenomenon involving the growing crystal as a whole. What can that be? What can tell one growing face of a crystal (in three dimensions this time) what the shape of the opposite face is like?" (SF#38) The speculation is that electrical forces may control the long-range symmetry of snowflakes as well as the unusual six-fold symmetry of the corposant described above. It's a thought anyway. The word "corposant" is said to be derived ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 133: JAN-FEB 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Strange Snow Sculptures The most familiar snowflakes are those feathery, six-armed dendritic crystals. However, snow sometimes falls as needles and plates. In GWP3 in Tornados, Dark Days..., we also catalog three observations of conical snow. These conical forms seem to be aggregates of tapered needles of ice. However, none of the foregoing shapes can surpass in strangeness the "snowflake" in the accompanying illustration. Here we see the hexagonal symmetry retained in column form and again in the plates at each end of the icy dumbbell. What those peculiar iceworms projecting from the plates are is anyone's guess. (Kaiser, Jocelyn; "Snow Up Close," Science, 289:503, 2000. Comment. It is difficult enough to explain the formation of the common six-armed flakes; the worm-terminated dumbbells are even more puzzling. What sort of mechanism in the atmosphere can scuplt such complex shapes in prodigious quantities? From Science Frontiers #133, JAN-FEB 2001 . 2001 William R. Corliss Other Sites of Interest SIS . Catastrophism, archaeoastronomy, ancient history, mythology and astronomy. Lobster . The journal of intelligence and political conspiracy (CIA, FBI, JFK, MI5, NSA, etc) Homeworking.com . Free resource for people thinking about working at home. ABC dating and personals . For people looking for relationships. Place your ad free. ...
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... , 1993. North Yorkshire. The following description comes from the British journal: Weather. "Some hail fell in a slight to moderate shower which lasted a couple of minutes around 0900 GMT on Christmas Eve. The hailstones were roughly spherical in shape, with a diameter of 4 to 8 mm, and translucent, with a faint, crystalline structure radiating from their centres. There were also some agglomerates of two or three stones and, unusually, a few contained four to as many as eight stones in an irregular but planar arrangement, with the larger ones tending towards a hexagonal conformation and dimensions of approximately 15 x 12 x 6 mm." (Cinderey, Mike; "Unusual Hail -- 24 December 1993," Weather, 50:194, 1995.) Comment. That snowflakes may agglomerate in large pancake-like aggregations has often been observed (GWP2 in our catalog: Tornados, Dark Days, etc.*), but this is the first time we have heard of hail being welded together in flat, hexagonal configurations. What draws the separate hailstones together into the same hexagonal geometry displayed by snowflakes? *Described here . From Science Frontiers #100, JUL-AUG 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... biologists, such as A. Alldredge, collect the tiny bits of debris drifting downwards from the ocean's upper layers. This is the "marine snow." Its constituents are mainly: ". .. the tiny leftovers of animals, plants, and non-living matter in the ocean's sun-suffused upper zones. Among these particles are chains of single-celled plants called diatoms, shreds of zooplankters' mucous food traps, soot, fecal pellets, dust motes, radioactive fallout, sand grains, pollen, and pollutants. Microorganisms also live inside and on top of these odd-shaped flakes." Marine snow is everywhere in the ocean. Sometimes, it reaches blizzard proportions, and divers cannot see beyond a few feet. Measured in millimeters, the marine snowflakes are much larger than the average interplanetary dust particles (but of course interplanetary dust itself is also a constituent of marine snow). The bigger marine snowflakes -- over 0.5 mm -- are a major food source for deep-sea denizens waiting below for this manna from the watery heaven. The reason for mentioning marine snow in Science Frontiers is that biologists like Alldredge are really pio-neering new territory, where new anomalies must surely dwell. "' We've essentially discovered a whole new class of particles in the ocean that no one knew was there," she exults. .. .. . "' They're islands, really, where the metabolic activities of algae, bacteria, and protozoans produce unique chemical environments,' says Alldredge." ...
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... and Other Ice Fogs GWD3 Mists and Epidemics GWD4 Dry Fogs and Dust Fogs GWF FALLS GWF1 Ice Falls or Hydrometeors GWF2 Stone Falls GWF3 Sulphur/Pollen Falls GWF4 Falls of Miscellaneous Inorganic Substances GWF5 The Fall of Manna GWF6 Unusual Falls of Hay and Leaves GWF7 Gelatinous Meteors or Pwdre Ser GWF8 Prodigious Falls of Web-Like Material (Angel Hair) GWF9 Falls of Miscellaneous Organic Substances GWF10 Fish Falls GWF11 Falls of Frogs and Toads GWF12 Insect Falls GWF13 Bird Falls GWF14 Falls of Miscellaneous Living Animals Sewage Falls Falls of Liquids and Goo GWH LARGE STORM SYSTEMS GWH1 Ozone in Hurricanes GWH2 Hurricane Geographical Anomalies GWH3 Thunderstorm Systems Hypercanes Unusually Intense Storms Large-Scale Oscillations of the Atmosphere Wind Storms in the Upper Atmosphere Green Thunderstorms [GWC] Hurricane Fine Structure GWP ANOMALOUS PRECIPITATION GWP1 Precipitation from a Clear Sky GWP2 Giant Snowflakes GWP3 Conical Snowflakes GWP4 Hailstones with Anomalous Shapes GWP5 Giant Hailstones GWP6 Hail Strewn Patterns GWP7 Slowly Falling Hail GWP8 Unusual Inclusions in Hail GWP9 Explosive Hail GWP10 Colored Precipitation GWP11 Luminous Precipitation GWP12 Point Precipitation GWP13 Surplus Ice Crystals in Clouds GWP14 Decrease of Rainfall with Increasing Altitude GWP15 Rain Gushes Associated with Lightning Puzzle of Snowflake Symmetry Weekend Rain Rainfall Correlated with Soil Temperature GWR TEMPERATURE ANOMALIES GWR1 Temperature Flashes GWR2 Incendiary Phenomena Global Warming The Year without a Summer Weekends Getting Warmer Chilling of the Stratosphere GWS WEATHER AND ASTRONOMY GWS1 Correlation of Lunar Phase and Terrestrial Weather GWS2 Correlation of Lunar Phase and Thunderstorms GWS3 Thunderstorms Correlated with Solar Activity GWS4 Effects of Meteors on Weather GWS5 Correlations between Solar Activity and Weather GWS6 Influence of Lunar Phase on Atmospheric Ozone GWS7 The Lunar Temperature Effect GWS8 Purported Effect of the Planets on the Weather ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 97: Jan-Feb 1995 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology The "inscribed wall" at chatata, tennessee Whence the 200,000 logs of chaco canyon? Astronomy How can some stars be older than the universe itself? Did the universe have a beginning? Solar-system puzzles Biology Fruit dupe Possible survival of giant sloths in south america The early (and persistent) insect catches the bird! Geology The earth's most common topographical feature: abyssal hills The 627-foot water slide between australia and india The age of fire and gravel Geophysics Football-sized snowflakes A LINE IN THE SEA Rubber duckies chase nike shoes across pacific Psychology A MAJOR STUDY OF DOWSING Mentally influencing the structure of water Does the past influence the future? ...
Terms matched: 1  -  Score: 15  -  15 May 2017  -  URL: /sf097/index.htm
... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 38: Mar-Apr 1985 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Who Built the East Bay Walls? Ancient Engineering Feat Antarctica Revisited, Hapgood Acknowledged Astronomy Quasar, Quasar, Burning Bright; What Shifts Your Spectral Light? Unidentified Object Young Interplanetary Dust Neptune's Incomplete Ring Biology Whales and Dolphins Trapped Magnetically Listening with the Feet Life in the Dark Bad Year for Water Monsters Geology Galloping Glaciers Geophysics: The Sick Man of Science Geophysics Ball Lightning and Blue Flashes Green Cloud with Light Rays Still Another Mystery Cloud The Sounds That Shouldn't Have Been Expanding Phosphorescent Rings Two Snowflake Anomalies Psychology Hypnosis and Memory The Subtle Placebo ...
Terms matched: 1  -  Score: 15  -  15 May 2017  -  URL: /sf038/index.htm
... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 157: Jan - Feb 2005 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Discovery of a hidden chamber in the Great Pyramid? Who are what was writing over a million years ago? Astronomy The cosmos is 'unspeakably bizarre' -- if you accept two premises No canals but glassy tubes instead Biology Snowflakes of the sea Ground-squirrel infrared countermeasures The shapes that determine time and memory Geology Geyser-type action of the Oklo natural nuclear reactors Geophysics Rogue waves Pwdre Ser falls again Psychology The profundity of sleep Physics Something's the matter with matter Who digs the Higgs? ...
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... lesser classifications; and (4 ) disordered molecules move smoothly and surely into the order manifest in the living cell. The question asked in the article is whether science has missed something in its description of the origin and development of life. Just what makes molecules coalesce into cells and humans? The answer given is: spontaneous self-organization ! In other words, there is no guiding external force. Molecules do this spontaneously. There are even computer models being developed, based on a branch of mathematics called "dynamical systems," that describe how this all happens - spontaneously, of course. (Waldrop, M. Mitchell; "Spontaneous Order, Evolution, and Life," Science, 247:1543, 1990.) Comment. When water molecules spontaneously cluster together to form a snowflake, with all its symmetry and order, science explains the process in terms of the properties of water molecules. The same must be true when molecules merge to form life forms. But why do atoms and molecules possess these properties that lead to bacteria, to humans, to who-knows-what's -next? "Spontaneous self-organization" is a cop out! From Science Frontiers #69, MAY-JUN 1990 . 1990-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... has obtained startling pictures of gold crystals and their environs. "At this magnification, individual columns of atoms in the gold crystals are clearly revealed; it appears that not only are atoms of the surfaces of small crystals in constant motion, hopping from site to site, but also that the crystals are surrounded by clouds of atoms in constant interchange with atoms on the crystal surface. The clouds of gold atoms extended up to 9A from the crystal surface, continually changing their shape and density." The remarkably dynamic nature of solid surfaces, as now revealed, has many implications. (Bovin, J. -O ., et al; "Imaging of Atomic Clouds Outside the Surfaces of Gold Crystals by Electron Microscopy," Nature, 317:47, 1985.) The problem of snowflake growth (SF#38) is probably solvable in terms of clouds of water molecules surrounding crystal nuclei with electrostatic fields guiding the symmetric deposition of molecules. Biological structures, too, are probably encompassed by clouds of atoms and molecules; viz., the crystal-like, polyhedral viruses. Does the highly ordered DNA structure also possess an aura of molecules constantly swapping places ? Such would not be inconsistent with "jumping genes" and M. Kimura's Neutral Theory of Evolution (SF#41). (WRC) From Science Frontiers #42, NOV-DEC 1985 . 1985-2000 William R. Corliss ...
Terms matched: 1  -  Score: 13  -  15 May 2017  -  URL: /sf042/sf042p26.htm
... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 57: May-Jun 1988 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Updating man-in-the-americas Who built these chambers? Stonehenge in quebec? Astronomy A NEARBY RING OF COMETS? Martian canals: is lowell vindicated? Biology You can fool some of the animals some of the time, but.... Mysterious bird deaths Does the aids virus really cause aids? The eels strike back Yeti evidence too hard! Living stalactites! subterranean life! (in three parts) Subterranean life! (part 3) Geology Florida more exotic than the travel agents promise Geophysics Outrageous earthquake waves The large-scale structure of electrical storms Unusually large snowflakes General Morphic resonance in silicon chips Did charles darwin become a christian? ...
Terms matched: 1  -  Score: 13  -  15 May 2017  -  URL: /sf057/index.htm

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