... bizarre, and amusing. The first two anecdotes involve amputees experiencing the phantom-limb phenomenon. The accepted explanation of this phenomenon is that the irritated stump of an amputee sends nerve messages that deceive the brain into signaling that the limb is there after all. Ramachandran, a neurologist, has shown that this theory is incorrect. Instead, he asserts, when the area of the brain assigned to the lost limb no longer receives sensory input from the area, it begins to react to sensory input arriving at adjoining areas in the brain. In other words, the idle area "overhears" nearby signals that are being processed and acts upon them in error. This view explains why by simply stroking a man who had lost an arm, Ramachandran discovered two virtual hands in the man's face and shoulder. A touch on the man's cheek brought the response, "You're touching my thumb." The second anecdote is explained by the fact that the area in the sensory cortex assigned to the genitals is located next to that for the feet. Genital stimulation of people who have lost a foot triggers sensations in the phantom leg. One man had orgasms in his phantom leg as well as his genitals! Lastly, there are those people who cannot recognize that they are paralyzed, say, on their left sides. Even when they obviously fail to pick up things with their left arms and cannot tie their shoes, they are emphatic that they are not paralyzed. Strangely and inexplicably, squirting water in the left ear brings them back to reality, but only ...

... BHB29 Eminence in Sports Champions Correlated with the Position of Mars; the "Mars Effect" BHB30 Cultural Creativity Correlated with Solar Activity BHB31 Cultural Flowering Correlated with Climate BHB32 Eminence and Order of Birth BHB33 Periodicity in the Population of Living Eminent People BHB34 Eminence Correlated with Longevity BHB35 Intelligence Correlated with Season of Birth BHB36 Intelligence Correlated with Birth Order BHB37 Intelligence Correlated with Myopia BHB38 A Relationship between Intelligence and Flicker-Frequency Response BHB39 Increasing Intelligence with Vitamin Intake BHB40 The Intelligences of Identical Twins Reared Apart BHB41 Likelihood of College Matriculation and Season of Birth BHB42 Mathematical Ability: Sex Differences BHB43 Intelligence Correlated with Stature Personality Correlated with Astronomy Inheritability of Intelligence Intelligence and Gender Human Intelligence Affected by Past Natural Cataclysms Economic Activity Correlated with Geomagnetic Field Schizophrenia Correlated with Season of Birth Disturbed Human Activity Correlated with Geomagnetic Field Tickling Phenomena Face Preference Correlated with Menstrual Cycle Curious Crowd Behavior (at Train Platforms) Why Do People Stick Out Their Tongues When Concentrating? Intelligence as a Pathogen Behaviorisms Transmitted by Organ Transplants Meme Phenomena Effect of Music (Mozart's ) on Mental Performance Motherhood Improves Learning and Memory BHC CHEMICAL AND PHYSICAL ANOMALIES BHC1 Electric People BHC2 Magnetic People BHC3 Body Potentials Correlated with Lunar Phase BHC4 Brain Electricity (EEGs) BHC5 Very High Body Temperatures BHC6 Unusual Body-Temperature Cycles BHC7 Anomalous Human Combustion BHC8 Retarded Decay of the Human Body BHC9 Imbalances in Element Ingestion and Excretion BHC10 The Human Inability to Synthesize Ascorbic Acid BHC11 Blood-Chemistry Variations BHC12 The Existence of Blood Polymorphisms BHC13 The Complexity, Variability, and Ubiquity of Hemoglobin BHC14 Geographical Anomalies in the Distribution of Blood Groups BHC15 Blood Chimeras Biorhythms BHE THE HUMAN FOSSIL ...

... Apparitions ACO9 Multiple Tails and Antitails ACO10 Ejection of Spherical Halos ACO11 Correlation of Terrestrial Auroras and the Phenomena of Distant Comets ACO12 Blinking Comets ACO13 The Anomalous Disappearance of Comets ACO14 Anomalous Brightening of Short-Period Comets ACO15 Comet Reflectivities Are Similar to Those of Asteroids ACO16 Some Cometary Light Curves Resemble Those of Asteroids ACO17 New Comets Exhibit Different Brightening Behavior Than Old Comets ACO18 Anomalous Splitting of Comets ACO19 Tail-Wagging Comets ACO20 Cometary Outbursts ACO21 Comet Attrition Rates Imply Youth ACO22 No Ices in Cometary Reflection Spectra ACO23 The Blackness of Cometary Nuclei ACX OCCULTATIONS BY COMETS ACX1 Cometary Tails: Anomalous Occultations of Radio Stars AE ENIGMATIC OBJECTS AEO BRIGHT ENIGMATIC OBJECTS AEO1 Bright Objects near the Sun AEO2 Starlike Objects with Anomalous Motions AEO3 Unexplained Nebulous Objects AEX UNIDENTIFIED OBJECTS TRANSITING THE SUN, MOON, AND PLANETS AEX1 Objects Crossing the Face of the Sun AEX2 Objects Crossing the Moon's Disk AEX3 Unidentified Objects Transiting Jupiter AG THE EARTH AGB ANOMALIES IN THE EARTH'S ROTATION AGB1 Variations in Latitude AGL EARTH-SATELLITE PHENOMENA AGL1 Slow Changes in Satellite Inclination AGL2 Sudden Perturbations of Orbital Elements AGL3 Slow, Unexplained Descent of Satellites AGL4 Direct Visual Observations of Natural Earth Satellites AGL5 Radio Propagation and Natural Earth Satellites AGL6 Correlation of Geophysical Events with Perigee Passages of Natural Earth Satellites AGO OBSERVATIONS OF EARTH FROM SPACE AGO1 Periodic Changes in Earth's Brightness AH MERCURY AHB MERCURY'S ORBITAL AND SPIN ANOMALIES AHB1 The Residual Advance of Mercury's Perihelion AHB2 Mercury's High Eccentricity and Inclination AHB3 Short Transit Times across the Sun AHB4 Mercury's Spin Resonance AHE GEOLOGY AND FIGURE OF MERCURY AHE1 The Asymmetry of Mercury's ...

... latter take great pride in their Jomon heritage. Complicating this picture is the fact that analysis of Jomon skeletons suggest that the Jomon did not closely resemble most modern Japanese. "Instead, they had features that made them look more like Caucasians and they seem to have resembled the Ainu, an ethnic group that still lives in tiny numbers in northern Japan. In the museum here in Aomori, Japanese tourists wandered by exhibits about the Jomon and gazed affectionately at pictures of what their Jomon ancestors are believed to have looked like -- even though the only one in the room who looked much like the pictures was an American." The Japanese population, in fact, is not as homogeneous as advertised. The natives of northern Japan tend to have rounder eyes, more body hair, and wider faces; that is, more of the Jomon characteristics. In the south, the Japanese have more Korean and Chinese characteristics. (Kristof, Nicholas D.; "Out of the Mist Looms, Maybe, the First Japanese," New York Times International , April 2, 1999. Cr. M. Colpitts.) Comment. From this starting point at Aomori, our tour moves north past Hokkaido, where remnants of the mysterious Ainu still hang on, to the Kuril Islands. From Science Frontiers #124, JUL-AUG 1999 . 1999-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 124: Jul-Aug 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Ancient Bones On Santa Rosa Just off the coast of Southern California, lies Santa Rosa, one of the Channel Islands. There, recently, two female thigh bones have been dug out of a gully at Arlington Canyon. Radiocarbon-dated at 13,000 years, they are 1,400 years older than the benchmark Clovis sites. The significance of the Santa Rosa bones is explained in the following quotation. "The new discovery is likely to be controversial in part because many scientists say that the old skeletons found in the past few years around the western United States do not resemble modern Native Americans. Detailed examinations of the skulls reveal slender faces, narrower brain cavities, high foreheads and slightly protruding chins that are more typical of Caucasoid peoples. "Some of them bear striking resemblance to a very ancient race called the Ainu, a maritime people who were the forerunners of the Polynesians and long ago occupied Japan and China." (Polakovic, Gary; "Channel Island Woman's Bones May Rewrite History," Los Angeles Times, April 11, 1999. Cr. E. Roy. Abbreviated version in the Houston Chronicle, April 12, 1999. Cr. D. Phelps.) Comments. It should be noted that Santa Rosa is also known for ancient "fire areas" (" hearths"?) where dwarf mammoths were roasted over 13,000 years ago. (See Ancient Man for details.) ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 23: Sep-Oct 1982 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Ancient Mud Structures in Colorado Astronomy At Poverty Point Astronomy The Cosmic Whirl Where Are the Primordial Stars? Biology Chessie Captured on Videotape Short-circuiting Heredity Remarkable Engineering Design in Nature Geology Facing Up to the Gaps The Cretaceous-tertiary Extinction Bolide Geophysics Zoom Lens in the Atmosphere Psychology High Technology Experiments in Parapsychology ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 59: Sep-Oct 1988 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Stele with Unknown Glyphs Found Near Vera Cruz All Roads Lead to Chaco Canyon How and When the Americas Were Peopled Astronomy "? " ! ? Nereid: Grotesque Shape Or Two-faced? Memoirs of A Dissident Scientist Biology Nothing Reacts with Something? Periodic Extinctions and Explosions in Terrestrial Life Aids: Another Great Deceiver Geology Going for Gold Is There Truth in the Grains? Did An Asteroid Impact Trigger the Ice Ages? The New Archaeoperyx Fossil Geophysics Fish and Winkle Showers Lightningless Thunder? Psychology The Enigma of Multiple Personality Observations of Luminous Phenomena Around the Human Body ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 91: Jan-Feb 1994 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Two-faced planets and moons Several solar-system objects present asymmetrical visages to our telescopes. Mars is a classic case, being much more heavily cratered in its southern hemisphere than its northern. But the dichotomies are not restricted to cratering, as we shall now see. Neptune . Recently, H.B . Hammel, using the University of Hawaii's 2.2 -meter telescope, discovered that Neptune's northern hemisphere is now brighter than its southern -- something never observed before. During the past eight years, the southern hemisphere has been consistently brighter, although the hemispheres were of roughly equal brightness during the late 1970s. The cause of these brightness changes remains a mystery. (Cowen, Ron; "Neptune's Northern Half Grows Brighter," Science News, 144:287, 1993.) Iapetus . This satellite of Saturn is dark on one half and light on the other. Quantitatively speaking, the bright side reflects ten times more incident light than the other. An explanation is suggested by the fact that the dark side points in the satellite's direction of motion. A recent study of 12 Voyager images of Iapetus also imply an exogenous (externally imposed) origin of the dark surface, because they show a gradual rather than sharp transition between the dark and light regions. The thought of planetary scientists is that micrometeoroids bombard the leading hemisphere of Iapetus preferentially and in the process volatilize ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 91: Jan-Feb 1994 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Dna undermines key paradigms Did captive christians and moslems build this mayan pyramid? A LARGE CELTIC PYRAMID IN GERMANY? Astronomy Two-faced planets and moons Pairs of ghostly spots sweep across jupiter Biology Some people are brighter than others Crayfish communication Pizzaspermia! The earth's biosphere, 'tis no thin veneer Geology Do earthquakes raise mima mounds? Geophysics Remarkable hailstones Lightning stalled aircraft Post-lightning glows Fiber fall ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 100: Jul-Aug 1995 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Microbes threaten radiocarbon dating Astronomy Has jupiter flashed before? A POT POURRI OF MARTIAN CUSIOSITIES (AND WE DON'T MEAN "FACES" AND "PYRAMIDS") Biology Anomalous larvae and the burning of heretics When humans were an endangered species Straight from the horse's ear The watchmaker is not blind after all! Geology Weird icicles Giant sea-bed pockmarks Geophysics Anomalous phenomena associated with the 1908 tunguska event How can the moon affect the earth's temperature? Kobe quake jostles the geo- magnetic field Superhail Physics When different universes rub together Another starchy anomaly Unclassified Unidentified object ...

... that prevail. Although viability on the present-day Martian surface is problematical, Earth-to-Mars transfers of life were feasible during an earlier 'wet' phase of the planet, prior to 3.5 Ga ago. The Martian atmosphere was also denser at that epoch, with several bars of CO2 , thus serving to decelerate meteorites, as on the present-day Earth. Since the reverse transfer can occur in a similar manner, early life evolution of the two planets may well have been linked." (Wallis, Max K., and Wickramasinghe, N.C .; "Role of Major Terrestrial Cratering Events in Dispersing Life in the Solar System," Earth and Planetary Science Letters , 130:69, 1995) Comment. Now we know why the "face on Mars" looks so human!! From Science Frontiers #99, MAY-JUN 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... 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 The Flat Face Of Mars Mars has two puzzling "faces": (1 ) That human-like visage at Cydonia; and (2 ) The whole northern hemisphere or "face." The latter is definitely real and consists of an immense, low-lying plain centered roughly on the planet's North Pole. The opposite face of Mars is occupied by rough, cratered highlands. This sharp, profound crustal dichotomy has been known for many years and has resisted explanation. In SF#113, T. Van Flandern advanced the theory that the rugged southern highlands are composed of the debris from an exploded planet which Mars once attended as a satellite. Be that as it may, there is something puzzling about the northern plains. We now have information from the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS), now orbitting the red planet, that the low-lying northern plains are much flatter than thought. For thousands of kilometers, they are smooth on a scale of hundreds of meters. This is flatter than the lava flows of the lunar maria; flatter than the smoothest central Sahara. These startling data come from the MGS's laser altimeter that can measure elevation of the terrain below it with 10meter accuracy averaged over the beam width of 150 meters. The only known terrain in the entire solar system that can match this flatness is the abyssal, sediment-filled floor of the South Atlantic. Hmmm! Does this ...

... look at the wall itself. B. Brailsford, of Christchurch, has been the chief investigator of the Kaimanawa wall, aided by American D.H . Childress, and others. The stones that make up the wall are 4-ton blocks of ignimbrite, a soft volcanic rock that could have been easily dressed with stone tools. The wall is topped by a red beech tree 2.9 meters in circumference and over a meter of accumulated humus. According to Brailsford, who was interviewed by the Listener : "There was no doubt that the stones had been cut. The four visible stones in the front wall were a uniform 1.6 metres tall, and 1 metre wide. In one place he could insert his arm into a root-ridden cavity and feel the back face -- and the front face of the next tier. The faces were uncannily smooth, with no saw or adze marks. The interstices where the blocks join were knife-blade thin. "Further up the hill, the tops of other stones protruded, suggesting a more extensive structure was buried in the hill." Supporting the contention that a pre-Maori people lived in New Zealand are the bones of the kiore, a type of rat alien to New Zealand, which was likely introduced by the first settlers. Some kiore bones have been dated as 2,000 years old -- centuries before the first Maoris arrived. Needless to say, New Zealand archeologists and anthropologists are not anxious to drastically revise their fundamental paradigm assigning the discovery and colonization of New Zealand to the Maoris ...

... 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 Sunspots And Planetary Alignments Many scientists and laymen have noticed that the sunspot cycle and Jupiter's period are both about 11 years. This must be a coincidence, because the tidal forces exerted on the sun by distant Jupiter seem far too weak to disturb the sun's internal operations. (See details in ASO9 in The Sun and Solar System Debris.) Could it be that we are missing something, for there is some evidence that some planetary alignments also exert influence on the number of spots seen on the sun's face? In particular, the Uranus-Neptuneearth conjunction has been investigated by B. Payne, who wrote the following in Cycles: "Sunspots increase when two or more planets line up, an effect I have observed for more than a decade. During the last six years, Uranus and Neptune have been within a few degrees of each other. Their conjunction, which occurs every 137 years, is an ideal situation to validate the hypothesis that sunspot numbers are associated with planetary positions." Payne's lengthy analysis is omitted, but the essence of his study can be seen in the accompanying graph. He concludes: "The results clearly show that sunspot numbers increase markedly during Uranus-Neptune-Earth-sun alignments." (Payne, Buryl; "Sunspot Number Changes during Planetary Alignments," Cycles, 45:146, 1995) Comment. It will take a lot more than ...

... Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Return Of The Monolith Some readers have asked that UFOs receive more attention in SF. We now address these complaints with a case of adequate strangeness. T.M . Olsen has investigated a bizarre observation from Kentucky. The date was September 28, 1996. "Vance C. Johns, a secondary-school horticulturist, lives a rural area east of Louisville. Sometime between midnight and 1:30 AM, he got up to use the bathroom and saw a strange object outside his bedroom window. His wife, Florence, keeps the drapes open on the center of three picture windows, and he immediately opened the other drapes for a better look. The open view through the windows, which face south, is of a grass lawn sloping to a curved driveway. This 0.8 -hectare cleared area is devoid of trees and other objects. Two large, automatic floodlights illuminate the ground around the entire house, and under a full moon, it was bright enough to read a book. The night was clear and about 10 C with no noticeable wind. No aircraft were in the area. "At a distance of 14 m (measured after the incident) from his vantage at the bedroom window, there appeared on the lawn an object resembling a common railroad cross tie but oriented in a vertical position, with one end on the ground. It was matte black, 2 1/2 - 2 3/4 m high and 30 - 35 cm wide. The ...

... 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 " ...

... regularity of the steps, but does not discount a natural origin. A photo taken by divers does reveal a remarkably regular, stepped surface, but nature can be very methodical on occasion. Adding to the artificiality of the "structure" is the claim that a "road" encloses it. (Barot, Trushar; "Divers Find World's Oldest Building," London Times, April 26, 1998. Cr. A.C .A . Silk & D. Phelps) Comments. If this submerged "structure" is really man-made, it would make Hapgood's Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings more plausible. Other nicely regular "structures," very likely natural, are: the Giant's Causeway, the Bimini Road, the Kaimanawa Wall, the Face on Mars, etc. Called a "monument" by some zealous explorers, this Okinawan undersea structure does exhibit many suspicious regularities. Nevertheless, nature is often a geometer, and this could be a natural geological formation. (Adapted from the London Times). From Science Frontiers #118, JUL-AUG 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... primitive instruments, is a fount of energy of which we know nothing. All this is a serious challenge to our understanding of space, time, and matter. Cosmologists are now appealing to quantum mechanical "shimmers," to "X -matter," and to a property called "quintessence." (Glanz, James; "Exploding Stars Point to a Universal Repulsive Force," Science, 279:651, 1998. Also: Glanz, James; "Astronomers See a Cosmic Antigravity Force at Work," Science, 279:1298, 1998.) Comment. When theorists toss around terms like "X -matter" and "quintessence," you can be sure that the basic laws of the universe are still unchalked upon science's big blackboard. God's face is still unread. From Science Frontiers #117, MAY-JUN 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... in Meteoritic Amino Acids," Science, 275:951, 1997. Also: Peterson, I.; "Left-Handed Excess in Meteorite Molecules," Science News, 151:118, 1997. Note that left-handed amino acids in the Murchison meteorite were also reported in the early 1980s: Kerr, Richard A.; "Odd Amino Acids in a Meteorite," Science, 216:972, 1982.) Comments. This discovery of a tilted universe means that we cannot confirm Martian life with spacecraft instruments that test for an excess of left-handed amino acids. Human philosophers, from the ancient Greeks to the present, like to think the universe is in balance, that equality reigns, yin and yang, and similar presumptions. But, let's face it: our particular universe is lopsided. Of course, our universe may be balanced by another one far away, where everything, including its intelligent life forms, are made from right-handed amino acids -- chemically speaking, a mirror image of our universe. Balance could thus be preserved at that scale. From Science Frontiers #111, MAY-JUN 1997 . 1997-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 117: May-June 1998 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Hard facts at cahokia Aliens, mystery races, or aborigines? Astronomy The flat face of mars The accelerating universe Biology The unread biotic message Terrestrial life is ambidextrous Kinky sex among the invertebrates Light makes bright Geology Two catastrophe scenarios Geophysics Flash auroras Foo fighters recalled Rare north atlantic light wheel Psychology Ability to detect covert observation Experimental induction of the "sensed presence" Chemistry & Physics More disorder here produces order there Logic & Math The evolution of computers ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 143: Sep-Oct 2002 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Ancient stone road leads to mountain laced with jade The Planet of the Apes: It's archaeology Ice-age faces on cave floors Astronomy From amusing little volcanoes to giant red devils Strange and Stranger astronomy Biology Dark Life A plague on theories Too close to be so far People who are not entirely themselves Geology Three inner-Earth heresies Geophysics Train, whistle, slowdown, bloop A bad assumption may obscure dark matter Psychology Contagious, collective laughter Physics Wordless memeories Chemistry Mechanical chemistry ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 23: Sep-Oct 1982 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Facing Up To The Gaps The textbooks and professors of biology and geology speak confidently of the fossil record. Darwin may have expressed concern about its incompleteness, but, especially in the context of the creation-evolution tempest, evolutionists seem to infer that a lot of missing links have been found. Some scientists, however, are facing up to the fact that many gaps in the fossil record still exist after a century of Darwinism. One has even dispaired that "the stratigraphic record, as a whole, is so incomplete that fossil patterns are meaningless artefacts of episodic sedimentation." D.E . Schindel, Curator of Invertebrate Fossils in the Peabody Museum, has scrutinized seven recent microstratigraphical studies, evaluating them for temporal scope, microstratigraphical acuity, and stratigraphical completeness. His first and most important conclusion is that a sort of Uncertainty Principle prevails such that "a study can provide fine sampling resolution, encompass long spans of geological time, or contain a complete record of the time span, but not all three." After further analysis he concludes with a warning that the fossil record is full of habitat shifts, local extinctions, and general lack of permanence in physical conditions. (Schindel, David E.; "The Gaps in the Fossil Record," Nature, 297:282, 1982.) Comment. This candor makes one wonder how much of our scientific philosophy should be based upon such a shaky foundation. From ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 10: Spring 1980 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A SUN-AND-SPIRAL CLOCK The astronomical sophistication of ancient humans becomes more obvious each year. A novel method of keeping track of the seasons has been discovered on an isolated butte in New Mexico. Here, the Anasazi, who occupied Chaco Canyon between 400 and 1,300 A.D ., carved spiral petroglyphs into the face of a cliff. Then, they arranged stone slabs so that sharp slivers of sunlight fell on the spirals. The precise position of the sliver of light depends of course upon the location of the sun. The solstices and equinoxes are registered by unique configurations of light slivers and spirals. In contrast to other calendar sites, which rely upon the rising and setting points of sun on the horizon, the New Mexico clock depends upon the altitude of the sun at midday. Slivers of moonlight on the spirals also seem to have astronomical significance. (Sofaer, Anna, et al; "A Unique Solar Marking Construct," Science, 206:283, 1979.) Reference. Our Handbook Ancient Man contains much additional material on archeoastronomy. For a description of this large volume, go to: here . From Science Frontiers #10, Spring 1980 . 1980-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... included. This criterion insured that the anomalous dates were off by one or more geological periods. To enhance his case, Woodmorappe excluded data for such troublesome minerals as K-feldspar, which have unreliable records. The surviving discordances will certainly disturb anyone who has long accepted radioactive dating as the near-final word in geochronology. The lengthy text accompanying the table delves into the geological problems posed by the tabulated anomalies, primarily the severe distortions implied in the supposedly well-established geological time scale. Many attempts have been made to explain away these discrepancies, usually by asserting that the system must have been "open"; that is, contamination and/or removal of materials occurred. But a far more serious situation exists: the reluctance of researchers to publish radiometric dates that fly in the face of expectations. Data selection and rejection are epidemic. Some authors admit tossing out wild points; others say nothing. (Woodmorappe, John; "Radiometric Geochronology Reappraised," Creation Research Society Quarterly, 16:102, 1979.) From Science Frontiers #10, Spring 1980 . 1980-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 34: Jul-Aug 1984 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Pouring A Pyramid The ancient Egyptians may have been more clever than we thought. Instead of chipping away laboriously in limestone quarries to precisely shape the stones constituting the pyramids. they may have cast the stones from a slurry of crushed limestone and a special mineral binder. Polymer chemist Joseph Davidovits has examined the limestone casing stones that were used to face the some of the pyramids. (Most of the facing stones were removed for use in modern construction projects.) Davidovits claims that the casing stones contain minerals not found in the quarries, and that they contain as much as 13% binder material. In addition, the casing stones have a millimeter-thick coating of binder. This theory might help explain the precise fitting of the stones. Others have also analyzed the stones and oppose the claims of Davidovits. (Peterson, I.; "Ancient Technology: Pouring a Pyramid," Science News, 125: 327, 1984.) From Science Frontiers #34, JUL-AUG 1984 . 1984-2000 William R. Corliss ...