250 results found.
... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 9: Winter 1979 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects An Ancient Planet Beneath A Youthful Veneer Gerald Wesserburg and Donald de Paolo, two California geologists, have studied the isotopic ratios of neodymium 143 and 144 in both continental and deep-sea lavas. If the underground lava sources were the same, the isotope ratios should be the same. But they are not. Midocean lavas are enriched in neodymium143 compared to continental lavas. Since neodymium-143 is a decay product of samarium, scientists have been able to establish the neodymium isotope ratio from the time of the Big Bang to the present. The isotope ratio for the mid-ocean lavas is just what would be expected on a planet where lighter surface materials had come to the surface during a molten state. The continental lavas, though, must tap very ancient reservoirs, possibly those of a true primitive earth. This ancient core is now swathed with younger materials from who knows where! This young envelope wraps around the whole planet, with the present continents being caused by slight protuberances on the ancient core. Whence the young veneer? A rain of material from some recent close encounter? (Anonymous; "Underground Sites of Ancient Earth," New Scientist, 83:886, 1979.) From Science Frontiers #9 , Winter 1979 . 1979-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... growth bands of coral, scientists hope to spot natural and man-made changes in global chemistry. For example, the large-scale use of fossil fuels should depress the ratio by adding carbon-12 in undue quanti ties. The advent of the nuclear age boosts the ratio through the addition of carbon-14 to the environment. Predictably, the carbon ratio rises dramatical ly after 1950 (the bomb tests, etc.). Before this date, however, anomalies crop up: Coral-ring and tree-ring data differ substantaially when they should not; Coral-ring carbon ratios from relatively close locales, such as Bermuda (solid line) and the Florida Keys (dashed line), also differ significantly. Item 1 might be due to non-atmospheric carbon upwelling in deep-ocean water; but this would not explain the Bermuda and Florida discrepancies. (Anonymous; "Carbon-14 Variations in Coral," Open Earth, No. 3 p. 30, 1979 Comment. These discrepancies are particularly relevant to the carbon-14 dating of seashells, which often produces wildly incorrect ages. From Science Frontiers #8 , Fall 1979 . 1979-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 7: June 1979 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Unwanted Noise On The Terrestrial Tape Recorder The hypothesis of continental drift and sea-floor spreading depends heavily upon the strip-like magnetic anomalies that parallel the active ocean ridges. Molten material pushing out along these ridges spreads out, solidifies, and is magnetized by the prevailing terrestrial magnetic field. Thus, the spreading sea floor becomes a "tape Recorder" preserving the record of changing terrestrial polarity over the past several hundred million years. As one drills into this thin conveyor-belt/tape-recorder, one would expect to encounter only rocks of one polarity. Not so! Some of the holes drilled by the Deep Sea Drilling Project have passed through several polarity zones. To illustrate, core 395A from the mid-Atlantic ridge is magnetized normally for the upper 170 meters, reversely for the next 310 meters, and normally again for 40 meters. Is the tape-recorder idea therefore incorrect? Some scientists argue that it is and that the whole modern edifice of plate tectonics is suspect. (Anonymous; "Testing Vine-Matthews," Open Earth, p. 28, April 1979.) From Science Frontiers #7 , June 1979 . 1979-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... near Hudson Bay. These ripples seem to have spread out like those from a pebble dropped into a pond, but here the ripples are actually ancient density variations in the earth's crust, now covered over by thick sediments. One hypothesis is that a 60-90 kilometer meteorite smashed into the earth some 4 billion years ago, wrinkling the young surface for several thousand kilometers in all directions around a colossal crater. Magma welling up in the crater solidified creating the nucleus of the North American continent. It is quite possible that the other continents began their existences in this way -- meteor impact. The gravity data that led to this hypothesis have been available for some time but apparently no one ever looked at them with continental patterns in mind. (Simon, C.; "Deep Crust Hints at Meteoric Impact," Science News, 121:69, 1982.) Comment 1: John Saul has discovered surface indications of immense ring structures in the American southwest. See ETC2 in our Catalog: Carolina Bays, Mima Mounds, which is described more fully here . Comment 2: If all our continents were initiated by meteor impacts, and if they were once clustered together in a supercontinent, as postulated by Continental Drift, then the incoming meteorites would have to have been focussed on a restricted portion of the earth's surface; that is, where the supercontinent was formed prior to continental drift. Several solar system bodies show just such preferential cratering on one hemisphere. From Science Frontiers #20, MAR-APR 1982 . 1982-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... A DEFECTIVE YARDSTICK?R. Kirshner and colleagues have discovered an immense void almost completely devoid of galaxies. Smaller voids have been found in other surveys of the heavens, but this one is too big to explain away in terms of random variations in galaxy distribution. Kirshner et al carefully measured galactic redshifts in three widely separated regions of the sky and found almost no galaxies in the redshift velocity interval 12,000 to 18,000 km/sec in all three areas. One interpretation of this huge gap is that the initial post-Big-Bang distribution of matter in the universe was unexpectedly lumpy. A further problem arising is that such a large void should show up as a blip in the 3 K cosmic background radiation -- but it doesn't . (Anonymous; "Deep Redshift Survey of Galaxies Suggests MillionMPC3 Void," Physics Today, 35:17, January 1982.) Comment. A less popular possibility is that galaxy redshifts do not measure distance at all and that no void exists. Reference. Cosmic voids are cataloged at AWB3 in Stars, Galaxies, Cosmos. For ordering information, visit: here . From Science Frontiers #20, MAR-APR 1982 . 1982-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 11: Summer 1980 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A GEOTHERMAL WOMB?A flurry of papers and at least one TV documentary have widely promulgated the news that many life forms thrive near the thermal vents 2,550 meters under the sea along the Galapagos Rift. Mollusks, worms, crabs, and other forms of life make up a successful biological community where light never penetrates. Terrestrial heat rather than the sun keeps this life going. The geothermal heat reduces sulfur compounds emitted from the vents and chemosynthesis proceeds up the biological ladder without need for sunlight. (Karl, D.M ., et al; "Deep-Sea Primary Production at the Galapagos Hydrothermal Vents," Science, 207:1345, 1980.) Comment. The implications are far-reaching. Does life exist at great depths in the earth and beneath the apparently lifeless surfaces of the other planets? Photosynthetically sustained life may represent only a small slice of the biological pie. Was sunlight necessary for life to originate and evolve -- assuming it did each? From Science Frontiers #11, Summer 1980 . 1980-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 4: July 1978 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects What caused the grooves on phobos?Photographs from the Viking Orbiters show that the Martian satellite Phobos displays a heavily grooved surface. Enough high-resolution photos have been taken to prove that these grooves emanate from the large crater named Stickney and run around the satellite to its opposite side where they die out. This suggests that the origin of the crater and the grooves are related. Further, the widest and deepest grooves (700 meters wide and 90 meters deep) are located close to Stickney. On the other side of Phobos, grooves are consistently less than 100 meters wide. Despite these hints of impact origin, the grooves are not quite what one would expect from simple fracture by collision. Some show beaded or pitted structures. Other grooves are composed of irregularly bounded segments. Finally, some of the straight-walled sections seem to have slightly raised rims. Evidently, some internal forces, perhaps stimulated by the formation of Stickney, also played a part. (Thomas, P., et al; "Origin of the Grooves on Phobos," Nature, 273:282, 1978.) Reference. The grooves of Phobos and its other anomalies are catalogued at ALL2 and ALL3 in The Moon and the Planets. To order this book, go to: here . Map of the strange grooves on the Martian moon Phobos From Science Frontiers #4 , July 1978 . 1978-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 1: September 1977 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects New England Seamounts Once Near Surface Exploration of the New England Seamount chain by the research submarine Alvin confirmed that some of these peaks, now all a kilometer or more below the surface, were once at or above the surface of the ocean. This undersea mountain chain contains more than 30 major peaks and stretches 1,600 miles southeast from the New England coast. Deep-sea dredging has previously brought up Eocene limestone of shallow-water origin from the submerged mountain tops, but the Alvin explorations resulted in the first eye-witness accounts of dead coral (which grows only near the surface) and rock samples containing strands of dead algae that grows only within 100 meters of the surface. The New England Seamounts have therefore either subsided on the order of a kilometer since Eocene times or sealevel has altered drastically. The Alvin dives also discovered a series of very striking and perplexing buttes obviously the results of erosion (see drawing on cover). The buttes are apparently composed of volcanic rock and are only a few meters high. Some unexplained, extremely vesicular (holefilled) rocks seen on the sea floor during the dives seem to be identical to samples occasionally dredged up and formerly classified as cinders jettisoned from old steamships. The underwater surveys suggested that these "cinders" have a natural (still mysterious) origin. (Heirtzler, J.R ., et al; "A Visit to the New England Seamounts," American Scientist, ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 124: Jul-Aug 1999 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Enormous structure in japan Circular structures in the kurils Ancient bones on santa rosa Astronomy A NEW COSMOLOGY Magnetic stripes on mars The 21-micron mystery Biology Hand-reading more useful than palm-reading Preadaptive evolution Photosnthesis at deep-sea vents Late survival of the kilopilopitsofy and kidoky Geology The mystery of eugene island 330 Forest rings Geophysics Offset lunar rainbow Unusual corposants Fall of hot globules Unclassified Measuring spirituality! ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 154: Jul - Aug 2004 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Click-click, Click-click-click, Click, Click-click, Click (Click languages) 200 Mystery Towers Some notes on anomalous early Americans Astronomy Biological Hot Spots on Mars? Could we Really be at the Center of the Universe? The Black Drop Effect Biology Shallow Samples Reveal Deep Ignorance Are Nanobacteria Alive or just Strange Crystal? Geology The Carbonate Columns of Pobiti Kamani Fairy Circles vs Fairy Rings Geophysics Never! Never! Never! The Whymper Apparation Unclassified Sorry Rocks ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 159: May - Jun 2005 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Incredible Discoveries in Mexico The Too-Ancient Human tools at Valesquillo Reservoir What the Polynesians Brought and What they tool Away Astronomy Rewriting Mars' History Again, Again, Again What's the Matter with Matter? Biology Rover's Leap Be Late and It's All Over between Us! Pleistocene Hanky-Pank? The Inversion of Chromosome 17 Geology Bot a Subtle Signal! Deep-Earth Methane Generation Geophysics Extreme LDEs (long-Delayed Echos) Unclassified 13 Things that don't make sense A Very High Satellite Some very Low Satellites? ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 114: Nov-Dec 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Surface life (us!) only a "special case"T. Gold is again challenging our most cherished ideas about geology and life's domain. In the subject article -- his latest paradigm-shaker -- he first reviews the abundant evidence for the existence of large quantities of primordial hydrocarbons deep within the earth and (probably) many other planets throughout the universe. Associated with these hydrocarbons is a "deep, hot, biosphere." By "deep" Gold means 100 kilometers and more. It is this combination of a deep reservoir of hydrocarbons and life forms (probably mostly bacteria) that can account for (among other things): The fact that all helium comes from oil and gas wells The fact that the composition of petroleum is not what one would expect from the decomposition of plants and animals. It is really a mixture of primordial hydrocarbons with some added biochemical by-products; that is, products of that "deep" biosphere. Since carbonaceous material is now known to be common in the solar system (comets, carbonaceous chondrites, etc.), it is likely that many other planets also possess deep stores of hydrocarbons. In these deep, warm, protected, energyrich "wombs," complex biospheres might readily evolve. In Gold's view, deep biospheres may be the rule and surface life the exception! Finally, Gold sees life as merely a natural process with no ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 121: Jan-Feb 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Oklo: An Unappreciated Cosmic Phenomenon In 1972, French scientists discovered that several natural concentrations of uranium ore had become critical and flared up some 2 billion years ago at Oklo, Gabon. The concentration and configuration of the natural uranium and surrounding materials at that time had been just right to sustain fission. In fact, the analysis of the nuclear waste in the burned rocks demonstrated that plutonium had also been created. This implies that natural breeder reactors are also possible, raising the possibility of hitherto unappreciated, long-lived heat sources deep in the earth, in the other planets, and inside some of the stars. Don't worry that the Oklo phenomenon might occur today on the earth's surface. The concentration of fissionable U-235 has fallen considerably in the last 2 billion years due to its radioactive decay. But, deep inside the earth and other astronomical bodies, nuclear criticality might still be possible due to different pressures, densities, etc. In a stimulating and generally overlooked paper in Eos, J.M . Herndon proffers four important natural phenomena that may involve natural fission reactors. Geomagnetic reversals . In the deep earth, where pressures and densities are high, natural nuclear reactors may generate intermittent bursts of heat -- just as they did at Oklo -- and thereby cause the earth's dynamo to falter and reverse. Planetary heating . Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune emit much more energy than ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 117: May-June 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Two Catastrophe Scenarios We present below two reconstructions of major terrestrial catastrophes. Both are based on sound geological research: deep-sea cores, seismic profiles, and the like; but the reconstructions of the events are on the speculative side, particularly in matters of the magnitudes of the effects. Both events also purport to explain long-standing puzzles. Scenario #1 . The Bosporus silt plug blows. During the last Ice Age, sea levels dropped hundreds of feet exposing the continental shelves. The planet's great rivers cascaded over the edges in great waterfalls. The rocky sill at Gibraltar kept the Atlantic waters out of the Mediterranean, and this sea began to dry up. Farther to the east, the Black Sea was now cut off from the Mediterranean's salty water by the silt-choked Bosporus, that narrow strait separating Asia Minor from Europe. In consequence, the Black Sea became a vast fresh-water lake fed by Europe's rivers to the north. The Ice Age eventually waned, and the oceans and Mediterranean began to rise. About 7,000 years ago, the hydraulic pressure on the Bosporus silt plug became too great and it popped. Salty Mediterranean water poured into lowlands around the Black Sea. Scientists estimate that 50 cubic kilometers of water surged through the Bosporus each -- 200 Niagaras in one colossal waterfall. Falling some 150 meters, the thunder of falling water might have been heard ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 112: Jul-Aug 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Sea turtles: from one end to the other Leatherback turtles are mysterious in several ways: flexible shell, warmbloodedness, etc. (See SF#76 for more.) Now, we add two more remarkable capabilities to their dossier. Precision navigation. The oily, flexible shells of leatherbacks have made it difficult for researchers to attach radio transmitters to the animals. Their very deep dives (over 1,000 meters) are also inimical to human instrumentation. But S.J . Morreale's group at Cornell have succeeded in attaching pressure-resistant transmitters to the shells on short tethers. This team was able to track female leatherbacks as they left their nesting beach in Costa Rica and headed southward, past the Galapagos, out into the open South Pacific. Surprisingly, all the leatherbacks plied a very narrow corridor each year of the experiment (1992-1995). In fact, the paths were almost for at least 2,700 kilometers southwest of the Galapagos. Highprecision navigation equipment is required here. Among the leatherbacks' "instruments" are probably sensors that detect the angle of the geomagnetic field, the length of daylight, and the identities of the oceanic currents encountered. There are probably other sensors and, of course, a brain to process all the signals; but virtually nothing is known about them. (Morreale, Stephen J., et al; "Migration Corridor for Sea Turtles," Nature, ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 121: Jan-Feb 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Lake Champlain's Two Seiches The main body of Lake Champlain is 117 kilometers long, with an average breadth of 6.3 kilometers, and average depth of 29 meters. Although its shoreline in complex, there is a deep channel about 2 kilometers wide with steep sides running lengthwise along the lake floor. When wind blows across the lake's surface, wind-drag pushes surface water downwind. When the wind stops or changes direction, the piled-up water is freed, and standing waves are set up as the water sloshes back and forth in the lake basin. These waves are called "seiches." Lakes usually have characteristic periods of oscillation. For Lake Champlain, it is 4 hours, with amplitudes measured only in centimeters on the surface of the water. What makes Lake Champlain of more than usual interest is the presence of a second seiche, an internal phenomenon not visible on the surface. In the summer, Lake Champlain is stratified with a thermocline separating a layer of warm surface water from much colder deep water. You can only "see" the thermocline if you lower a thermometer into the water. This thermocline also exhibits seiches, but they are startlingly different from those on the surface. In Lake Champlain, the period of the internal seiche is 4 days rather than 4 hours. The amplitudes fall between 20 and 40 meters instead of being in the centimeter range. Just a few meters ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 107: Sep-Oct 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Antarctica's Lake Vostok Revisited Based upon a Japanese account, we reported the discovery of Lake Vostok in SF#102 almost a year ago. Some details are finally appearing in Western science publications. We can now offer a good cross section of the lake, plus some thoughts about potential ecosystems existing deep under the lake's ice. Although Lake Vostok lies under some 4 kilometers of ice, it remains liquid as geothermal heat seeps up through its floor. Surprisingly, the thick ice cover does not preclude all contact with the surface above. The covering ice sheet moves slowly across the lake and, as it does so, its bottom melts a bit, releasing frozen-in oxygen as well as life forms -- still-living microorganisms and dead creatures that fell onto the Antarctic ice thousands of years ago. Thus, there is a perpetual source of food and new life. Cores drilled from the ice sheet capping Lake Vostok have brought up a great diversity of live microbes that have survived despite the low temperatures and passage of time. A living unicellular alga was found 2,375 meters down in ice about 110,000 years old. Spore-forming bacteria brought up from 2,395 meters are about 200,000 years old and still alive! Although science has proclaimed that Lake Vostok biology must consist entirely of microorganisms, no one really knows what is down there. Another fascinating fact is that some 70 ...
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... Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Too Much Order In The Early Cosmos Astronomers are becoming accustomed to the idea that many nearby galaxies are concentrated in spherical shells separated from one another by about 400 million light years. This onion-skin geometry is inferred from the fact that galactic red shifts cluster around specific values; that is, they are quantized. Since red shifts are held to be proportional to distance in the expanding universe paradigm: Voila! We have shells! This evidence of nearby cosmic order does not seriously disturb cosmologists, because in the nearby galaxies we are seeing that portion of the universe that is billions of years old. In other words, nearby there has been enough time for some degree of order to have evolved out of the primordial chaos of the Big Bang. Now though, "deep" surveys of galaxies, looking much farther back in time, still show clustered red shifts -- not the expected increasing chaos required by theory. Although the surveys are incomplete, astronomers are discomfited by this early lumpiness. Their theories say that there was not enough time for galaxies to organize themselves into sheets, shells, and skeins. If further "deep" probings of the cosmos confirm this redshift clustering, we may need a new evolutionary scenario. Good bye Big Bang and expanding universe! (Vogel, Gretchen; "Goodness, Gracious, Great Walls Afar," Science, 274:343, 1996. Vergano, D.; "New Evidence of Cosmic Architecture," Science News, 150:239, 1996) In a related news item, Mexican scientists have proposed ...
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... very few, however, are captured in huge, fluidfilled tanks built by physicists. These trapped ghostly particles tell tales we do not yet fathom. We have mentioned the solar-neutrino problem before (SF#46/84, for example). It is one of science's more perplexing and enduring mysteries. Even the most modern, sophisticated neutrino detectors count only about one-third the number of neutrinos that the sun "should" be sending in our direction -- according to our best theories on the nuclear reactions simmering away in the solar core. To this classical neutrino problem has been added the discovery that the solar neutrino flux varies in ways difficult to explain. P. Sturrock and G. Walther, at Stanford University, scrutinized 20 years of data from a detector deep in the Homestead Mine in South Dakota and find that the neutrino flux seems to peak every 21.3 days, varying as much as 30% to 100%. It may be that the sun's fusion "engine," long thought to run steadily and smoothly, sputters in a cyclic fashion? If an automobile engine did this, we would take it to the garage! (Holden, Constance; "More Neutrino Mystery," Science, 273:1663, 1996.) The problem deepens: The first 102 days of neutrino data from Japan's new Super-Kamiokande detector suggest that the solar neutrino flux is greater at night than during the day, and that it also varies during the year. (Anonymous; "First Data from New Neutrino Detector, ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 108: Nov-Dec 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Glow Below Is there such a thing as sunless photosynthesis? Did photosynthesis evolve at the earth's surface or deep in the oceans near hydrothermal vents? Such questions are engendered by the strength of the mysterious glow that emanates from these deep-sea vents. It is at these cracks in the ocean floor that very hot, mineralladen water gushes forth, and where colonies of bizarre tube worms, blind shrimp, and hyperthermophilic (high temperature-loving) bacteria thrive. (For details, see SF#60 or p. 238 in Science Frontiers, the book) The first anomaly is the strength of the glow itself. It is not all thermal radiation emitted by the 350 C water spewing forth from the vents; in fact, it is 19 times more intense than expected from theory. Something else is contributing energy, but no one knows what it is so far. The unexpected intensity of the vent glows also asks some provocative questions of the biologists: Is the glow strong enough to sup port photosynthesis? Quite likely, seems to be the answer. Are life forms in the vicinity of the vents employing photosynthesis? We don't know yet, but some bacteria do photosynthesize. Might not life and perhaps photo synthesis, too, have originated at the vents rather than on the planet's surface? This is an attractive possi bility, because very early in the earth's history the surface was ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 118: Jul-Aug 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Mysterious Terras Pretas Most of the lush jungles of tropical South America grow on a very thin layer of soil that is continuously regenerated by decaying vegetation. Deforest the jungle and the agricultural potential is about that of a your nearest Interstate highway. But the so-called "terras pretas" are curious exceptions. Spotted along Brazil's Aripuana River are small areas of deep, black earth that are from 7 to 17 feet deep. These are the "terras pretas" or "black earths." Scientists believe that these fabulously productive "islands" in the sea of otherwise poor soil were developed by native peoples about 10,000 years ago. No one knows how these ancient farmers made the terras pretas. The slash-and-burn farming of the present inhabitants is primitive in comparison. (Anonymous; "Fertile Soil of Ancient Tribes Poses Puzzle," Columbus Dispatch , January 11, 1998. (Cr. J. Fry via COUD-I ) From Science Frontiers #118, JUL-AUG 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 107: Sep-Oct 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Rock-Based Life Virtually all biology textbooks insist that all terrestrial life ultimately depends upon sunlight for its survival. The ecosystems clustered around the deep-sea vents and the bacteria found in deep aquifers demonstrate that the sun is not essential to life -- chemical energy does just fine. In fact, the domain of chemosynthetic life has now been extended to a Romanian cave that has apparently been almost completely sealed off from surface influences for 5.5 million years. Air does leak in through tiny cracks, and water partially fills the cave. What is most remarkable in this sunless, sealed ecosystem is its biodiversity: 48 animal species, including 33 brand-new species. The roster includes isopods, a millipede, a centipede, a water scorpion, and a leech. Of course, bacteria and fungi thrive there, too. In contrast to unsealed caves, where insects, bats, and other sources of food filter in from the surface, life in the Romanian cave seems to derive entirely from hydrogen sulfide present in the cave's rocks. This compound is consumed by microorganisms, which are then grazed by cave occupants higher up the food chain. A NASA scientist has called Movile cave a "Mars analog site." And indeed it might be, for Mars has plenty of rocks and subsurface water. (Skinrud, E.; "Romanian Cave Contains Novel Ecosystem," Science News, 149: 405, ...
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... Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Wind-driven Ice Sheets In Death Valley Scientists generally scoff at Forteana as beneath their dignity to investigate. But the mysterious moving rocks on Racetrack Playa in Death Valley have lured them out of their ivied halls. We quote from the abstract of a report seen in the mainstream journal Geology . "Sharply angular boulders as large as 320 kg [700 pounds] sit on the Racetrack Playa, Death Valley, California; trails leading to them indicate that the rocks have moved large distances. The process has never been witnessed. Although high winds and a wetted surface seem necessary, controversy persists about the need for other conditions, especially ice sheets. On the basis of experiments with a wetted Racetrack surface (soft mud about 3 cm deep), we find the effective coefficient of friction to be surprisingly high, about 0.8 . Movement by wind alone of moderate-sized (20 kg) rocks with cubic shape requires sustained winds close to the ground of about 80 m/s (about 180 mph). Larger flat-lying rocks require much higher winds." The authors of this paper, J.B . Reid, Jr., et al, precisely mapped a large number of the enigmatic tracks. Their maps revealed many "mated pairs" of rocks, whose curving tracks matched near their origins to within a few centimeters, even though the tracks were separated by up to 830 meters (over 0.5 mile!). Apparently these mated rocks were locked into a huge ice sheet resting ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 120: Nov-Dec 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A Bright Flying Object And Another Enigmatic Crater The curious event described in the following abstract is eerily like the fireball and suspicious "crater" mentioned in SF#110. In that incident, which occurred November 22, 1996, near the HondurasGuatemala border, there was also a detonation. "On the early morning of 1994 January 18, a very bright luminous object crossed the sky of Santiago de Compostela, Spain. From visual sightings, it is concluded that the object wasn't a meteoric fireball (bolide). A surface "crater" in Cando (close to Santiago) with dimensions 29 x 13 m and 1.5 m deep was later discovered within 1 km of the projected "impact" point of the luminous object. At this site, in addition to the topsoil, full-grown pine trees greater than 20 m high were thrown downhill over a nearby road, leaving the downslope edge of the "crater" untouched and with a steep interior wall (this would not be the case if a regular landslide were responsible for the transport). Standing trees below the "crater" showed embedded soil and plant residues up to heights greater than 3 m. No strange materials (meteorites or artifacts) were recovered in or close to the "crater"; all materials belonged to the site and were not shocked; thus an impact is very improbable. "A possible explanation capable of reconciling all of the observations ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 120: Nov-Dec 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Pigeon-snaring Mounds Of Tonga In North America, the industrious Mound-builders excavated untold millions of basketfuls of soil which they piled up in impressive mounds. Flat-topped Monk's Mound at Cahokia, Illinois, rivals the Great Pyramid in volume. A casual observer of this huge earthen structure could only conclude that such immense labor was undertaken for some social imperative, such as worship or sacrifice. Perhaps this was the case in North America, but deep in the South Pacific, just east of Fiji, on the islands of Tonga, native peoples scraped large mounds of earth for what seems to be a frivolous purpose: pigeon-snaring ! But bear in mind that carnivory on these romantic Pacific islands was difficult because large game animals were nonexistent. Captured enemies helped solve the protein problem, but pigeons were much more common, and some species were good-sized and delicious. So much so that eventually only island royalty was allowed to catch and eat them. Pigeon poachers were whipped or executed (and maybe eaten?) In fact, pigeon snaring became a royal sport. To this end, starting at least a thousand years ago, the king's loyal subjects grubbed up the thin island soil and piled it up into high mounds. Tonga's pigeon-snaring mounds did not compete with Monk's Mound sizewise, being at most 115 feet in diameter and perhaps 15 feet high. But ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 107: Sep-Oct 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects An Old Galaxy In A Young Part Of The Universe As the Hubble Space Telscope has probed ever farther toward the supposed edge of the universe, it has discerned. as expected, many youthful-looking galaxies. Since such deep-viewing telescopes are thought to be looking far back into time as well as space, youthful galaxies are not only expected but demanded by the Big-Bang/expanding universe theory. Unfortunately for theory, these telescopes have also identified a handful of apparently very old galaxies cavorting amidst the youthful ones! "The problem, if conventional cosmological models are correct, is that galaxies that old and that far away simply should not be there. The observation tightens the thumbscrews on the Einstein-de Sitter cosmological model, and offers evidence that at least some galaxies formed at very early epochs, within a billion years after the Big Bang." (Kennicutt, Robert C., Jr.; "An Old Galaxy in a Young Universe," Nature, 381:555, 1996) Comment. A similar age discrepancy has been claimed for some galaxies that seem to harbor stars older than the universe itself! (SF#97) Reference. The subject of galaxy distribution is covered in Chapter AWO in the Catalog: Stars, Galaxies, Cosmos. For a description of the book, visit here . From Science Frontiers #107, SEP-OCT 1996 . 1996-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Circles Of Contention No, this is not about crop circles, although these are easily as controversial -- at least among anthropologists. The story broke last September (1996), in Sydney, Australia, and has been simmering ever since. We have let the story cook for a while, hoping to get some confirmation of the dates involved. This will have to come later. These "circles of contention" are engraved on tall boulders (about 2 meters high on average) arranged in arcs hundreds of meters long at a site the aborigines call Jinmium. Jinmium is located near the western boundary of Australia's Northern Territory. The circles are obviously the work of humans. There are thousands of these etchings all told. Dimensions: 2-3 centimeters across and about half as deep. No one doubts that the Jinmium site is ancient. Judging from the sediments that cover the lowest circles, these engravings are about 60,000 years old. If this date survives scrutiny, the Jinmium carvings will be the oldest human art on the planet -- twice as old as anything found in Europe. No wonder the circles have created a stir. Actually, though, a larger issue is at stake. In the sediments around the engraved boulders, anthropologists have discovered what seem to be even-more-ancient signs of human activity: stone tools stratigraphically dated at 116,000 and 176,000 years. The problem here is that most anthropologists hold (rather fervently) that modern humans did not expand out of Africa until about 100,000 years ago. Paleoanthropologist ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 111: May-Jun 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Levitation And Levity!New Scientist's "Feedback" page, our favorite source for remarkable insights into cosmic phenomena, noted recently that the magazine Omni had announced the winner of its "Theories" contest. The winning entry was revolutionary, to say the least. In the words of the inventor: "When a cat is dropped, it always lands on its feet, and when toast is dropped, it always lands with the buttered side facing down. I propose to strap buttered toast to the back of a cat; the two will hover, spinning inches above the ground." There is a deep profundity in this arrangement. S. Voss recognized immediately that a perpetual motion machine had been proposed. He set out to find a flaw. Somehow, energy was being supplied to keep the cat-toast armature turning. Voss observed that any practical cat-toast motor would have to be suspended over a very expensive carpet, for the simple reason that the probability of the toast landing buttered-side down is well known to be proportional to the cost of the carpet. (Linoleum is very poor in this application.) Furthermore. to maintain the machine's efficiency, the rug would have to be frequently cleaned of falling cat hairs. Carpet cleaning is energy-intensive, and it is here that energy must be supplied, thereby nullifying the perpetual-motion claim! (Anonymous; New Scientist " ...
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... 45 in all rows, columns, and diagonals. The square is "magic" in words. The second member of the pair is formed by counting the number of letters in each word of the first square, thus: 4 9 8 11 7 3 6 5 10 This square is also magic, adding up to 21 in all directions! Just a fluke, you say? Not so. You can even construct alphamagic squares in different languages. In his column in Scientific American, I. Stewart provides examples in French, German, Welsh, and even Swahili! In German, there are no less than 221 alphamagic squares using numbers under 100. (Stewart, Ian; "Alphamagic Squares," Scientific American, 276:106, January 1997.) Comment. The "deep meaning" of alphamagic squares is about the same as that associated with the existence of your Social Security Number in the decimal expansion of pi! From Science Frontiers #110, MAR-APR 1997 . 1997-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... ONLINE No. 112: Jul-Aug 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects From The Depths Of The Amazon Trawls lowered between 9 and 45 meters into the Amazon's muddy waters have brought up many bizarre fish never seen before. J. Lundberg and his team from the University of Arizona found two species of electric fish that subsist entirely on the tails of other electric fish. Some of the catfish are armorplated; others are transparent; another catfish is only 8 millimeters (1 /3 inch) long. Most interesting to taxonomists will be two separate species of electric fish that can be told apart only by the different patterns of electrical discharges they generate! What will trawls capture in the Rio Negro which is about 100 meters deep in one place? (Bille, Matthew A.; "Recent Discoveries: Fishing in South America," Exotic Zo ology , 4:1 , March/April 1997. Publication address: 3405 Windjammer Dr., Colorado Springs, CO 80920.) From Science Frontiers #112, JUL-AUG 1997 . 1997-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... anticlockwise and for most of the time the disc was in contact with the border ice. This contact point moved clockwise, i.e . the ice disc was not 'rolling' on the walls of the hole. This erosion by contact, which caused a low-frequency sound, explains why the hole in the ice was kept open for months." The ice thickness was 0.43m. Estimated weight of the ice disc = 864 metric tons -- almost 2 million pounds! Formation of the disc began when ice floes formed upstream were captured by a big whirlpool just as the river was beginning to freeze over. As more and more floes accumulated, the disc grew. Friction with the surrounding river ice rounded off the edges until it was nearly a perfect circle Although no deep mystery is involved here, the authors of the referenced article admitted that: "The mechanisms that form and drive the rotating ice disc are not yet known." (Nordell, Bo., and Westerstrom, Goran; "Large Rotating Ice Discs on Ice-Covered Rivers," Weather, 52:17, 1997.) Reference. Ice sometimes exhibits strange phenomena, such as sinusoidal cracks, columnar jointing, and even luminosity. See Chapter ESP in Anomalies in Geology. Ordering information at here . 160-foot diameter, rotating ice disc in the Pite River, Sweden, 1987. From Science Frontiers #112, JUL-AUG 1997 . 1997-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 111: May-Jun 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Carnot Creatures Photosynthesis is the ultimate source of energy for most of the life forms we recognize here on earth. Sure, there are also a few creatures that derive their energy by oxidizing the sulfides dissolved in the 400 water gushing forth from deep-sea vents. We will call them "geochemical creatures" to separate them from the "photosynthetic creatures" we are more familiar with. But, in principle at least, there could also be "Carnot creatures", whose metabolisms depend upon temperature differences like almost all human-built engines. Some bizarre animal, such as a meter-long tube worm, could plant one end on a hot rock surface and dangle the other in cold seawater to reject waste heat from its Carnot engine. Since thermodynamic-cycle efficiencies can approach 60% compared with only 10% for photosynthesis, evolution would have been remiss if it had not tried to evolve "Carnot creatures." For, as D. Jones comments below, Carnot creatures would be adaptable to many more habitats in the universe than photosynthetic creatures, which must have a sun with a very specific electromagnetic spectrum. "Many worlds, from distant 'brown dwarf' stars to the satellites of giant planets, may have internal heating but no effective 'Sun'. If Carnot life is possible, it may well have evolved in such dark and distant places -- making life abundant throughout the Universe. Indeed, our distant ...
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... is, the mound certainly does not seem to be a reservoir, but that is what recent research says it is. The mound is shaped like an inverted frying pan, with a 1500-foot-long handle that leads to a normally dry stream bed higher up in the canyon. The Anasazi were excellent water managers and took advantage of the flash floods that roared down the canyon every few years. To impound some of this valuable water, they initially built a conventional reservoir, but it was soon silted up by the freshets. So, they gradually raised the reservoir walls and constructed a raised canal to the stream bed. It was all very logical. The engineering of the canal is particularly impressive. The channel is 4-8 feet wide, but only 1-2 feet deep. Its steep, 15-foot-high sides are shored up with neatly aligned stones that were carried in from somewhere outside the canyon. (Anonymous; "Mystery Mound Appears to Be an Ancient Reservoir," San Francisco Chronicle, June 6, 1997. Cr. D. Phelps. Also: Anonymous; "Mysterious Mesa Verde Mound Turns Out to Be a Reservoir," Deseret News, June 10-11, 1997. Cr. S. Jones.) Comment. The closely related Hohokam Indians built miles of well-engineered canals where Phoenix now stands. See SF#19 for description. From Science Frontiers #116, MAR-APR 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... of space heated by starlight than as the remnant of a fireball. Element-abundance predictions using the Big Bang require too many adjustable parameters to make them work. The universe has too much largescale structure (interspersed "walls" and voids) to form in a time as short as 10-20 billion years. The average luminosity of quasars must decrease in just the right way so that their mean apparent brightness is the same at all redshifts, which is exceedingly unlikely. The ages of globular clusters appear older than the universe. The local streaming motions of galaxies are too high for a finite universe that is supposed to be everywhere uniform. Invisible dark matter of an unknown but non-baryonic nature must be the dominant ingredient of the entire universe. The most distant galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field show insufficient evidence of evolution, with some of them apparently having higher redshifts (z = 6-7 ) than the faintest quasars. If the open universe we see today is extrapolated back near the beginning, the ratio of the actual density of matter in the universe to the critical density must differ from unity by just one part in 1059. Any larger deviation would result in a universe already collapsed on itself or already dissipated. (Van Flandern, Tom; "Top Ten Problems with the Big Bang," Meta Research Bul letin , 6:64, 1997. Bulletin address: P.O . box 15186, Chevy Chase, MD 20825-5186.) From Science Frontiers #116, MAR-APR 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Kinky Sex Among The Invertebrates We suspect that the following two items may embarrass some, but they are too weird and amusing to ignore. Love's arrow. Or, rather, love's giant hypodermic needle. Cupid's arrows are rather benign compared with those of some squid. Some small squid will use their sharp beaks or tentacle hooks to rip open the skin of females. They then insert spermatophores with their penises. In the giant squid, however, the male's penis is formidable, muscular, and almost a meter long. It is powerful enough to insert spermatophores directly under the skin of the females. The males are not always accurate, for males themselves are sometimes impregnated in this manner during the squids' deep-sea orgies. (Norman, Mark D., and Lu, C.C .; "Sex in Giant Squid," Nature, 389:683, 1997.) The free-style penis. In the octopus and many cephalopods, the males have a special tentacle with which they insert their spermatophores under the mantle of the female. The tentacle is then retracted for future use. The male paper nautilus is more profligate with its tentacles. The paper nautilus is cephalopod which, like its cousin, the chambered nautilus, "sails the unshadowed main."* When the male detects a receptive female, he avoids intimacy. It's sex at a distance. His spermatophore-bearing tentacle detaches itself from the body and swims -- under its own power - ...
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... Tough And Different Today's textbooks recognize only two main divisions of life: the prokaryotes (cells without nuclei) and eukaryotes (cells with nuclei). Humans and most of the life forms we are familiar with belong to the latter group. (Curiously, human red blood cells lack nuclei!) However, a third basic type of life has been found prospering in some extreme environments. These are the Archea, typified by the methane-producing microbes discovered clustered around hot deepsea vents, where temperatures may exceed 400 C. It is not their rugged constitutions that place these miniscule forms of life in a new category; it is their genomes. They are radically different from those found in prokaryotes and eukaryotes. The genome of one species of Archea collected from a hot vent 3 kilometers deep in the Pacific has been sequenced. Biologists were taken aback. Methanococcus jannaschii , as it has been dubbed, possesses 1738 genes, of which 56% are entirely new to science. Many of these genes do not look anything like those found in the prokaryotes and eukaryotes. In a word, they seem "alien." (Morell, Virginia; "Life's Last Domain," Science, 273:1043, 1996.) How alien? Well, they are so tough that they could have arrived from Mars on a meteorite. Millions of years of residence in a meteorite edging its way toward a rendezvous with earth mean nothing to the Archea. They have even been cultured from the interior of a salt crystal 200 million years old. (Fanale, Fraser; " ...
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... Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Two Creations Of Life?The lifeforms called Archaea and Eubacteria follow radically different life styles. The former are very happy in such extreme environments as the salty Dead Sea and the sea-bottom, hydrothermal vents; the latter prosper in bad hamburgers and your gut. Despite their differences, they have always been thought to have evolved from a common ancestor. A more subtle, fundamental difference has now been found. Recall SF#117 and how some terrestrial life forms do incorporate right-handed molecules in their structures, especially in cell membranes? The ubiquitous Eubacteria do this. In the Archaea, however, the same structural components of the cell membranes (glycerophosphates) are left-handed. A subtle difference, but one with deep implications. Some scientists maintain that it is impossible for two organisms relying upon mirror-image versions of the same molecule to have evolved from a common ancestor. Their genomes must be fundamentally different. Conclusion: the Archaea and Eubacteria must have evolved separately, and from different biological wellsprings -- that is, "creations." Such thinking is anathema. M. Kates, a Canadian evolutionary biologist, is skeptical. "Both the physics and chemistry of membranes are so complex that I would regard it as highly improbable that they could have auto-assembled twice." (Barnett, Adrian; "The Second Coming," New Scientist, p. 19, February 14, 1998.) Comment. Both opinions rely upon wild probability guesses, as do all opinions regarding the creation ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 120: Nov-Dec 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Precognitive Dreams For her doctoral dissertation, M.S . Stowell completed a deep study of precognitive dreaming. She approached this subject about the only way one can, which is by interviewing people who claim to have had such dreams. Stowell interviewed five such claimants, and it is remarkable how many precognitive dreams they have had collectively. There are 51, and 37 of them have been confirmed as accurate. In addition, all five dreamers had precognitive experiences while awake. Many of these were also confirmed. It is important to bear in mind that it takes only one solid confirmation of precognition to shatter some sacred paradigms! Here, we might have a couple score of them! To give the reader the flavor of this type of parapsychological research, we select one dream that foresaw a plane crash. Here is how Elizabeth described her dream: "It starts out where I'm driving north on the freeway in [City]. Right about by [specific location], going north, heading for the [specific] Bridge, I look up and there's a big plane coming straight at me, and there's also an overpass right where I am. My initial reaction is that it's going to crash on and that I'm in trouble and instead a split second passes in which I realize that I'm going under it, under the overpass, and the plane will go right ...
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... that they did not fossilize well. (Ref. 3) Comment. The molecular biologists are a bit arrogant in their assertions. They seem to assume that because they can quantify molecular divergences; that is, fill their journal contributions with numbers; that their data is more sound than fossiliferous strata. But their crucial assumption of constant DNA divergence in time may be their undoing. References Ref. 1. Anonymous; "Deflating the Biological Big Bang," Science News, 150: 335, 1996. Ref. 2. Perlman, David; "Origin of Animals -- 1.2 Billion Years Ago," San Francisco Chronicle, October 25, 1996. Cr. J. Covey. Ref. 3. Wray, Gregory A., et al; "Molecular Evidence for Deep Precambrian Divergences among Metazoan Phyla," Science, 274:568, 1996. Homology vs. DNA. Until the molecular biologists recently arrived on the scene, evolutionary family trees were based upon similarities in appearance; that is, homology. Animals that look alike must be closely related. But molecular biologists have discovered that some animals that seem identical to the eye differ significantly in their DNA complements. Thus, the Pacific skinks may undermine homology. Inhabiting many, far-separated Pacific islands, these small lizards all look pretty much alike externally. For many years, biologists assumed that they all belonged to the same species. Recently, scalpels in hand, they found that the skink innards differed enough to define two species: Emioa cyanura and Emioa impar . Next, the molecular biologists got ...
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... Tunisia. In a recent issue of Geology Today, C.C . Reeves, Jr., Texas Tech University, adds to the list a playa at Double Lakes, Texas. Of special interest at Double Lakes is not the rocks and other debris blown across the playa but a discarded hotwater tank. It, too, is a playa slider. It first left a trail a few hundred meters long when it was frozen in an ice sheet spigot down, with the spigot furrow quite obvious. The ice sheet then melted, and the tank was blown over spigot-up. Another ice sheet formed, and the tank was off across the playa again. This time the keel of the tank excavated a furrow as wide as the tank's length, 91 centimeters, several centimeters deep, and 122 meters long. Reeves contends that this is the world's largest playaslider furrow! (Reeves, C.C ., Jr.; "Unusual Playa Sliders at Double Lakes, Texas," Geology Today, 12:207, 1996.) Comment. Now that science has finally stooped to study this mundane phenomenon and has come up with some answers, we are inclined to remove it from the rolls of Fortean phenomena! From Science Frontiers #114, NOV-DEC 1997 . 1997-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... 4:48 AM, November 29, 1975, a 37-mile-wide section suddenly dropped 11 feet and slid seaward 26 feet. The result was a magnitude-7 .2 quake and a 48-foot-high tsunami. This was a minor of the slump. If the entire 4,760-cubic-mile block decided to break off, it would probably create a magnitude-9 quake and a tsunami 1,000-feet high. All the coast-hugging cities of the Hawaiian Islands would be swept away. And LOOK OUT Australia, Japan, and California. (Napier, A. Kam; "Landslide," Honolulu , p. 28, February 1997. Cr. H. DeKalb.) Comment. Tsunamis travel at jet speeds on the deep, open ocean and have such small amplitudes that ships rarely notice them. Only when they reach shallow water do they slow down and reach monstrous sizes. From Science Frontiers #115, JAN-FEB 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... plates where oceanic plates dive under continental plates. Stresses naturally accumulate during such slow-motion collisions. The result: plenty of quakes. Mechanically, this model is very appealing, but there are puzzling exceptions. There are sections along plate boundaries obviously in collision where no earthquakes at all occur to relieve stresses. Quakes are felt on either side of these segments, but all is serene inside. These segments are termed "seismic gaps." They may stretch for hundreds of kilometers. Theory insists that all seismic gaps must eventually be filled in. After all, the rocks can take only so much stress. Theory may be wrong because at least ten seismic gaps seem to be permanent. Something unexplained is transpiring beneath the surface that allows oceanic plates to slide quietly down under the continents and deep into the mantle. One such permanent seismic gap is especially embarrassing to geophysicists. It stands out prominently on earthquake maps of the very active Peruvian coast. When the immense quake of 1974 shook this coastline, this gap was unperturbed. Neither did the many aftershocks violate this charmed region. Not believing in subterranean magic, some geophysicists confidently (and very loudly) predicted this reluctant gap would soon yield. After 23 years it is still there! (Penvenne, Laura Jean; "When It's Better to Build on the Fault," New Scien tist , p. 14, January 11, 1997.) From Science Frontiers #112, JUL-AUG 1997 . 1997-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... sort is equivalent to "facial vision" in blind humans, who can hear objects using the environmental sound reflected from them. J. Potter and his colleagues at the National University of Singapore have constructed an array of underwater microphones that detects "slices" of the acoustical environment around it. When processed by a computer, images of objects emerge by virtue of the background noise reflected from them. This group has also estimated the ability of dolphins to detect and process background noise. They suggest that dolphins should be able to "see" objects at least 25 feet away without even using their active sonar; that is, their clicks. This passive acoustical imaging would be a useful evolutionary development because dolphin clicks warn some prey and allow them to escape. (Anonymous; "Cacophony of the Deep," Discover, 19:19, May 1998.) Comments. Some insects can detect the sonar cries of pursuing bats and take evasive action. Perhaps some fish can detect pursuing dolphins, too. Blind people can augment facial vision by tapping with a cane or using a mechanical clicker. From Science Frontiers #120, NOV-DEC 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... could, in principle, affect weather in Canada. In effect, a slight change in initial conditions could, in the fullness of time, have very large effects. Now, it is generally admitted that the solar system is chaotic after all. Each planet is subject to the tiny, butterfly-like gravitational tugs of the other planets, especially Jupiter. Given enough time, these gravitational nuances can result in the ejection of a planet from the solar system -- and may already have done so in the past! Mercury and Mars are the most vulnerable on a billion-year time scale. In the case of Mercury, its orbit will become more and more elliptical according to computer simulations. Eventually a close gravitational encounter with Venus is possible. This could send Mercury careening off into deep space. The probability of this happening is only 1 in a 1000 over 5 billion years, but it is not zero. Mars might likewise be ejected by a passing nudge from earth. However, this encounter could go the other way. Depending upon the celestial dynamics of the encounter, Mars might gravitationally fling earth out into the Galaxy, and our planet would truly become "Spaceship Earth." (Frank, Adam; "Crack in the Clockwork," Astronomy, 26:54, May 1998.) Comment. The computer simulations used in the foregoing study have to assume that we know all the forces acting in the solar system. This may not be the case according to the next item. From Science Frontiers #120, NOV-DEC 1998 . 1998-2000 ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 95: Sep-Oct 1994 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Deep Quake Deepens Mystery Most earthquakes are shallow. They are concentrated no deeper than 20-25 kilometers down. However, a few extremely deep quakes rumble at depths of about 600 kilometers. On June 8, 1994, what may be the largest deep earthquake of the century -- magnitude 8.2 -- exploded 640 kilometers beneath Bolivia. "Exploded" may or may not be the proper word. Geophysicists are really not certain what causes the very deep quakes, because at 640 kilometers rocks are so hot that they flow rather than snap under geological stresses. The more common, shallow earthquakes are generally created when rocks snap and fracture. Since the deep quakes seem to be concentrated in subducted slabs of terrestrial crust that plunge down deep into the earth's mantle, geophysicists suppose that the increasing heat and pressure applied to the descending slabs may cause "explosive" phase changes in minerals contained in the slabs. Phase changes often involve volume changes that, if sudden, might generate seismic waves. Too, water of hydration in minerals may be explosively turned into vapor. But this is all surmise at present. The Bolivian quake also caused the whole earth to ring like a bell. Every 20 minutes or so, the entire planet expanded and contracted a minute but detectable amount. Another surprise: the Bolivian earthquake was felt a far away as Seattle -- the first time that a quake in that part of South ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 96: Nov-Dec 1994 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Two really deep oceans During our latest anomaly-collecting cycle, we came across two reports on apparently identical phenomena. Neither article mentioned the work of the other! Both groups of scientists processed massive quantities of earthquake records to form "seismic images" of structures deep in the bowels of the earth. (The technique is called "seismic tomography.") Both groups have discerned huge slabs of crust that were once on the planet's surface but were subsequently thrust (" subducted") down under the continents. These slabs are now hundreds of kilometers below the surface, and they have dragged water along with them. In fact, their water inventories may rival today's surface oceans; they may even have been surface oceans themselves millions of years ago before they descended into the infernal regions. Only a few years ago, all geologists maintained that all water in subducted slabs was squeezed out of the rocks by immense pressure and later reappeared at the surface as volcanic steam. Deep ocean #1 . G. Nolet and A. Zielhuis, Princeton seismologists, report a huge reservoir of water about 900 kilometers under present-day Europe. Some 400-500 million years ago, there was an ocean in this locale. (Zimmer, Carl; "The Ocean Within," Discover, 15:20, October 1994.) Deep ocean #2 . H. Wysession, Washington University, has located a water ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 95: Sep-Oct 1994 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A DEEP-SEA HYDROTHERMAL VENT INSTEAD OF A WARM LITTLE POND?If earth life didn't arrive from outer space (See under ASTRONOMY.), it may have arisen a couple miles below the ocean's surface at hydrothermal vents. The curious glows recently remarked at these vents (SF#87) have stimulated much speculation as to the potential role of these glows in the origin of life: "The history of hydrothermal activity predates the origin of life, and light in the deep sea has been a continuous phenomenon on a geological time scale and may have served either as a seed or refugium for the evolution of biological photochemical reactions or adaptations." We formally classify this item under GEOPHYSICS because scientists are still pondering how these glows are created. Some of the light is obviously black-body radiation from the very hot (350 C) water but: ". .. other potential, narrow-band sources of light may be superimposed on the blackbody radiation spectrum, including crystaloluminescence, Cerenkov radiation, chemiluminescence, triboluminescence, sonoluminescence, and the burning of methane in supercritical water." (Van Dover, Cindy Lee, et al; "Light at Deep Sea Hydrothermal Vents," Eos, vol. 75, 1994.) Comment. If cold, diffuse molecular clouds in deep space can synthesize glycine, imagine what the hot, chemically-rich fluids around hydrothermal vents might be able to do. ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 95: Sep-Oct 1994 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Blondes in ancient china Evidence of tobacco in ancient egypt Dwarf mammoths in ancient egypt? Astronomy "AN UNPRECEDENTED AND BIZARRE OBJECT" Comets, asteroids, or neither? This was the big one, but where did it come from? Snowballs in hell? Biology It's according to hoyle and wickramasinghe Music of the hemispheres The urge to replicate: part i The urge to replicate: part ii Geology Might diamonds be dead bacteria? Deep quake deepens mystery Geophysics Sylvanshine: a newly recognized optical phenomenon Gamma-ray flashes in the upper atmosphere A DEEP-SEA HYDROTHERMAL VENT INSTEAD OF A WARM LITTLE POND? Psychology The solar wind and hallucinations Physics Cold fusion update: 1994 Miscellaneous A SKEPTIC'S NDE -- NOT SO MYSTICAL ...
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... - none obvious to surface observers. This unexpected macrostructure of the ocean surface is shaped by variations in the strength of the earth's gravitational field and sea-bottom terrain. Wherever the gravitational field is stronger, it creates a depression on the fluid surface. German geophysicists, in fact, have drawn a global map of the ocean's large-scale topography, as measured from the European Space Agency's ERS-1 satellite. The surface of the world ocean departs wildly from a smooth sphere. On their colored map: "Brilliant pink and red areas are continental-size mounds of water most notable northeast of Australia, where the sea topography is up to 85 meters (280 ft.) higher than the standard ocean level. Just to the west near India, deep blue indicates a 105-meter (346-ft.) deep depression in the sea surface. Major differences in the gravity fields and terrain underlying the two regions cause a variation of 190 meters (627 ft.) in sea surface topography between these two adjoining areas." (Covault, Craig; "ESA Radar Scans Global Ocean," Aviation Week , p. 42, October 24, 1994. Cr. J.S . Denn.) From Science Frontiers #97, JAN-FEB 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 92: Mar-Apr 1994 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Back to siberia: the biggest flood?14,000 BP. Deep in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia. About this date, a wall of water 1,500 feet high surged down the Chuja River valley at 90 miles per hour. How does one deduce such a hydrological cataclysm? A. Rudoy, a geologist at Tomsky State Pedagogical Institute, points to giant gravel bars along the Chuja River valley. These are not the inch-sized ripples we seen on the floors of today's rivers; these are giants measuring tens of yards from crest to crest. Only a catastrophic flood could have piled up these ridges of debris. Rudoy postulates that, during the Ice Ages, a huge ice dam upstream held back a lake 3,000 feet deep, containing 200 cubic miles of water. When the ice dam suddenly ruptured, all life and land downstream was devastated. (Folger, Tim; "The Biggest Flood," Discover, 15:36, January 1994.) Comment. The breaking of Pleistocene ice dams also carved up parts of North America. There was the famous Cincinnati ice dam and, of course, the Spokane Flood that gouged out the Channelled Scablands of the Pacific Northwest, when Lake Missoula catastrophically emptied into the Pacific. See ETM5 in our catalog: Carolina Bays, Mima Mounds. It is described here . But other thoughts intrude: Were the heaps of mammoth carcasses, the ...
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