145 results found.
... , Apr 1982, ISBN: 0-915554-08-9 , 9.5 x 6.5 inches Archeology Handbook For a full list of archeology subjects, see here . Ancient Man: A Handbook of Puzzling Artifacts Sorry: Out of Print. No longer available. Now in its third printiing, our archeology Handbook reproduces hundreds of items from the difficult-to-obtain archeological literature. Typical subjects covered: Ancient Florida canals * The Maltese "cart tracks" * New England earthworks * Ancient coins in America * Ancient Greek analog computer * Inscriptions and tablets in unexpected places * The great ruins at Tiahuanaco * Zimbabwe and Dhlo-dhlo * Huge spheres in Costa Rica * The Great Wall of Peru * Ancient batteries and lenses * Mysterious walls everywhere * Pacific megalithicsites * European stone circles and forts * [Picture caption: Scottish carved stones from circa 1000 B.C . Comments from reviews ". .. a useful reference in undergraduate, public, and high school libraries", Booklist. 792 pages, hardcover, $23.95, 240 illustrations, index. 1978 references. LC 77-99243, ISBN 915554-03-8 , 6x9forrnat. Ancient Infrastructure: Remarkable Roads, Mines, Walls, Mounds, Stone Circles Sorry, Out of print Ancient people raised standing stones on all continents save Antarctica. The dug canals 50 miles long and erected even longer walls. Gleaned from hundreds of volumes of Science, Nature, Antiquity and other science journals, this massive collection of archeological puzzles will keep researchers digging for decades. Costa Rica's enigmatic stones ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 129: MAY-JUN 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Crop Circles Can be Natural Before today's prolific crops of bogus crop circles, there were rare instances where nature neatly carved circles in fields of grain. These legitimate crop circles have been trashed with the fake ones and are still unexplained. A good example of the "real thing" was resurrected in the Journal of Meteorology. The original source is: Nature, 22:290, 1880. J.R . Capron, a respected spectroscopist of the time, was the reporter. The storms about this part of Surrey have been lately local and violent, and the effects produced in some in-stances curious. Visiting a neighbour's farm on Wednesday evening (21st), we found a field of standing wheat considerably knocked about, not as an entirety, but in patches forming, as viewed from a distance, circular spots. Examined more closely, these all presented much the same character, viz., a few standing stalks as a centre, some prostrate stalks with their heads arranged pretty evenly in a direction forming a circle about the centre, and outside these a circular wall of stalks which had not suffered. Capron thought the nearly perfect circles of crop damage bespoke cyclonic wind damage. (Van Boorn, Peter; "A Case of Genuine Crop Circles Dating from July 1880 As Published in Nature in the year 1880," Journal of Meteorology, U.K ., 25:20, 2000 ...
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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 had 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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... Moundbuilding?The thousands of earthen mounds and walls piled up basketful-by-basketful by Native Americans throughout the Midwest and, especially, Ohio, suggest only simple cultures that raised rude edifices and monuments to their chiefs and gods. But now some anomalies have arisen from below the Midwestern soil. Archeologists got a shock in 1998, when drillers installing a drainage system at huge, terraced Monk's Mound in Illinois discovered that the mound was not all dirt after all. Some 40 feet below one of the terraces they ran into a 32foot-thick layer of stones. Hidden for centuries, no one knows the extent or purpose of this huge mass of stones. (SF#117) Now, just 3 years later, scientists using magnetic and other noninvasive equipment have discerned a buried circle of "something" measuring 90 feet across. Like the stones in Monk's Mound, the find was entirely serendipitous. The locale is Paint Creek Prairie, Ross County, in Southern Ohio. There are run-of-the-mill mounds at the site but no one supposed there was anything of significance beneath the surface. (Sloat, Bill; "Mysterious Circle Found Buried beside Mounds," Cleveland Plain Dealer web site, September 6, 2001. Cr. P. Huyghe) Comment. The Hopewell Culture flourished in this region from about 400 BC to 400 AD. In fact, they held sway from the Great Lakes to the Gulf. Above ground, they left abundant mounds, earthen walls in various enigmatic geometries, and, of course, the Great Hopewell ...
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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 Missing Planets In Globular Clusters If you lived on a planet circling a star in a globular cluster, you would see a night sky ablaze with thousands of stars all brighter than the brightest in the earth's sky. This is because globular clusters contain tens of thousands of stars all compressed into 5-25 parsecs -- they are much more tightly packed than those in the Milky Way in general. In fact, though, you would have to observe this blazing sky from a spaceship, because diligent searches have not detected any planets in any of the many globular clusters. In 1999, a team of 24 astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to search for planets in the cluster named 47 Tucanae. Their method was to look for dark planets crossing the bright disks of the cluster's stars. After patiently watching 34,000 stars, they came up empty-handed. For some unknown reason, planets never formed around the stars in 47 Tucanae -- or in any other globular clusters checked so far. Are globular clusters in general different from the rest of the Milky Way? Possibly, see below. (Anonymous; "No Globular Planets?" Astronomy, 28:34, October 2000. Anonymous; "Planets Come Up Missing in a Globular Cluster," Sky & Telescope, 104:23, October 2000.) Answer. Globular clusters are peculiar in several additional ways. For example, the ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 130: JUL-AUG 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Drifters Sure, there may now be or once have been primitive life forms on Mars, but there does seem to be a serious shortage of carbon-based life forms elsewhere in the universe. In fact, there seems to be a great dearth of small, cool, solid, water-and-carbon-rich planets circling beneficent suns. Can it be that we are looking for extraterrestrial life in the wrong places? Life may have originated and prospered on the multitude of sun-less aggregations of matter drifting through the void, some doubtless quite close to us. Myriad nomadic planets may be roaming our Galaxy free from the clutches of parent stars. Two teams of astronomers think they have detected 25 of these free-floating planets, and say there could be hundreds of millions of them wandering the Milky Way. These free-floaters or "drifters" were created when small clouds of gas and dust coalesced under gravity's urging. If such collapsing clouds were less than 80 times Jupiter's mass, they would not be able to sustain nuclear reactions and become long-lived stars. Many would be-come "brown dwarfs." Still smaller aggregations -- less than 14 Jupiters -- would never shine at all. These would remain warm for a while as they dissipated the gravitational energy that created them. Such small objects would be temporarily detectable by infrared telescopes. Hundreds of such infrared " ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 138: NOV-DEC 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects When The Arctic Was Warm According to the anthropologists' schedule of hominid diffusion across the planet, the Ice Ages blocked most east-west travel at high latitudes until about 12,000 years ago. This date now seems far off the mark. A team of Russian and Norwegian archeologists has located a hominid camp at Mamontovaya Kurya in Russia on the Arctic Circle. Bones of horses, reindeer, and wolves were strewn about this Paleolithic camp. Most important of all, though, was a 4-foot mammoth bone bearing grooves made by sharp stone tools -- a sure sign of human occupation. The mammoth bone has been dated as 36,000 years old. This is the earliest sign of hominid presence in the high Arctic. These grooves on the Mamontovaya Kurya mammoth bones were made with sharp stone tools, but for what purpose? Was primitive notation in use 40,000 years ago? You will notice that we use the word "hominid" rather than human, because the campers may have been Neanderthals. No hominid bones were found to resolve this matter. The implication of all of this is that, although the Arctic may have been very cold 36,000 years ago, it was largely ice-free. (Pavlov, Pavel, et al; "Human Presence in the European Arctic Nearly 40,000 Years ago," Nature, 413:64,2001. Wilford, John Noble; " ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 136: JUL-AUG 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects 2000 CR105 and Planet X 2000 CR105 is a supercomet some 400 kilometers in diameter. It is one of hundreds of icy TNOs (Trans-Neptunian Objects) that normally populate the Kuiper Belt girdling the solar system just beyond the orbit of Neptune. The problem is that 2000 CR105 is not normal. Its orbit is highly eccentric, with an aphelion 13 times farther out than Neptune's . This massive object (probably mostly ice) takes 3175 years to circle the sun. 2000 CR105 is real; it has been photographed; it is not Mirror Matter; no one blames any terrestrial extinctions on it. Nevertheless, we can and must wonder how its orbit became so badly distorted. Often in past years, whenever astronomers detected cometary orbits gone awry, they invoked Planet X; that is, some undiscovered massive body plying the outer reaches of the solar system. Indeed, there have been several intense and unsuccessful searches for Planet X over the years. (See Chapter AX in The Sun and Solar System Debris.) History seems to be repeating itself with 2000 CR105. Astronomer B. Gladman proposes that 2000 CR105 was forced into its present eccentric orbit by an encounter with a Mars-size Planet X that now orbits the sun at a distance about 15 times that of Neptune. From the standpoint of celestial mechanics, this perturbation of 2000 CR105's orbit is certainly within the realm of possibility. But two associated ...
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... Somewhat more puzzling is a 16-foot ice ring that formed overnight in the more placid waters of a farm pond near Delta, Ontario, in December 2000. The ice was too thin to walk upon, so it had to be a natural phenomenon. However, there was no whirlpool to provide the lathe-like action needed to create the neat disc. Nor was the disc said to be rotating when discovered. The whole event happened very quickly, too. (Bronskill, Jim; "Strange Ice Rings Baffle Researchers," Toronto National Post, March 8, 2001. Cr. G. Duplantier via L. Farish.) Comment. Even small farm ponds have some circulation of water, particularly if fed by a stream. Rather than trying to associate ice rings with crop circles, as some do, it would be better to find out what's happening below the ice! From Science Frontiers #136, JUL-AUG 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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... one of Jupiter's large satellites, Ganymede, boasts a magnetic field. In fact, Ganymede is apparently the only satellite in the solar system to display an intrinsic, dipole magnetic field like the earth's . Although Ganymere's magnetic field is like that produced by a permanent bar magnet, its core is much too hot for permanent magnetism. Again like the earth, Ganymede's field is theorized to be generated by the convection of electrically conducting liquid in its core -- a dynamo of sorts. All well and good, but Ganymede is so small that it should have cooled off billions of years ago thereby freezing its metallic core. So then, whence its magnetic field? One way out of this box it to suppose that about a billion years ago Ganymede was circling Jupiter in an orbit that took it much closer to this ponderous planet. Then, Jupiter's powerful gravitational field would have gently kneaded Ganymede's structure creating what is called "tidal heating," which kept the core liquid and able to generate a magnetic field. (Johnson, Torrence V.; "The Galileo Mission to Jupiter and Its Moons," Scientific American, 282:40, February 2000.) Comment. Sounds good, but there is a puzzle piece missing: What catastrophic event catapulted Ganymede into its pre-sent orbit? It's as big as Mercury! From Science Frontiers #128, MAR-APR 2000 . 1997 William R. Corliss Other Sites of Interest SIS . Catastrophism, archaeoastronomy, ancient history, mythology and astronomy. Lobster . ...
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... do it (turtles, SF#65); and so do mammals (humans, SF#106). Grunting is an amusing and effective technique for luring earthworms to the surface where they can be consumed or used for fish bait. Animals usually grunt for worms by stomping on the ground after a rain. Just why the worms below rush to expose themselves upon detecting these seismic signals is known only to them. Perhaps they think more rain is falling or that a mole is burrowing toward them. All we know is that grunting works. In the article under review, English seagulls are reported doing a flat-footed version of an Irish jig to entice their dinner to the surface. Oystercatchers, on the other hand, prefer a reel-like dance in which they cavort in circles and straight lines. Somehow, the grunting technique has been communicated to birds everywhere. Red-billed gulls in New Zealand grunt for worms, so do the olive thrushes of South Africa. (Smith, Richard Hoseason, et al; "Rain Dance," New Scientist, p. 102, May 12, 2001.) Comment. It is mildly anomalous that this unlikely hunting technique is found in so many places and employed by so many species. Our own research adds that strange New Caledonian bird, the kagu, to the list of worm-grunters. How did the kagu on an isolated Pacific island learn the technique? And in the States, another very strange bird, the woodcock, can sometimes be seen engaged in a weird rocking motion that is believed to set ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 90: Nov-Dec 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Dune Circles Of Sossusvlei The Dead Pan of Sossusvlei lies in the Namibian Desert some 50 kilometers from the Atlantic Ocean. It is a 5-hour drive from Windhoek, the capital of Namibia. Geologically, this feature is a clay pan in the flood plain of the Tsauchah River, which flows on the average only once in a decade. Towering above the clay pan are sand dunes that reach 350 meters elevation above the river bed. They are veritable mountains of sand and the tallest dunes in the world. The potential anomaly at Sossusvlei is not the size of the dunes but rather the mysterious circles of grass that grow upon them. All we have to go on is a photograph showing a dozen or so of the circles situated at some unspecified distance from the photographer. Somewhat irregular in shape, the circles seem to be on the order of 100 meters in diameter. No grass at all grows within the rings of thick grass, but outside grow sparse, evenly distributed grass clumps. The writer of the Sossusvlei article labels the circles "unusual phenomena." (Pupkewitz, Tony; "Sossusvlei," Optima , 36:136, 1988. Cr. P.A . Hill. Optima is a South African publication.) Comment. Are these circles akin to the "fairy rings" found in moister climates? Perhaps also pertinent are the clones of creosote bushes which grow outwards in expanding circles, as mentioned in ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 89: Sep-Oct 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Crop circles: a middle ground On one hand, mainstream scientists, when they deign to notice them at all, pronounce that all crop circles are the work of hoaxers, as in the article by J.W . Deardorff referenced below. On the other hand, several books and a flood of reports in fringe publications claim that the crop circles, particularly the complex ones, are evidence that extraterrestrial intelligences are attempting to communicate with us. There is also a middle ground upon which stands G.T . Meaden, a physicist, and a few other scientists. Meaden has summarized this third position in the following paragraph: ". .. we believe that the formation of real crop circles is a rare phenomenon resulting from the motion of a spinning mass of air which Professor Tokio Kikuchi has modelled by computer simulation and calls a nanoburst. This disturbance could involve the breakdown of an up-spinning vortex of the eddy or whirlwind type. On this theoretical model such a process leads to plain circles and ringed circles -- types which are known from pre-hoax times in Britain and other countries, and are the only species which credible eye-witnesses have seen forming. All other so-called crop circles reported in the media news in recent years are likely to be the result of intelligent hoaxing, while the so-called paranormal events to which Deardorff alludes are nothing but the consequence of poor observation and/or ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 83: Sep-Oct 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Crop-circle contest July 11-12, 1992. Buckinghamshire, England . On this dark night, in a barley field, 12 teams assembled in hopes of winning a $5 ,200 prize provided by the Koestler Foundation and the German Magazine PM. This sum was to be awarded to the best crop-circle hoaxers. First prize went to three engineers from a British helicopter company, who used rope, plastic piping, and a ladder suspended from a trestle. Close behind in the competition was American J. Schnabel, who, working all alone, required only a plank, some rope, and a small garden roller to produce a creditable, rather elaborate design. (Anonymous; "Circle Hoax Contest," Science, 257:481, 1992.) Comment. The quality of the best entries assures us that hoaxing is not to be discounted as a major factor in cropcircle studies. From Science Frontiers #83, SEP-OCT 1992 . 1992-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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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 Unidentified Light Strange optical phenomenon seen off the coast of Trinidad in 1991. January 13, 1991. Caribbean Sea. Aboard the m.v . Trinidad and Tobago . "At 0210 UTC whilst the ship was proceeding eastwards along the north coast of Trinidad, a relatively bright patch was noticed in the almost cloudless sky and was thought to be a cluster of stars. Its bearing was approximately 300 at an elevation of about 50 , and closer inspection through binoculars revealed a rather strange phenomenon, as shown in the sketch. "The bright patch was a perfect circle of a bright, light-blue colour and was transparent as stars could be seen through it. There was also a trail from the circle which looked like the track a disc would describe if it moved through an arc. This trail was also of light-blue colouration but was not nearly so bright as the circle. The entire phenomenon dissipated after about five minutes." (Knight, M.; "Unidentified Light," Marine Observer, 62:22, 1992.) From Science Frontiers #80, MAR-APR 1992 . 1992-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 89: Sep-Oct 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Transcendental Messages In Transcendental Numbers Those complex crop circles supposedly conveying messages from extraterrestrial entities all seem to be hoaxes. We must, therefore, search out other sources of transcendental signals. Fortunately, a brand-new, unhoaxable communication channel has opened up. Forget standard numerology, the Number of the Beast (666), and all that. Instead, give the letter A the value 1, B = 2, C = 3, etc. Next, add to your scheme a breakthrough discovery of L. Sallows, let 0 = _, and interpret _ to be a space, so that we can make sentences out of words. Finally, discard our usual base of 10 and adopt as a base 27 -- the number of letters in our alphabet plus _, the space. In this system, B_C decodes as 2 x 272+ 0 x 271+ 3 x 270 , which equals 1461 in decimal. Now we have a way to convert numbers into words in a novel, though tedious, way, and vice versa. For example, CHAT+ TALK = WIND, which is not an unlikely word equation. Really fantastic word-number equalities can be found with the help of a computer. Who would have ever guessed that the following magic square of meaningful words could be constructed? DIM OWE TUG RAP RIG TAP DOT RAY THE TIP NAP DID PAP DUD SPY TOW The magic constant is ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 85: Jan-Feb 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Ball Lightning Punches Circular Hole In Window Window glass with a 7-centimeter hole fitting glass circle believed to have been created by ball lightening. In the Autumn 1992 issue of the Journal of Scientific Exploration, A.I . Grigor'ev et al collected 43 eyewitness accounts of ball lightning penetrating into closed rooms. Most of the reports came from the former USSR and are new to Western scientists. The majority of these balls entered through closed glass windows. Sometimes the balls penetrated the windows without damaging the glass at all, but in a few cases neat circular holes were somehow melted or punched through the glass. The accompanying photograph illustrates an incident in which lightning (supposed to be ball lightning) surgically excised a coin-like piece of glass. (Girgor'ev, A.I . et al; "Ball Lightning Penetration into Closed Rooms: 43 Eyewitness Accounts," Journal of Scientific Exploration, 6:261, 1992. Journal address: ERL 306, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-4055.) Reference. An entire chapter of our catalog Lightning, Auroras is devoted to ball lightning. Ordering information here . From Science Frontiers #85, JAN-FEB 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Looping Lightning March 17, 1992. Delta Flight 1083 en route from Pittsburgh to Atlanta. At approximately 8:30 PM, this flight was thought to be flying safely high above thundercloud tops, which were situated at 20,000-22,000 feet. The pilot, W.F . Blanchard describes what he observed: "Then, from one of these clouds, a lightning bolt appeared that changed my mind instantly. This bolt came from the top of the buildup closest to our line of flight and formed an enormous loop in the sky. It started at the top of the cloud and went well above our altitude (to at least 40,00045,000 ft.) and then circled back down into the cloud. My impression is that it joined back into itself at the top of the cloud, but it may have returned to another of the peaks in the same cloud." (Grynkewich, N.E ., Jr.; "Lightning Loop," Weather, 47:493, 1992.) Comment. There have been numerous recent reports of upwardly directed "rocket" lightning, but none in which the lightning returned back to the same cloud. Grynkewich may have seen some bizarre form of intercloud lightning. Reference. Unusual and anomalous forms of lightning are cataloged in section GLL in our catalog: Lighting, Auroras . Details here . From Science Frontiers #89, SEP-OCT 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 105: May-Jun 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Hidden messages in genesis?Some can find cryptic meanings in the works of Nostradamus, others see messages in crop circles. Forget those sources! A better one has been around for millennia. Three researchers at the Jerusalem College of Technology and the Hebrew University have analyzed the text of Genesis using an analytical technique that can only be called "inspired". "By treating the text as an unbroken string of letters, and selecting sequences of equally spaced letters, three mathematicians discovered 300 hidden pairs of Hebrew words with related meanings in close proximity to one another. Some of the words involved people who lived and events that occurred long after the Torah was written. "The odds of the words occurring by chance? Less than one in 50 quadrillion, according to an article by Jeffrey Satinover in the October issue of Bible Review ." Satinover is a psychiatrist and lecturer on the relationship between science and religion. He commented: "I guess the bottom line is, if the research holds up and no flaw is found in the methodology, then I think the implication is clear that the authorship of Genesis is not human." Unsettling though the implications are to mainstream science, the research has made it past the usual critical hurdles into two scientific journals: Statistical Science and Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Scientists familiar with the work can only say that, "Something weird seems to be happening." We certainly agree! ...
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... away, going fast on a motorway -- but the sound did not come any closer). The national grid reference was ST 866392 approximately. "These four spinning shapes (like the top of a cotton bud -- not dense and solid) went round and round in a clockwise direction. They came together in the middle, out and round and round. They did this several times (once, one went off to the right but came back into 'formation'), and then they came back together and just disappeared." (Haines, David, and Haines, Elaine; "An Observation of Four Luminous Spinning Vortices, 21 July 1991," Journal of Meteorology, U.K ., 17:24, 1992.) Comment. Could the controversial crop circles, common in Wiltshire, be related to these luminous objects, or are they all hoaxes? From Science Frontiers #81, MAY-JUN 1992 . 1992-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... but bioluminescence still visible around vessel. 1950: Bioluminescence diminished. "The Aldis lamp was shone upon the water but gave no change, then the echo sounder was switched on and off but made no difference either. Several samples of sea water were taken which when shaken contained glowing, luminous, yellow-green specks 1 mm in size. "The wheels were turning in slow clockwise motion and the closest that any came to the ship was about 12 m. There was intense milky-white colouring in the centres which faded to pale white towards the outer limits." None of the radial spokes so common in phosphorescent-wheel reports were remarked in the Wiltshire report. Wheel rotation was also much slower than normal. One scientist supposed that the wheels were caused by fish swimming in tight circles! (Marsh, C.H .; "Bioluminescence," Marine Observer, 62:177, 1992.) Reference. Wheels and a variety of other enigmatic bioluminescent phenomena can be found in Chapter GLW in our catalog: Lightning, Auroras. To order, visit: here . From Science Frontiers #85, JAN-FEB 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... as compared with any other known comet, and their unusually red coloration, seem to make them the first-discovered members of a new class of solar system bodies. Since the searches leading to their discovery have examined only 1.5 out of tens of thousands of square degrees of sky wherein such objects might be discovered, it seems a reasonable conjecture that thousands of additional similar objects will ultimately be found. In short, it appears at this early stage that the solar system may have a second asteroid belt beyond Neptune." (Van Flandern, T.; Meta Research Bulletin, 2:13. June 15, 1933.) Comment. Did this new class of objects once comprise Planet X? If there are truly thousands of such bodies with diameters of 200-300 kilometers circling out there beyond Neptune, the astronomers will be hard put to account for them, and the astrologers will have to modify their calculations! What's going on here? How could astronomers completely overlook a major component of the solar system? Paradigm blinders? An entire chapter (AX) is devoted to Planet X in our Catalog: The Sun and Solar System Debris. Ordering information here . From Science Frontiers #90, NOV-DEC 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 78: Nov-Dec 1991 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Crop circles: hoaxes or natural phenomena?The question posed by the above title was answered presumptuously and onesidedly by Time (September 23) and more objectively by Science (August 30). While Time implies that all crop circles are hoaxes, the Science article states that the "really bizarre" circles are hoaxes and that the simpler circles may have acceptable meteorological explanations. Unfortunately, the ridiculing tone of the Time article will probably set back the budding scientific interest in crop circles reported in Science. The real losers, as we shall see below, are those crop-circle experts who assert that they can always detect hoaxes. Essence of the Time article. Two cropcircle hoaxers have confessed. D. Chorley and D. Bower have admitted that they have made as many as 25-30 fake crop circles per year, since 1978, including some of the bizarre ones. All they needed was a 4-foot wooden plank, a ball of string, and a baseball cap with a wire mounted on it for sighting purposes. It was all too easy! And, they assure us, other hoaxers were active in fields at night, too. This is indeed damaging evidence to crop-circle enthusiasts. Time concluded that the admissions of Chorley and Bower have "brought to an end one of the most popular mysteries Britain -- and the world -- has witnessed in years." (Constable, Anne; " ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 75: May-Jun 1991 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Crop Circle Roundup Summary of Britain's 1990 crop circles. "Over seven hundred circles were found in Britain in 1990, the earliest in April, the latest toward the end of August. They were spread across thirty counties, including Wales and Scotland, besides which there were numerous good reports of circles from Ireland, Holland, Bulgaria, Japan (at least twenty), Canada (over twenty), the U.S .A . and some other countires. The large British total was made possible because of the cooperation of so many enthusiasts via the nationwide CERES organisation. "As usual for Britain most circles were found in wheatfields, but there were some reports from fields of barley, rapeseed, linseed, and long grass grown for silage. In 1990, as in 1989, Wiltshire dominated the British scene with about 70% of the year's total. This year the leading counties were Wiltshire: over 400; Hampshire: over 50; Norfolk: 18; Devon: 17; Sussex: 16; Oxfordshire: 13; Buckinghamshire: 12; and so on." In his review of the 1990 phenomena, G.T . Meaden dwelt on the Hampshire dumbbell formations. From these many spectacular "circles" we focus on the one at Seven Barrows, Hampshire. Two of the 1990 Hampshire dumbell formations. (L ) Near Seven Barrows; (R ) Near Morestead. "The next system ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 72: Nov-Dec 1990 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Crop circle update: what are "they" trying to tell us?Several hundred crop circles have afflicted English farmers' fields already this year. The English newspapers haven't neglected them, but where are Nature and Science? Here is a genuine mystery, and most scientists don't dare touch it for fear of being labelled "kooks." Well, we do have one item from New Scientist, but we'll have to rely upon the newspapers for this evermore-bizarre phenomenon. Australia now a target. "Dozens of flattened rings of wheat have been reported recently in Australia over a wide area of arable country in northwestern Victoria. The rings resemble the corn circles found in southern Britain. "Max and Nancee Jolly, farmers at Turiff West, found 12 rings in their wheat crop. Each ring was 12 metres across and rock-hard in the middle. 'The wheat in the rings was bent over at the base but not damaged in any other way.' said Nancee Jolly." The Australian Sceptics suspect pranksters. (Anonymous; "More Circles," New Scientist, p. 23, August 11, 1990.) An article in a Perth newspaper puts the number of wheat circles in Victoria at 400, as of July 9. That's a lot of work for hoaxers! It is also said that the soil in the rings is "magnetically altered," whatever ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 65: Sep-Oct 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Books About The Crop Circles You know a phenomenon has "made it" when a book is devoted to it. With the English crop circles, we now have two books (bibliographical information below.) We will try to stock at least one of these books, but it will be a few months before can can get them on this side of the Atlantic. Meanwhile, a review of the two books in New Scientist provides some information beyond that already presented in several past issues of SF. First, the crop circles, spanning 5 to 20 meters, are incredibly precise and sharp. Flattened stems on the periphery of a circle almost touch erect, undamaged stems. The so-called satellite circles that sometimes array themselves around the main circles may be connected by a narrow ring, thus: Even more curious, a short radial spur extends outward from some circles, so that from the air the circle resembles a fat tadpole. In his book, G.T . Meaden, the Editor of the Journal of Meteorology, U.K ., presents his theory of how the circles are incised in field crops: "He describes the clues that have enabled him to point to the circles being formed by the impact of a body of fast-spinning air that has been partially ionized. He explains how a columnar atmospheric vortex, with a vertical or inclined axis, provides the channel for the formation of a plasma ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 79: Jan-Feb 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Crop circles: if some are hoaxes, are they all hoaxes?One could almost hear a sigh of relief among the skeptics of unusual natural phenomena when two Britons admitted to manufacturing scores of crop circles. After all, the crop circles are about as outrageous as UFOs and toads-entombedin-stone. However, the crop circles have not gone away. In fact, plant and soil samples from the circles seem to point to bizarre, highly energetic processes at work. This aspect of the phenomenon has been discussed by R. Noyes, Secretary of the Center for Crop Circle Studies (CCCS). First, though, Noyes has asserted that hoaxes cannot explain the large numbers of circles that have been counted -- about 1000 between 1980 and 1989. He con tinued as follows: "The events of 1990 and 1991 (totalling about a further 1000 over the two years) certainly present a puzzle. Hoax is beyond doubt in some cases, but it seems very unlikely as a general explanation. Many events have been very large and very elaborate; they have occurred widely about the country (sometimes several on the same night in counties far from each other); there have been very few cases of detection of hoax, despite massive surveillance in the Mariborough/Devizes area, where so many of the events took place; circles (including a dumbbell formation) occurred within visual and radar range of a hi-tech ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 73: Jan-Feb 1991 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Crop Circle Corner The Wiltshire crop "scroll". Dimensions in meters. Every week, it seems, some new facet of the crop circle phenomenon appears. It is reminiscent of the early days of UFOs. Several books have appeared. A periodical, The Cereologist , now promises to keep everyone up-to-date. People are scouring the old literature and pouring over aerial photos for pre-1980 examples. Theories abound, especially those invoking extraterrestrials! We have room here for only a few brief items. Scorched earth in Xenia, Ohio. A hired hand of Gene Eck was harvesting a field of soybeans when he came upon a circle of flattened plants -- bent but not broken -- some 80 feet in diameter. Inside this circle was a 40-foot-diameter ring of burnt stubble. Within the ring was a patch of undisturbed foxtail 14 feet in diameter. The soybean circle was a half mile from the nearest road; no tracks led into it. (Williams, Nat; Illinois Agri-News, November 9, 1990. Cr. R.A . Ford) Column of light in Wiltshire. During the summer of 1990, teams of English ob servers scanned the cereal fields at night. At 2:30 AM, on July 25, R. Fla-herty, an experienced wildlife photographer, saw a single shaft of light descending from high in the sky toward a Wiltshire wheat ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 70: Jul-Aug 1990 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Spinning Ball Of Light Inscribes Crop Circles In the January 1990 issue of the Journal of Meteorology, U.K ., two reports appeared describing eyewitness observations of crop circles-in-the-making. Both involved a self-luminous spinning ball of light. We reproduce here the second of these accounts. June 28, 1989, north-central Wiltshire, near Silbury Hill. "Soon after midnight the occupier of the roadside cottage by the path which leads to West Kennett Long Barrow noticed a large ball of light 400 metres distant in a wheatfield to the west. At the time of the observation he was walking from house to garage, and had a clear view to the illuminated part of the field through a gap in a hedge which borders his garden. He described the ball as orange in colour, adding that it was brighter around the periphery, and he guessed the diameter as 30-40 feet (say, 10-13 metres). When first seen, the ball was already low over the field and still descending. The witness watched the base of the ball 'go flat' as it made contact with the crop and/or the ground. The ball then gave 'a little bounce' and after a further 'seven or eight seconds' disappeared in. "Next morning on leaving the house the witness could see via the gap in the hedge a large circle at the place which corresponded ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 77: Sep-Oct 1991 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Crop circles: daisy patterns and a red ball of light G.T . Meaden, in the second installment of his review of 1990 crop-circle research, singled out for special attention the so-called "daisy patterns." While these are not as intricate and mysterious as the spectacular nine-circle complex at Alton Barnes, the formation of one of the daisy patterns may have been accompanied by luminous phenomena. "Circles in a daisy pattern were reported from Devonshire and Somerset County: the first a centre circle with seven regular satellites, evenly spaced, from Bickington in June; the second a circle with six similar satellites from Butleigh Wootton, near Glastonbury in mid-July. "A third daisy-pattern system, one with ten ringed satellites surrounding a central ringed circle, turned up at the end of July in East Anglia. This last was formed on the night of 30-31 July, possibly in the late evening of 30 July at the time of the observation of a glowing ball of red light. It was seen by the farmer shining above his field at Hopton as viewed from his house on the edge of Gorleston (Norfolk). 'He looked at it through his binoculars and described it as a red central glow with a thinner red outer ring...By the time he had passed the binoculars to his son the thing had gone'" ( Eastern Daily Press ). ( ...
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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 Crop Circle Craze Continues Trying to maintain our sanity during the current crop-circle flap, we have adhered closely to reports in the conservative Journal of Meteorology, U.K . But don't imagine that wilder accounts are not surfacing in the newspapers. Two accounts should suffice. Australia. "Three frightened farmers believe a gigantic UFO landed last week on their Victorian wheat property. "A pattern of five perfect circles - in which unbroken wheat stalks swirl anticlockwise - have been found on the 9000- hectare farm, West Park, run by Max and Nancee Jolly and their son Stuart, 29. "The startling discovery comes only weeks after the family's 700 sheep were panicked by a huge yellow object pulsating above the paddocks in western Victoria's Mallee region." (Pickney, John; "Sheep Panicked by Eerie Light in Fields," Melbourne Truth, December 16, 1989. Cr. P. Norman via L. Farish) Canada. "Argyle, Man. - There's a mystery on Ray Crawford's land and stumped investigators say anything from bizarre weather phenomena to visitors from outer space could have put it there. "Sometime in the past year, an almost perfect circle was gouged out of a remote patch of the elderly cattle farmer's property, 30 kilometres north of Winnipeg, on the edge of the rockstrewn scrub and bush that comprise the region between Lake Manitoba and ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 76: Jul-Aug 1991 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Subterranean "circles"As if we didn't have enough problems with crop circles on the earth's surface, it now seems that whatever agency (or "entity") that is responsible for them also plies its craft underground! "Sets of concentric rings, similar to those found last summer in British wheat fields, have been discovered in a Japanese subway tunnel. .. .. . "Many sets of concentric rings were found drawn in dust that accumulated on the ground and walls inside the tube. The metro versions of the mystery circles are much smaller -- up to 8 centimeters in diameter -- than the British ones, the largest of which measures scores of meters." Y. Otsuki, a professor of physics at Waseda University, discovered the rings and believes that plasma generated in the air creates them. Subway tunnels, he says, create conditions similar to those in the plasma generators he uses in his fireball research. A photo of the rings accompanying the article shows six neatly-formed, concentric rings around a central crude circle. (Anonymous; "' Mystery Circle' Found in Tunnel," Asahi Evening News (Tokyo), April 5, 1991. Cr. Y. Matsumura via L. Farish) Speculations. Apparently, plasmoids can be of any size: crop circles may be 100 feet in diameter of just a foot or two, and now we may have centimeter ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 67: Jan-Feb 1990 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Eyewitness Account Of Cropcircle Formation UFO enthusiasts have had a field-day speculating that nighttime landings of alien craft have created the famous crop circles. Now, a good daytime description of actual crop-circle formation is at hand. Even so, the whole business still sounds pretty mysterious. The source is a letter to G.T . Meaden, Editor of the Journal of Meteorology, U.K ., from R.A . Barnes. "I have been meaning to write to you for some time on the subject of corn circles. About six or seven years ago I was fortunate to see one of these form in a field at Westbury. It happened on a Saturday in early July just before six in the evening after a thunderstorm earlier that afternoon; in fact it was still raining slightly. "My attention was first drawn to a 'wave' coming through the heads of the cereal crop in a straight line at steady speed; I have since worked this out to be about fifty miles per hour. "The agency, though invisible, behaved like a solid object throughout and did not show any fluid tendencies, i.e . no variation in speed, line or strength. There was no visual aberration either in front, above or below the advancing line. "After crossing the field on a shallow arc the 'line' dropped to a position about 1 o'clock and radially described a ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 71: Sep-Oct 1990 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Florida's circular canals Circular canals up to 1,450 feet in diameter and 6 feet deep have been discovered in south central Florida. Dug in the savannas and flood plains around Lake Okeechobee, the man-made circles include gaps where drainage canals extend outwards. Forty of these circular earthworks have been located by R.S . Carr. Some are as old as 450 BC; others as recent as the 16th. century. Mounds and large plazas are also part of this impressive example of Precolumbian engineering. Carr supposes that the circular canals were fish traps, but no fish bones or other supporting evidence for this theory have appeared. Another thought is that the earthworks drained agricultural land, but no maize pollen has been found. Could they have been ceremonial sites. No one really knows. (Bower, B.; "Florida 'Circles' May Be Ancient Fisheries," Science News, 138: 6, 1990.) Reference. Other ancient Florida canals are described in our handbook Ancient Man. Ordering details here . From Science Frontiers #71, SEP-OCT 1990 . 1990-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... holes. The grass and plants around them exhibit none of the minor damage which would inevitable be caused by any normal process of drilling. The holes have all been excavated directly from above, at an angle of 90 degrees to the surface." Six Swiss holes have been reported from the environs of Lake Geneva. The two largest are at Begnins (December 17, 1982; 18 feet across, 24.5 feet deep) and Confignon (February 3/4 , 1990; 33 feet across, 40 feet deep). Obviously, we are not dealing with minor earth-moving operations here. (Anonymous; "The Gruyerization of Switzerland," The Cerealogist , no. 3, p. 26, Spring 1991. The Cerealogist is a British publication focussing on the crop-circle phenomenon.) Comment. Could the "force" flattening the crop circles also gouge out cookiecutter holes and the Swiss cavernous pits? Additional information on the Swiss excavations and similar events is certainly required. Anomalists know from experience that for every strange phenomenon there exists a hoaxer anxious to reproduce it. Reference. Cookie-cutter holes have been cataloged in ETB7 in our catalog on topographical anomalies: Carolina Bays, Mima Mounds. To order, visit: here . From Science Frontiers #77, SEP-OCT 1991 . 1991-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 65: Sep-Oct 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Pi in the mind!" Srinivasan Mahadevan, a graduate student from India at Kansas State University in Manhattan, is trying to become the fourth person to remember the first 100,000 digits to pi, the theoretically infinite computation that measures the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. He has already memorized the first 35,000 digits of pi. "Only three cases of such ability to remember have been documented in 200 years. One of these people became insane when he became unable to forget anything and his reasoning processes drowned in a flood of facts." (Anonymous; "Student's Memory Wins Bets," San Mateo Times, June 2, 1989. Cr. J. Covey) From Science Frontiers #65, SEP-OCT 1989 . 1989-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 73: Jan-Feb 1991 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Five Reasons Why Ufos Are Not Extraterrestrial Machines Regardless of what mainstream science thinks of them, UFO observations continue to pile up -- by the tens of thousands! In fact, like the crop-circle events, UFO reports are increasing in number and strangeness. It doesn't matter that the UFOs and their alleged occupants may be physically real. There are tens of thousands of people who think that they have observed something strange -- even after all hoaxes and misinterpretations of natural phenomena have been culled out. Most of those who are willing to accept UFOs as valid phenomenon think they are real hardware piloted by extraterrestrials. J. Vallee, a computer scientist and prolific writer on the subject, demurs, and he gives five reasons why: "( 1 ) Unexplained close encounters are far more numerous than required for any physical survey of the earth; (2 ) The humanoid body structure of the alleged 'aliens' is not likely to have originated on another planet and is not biologically adapted to space travel; (3 ) The reported behavior in thousands of abduction reports contradicts the hypothesis of genetic or scientific experimentation on humans by an advanced race; (4 ) The extension of the phenomenon throughout recorded history demonstrates that UFOs are not a contemporary phenomenon; and (5 ) The apparent ability of UFOs to manipulate space and time suggests radically different and richer alternatives." If not extraterrestrial hardware, what are the UFOs ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 79: Jan-Feb 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A LUMINOUS-TUBE PHENOMENON Night of July 11-12, 1991, near Alton Barnes, Wiltshire, England. Three individuals were monitoring nearby fields for crop-circle phenomena. Instead, they observed a strange, but possibly related, luminous mass. R.L Goold described it in the following words: "Suddenly, at 2.55 a.m ., birds began singing which heightened our alertness and made us check wrist watches. It was soon quiet again, but at 3.00 a.m ., almost exactly, I spotted a tube of light to the northeast descending vertically beneath a cloud in that part of the sky. Most of the remainder of the sky was clear and starry. The tube extended steadily in length as we watched, and its milky-white colour seemed to be due to a self-luminoscity like one might expect from the electrical effect known as plasma. As it came down against the black sky and neared the ground, the tube began to broaden, and branched out to give two opposed arms, as indicated in the drawing, forming a design in the air with rounded ends. Then the tube dissipated from the top downwards, and disappeared into the horizontal arms which themselves proceeded towards the ground out of sight beyond the hill peaks. No noise was heard. The whole phenomenon lasted about six seconds." The trio of observers used their fingers held at arm ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 66: Nov-Dec 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Army ants: a collective intelligence?Put a hundred army ants on a flat surface and they will walk around in never decreasing circles until they die from exhaustion. But a colony of a million army ants is a sophisticated "super-organism." The colony carries out its legendary raids and can even keep nest temperatures constant to within a degree. An army ant colony seems en dowed with an intelligence far beyond that of any individual ant. N.R .Franks speculates thus: "It seems that intelligence, natural or artificial, is an emergent property of collective communication. Human con-sciousness itself may be an epiphenomenon of extraordinary processing power. Although experts prefer to avoid simplistic definitions of intelligence, it seems clear that all intelligence involves the rational manipulation of symbolic information. This is exactly what happens when army ants pass information from individual to individual through the 'writing' and 'reading' of symbols, often in the form of chemical messengers or trail pheromones, which act as stimuli for changing behavior patterns." During its 20-day stationary phase, an army ant colony scatters about 14 foraging raids directed 123 apart. The heavy line indicates the colony's path during the nomadic phase. In the body of his article, Franks describes two remarkable capabilities of an army ant colony: time-keeping and navigation. The outward manisfestation of time-keeping is in the precise timing of the colony' ...
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... fossils have been dug up in Alaska, northern Canada, Siberia, New Zealand, and Antarctica. Not only were some dinosaurs cold-resistant but, seeing many were herbivorous, they were also able to migrate to more temperate climes as the long days of the polar summers waned. The point here is that the dinosaurs as a clan were very adaptable and should have survived severe environmental stress. (Vickers-Rich Patricia, and Rich, Thomas H.; "The Dinosaurs of Winter," Natural History, 100:33, April 1991.) That the polar regions were once covered by lush forests has been underscored by recent discoveries in both polar regions. Stumps of huge trees 45 million years old dot the now-bleak landscape of Axel Heiberg Island far north of the Arctic Circle. In Antarctica, heaps of 3- million-year-old fossil leaves have been found within 400 kilometers of the South Pole. (Francis, Jane E.; "Arctic Eden," Natural History, 100:57, January 1991. Also: Peterson, Christian; "Leafing through Antarctica's Balmy Past," New Scientist, p. 20, February 9, 1991.) Comments. Coal beds are also known from Spitzbergen and Antarctica. The vision of dinosaurs roaming polar Edens evokes many questions. If the polar regions were indeed 10-20 C warmer than now, what could have survived at the Equator? The dates given above (3 and 45 million years ago) for polar heat waves are well after the 65million-year demise of the dinosaurs ...
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... soil and small stones. They are often 2 meters high, with diameters of 20 meters. Mound densities can reach 25-50 per hectare. Mima Mounds, prai-rie mounds, pimple mounds, or whatever they are called locally, are widely thought to be the work of pocket gophers, although this hypothesis is still contested, as we shall see below. No one denies that pocket gophers are often associated with the mounds. In fact, a recent scientific paper describes the relationship between the sizes and shapes of the mounds and the numbers of resident gophers. The authors of this paper, G.W . Cox and J. Hunt, state confidently that: The seismic waves intersect, an interference pattern forms. Loose surface material collects at points of minimum surface disturbance (open circles). "Investigations of Mima mounds in western North America support the hypothesis that mounds are formed by the gradual translocation of soil by pocket gophers..." (Cox, George W., and Hunt, Jodee; "Form of Mima Mounds in Relation to Occupancy by Pocket Gophers," Journal of Mammalogy, 71:90, 1990.) In another paper, appearing at almost the same time, A.W . Berg contends that the Mima Mounds could instead be the consequence of seismic activity. In his abstract he says: "Small-scale Mima mounds can be produced experimentally by subjecting a plywood board covered with a thin veneer of loess to impacts that produce vibrations in the board. Experimentally produced mounds have characteristics that are nearly identical to those found in the ...
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... .. . "Of note, although this may have been a coincidence only, was that the vessel was passing through patches of bioluminescence at the time, mostly only bright enough to show up in the breaking waves of the ship's wake, but during the period of low signal strength, the whole area of white, foamy water along the ship's side frequently shone a bright greenish colour." (St. Lawrence, P.F .; "Radar Interference," Marine Observer, 60:17, 1990.) Comment. Apparently, some sort of electromagnetic disturbance affected not only the radar but also satellite communications and the bioluminescent organisms in the water. Could it have been one of those plasma vortexes said by some to be responsible for some of those crop circles? Reference. Other examples of radar phenomena associated with bioluminescence are cataloged in GLW10 and GLW14 in our catalog: Lightning, Auroras. To order, visit: here . From Science Frontiers #78, NOV-DEC 1991 . 1991-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... the Belgian Society for Studying Special Phenomena. "More surprising is how seriously the army is taking the whole thing. For the time being it says it is viewing the matter as a 'technical curiosity' as the intruder has shown no aggressive signs. Should it turn nasty, it will be a different matter altogether. .. .. . "Scientists on the ground appear in the past few days to have produced a clear image of the object, which is said to correspond to the reports of eyewitnesses. It is a triangle 30m-50m in diameter, with red, green and white lights at the corners, 10 times brighter than any star. It has a convex underbelly and makes a sharp whistling noise." (Anonymous; "Flying Triangle Has Belgians Going around in Circles," London Financial Times , April 18, 1990. Cr. T. Good via L. Farish) Comment. This is a strange place to find an even stranger report. Could there be a hoax here? Perhaps some of our readers in Europe will enlighten us. From Science Frontiers #70, JUL-AUG 1990 . 1990-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 64: Jul-Aug 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Sheep circles!Britain has been plagued lately with circular areas incised in fields of cereal crops. G.T . Meaden has collected scores of such events, some of which he has published in his Journal of Meteorology. On the theory that one kind of circle might somehow be related to another kind of circle (the same reasoning biologists employ to draw the Tree of Life), J.C . Belcher submitted a most interesting letter to Meaden. "By their very nature sheep tend to be stubborn self-willed animals exhibiting individual characteristics not suggestive of good group co-ordination. For example, when disturbed by a potential predator, a flock of sheep tends to mass protectively in a group of irregular outline, the group being formed of individual groups of small numbers of sheep. When grazing undisturbed, sheep tend to fan out from a given point, sometimes following a dominant group leader. Progress is usually uncoordinated and ragged. In general, patterns presented by sheep en masse are seen to be haphazard, indeed, generally random in nature. If follows that any suggestion of flocks of sheep forming geometric patterns would appear to be highly improbable, since this would call for group coordination only to be found in such as wolves and wild-dogs. In view of this it would appear that certain exceptional observations made on Sunday 21 August 1988 would be worthy of recording. "Out on an afternoon drive M. Belcher ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 60: Nov-Dec 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Spiral-circle ground patterns in field crops G.T . Meaden has recently summarized his research into those marvelously sharp and complex designs cut into English field crops by atmospheric vortices. (Why other countries are not similarly affected is unknown.) The simple circles range from 3 to 30 meters in diameter. The central, flattened vegetation is crushed clockwise about half the time, counterclockwise in the other cases. On two known occasions, the flattening process has actually been observed. The invisible atmospheric vor tex does its work in 30 seconds or less and generates a high-pitched humming sound. The complex nature of these vortices is attested to by the rare ringed circles and multiple patterns. Both single- and double-ringed circles are known. The wind direction always alternates from central circle to first ring to second ring. The most common multiple patterns consist of large central circles flanked by two or four, smaller satellite circles, all nicely spaced. In the quintuplets, all five circles are usually flattened clockwise, but one case has presented theorists with four counterclockwise circles accompanied by a single improbable clockwise circle! (Meaden, G.T .; "The Mystery of Spiral-Circle Ground Patterns in Crops Made by a Natural Atmospheric-Vortex Phenomenon," Journal of Meteorology, U.K ., 13:203, 1988.) Quintuplet pattern in barley crop, west Wiltshire, 1987 From Science Frontiers #60, ...
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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 Ball Lightning Burns A Rayed Circle On A Shed Wall B. Evans sent the following account to the Editor of the Journal of Meteorology: "Your report of 26th August (1986) about the mysterious five circles which appeared in cornfields near Devil's Punchbowl, near Winchester -- the largest being 42 feet across -- reminded me of an incident during the night shift in 1980 at Shotton steelworks. "A high wind was followed by a bright light which lit up the whole area. When we looked down on the yard from our vantage point we could see that a great ball of lightning had struck. As it bounced from spot to spot, we had to duck to get out of its way, but as soon as it has passed we ran out and saw it strike the side of a scrap shed. When the sun came up, it picked out the shape of a dartboard on the scrap shed. The pattern was clear, with all the segments in place, and it was about 37 feet across." (Meaden, G.T .; "Rayed Circle Made by Ball Lightning on the Wall of a Shed," Journal of Meteorology, U.K ., 11:27l, 1986. Journal address: 54 Frome Road, Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire, BA15 1LD, UNITED KINGDOM.) Reference. Other examples of ball lightning with rays are cataloged in GLB3 in ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 80 - 15 May 2017 - URL: /sf050/sf050p21.htm
... 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 east..., 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 ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 74 - 15 May 2017 - URL: /sf062/sf062g10.htm
... Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Stonehenge in quebec?" Are there carefully crafted stone structures in Quebec similar to that most mysterious of man-made structures, Stonehenge? The answer is yes, according to biology professor Gerard Leduc, who says he has found evidence of sundials in four different locations in the Laurentians and Eastern Townships." .. .. . "The stone complexes, comprising a centre stone and others radiating toward the east and west, may have been used as calendars whereby farmers could, for example, have known when to plant and harvest crops." Leduc also claims to have discovered: Unexplained stone walls two to three feet high that begin and end with no apparent purpose, and which are not associated with the fields of farmers. Grass circles showing up as yellowish rings in green grassy fields, caused by a different type of vegetation. These grass circles are perfect in shape and associated with stone structures. Trilithons, located at the sundial sites, consisting of three closely grouped rocks. (Morrissy, John; "Stonehenge in Quebec," Stonehenge Viewpoint, no. 79, p. 3, Winter 1988.) From Science Frontiers #57, MAY-JUN 1988 . 1988-2000 William R. Corliss ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 25 - 15 May 2017 - URL: /sf057/sf057a03.htm
... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 64: Jul-Aug 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Directed Mutation Dear reader, things have a way of working out serially. For several months, we have had in our possession a paper from Nature, by J. Cairns, of Harvard, plus some passionate correspondence stimulated by the paper. Now that the circle-forming sheep have provided a good introduction, we will jump into the fray, too. Basically Cairns (in Nature) and B. H. Hall (in Genetics ) say that organisms can respond to environmental stresses by reorganizing their genes in a purposeful way. Such "directed mutation" shifts the course of evolution in a nonrandom way. Such a conclusion was like waving a red flag in front of the evolutionists. R. May, at the University of Oxford, complained, "The work is so flawed, I am reluctant to comment." On the other side, a University of Maryland geneticust, S. Benson, comments, "Many people have had such observations, but they have problems getting them published." Our template in this discussion is an article by A.S . Moffat in American Scientist. She says, "The stakes in this dispute are high, indeed. If directed mutations are real, the explanations of evolutionary biology that depend on random events must be thrown out. This would have broad implications. For example, directed mutation would shatter the belief that organisms are related to some ancestor if they share traits. ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 15 - 15 May 2017 - URL: /sf064/sf064b07.htm
... Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A Mammoth Fraud In Science The Holly Oak pendant, shown in the accompanying sketch, reveals a mammoth incised on a piece of seashell. Said to have been discovered in 1864 at a Delaware archeological site, it has been employed to "prove" two different theories: That humans were in North America as the Ice Ages waned and when mammoths still roamed the continent; and The the mammoth survived in North America well into the Christian era. In an article in American Antiquity, J.B . Griffin et al marshall considerable evidence implying that the Holly Oak pendant is a fraud. Much of this contrary evidence seems weak: The discoverer of the pendant, H.Y . Cresson, was not highly regarded in American archeological circles of the time; The pendant was not taken seriously by other archeologists; The drawing of the mammoth "looks like" it was copied from an accepted European engraved tusk; and The shell from which the Holly Oak pendant was made "looks like" shells found in other archeological sites with more recent dates; and so on. The only "hard" evidence that the pendant is a fake comes from radiocarbon dating, which suggests that the shell is only 1530 110 years old. The authors state that since mammoths positively did not survive that recently, the pendant must be a fraud. Griffin et al thus dump the Holly Oak oendant into the archeological wastebasket of "proven" frauds. This rather large wastebasket, they say, also contains the Calaveras skull, the Davenport elephant pipes ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 15 - 15 May 2017 - URL: /sf061/sf061a02.htm
