511 results found.
... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 127: Jan-Feb 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Some Funny Things Happened On The Way Around The World Weird things happen in the weightlessness of an orbiting spacecraft. In the many videos shot aboard the Space Shuttle s, we are treated to tools, even gently oscillating globules of water, floating aimlessly in midair. Even stranger are the effects of microgravity on humans and other life forms. Astronauts, for example, when they first arrive in orbit, sometimes perceive their world to be upside-down regardless of their orientation. Their nervous systems were apparently thrown for a loop when the force of gravity was cancelled out. These illusions disappear later in the mission. Speaking of loops, consider the medaka. This fish is the only vertebrate to have mated and laid eggs that developed into offspring in microgravity. Said offspring are doomed to lives of somersaulting swimming. (Wassersug, Richard J.; "Life without Gravity," Nature, 401:758, 1999.) Comment. Could there be a connection to the nervous affliction of tumbler pigeons? See BBB8 in Biological Anomalies: Birds. From Science Frontiers #127, JAN-FEB 2000 . 1997 William R. Corliss ...
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... No. 127: Jan-Feb 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects What's Cooking On Europa?Data streaming back to earth from the Galileo spacecraft encode a curious fact about Europa, one of Jupiter's large, Galilean satellites. The nighttime flow of heat from Europa's polar regions is 1 watt/meter2 higher than can be accounted for by all known mechanisms, such as the tidal heating created as Jupiter's powerful gravitational field flexes the satellite's integument. (Anonymous; "Cozy Nights," New Scientist, p. 27, June 5, 1999.) Comment. What is happening beneath Europa's icy surface? "Something wonderful"? Recall that in the film 2010, humans were "given" all worlds except Europa. Was A.C . Clarke prescient again? From Science Frontiers #127, JAN-FEB 2000 . 1997 William R. Corliss ...
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... ONLINE No. 126: Nov-Dec 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Flotsam On The Great Sand Sea One of the strangest mysteries nestled among the giant dunes of the Egyptian Sahara was not recognized by modern scientists until 1932. In December of that year, P. Clayton, a surveyor for the Egyptian Geological Survey, was driving among the dunes near the Saad Plateau when he heard his tires crunch on something that wasn't sand. It turned out to be large pieces of marvelously clear yellow-green glass -- not just any glass but ultra-pure glass, 98% silica. As often the case, Clayton was not the first to come across the now-famous Libyan Desert Glass or LDG. Prehistoric humans had made knives and other sharp-edged tools from it; the ancient Egyptians had carved a scarab from LDG and deposited it in Tutankhamen's tomb. But Clayton and the ancients did not recognize the scientific implications of their discovery. LDG is the purest natural silica glass ever found. Over a thousand tons of it are strewn across hundreds of kilometers of bleak desert. Some of the chunks weigh 26 kilograms, but most LDG exists in smaller, angular pieces looking like shards left when a giant green bottle was smashed by colossal forces. Pure as it is, LDG does contain tiny bubbles, white wisps, and inky black swirls. The whitish inclusions consist of refractory minerals, such as cristobalite. The ink-like swirls, though, are rich in iridium, which is ...
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... that they emit super-flares about once every century. If our sun sent such a super-flare our way, the atmosphere would glow like a neon tube, our fleet of satellites would be fried, and half the protective ozone layer would disappear in a flash. Earth life would survive -- at least for a while. Our sun, it seems, is favored with anomalous stability, but no one knows why. We are simply lucky! (Seife, Charles; "Thank Our Lucky Star," New Scientist, p. 15, January 9, 1999.) Comment. We also live in a "lucky" galaxy. (See NOW WE KNOW WHY...later in this issue.) The universe is anthropic (i .e ., favoring humans) at all levels! From Science Frontiers #122, MAR-APR 1999 . 1999-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... wall of the Jeannel Gallery of Portel Cave, in Arlege. The long, looping dotted line indicates the amplitude of resonating sound at a frequency of 95 Hertz, as the long gallery behaves like a giant wind instrument. The peak occurs smack in the center of the decorated area. At the peak, in the dotted circle, there is a rocky projection in the shape of a (hard-to-see) feline head. On the opposite wall (not shown), the same peak coincides with an ocher circle that dominates a meter-long decorated panel. (Dauvois, Michael, et al; "Son et Musique au Paleolithique," Pour la Science , p. 52, no. 253, November 1998. Cr. C. Mauge.) Comment. Modern humans are also cognizant of acoustical effects, as in the design of auditoriums, churches, whispering galleries, etc. North Wall of La Galerie Jeannel. The dotted curve indicates standing wave amplitude at 95 Hertz. From Science Frontiers #123, MAY-JUN 1999 . 1999-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 123: May-Jun 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Mysterious Mountain Deaths Occasionally, young, healthy hikers are discovered lying dead in the mountains without a mark on them. The answer to this mystery may be in the magnetic pulses created by close lightning strikes. Most deaths from lightning are from direct strikes, side flashes, or ground currents. The ground currents kill by passing up one leg and down the other. Cows sheltering under trees are even more susceptible than humans because they contact the ground in four places! People and animals electrocuted by these phenomena bear burn marks and other clues pointing to the cause of death. As for those "mysterious mountain deaths," M. Cherington and colleagues at the Lightning Data Center, Denver, suggest that these unlucky individuals may have been zapped magnetically. Lightning strikes can create electrical currents as high as 100,000 amperes in rocks and soil. These, in turn, create intense magnetic pulses that induce small electrical currents in nearby objects, such as hikers. Although small, these internal currents are sufficient to stop heart action -- without leaving tell-tale signs. (Anonymous; "Mystery Mountain Deaths and Lightning," Journal of Meteorology, U.K ., 23:230, 1998.) From Science Frontiers #123, MAY-JUN 1999 . 1999-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... 100 million years, but theory suggests that they were much more frequent in the past. As a consequence, by the time intelligent life evolves anywhere and figures out how to build spaceships, they are zapped by a GRB. Perhaps some do begin exploration of their galaxy, but they don't get very far. (Matthews, Robert; "Sorry, We'll Be Late," New Scientist, p. 16, January 23, 1999.) Comment. Any reader of science fiction can come up with other explanations: (1 ) ETs have been here but find nothing of interest and leave; (2 ) ETs were here and helped build Atlantis, the Great Pyramid, the Face on Mars, etc.; (3 ) ETs are here now but avoid human contact; and (4 ) ETs are here now but look so much like us that we cannot tell the difference! You are free to make up your own explanations! Yes, we live in a favored galaxy, because life on earth has not been GRBsterilized for at least 3 billion years -- 30 times the average period between GRBs. Are we simply lucky? From Science Frontiers #122, MAR-APR 1999 . 1999-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... 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 Hand-reading More Useful Than Palm-reading After learning that mutations in a single gene in mice affected not only the development of their digits but also their ovaries and testes, J. Manning and his colleagues decided to see if there is a link between human hand shape and fertility. There is! Men with hands that are not precise mirror images of each other tend to produce fewer sperm. Manning asserts, "The more asymmetry, the fewer sperm." Easier to test yourself are the relative lengths of your ring and index fingers. Men tend to have ring fingers that are longer than their index fingers. The greater this difference in males, the higher their levels of testosterone, a hormone associated with fertility. In women, the same fingers are usually about equal in length. However, in contrast to males, larger index fingers are correlated with the increased presence of fertility hormones, such as estrogen and lutenizing hormones. (Motluk, Alison; "Fertility Index," New Scientist, p. 10, August 22, 1998.) A virile male's hand? From Science Frontiers #124, JUL-AUG 1999 . 1999-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 139: Jan-Feb 2002 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects And The Machines Wept For Man Philosophers have always wondered if humans and life in general are really completely detached from the material world of non-life. Might there be unrecognized influences humans (and possibly other animals) exert knowingly or unknowingly upon inert matter? Many have been the experiments in which humans attempt to affect the swinging of a pendulum, the throws of dice, or the output of a random-number generator. The parapsychologists declare that, YES, humans can exert tiny but statistically significant influences on such devices. But other scientists and the man-in-the-street would really like to see a robust physical effect, not just a bunch of statistics. An ambitious endeavor called the Global Consciousness Project just might be able to produce a more satisfying mind-over-matter effect. This Project is conducted by a group of scientists who maintain a dispersed network of random-number generators (RNGs). A total of 38 RNG stations are presently "listening" for global perturbations in whatever medium carries the supposed human-to-matter influences. The analogy to global weather and seismological stations is appropriate here. On September 9, 2001, the Global Consciousness Project network of RNGs did indeed detect a sort of groaning in the consciousness of the planet's human cargo. The dispersed RNGs produced strings of numbers that were rather far from random, as indicated on the accompanying graph. For three days the ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 139: Jan-Feb 2002 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Who Needs Boats?We don't know why our distant ancestors would forsake the idyllic tropical island of Bali, but some 900,000 years ago they somehow reached Flores, the next Indonesian island in the chain trending toward Australia. Sea levels were lower 900,000 years ago, but Flores was still 19 kilometers away. How did our ancestors cross this water barrier? There is no evidence whatsoever that these hominids built boats. How about simple rafts? Possibly, but there is another way. They swam the 19 kilometers (12 miles)! Many modern humans can paddle this far and it seems reasonable that ancient peoples could, too. Another water barrier may have been crossed by African swimmers a million or so years ago. Their artifacts are found in southern Spain. Did they swim across the Strait of Gibraltar rather than trek the long land route through the Middle East and across mountainous southern Europe? These possible aquatic feats of our ancestors are not in themselves enough to strongly interest an anomalist but when they are coupled to another recent discovery they add weight to a much more fascinating speculation that early hominids were once marine mammals -- or at least nearly so. More important to this radical thesis than human swimming prowess is the recent scuttling of of the vaunted paradigm that modern humans began evolving only when they split from the forest-dwelling primates and invaded the African savannahs. It now seems that the regions once ...
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... Geology Geophysics Mathematics Psychology Physics Catalog of Anomalies (Subjects)Overview Astronomy Biology Chemistry/Physics Geology Geophysics Logic/mathemitics Archeology Psychology Miscellaneous phenomena Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online Science Frontiers: The Book Sourcebook Project Catalog of Anomalies (Subjects)Entries in the Sourcebook Project's Catalog of Anomalies are divided into the following nine "fields". (Click on the links to display the full list of subjects) ASTRONOMY (A ) BIOLOGY (B ) CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS (C ) GEOLOGY (E ) GEOPHYSICS (G ) LOGIC AND MATHEMATICS (L ) ARCHEOLOGY (M ) PSYCHOLOGY (P ) MISCELLANEOUS PHENOMENA (X ) Within each of these fields, catalog sections that are already in print are given alphanumerical labels. For example, BHB1 = B (Biology)+ H (Humans)+ B (Behavior)+ 1 (first anomaly in Chapter BHB). Some anomalies and curiosities that are listed below have not yet been cataloged and published in catalog format. These do not have the alphanumerical labels. Only the file descriptors are given in these cases. Three fields (C , L, X) are represented by extensive files but are not yet thoroughly organized and posted. Alphanumerical labels in brackets are cross references indicating possible overlapping files. The Catalog is always in a state of flux, with fresh material being added constantly. New Catalog volumes are published at the rate of about one per year. Eighteen volumes are now in print, with a final total of about 32 volumes planned. Full details here. Other Sites of Interest SIS . Catastrophism, archaeoastronomy ...
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