482 results found.
... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 116: Mar-Apr 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Dry Fogs And Bright Nights June 1783. Much of Europe. ". .. the atmosphere was suddenly invaded, in Europe, by a sort of dry fog of peculiar character. It did not moisten objects, did not affect the hygrometer, and persisted when the wind rose, and rain fell. The sun looked pale through it. This fog lasted a month. One curious point is, that it was phosphorescent, and gave a light like moonlight at night." August 18, 1821. Western Europe. ". .. a similar fog was observed throughout Western Europe; it lasted twelve days. It deprived the sun of so much brightness, that one could look at this star at any hour; it gave the disc a glossy blue tint. Twilight assumed an extraordinary brightness, so that the day was greatly prolonged, and one could even read at midnight." (Houzeau, M.; "On Certain Enigmas of Astronomy," English Mechanic , 29:32, 1879.) From Science Frontiers #116, MAR-APR 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 116: Mar-Apr 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects An Anasazi Reservoir In Morefield Canyon, Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado, a strange earthen mound, 200 feet wide, rises 15 feet above the canyon's grassy floor. Archeologists have debated the mound's purpose for decades. Being elevated above the floor of a usually dry canyon as it 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 ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 116: Mar-Apr 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Miles Of Mush The earth's tectonic plates are usually drawn as neatly fitting puzzle pieces. This idealistic picture is changing because several lines of evidence suggest that some plates are separated by miles of geological "mush." J-Y . Royer and R.G . Gordon came to this conclusion after careful inspection of the huge Indo-Australian plate. First, they noticed that many powerful earthquakes originated in the center of this plate. Usually, quakes are confined to the edges of plates where they crunch against neighboring plates. Second, a line of folds 3,000 feet high runs down the center of the plate, as if is being squeezed like an accordion. But they could not identify any geological accordionist. Finally, working backwards in time using paleomagnetic data, they reconstructed plate configurations 11 million years ago. The Indo-Australian plate did not match up with its neighbors of that time period. Royer and Gordon concluded that the Indo-Australian plate really consists of three smaller plates. Even more surprising was their discovery that in between the boundaries of the three new plates there is a tectonic morass perhaps a thousand miles wide in places -- the "miles of mush" of our title. Plate tectonics (nee "continental drift"), once a revolutionary idea in geology and geophysics, seems poised for another upheaval. (Anonymous; "Gaps in the Theory," Earth , 7:11 ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 116: Mar-Apr 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Target: Greenland Reports of recent large meteors and suspicious craters are plentiful in back issues of this newsletter. (SFs #93, #102, #103, #110, to name a few) Here is another. December 9, 1997, Greenland. At 5:11 A.M ., crews of three trawlers at widely separated sites off south Greenland reported "a blazing fireball that turned night into day." At a distance of 100 kilometers (62 miles), the flash was compared to that from an atmospheric nuclear explosion. Danish officials dismissed the possibility of a surreptitious nuclear test. The U.S . Air Force stated that the object was neither a reentering spacecraft nor artificial space debris. Some seismic tremors also emanated from Greenland, so the impact of a large meteorite is suspected. Based on the visual sightings and a moving object caught on a parkinglot surveillance camera in Nuuk, Greenland's capital, the probable impact point is at 61 25' N., 44 26' W. Efforts to locate the meteorite will have to wait for favorable weather. The supposed meteor was not a small object. The Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen compared it to the Kap York meteor that fell south of Thule, Greenland, in prehistoric times. Pieces of this iron meteorite aggregating 50 tons have been collected. (Sawyer, Kathy; "Fireball a Mystery till Thaw," Charlotte Observer, December ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 116: Mar-Apr 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Ten Strikes Against The Big Bang T. Van Flandern, editor of the Meta Re search Bulletin, has compiled a list of Big-Bang problems -- and it is not a short list. Can the Big-Bang paradigm be that shaky? Like Evolution and Relativity, the Big Bang is usually paraded as a proven, undeniable fact. It isn't . Static-universe models fit the data better than expanding-universe models. The microwave "background" makes more sense as the limiting temperature 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 ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 110: Mar-Apr 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Did a methane burp down twa800?The potential for methane eruptions from offshore sediments to sink ships and down aircraft was proposed by W.D . McIver way back in 1982, in the Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. (SF#25/208) The source of methane-gas releases (" burps") is the rapid decomposition of methane hydrate, which exists in prodigious quantities in offshore sediments. Some geologists have estimated that there is twice as much methane in methane-hydrate deposits as in all terrestrial natural-gas fields. What makes methane hydrate potentially lethal is its instability. Landslides and small quakes can release huge plumes of methane bubbles into the ocean and thence into the atmosphere. Ships might founder in the lowdensity froth of bubbles, and aircraft might be adversely affected, too. This is where TWA800 comes in. R. Spalding, a scientist at Sandia National Laboratories has been monitoring mysterious atmospheric explosions and believes that some of these detonations are consistent with the atmospheric ignition of huge methane plumes. (Other detonations are due to meteors.) Spalding proposes the following scenario: The ocean floor releases a massive methane gas plume, which rapidly rises to the surface and ascends into the atmosphere. The lighter-than-air methane cloud gains altitude, mixing with oxygen and thereby gaining explosive poten tial. An electrical disturbance -- possibly caused by the rising cloud itself or a lightning strike - ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 110: Mar-Apr 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects 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 ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 116: Mar-Apr 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Evolution Of Cyberlife The evolvable hardware described in SF#115 is only one several efforts underway aimed at modeling life and evolution. Network Tierra. Here we have a network of 150 computers linked worldwide by the Internet. One objective is the exploration of structures and patterns of information that drive evolutionary processes. A key element is an artificial lifeform that begins as a "seed organism" (modeled as information, of course) that wanders at will among the different environments presented by the computers in the network. So far, these digital organisms are surviving and changing. (Blakeslee, Sandra; "Cyberlife Critters Evolving in Computer Network," Austin American-Statesman , November 30, 1997. Cr. D. Phelps. Minad Project. Begun in 1953, the Minad Project is pure futurism; that is, the prediction of where the computer revolution is taking us. The Minad Project envisioned three evolutionary stages: Wiring the world (already accomplished as today's Internet); The transformation of the network into a high-speed creative mechanism (the Technosphere); and The emergence of global hyperintelligence (the Autosphere). The Minad Project is now forecasting what this all means for non-silicon-based life in the 21st. Century. (Baker, Lance; "They're Taking Over," New Scientist, p.55, December 6, 1997.) From Science Frontiers #116, MAR- ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 110: Mar-Apr 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Cichlids Punctuate Equilibrium In those pesky cichlid fish of African lakes we may be seeing punctuated evolution during an actual punctuation. Responding to the article in SF#108 on the Lake Victoria cichlids, A. Mebane called our attention to Lake Malawi. While the Lake Victoria cichlids seem to have evolved a profusion of species in a space of about 12,500 years, those cichlids in Lake Malawi may have done the same in only a century or two. T. Goldschmidt advances this evenmore-abbreviated time scale in his book Darwin's Dreampond . In it, he discusses how the water level of Lake Malawi fell more than 120 meters during the 1800s -- an exceptionally dry period in Africa. Today, the Lake is again high and once more host to isolated rocky islands, each with its own unique complement of cichlid fish; each island has species found nowhere else in the lake. Where did all these species come from, considering that their little islands were bone dry just a century ago? Goldschmidt writes: "Cichlids that inhabited these exposed rocks would have suffocated, unless they had already left for wetter climes. Yet today, species that do not exist anywhere else can be found near almost every rocky island. From an orthodox point of view, the most plausible explanation for this is quite surprising: many color forms as well as biological species developed over a period of less than two hundred years." This ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 110: Mar-Apr 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Unusual Circulating Cloud Object July 24, 1996. Malborough, South Devon. About midnight on this date, E. Netley and his wife observed a most peculiar cloud formation. It was so well-formed and precisely organized that Netley felt that the term "cloud object" was appropriate. Even so, he was confident that the apparition represented a natural phenomenon. "Natural" probably, but certainly the strangest cloud we have encountered in 30 years of literature research. The evening of July 23 was warm and a bit humid, with a modest breeze blowing in from the ocean. Netley and wife first saw the "cloud object" from a distance of about a kilometer; they eventually walked to within 400 meters of the phenomenon. The "object" consisted of a slowly rotating ring of thin, vertically oriented clouds. (See figure.) The cloud ring was 80-100 meters across and seemed to rotate in a horizontal plane at the rate of about one revolution per minute. As though this were not strange enough, the rotating "cloud object" itself moved in a larger circle 8-10 times the diameter of the "cloud object." The "cloud object" took 4-5 minutes to complete a trip around the larger circle. The phenomenon lasted for about an hour before dissipating. (Netley, Edward; "Unusual Circulating Cloud Object," Journal of Meteorology, U.K . ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 110: Mar-Apr 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Crystalline Universe Cosmologists think in the large. Billions of stars are nothing to them. The megaparsec (3 ,528,000 light years) is but a hop, skip, and jump. A pressing question for these cosmologists searching for the really big picture is whether there is any order in the distribution of galaxies, galactic clusters, and superclusters. The scale of organization of the universe is of critical importance because it is a measure of state of the cosmos when hydrogen atoms first condensed from the seething sea of ions following the Big Bang. The prevailing expectation has been that galactic clusters and superclusters should be distributed at random; that is, no order prevails at that scale. Recent redshift measurements, however, hint more and more forcefully that the huge superclusters of galaxies are almost as neatly arranged as the atoms in a crystal. A recent paper in Nature by J. Einasto et al puts a number on the spacing of the superclusters: "Here, using a new compilation of available data on galaxy clusters, we present evidence for a quasi-regular three-dimensional network of rich superclusters and voids, with the regions of high density separated by "120 Mpc [megaparsecs]. If this reflects the distribution of all matter (luminous and dark), then there must exist some hitherto unknown process that produces regular structure on large scales." (Einasto, J., et al; "A 120 ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 116: Mar-Apr 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects G: The Embarrassing Constant Of Nature Of the four fundamental forces of nature, gravity was the first to be discovered. Even the Neanderthals knew of it! That's hardly surprising; it's everywhere. Unfortunately, we don't know much more about it than the Neanderthals. Though it seems powerful when you trip and fall, gravity is the weakest of the fundamental four. In a helium nucleus, the force of repulsion between two protons is 1040 times the gravitational attraction between them. Weak though it may be, gravity controls the trajectory of a baseball, the motion of the planets, and the shape of our Galaxy. Physicists describe gravitation with Newton's Law of Gravitation, which incorporates the Gravitational Constant G. Here's where the embarrassment arises. Many other constants of nature, such as the charge on the electron, are known to eight significant figures. We only know G to three. What's worse, modern attempts to refine the measurement of G come up with wildly different answers. Torsion-pendulum experiments in the U.S ., Germany, and New Zealand are far apart in their G-measurements. And physicists are perplexed -- to put it mildly. Of course, G is hard to measure. Seismic waves from ocean surf hundreds of miles away can affect the experiments. If a colleague a few offices away brings in some boxes of books for his ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 110: Mar-Apr 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Nannobacteria: life on a different scale Who ever heard of nannobacteria until those tiny, worm-like objects were photographed inside that putative Martian meteorite ALH 84001? It turns out that these very tiny cells (only 0.1 - 0.4 micrometers in diameter) are everywhere on earth, but it seems that virtually no one knows about them. The furor over ALH 84001 has underscored professional and public ignorance of nannobacteria. Some scientists have asserted that bacteria could never be as small as those "objects" seen in the greatly magnified photos of ALH 84001. This claim led R.L . Folk to fire off a letter to Science that began with these two sentences: "Enough! As one of the discoverers of mineralized nannobacteria on Earth*, I must come to their defense. They are so abundant in samples I have studied that I believe they may make up most of the Earth's biomass." Folk reports that nannobacteria are found just about everywhere: hot-spring waters, decaying leaves, even blood. Nannobacteria are key players in the earth's surface chemistry, precipitating a host of minerals and acting symbiotically to precipitate organic hard parts. (Folk, Robert; "In Defense of Nannobacteria," Science, 274:1288, 1996.) Comment. Ignorance of nannobacteria is not surprising. One needs a scanning electron microscope to see them. * See: Folk, R.L ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 116: Mar-Apr 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Monarch Compasses Field experiments down the years suggest that migrating birds use a variety of strategies to chart their courses with high precision. The geomagnetic field, the sun, the stars, prominent landmarks, and even odors help guide them across the continents and open seas. But birds are considered highly evolved animals so their sophisticated navigational techniques are not especially surprising. Monarch butterflies, however, are mere insects, with tiny brains (navigation-data processors) and not much in the way of the environment sensors and internal clocks required for long-distance migration. Yet, some of these colorful insects manage to flutter up to 4,000 kilometers from the eastern U.S . and Canada to their wintering grounds in Mexico. How do they do this? S.M . Perez et al have now shown that monarch butterflies are equipped with a sun compass; that is, they chart their courses by noting the sun's changing azimuth. This feat requires not only the measurement of solar azimuth but also reference to an internal clock. Humans cannot do this without artificial instruments. Furthermore, even on cloudy days, migrating monarchs fly in the proper direction (generally south-southwest). Apparently, they also have evolved a backup navigation system, perhaps a geomagnetic compass. (Perez, Sandra M., et al' "A Sun Compass in Monarch Butterflies," Nature, 387:29, 1997.) Comment ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 116: Mar-Apr 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Ball Lightning Collides With Car Summer 1991. Southern Bavaria, Germany. R. Urbanek, a teacher from Wasserburg, recalls her encounter with ball lightning. "I was with a friend in the area of Traunstein. My friend drove a minibus...150-200 meters...ahead of my car. Golf and several other cars were following behind me. It (had been) raining with heavy lightning and thunder. I did not drive at normal speed in such a weather...Then came a straight stretch of road with a bicycle path to the right, and an open wide field...Suddenly I saw a bright green, phosphorescent...ball about the size of a medical training ball, that dropped to the ground behind the minibus...It fell to the road and rolled towards me . I knew immediately it was ball lightning, and from school physics I knew a car acts as a Faraday cage. So I kept my feet to the floor mat and grabbed the wheel with both arms. 3 to 5 seconds passed until the ball reached my car. It came in a straight line, with a slight deviation to the right (as seen from my position). When the ball caught my car at the right front side, it gave the vehicle a strong shock or jerk, as if I had driven against an obstacle . All that was on the ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 116: Mar-Apr 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Eyeless Vision Tomatoes see red. And other colors, too! We touched on this subject over a decade ago. (SF#54) Then we described how the use of red plastic mulch greatly improves the yields of tomato plants. More recent research reveals that fruit quality and resistance to pests are also improved. How can this be? Plant leaves, it turns out, contain color sensors -- light-sensitive pigments similar to those it the human retina. Obviously, the plants do not "see," but the pigments provide environmental information. Here's the mechanism: plant leaves reflect infrared light well, so when a tomato plant's pigments detect a lot of infrared, the plant "thinks" that it may be crowded out by competing vegetation. The tomato plant responds aggressively by growing more rapidly. The red plastic mulch between the rows also reflects a lot of infrared light, and it thereby tricks the tomato plant into accelerating its growth. (Raloff, Janet; "When Tomatoes See Red," Science News, 152:376, 1997.) Fire-detecting beetles. The beetle Melanophila acuminata seeks out forests that have just been ravaged by fires so that it can lay its eggs in the nutritious, freshly burnt wood. These insects are capable of detecting fires up to 32 kilometers (20 miles) distant. They do not see the fire with their eyes but instead detect the ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 110: Mar-Apr 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects "PLANETARY VISIONS" DURING NDEs (Top) Global nuclear arsenal in thousands of warheads. (Bottom) number of peace-keeping missions. It is difficult to move from the universe of hard objective facts into the shadowy world of Near-Death Experiences (NDEs). Nevertheless, NDEs have elements of consistency across a wide spectrum of percipients. Mainstream scientists always explain NDEs in reductionist terms: they are merely the consequence of physiological changes taking place in the dying person's brain. Parapsychologists are more open-minded. They wonder if being near death breaks down a barrier separating the everyday, objective world from a spiritual one. If their intuition is correct, there is the thought that, by breaching this barrier during NDEs, the percipients might transcend our usual confines of time and space. At these moments, "planetary visions" beyond the moment might occur; that is, prophecy! Before chucking this issue of SF, "hard" scientists should recognize that the foregoing surmise can be tested, not as rigorously as measuring the electron's charge, but still a test of sorts. K. Ring has collected testimonies of these so-called "planetary visions" from individuals who had been clinically dead for more than 10 minutes, but who were subsequently revived (obviously!). Typical of Ring's collected testimonies was this from a 17-year-old NDE percipient: "I was informed ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 116: Mar-Apr 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Eco-Darwinism: Diffuse Individuals Epigenetic phenomena -- those phenomena beyond the pale of DNA -- are seen in "diffuse individuals" such as fungi, where it is difficult to separate individual units of life. To illustrate, some fungi may be 1,000 years old and extend for 35 acres (15 hectares) and yet possess a single, still unmodified genome. In his review of A. Rayner's new book Degrees of Freedom: Living in Dynamic Boundaries , T. Wakeford writes: "So, like the World Wide Web, a fungal network is decentralized. There is no central region capable of exerting control over the rest of the network. Rayner's own work suggests that the growth patterns of fungal filaments are forged as much by the environment that they encounter as by their genes. He believes that epigenetics, the process whereby opportunities in an organism's surroundings dictate which genes are expressed, is the norm in microorganisms. Genetic determinism is thus turned on its head." (Wakeford, Tom; "We Are the Fungus," New Scientist, p. 49, May 10, 1997.) Comment. Looking at the above situation from an information viewpoint, as one must these days, it seems that the environment can somehow "interpret" genes as the situation demands. In other words, genes are not "single-message" information carriers, but can be " ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 110: Mar-Apr 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Is oliver a "humanzee"?Oliver: male, 30ish, very hairy, height 1.2 meters, weight 50 kilos, erect posture, unusual ears, offensive odor. Oscar always walks on two feet, uses a human toilet (which he flushes), can mix drinks, and enjoys a cup of coffee and a nightcap. Chimps ignore him; humans wonder what he is. Superficially, Oscar is definitely chimp-like; but shave his head and he becomes eerily human. Although Oscar was widely exhibited in the 1970s, his fame diminished in the 1980s. But now, scientists want to count his chromosomes and find out what he really is. One suggestion is a cross between a chimpanzee and a bonobo (a "pygmy chimpanzee"). Or how about a chimp-human hybrid? There have been dark rumors of hushhush experiments in China, Italy, and the U.S . We'll let you know what the geneticists conclude -- unless there is more "hush-hush." (Holden, Constance; "' Mutant' Chimp Gets a Gene Check," Science, 274:727, 1996. Also: Anonymous; "Oo-be-doo, I Want to Be Like You," Fortean Times, no. 95, p. 15, February 1997.) From Science Frontiers #110, MAR-APR 1997 . 1997-2000 William R ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 116: Mar-Apr 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Those Ancient Greek Pyramids That's right. Greek pyramids! On Greek soil, at Hellenikon and Ligourio west of Athens in the Argolid region, are two limestone pyramids that are stylistically very much like those at Giza near Cairo. The big difference is size; the Greek pyramids are only the size of a large room compared to the Great Pyramid's height (with capstone) of almost 500 feet. When excavations were made around the Greek pyramids in the early 1900s, pottery fragments from the Fourth Century B.C . were found, and it was presumed that the pyramids were also constructed then; that is, about the time of Alexander the Great. Recent dating of crystals from internal surfaces of the limestone blocks using thermoluminescence puts the construction times back two millennia. The Hellenikon pyramid dates to 2730 B.C .; the Ligourio, to 2260 B.C . This means that the Greek pyramids were built in roughly the same time frame as the Egyptian pyramids. Why would the ancient Greeks want to build miniature pyramids? The classical scholar Pausanias wrote in the Second Century A.D . that the Hellenikon pyramid was a cenotaph for the dead fallen in a fratricidal battle 4,000 years ago. Nobody believed his story until now. (Hammond, Norman; "Did the Early Greeks Simply Copy the Pyramids of Egypt?" London Times, August 1, 1997. Cr. A.C . ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 116: Mar-Apr 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects More On The Mekong Mystery Those basketball-sized lights erupting from the Mekong River, Thailand, (SF#114) turn out to be a well-known annual event. Their official name is: the Nekha Lights. They have even been filmed and shown on Thai TV. These weird luminous displays occur during the October full moon and last only about 30 minutes. The lights rise out of the river and nearby rice paddies, but only along a small stretch of the river straddling the Thailand-Laos border. (Anonymous; "Mekong Mystery," New Scientist, p. 109, December 20/27, 1997.) Comment. Some marine species, such as the paolo worms, rise to the surface annually to spawn under a full moon. Could the Mekong Lights have a biological origin? From Science Frontiers #116, MAR-APR 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 116: Mar-Apr 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects "A FANTASTIC RESULT!"That's what Princeton astronomer N. Bahcall said of the discovery that the very early universe was already partitioned by colossal walls of galaxies hundreds of millions of light years long. That walls of galaxies exist is not a new idea, but finding that they existed shortly after the Big Bang is highly disconcerting to most astronomers. How did these walls form so early? Why hasn't the force of gravity modified the basic structure of the cosmos over the billions of years that followed the Big Bang? The astronomical quandry is this: If the very early universe looks pretty much the same as today's universe, the implication is that mass, the source of gravitational sculpting, is scarce. But this is at odds with the cosmic expansion rate which implies a much higher density of matter. (Appenzeller, Tim; "Ancient Galaxy Walls Go up; Will Theories Tumble Down?" Science, 276:36, 1997.) Comment. The existence of galaxy walls, like so many astronomical constructs, depends upon the assumption that the red shifts of galaxies are proportional to their recessional velocities and, additionally, their distances and ages. So much rides on this one assumption. The same situation prevails in biology, where everything is founded on the assumption that random mutations and natural selection can together generate any degree of complexity, sophistication, and innovation seen in nature. The history of ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 110: Mar-Apr 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A NAZCA ZODIAC?Although the famous Nazca lines and figures etched into Peru's Atacama Desert are assuredly not part of an extraterrestrial landing field, they still may have a stellar connection of sorts. P.B . Pitluga, of Chicago's Adler Planetarium, proposes that some of the figures may be part of a Zodiac; that is, a terrestrial representation of the constellations. Here follows an abstract of her paper presented before a meeting of the Society for Scientific Exploration . "New field measurements and computer analysis link the gigantic ground drawings to the Andean tradition of dividing up space and time by cycles of the Milky Way. By including ethnoastronomy in the analysis, these conclusions differ from [those of] previous researchers. The first hypothesis tested was that the figures could be considered like labels to the lines. Of the twenty-seven figures, ten are birds, three are whales, and two are seaweed plants. Theodolite measurements revealed a non-random distribution of the directions of lines attached to look-alike figures. The second test showed a physical relationship of present-day Andean plant and animal figures imagined as silhouettes in dark spots along the Milky Way to figure-lines pointing to the rising and/or setting of the same Andean figure 2000 years ago. In the third test, all other lines extending to the desert horizon from a figure center keyed into dark spots and bright stars along the Milky ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 116: Mar-Apr 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Mystery Of The Stoned Pharaoh So reads the caption under the photo of an Egyptian sarcophagus in the French magazine Telerama . The short article accompanying the photograph relates how a respected toxicologist, a Dr. Balanova, has presented "irrefutable" proof that the mummy of the pharaoh Henut Taui contains traces of both cocaine and tobacco. This pronouncement elicited the comment: "Madame Balanova hallucinates!" The reason for such a reaction is not hard to find. The mainstream position has been that cocaine and tobacco are New World substances that were unknown in the Old World until after 1492. A stoned pharaoh implies trans-Atlantic commerce 2,000 years before Columbus. (Merigaud, Bernard; "La Cocaine des Pharaons," Telerama , p. 122, September 3, 1997. Cr. C. Mauge.) Comment. Fragments of tobacco leaves have been discovered in the stomach of the pharaoh Ramses II. (SF#7 ) From Science Frontiers #116, MAR-APR 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 110: Mar-Apr 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Cracks In The Kaimanawa-wall Story?It was bound to happen. The publicity accorded the Kaimanawa Wall by New Zealand newspapers (SF#107) stimulated the scientific community to take a close look at the controversial "wall." The New Zealand Department of Conservation asked geologist P. Wood for his assessment. "He identified the rock as the 330,000-year-old Rangitaiki Ignimbrite. Following the line of blocks both horizontally and vertically, and photographing them in series, he revealed a system of joints and fractures natural to the cooling process in ignimbrite sheets. What Brailsford [see SF#107] had taken to be manmade cut, stacked blocks were no more than a type of natural rock formation." P. Andrews, the author of this article likened the regular jointing of the "wall" to neatly hexagonal prisms seen in many basalt flows. He supplied two photographs of the "wall." One was like the photo in SF#107 and showed regular joints; the second, from the same outcrop, displayed angled fractures and joints that certainly do not look like the work of humans. (Andrews, Philip; "New Zealand: Recent Ash, Ancient Wall," Geology Today , p. 136, July-August 1996. Cr. R.E . Molnar) Comments. If we receive counter-arguments from proponents of the wall's artificiality, we will add ...
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... Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A VANISHED PLANET?Almost every week, it seems, a new Texas-sized object is discovered in the outer solar system. In the inner solar system, however, some astronomers are finding "holes" where planets seem to have been ejected by unknown forces. D. Christodoulou, Louisiana State University, found one such "hole" serendipitously. He was studying how the sun and the planets might have condensed from the (hypothesized) cloud of primordial gas and dust. Factoring in gravity, rotation, and magnetic fields, he found the cloud condensing in concentric rings at just the right locations for protoMercury, proto-Venus, and proto-earth. The fourth ring, however, did not correspond to any existing planet, and the position of proto-Mars was off the mark. But the asteroids and outer planets fell rather neatly into place. The implication of these calculations is that some turmoil in the early inner solar system cast out one planet and dislocated Mars. (Hecht, Jeff; "Did Extra Planet Vanish into Outer Space?" New Scientist, p. 18, June 14, 1997.) Comment. These are sour notes in the "music of the spheres," but don't be overly concerned; these are just calculations based upon many assumptions. Calculated positions of rings of condensed dust and gas compared to actual planet locations. From Science Frontiers #113, SEP-OCT 1997 . 1997-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... 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, 1996) Comments. Fluid-filled cracks and pores extend miles down below the earth's surface. It would be surprising if novel ecosystems do not exist there, too. The ice-sealed Antarctic lakes (see next item under GEOLOGY) may also surprise biologists. As for outer space -- a realm pulsing with energies of many kinds -- we can imagine that matter has assumed many unfamiliar forms, some of which we might call "life." From Science Frontiers #107, SEP-OCT 1996 . 1996-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 110: Mar-Apr 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Sparrows At Play While looking through the ornithological literature for avian anomalies recently, we found an irresistible item that bears on that deeply profound bit on "Crow Woes" appearing in SF#109. Remember how the Yokohama crows placed stones on the train tracks and dropped others on houses? Well, this stone-dropping must have some adaptive value in the evolution of birds, because sparrows have also inherited the trait. E.C . Jaeger recounted this anecdote in a 1951 number of The Condor : "During my high school days at West Point, Nebraska, my father was a merchant occupying a building of two stories with a long pebble-covered, tarred roof sloping to the rear. Forming a short walkway behind the rear entrance were two sloping doors, which, when opened up, admitted entry to the basement stairway. Over a period of several days in mid-May of 1903, I noticed many small pebbles scattered about on these doors. I also heard from time to time the sound of small objects falling on the doors. Efforts to find the pebble-droppers were of no avail until one day when I happened to approach the rear of the building from the alley. My position some fifty feet from the building now permitted me to see several House Sparrows ( Passer domesticus ) bringing small stones to the edge of the roof and dropping them. As each pebble was dropped the bird involved turned its head ...
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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 Gaia as a super-superorganism The Gaia hypothesis states that the earth's environment is maintained suitable for life by life itself. Our climate, atmospheric oxygen level, ocean composition, and similar vital conditions are kept livable by life's waste products, such as the oxygen emissions of plants. That something like Gaia is required is seen in the extreme disequilibrium of the earth's atmosphere compared to the near-equilibrium of the atmospheres of apparently lifeless Venus and Mars. For example, our atmosphere's 21% oxygen, a highly reactive gas, is many orders of magnitude higher than one would expect on a lifeless planet. Furthermore, life-friendly conditions have been maintained for billions of years despite large changes in the sun's output and the traumas of asteroid impacts. T.M . Lenton, writing in Nature, asks a salient question: How has planetary self-regulation (Gaia) been established and maintained by evolution and natural selection which operate on the level of individuals? In other words, evolution tells us that organisms should evolve so as to leave the most progeny not so as to regulate the atmosphere. Lenton answers that there must be feedback loops from the planetary environment that steer the evolution of individuals in the "proper" direction. Lenton goes on to explore some of these many feedback mechanisms; one obscure loop involves the production of dimethyl sulfide by marine phytoplankton. Truly, it ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 118: Jul-Aug 1998 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Archeological revisionism Astounding undersea structure near okinawa More bones that don't belong The mysterious terras pretas Paradigm assaults from way down under Astronomy The "stealth" region of mars The day the laws of phsics changed Biology Lunacy in trees Two creations of life? Biological miscellany Geology The song of the earth Glitches in the terrestrial conveor belt Geophysics Unidentified light Phosphorescent rings and wheels Broadside against small icy comets Psychology Measuring beauty Monogrammic determinism Tactile ventriloquism ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 120: Nov-Dec 1998 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology The pigeon-snaring mounds of tonga Pyramid stones not "cementitious" Where did they come from? Astronomy Bye-bye mercury, and maybe mars The force is with them Biology Why some like it hot Dog doctors Acoustical "vision" underwater Gaia as a super-superorganism Geology Spod logs Miles of floating forest Geophysics Bouncing ball lightning A BRIGHT FLYING OBJECT AND ANOTHER ENIGMATIC CRATER Psychology Are ufo abductions akin to ndes? Precognitive dreams Physics More quantum weirdness Mathematics The first digit phenomenon ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 113: Sep-Oct 1997 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Triangular holes in boulders America b.c . and then some! Astronomy A VANISHED PLANET? An exploded planet and the "face on mars" Biology Who's in charge down there? Acoustical pipes in beaked whales? Sheep foil cattle guards Geology Earth's shifting crust Geophysics Green thunderstorms Ball of light clocked at 1,800 miles/second! Atlantic wave heights increasing Psychology Why are dreams always retrospective? A DREAM INVENTION The view from within Unclassified Where do all good deleted data go? Can computers have ndes? ...
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... book is in Japanese. We'll have to settle for the Contents page, which is rather revealing. Human Beings under the Sea The Submarine Ruins Discovered Were the Ryukyu Islands a Continent? Discovery of a Civilization Lost in the Sea An Ancient Civilization in Southernmost Japan A Continent Lost in the Pacific Ocean Submersion of the Land and Tectonics of the Earth Hypotheses for the Land Lost in the Pacific Ocean A Utopia Sunk in the Pacific Ocean Pretty inflammatory stuff, so much so that we must be wary indeed! One of the drawings in our photocopy is good enough to reproduce here. The immediate impression, as with many of the underwater photographs, is that surely this structure is artificial. But we must remember that Nature has her playful moods and has deposited simulacra everywhere, perhaps even on Mars, certainly with the Grand Tetons! (Kimura, Masaaki; A Continent Lost in the Pacific , all other bibliographical data in Japanese. Cr. R. Molnar) This secion of Kimura's "lost continent" is only about 180 meters long. Artificial structure or natural geological formation? From Science Frontiers #121, JAN-FEB 1999 . 1999-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... . 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; "Martian Substances," Science, 275:321, 1997.) From Science Frontiers #112, JUL-AUG 1997 . 1997-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... 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 ...
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... 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 ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 100: Jul-Aug 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A POT POURRI OF MARTIAN CUSIOSITIES (AND WE DON'T MEAN "FACES" AND "PYRAMIDS")A shadow and grid-like pattern. ". .. the recent Phobos probe that the Russians sent to Mars in 1988 -- which met a mysterious and untimely demise -- recorded two quite mysterious Anomalies on the planet before contact was lost with the satellite. One was a strange shadow moving across the planet's surface (not a shadow of either of Mars' moons)! The other anomaly was a strange grid-like pattern at one location on the Martian surface; it was photographed with an infrared camera on Phobos 2, the first such instrument carried on a spacecraft sent to Mars." (Ref. 1) The canals are still there -- in a shadowy way ! Commenting upon the theory that those Martian canals that keep showing up on plates made through terrestrial telescopes are only picture/film defects, D. Louderback points out that the: ". .. canals are also showing up on CCD [Charge-Coupled Device] camera photos like the one taken by Donald Parker with a 12.5 -inch reflector and shown on the cover of the Strolling Astronomer earlier this year. It clearly showed a pentagonal pattern of canals surrounding Elysium. It is almost certain that these were not a 'picture defect'!" (Ref. 1) Searching for explanations, J ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 101: Sep-Oct 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Alh 84001: a message from mars or perhaps some other planet ALH 84001 is a meteorite picked up in the Allan Hills of Antarctica a decade ago. Its composition and fused crust suggest an extraterrestrial -- origin probably Mars. Space scientists think ALH 84001 was blasted off the Martian surface by an impacting body 14-18 million years ago, based upon its exposure to cosmic rays while circling the sun, edging ever closer to earth. The composition of ALH 84001 tells us curious facts about its place of origin. First, it contains carbonate minerals deposited by water. Second, the carbonate grains are banded, implying the parent rock formation was washed by water more than once. Third, and most interesting, chemists have found traces of molecules called PAHs, based on interconnected benzene rings. Three sources have been proposed for these PAHs: Terrestrial contamination Prebiotic activity on the planet of origin PAH-bearing comets and/or asteroids impacting the parent planet. Terrestrial contamination has always been a problem in analyzing meteorites, but great care has been taken in recent years, especially with the Antarctic lode of meteorites. In view of these precautions, it seems rather likely that somewhere "out there" life is brewing. (Anonymous; "A Chip Off the Old Mars," Sky and Telescope , 90:12, July 1995.) Reference: See also: Incredible Life for the interesting history of past "discoveries of life ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 99: May-Jun 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Ballistic Panspermia Scientists are already convinced that cratering events on the moon and Mars have propelled rocky debris in the direction of the earth, and that some of these fragments have landed here in the guise of meteorites. A logical question is: Can life forms and/or chemical precursors of life be transported thus across the far reaches of the solar system? Can one planet infect another ballistically? An analysis by M.K . Wallis and N.C . Wickramasinghe is rather warm towards this idea: "The mass of escaping ejecta from the presumed 10-km comet that caused the 180-km Chicxulub crater, with a radius of roughly 10 km and 1 m deep, amounted to ~300 Mm3 , of which one third may have been rock and 10% higher-speed ejecta that could have transited directly to Mars. It may have taken 10 Ma to impact Mars but...the probability is not exceedingly low but 0.1 -1 %. "The survival and replication of microorganisms once they are released at destination would depend on the local conditions 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 ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 98: Mar-Apr 1995 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Ancient egyptians in the new world? Carbon-14 dating: under a cloud? Translating the grand traverse stone Astronomy The earth has recently been swallowed by a cloud of inter-stellar gas Arp banished, but not redshift anomalies A YAGI WATCHES A SOLAR ECLIPSE Biology Emf fertilizer? Vampire fish -- [x -rated item] Some shaky observations Blindsight also occurs in monkeys Geology A UNIFIED THEORY OF GEOPHYSICS Six immense armadas of icebergs invaded the north atlantic Geophysics An unknown atmospheric light phenomenon Crop-circle litmus test? Earthquake ripples in the ionosphere Psychology Madness and creativity How to test for lucid dreaming Physics Can we explore hyperspace? Unclassified Nobel gossip! ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 104: Mar-Apr 1996 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Reinventing the neandertals The pit-zodiacs Astronomy Men like gods The petrozavodsk phenomenon Biology It's "smothers" not "pods" Search-and-destroy sperm The magnetic mountain Geology A HOLLOW, TRIANGULAR ICICLE A METEORITIC EVENT LAYER IN ANTARCTIC ICE The whale-on-its-tail fossil An antarctic bone bed Geophysics Puzzling winds Ball lightning materializes in a sitting room Bright sparks erupt from beach Psychology An invisible information superhighway? ...
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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 Chaos At The Amusement Park Readers of Science Frontiers are well aware that some denizens of our solar system exhibit chaotic motion, as do some pendulums and even dripping faucets. Chaosists seem to be able to find chaos everywhere they look. If you have ever ridden on that amusement park staple called the Tilt-A -Whirl, you will recall that the ride is fun because you never know exactly what the car you are riding in will do as the platforms move along the hilly circular track. Each car is free to rotate about its center and will also tilt in all possible directions as the cars go up and down the hills. Can one mathematically predict whether the car will spin clockwise, counterclockwise, or not at all? What a neat problem for a physicist! And two physicists, R.L . Kautz and B.M . Huggard, have developed a mathematical model of the Tilt-A -Whirl. By integrating the equation of motion, they find that the Tilt-A -Whirl is, indeed, a chaotic system. You really cannot tell what the car is going to do -- even if you take your laptop along with you! (Kautz, R.L ., and Huggard, Bret M.; "Chaos at the Amusement Park: Dynamics of the Tilt-A -Whirl," American Journal of Physics, 62:59, 1994.) From Science Frontiers # ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 98: Mar-Apr 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Nobel gossip!Have you heard that: Alfred Nobel originally planned to use his fortune for the construction of crematoria all over Europe, but opposition from the Catholic Church forced him to find another way to use his money; thus, the coveted prizes? And that Nobel never established a prize for mathematics because his wife had had an affair with a mathematician? (Griffith, John; "Smoke Scheme," New Scientist, p. 48, January 14, 1995) From Science Frontiers #98, MAR-APR 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 Is immortality only a mutation away?Here follows the lead sentence of the abstract of a recent letter to Nature : "We have found that mutations in the gene daf-2 can cause fertile, active adult Caenorhabditis elegans hermaphrodites to live more than twice as long as wild type." (Kenyon, Cynthia, et al; "A C. elegans Mutant That Lives Twice as Long as Wild Type," Nature, 366:461, 1993.) Comment. C. elegans is a roundworm only about a millimeter long. Roughly a thousand cells make up its tiny body, and scientists have charted the birth and death of each cell from egg to adult. This roundworm's life is a mosaic of changing cells, as some die to make way for new cells with different agendas. Somehow this programmed sequence of cell death and birth can be slowed down by mutations and thus increase longevity. Wouldn't any mortal speculate that perhaps human longevity might, like that of C. elegans , be extended by modern gene manipulators? Sure, it's quite an extrapolation from roundworm to human, but our cells are programmed just like those of C. elegans . Change a gene here and there, and we might all live as long as Noah! From Science Frontiers #92, MAR-APR 1994 . 1994-2000 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 Unidentified Light January 14, 1993. Eastern North Pacific. Aboard the m.v . B.P . Adventure , Panama to Chiba. "At 0235 UTC the phenomenon shown in the sketch was first seen about 15 above the horizon, bearing 265 . It was initially thought to be a downward pointing spotlight from an aircraft: it was bright (nearly white), conical in shape and about 1 high. During further observation the shape slowly enlarged, becoming more bell-shaped with a darker elliptical patch at the bottom. As it increased in size, the shape faded away and moved slowly towards the horizon in a slightly southerly direction before disappearing just above the horizon at 0254, bearing 260 . "The maximum height reached by the shape was about 5 and throughout the observation stars could be seen through it while at one point it was nearly obscured by cloud of which there was 1 okta. The only other bright object nearby was Venus, being slightly higher and to the south, bearing 248 , elevation about 20 . Visibility was excellent as about 10 minutes after the observation a ship was spotted bearing 280 at a distance of 16 n.mile. The observers felt that the shape was too regular to be a cloud and had no real idea of its origins." (Peacock, K.E .; "Unidentified Light," Marine Observer, 64:17, 1994.) From Science Frontiers # ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 98: Mar-Apr 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Madness And Creativity The observation that creativity and genius are often allied with psychiatric problems is an ancient one. More recently, male writers have been shown to have high rates of mood disorders and alcoholism. Persuing these kinds of correlations further, but with the female sex, A. Ludwig, of the University of Kentucky Medical Center, chose as his "creativity" sample 59 female writers attending a Women Writers Conference. These were compared with 59 non-writers matched in terms of social, demographic, and family factors. Psychiatric problems in both groups were elicited through interviews. As the table below shows, the psychopathological differences between writers and non-writers are large. Diagnosis Writers Non-writers Depression 56% 14% Mania 19 3 Panic attacks 22 5 Eating disorders 12 2 Drug abuse 17 5 Childhood sexual abuse 39 12 It seems that Dryden, back in the 17th century, was correct when he wrote: "Great Wits are sure to Madness near ally'd ." (Anonymous; "Madness and Creativity Revisited," Science, 266:1483, 1994) From Science Frontiers #98, MAR-APR 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 98: Mar-Apr 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Earthquake Ripples In The Ionosphere During the January 1994 Northridge earthquake in California, the ground surface acted like a drumhead. By suddenly shoving the surface upwards by about 40 centimeters, the quake generated atmospheric disturbances that spread skyward at velocities of 1,000-2 ,200 kilometers/hour. Upon reaching the ionosphere, the waves created ripples that were detected by the array of navigational satellites that make up the Global Positioning System (GPS). (Monastersky, Richard; "Bouncing an Earthquake off the Sky," Science News, 146:415, 1994) Comment. The great 1964 Alaskan quake not only blasted the ionosphere, it generated air waves that were detected by a microbarograph at Berkeley, California, 3,130 kilometers away. See GSW2 in Earthquakes, Tides, Unidentified Sounds. For a description of this volume, visit here . From Science Frontiers #98, MAR-APR 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 98: Mar-Apr 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Six Immense Armadas Of Icebergs Invaded The North Atlantic "Observations of large and abrupt climate changes recorded in Greenland ice cores have spurred a search for clues to their cause. The search has revealed that at six times during the last glaciation, huge armadas of icebergs launched from Canada spread across the northern Atlantic Ocean, each triggering a climate response of global extent." The foregoing abstract does not mention the interesting Heinrich layers that fostered the above scenario. In 1988, H. Heinrich published a paper describing a curious set of sedimentary layers found in cores drilled in the tops of the Dreizack seamounts in the eastern North Atlantic. Heinrich concluded that each of the six layers he found represented the melting of "six great armadas of icebergs." These icebergs carried debris picked up in Canada and, as they melted, deposited it on the seamounts and ocean floor. Each layer could be correlated with the major climate boundaries revealed by the Greenland ice cores. Very fittingly, these iceberg incursions are now termed "Heinrich Events." (Broecker, Wallace S.; "Massive Iceberg Discharges as Triggers for Global Climate Changes," Nature, 372:421, 1994.) From Science Frontiers #98, MAR-APR 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 98: Mar-Apr 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Carbon-14 dating: under a cloud?An item in Science News about the earth's envelopment by a cloud of interstellar gas 2,000-8 .000 years ago impelled J.M . Rankin to inquire if this cloud could change the cosmic-ray flux enough to affect carbon-14 dating. The answer seems to be YES. Unfortunately, we do not yet know enough to make corrections for this gastroastronomical event. (Rankin, John M., and Frisch, Priscilla C.; "Carbon-14 Dating: Under a Cloud?" Science News, 147:51, 1995.) Cross reference. See item under ASTRONOMY in this issue for more on this cloud. From Science Frontiers #98, MAR-APR 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 98: Mar-Apr 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Ancient egyptians in the new world?In issue #8 of The Ancient American , G. Thompson translated a few paragraphs from Mariano Cuevas' 1940 book: Historia de la Nacion Mexicana . We now summarize that translation. In August 1914, Professor M.A . Gonzales was excavating Mayan ruins in the city of Acajutla, in Mexico. The two illustrated statuettes were uncovered. On the male, the headdress, the beard, and the cartouche are all typically Egyptian in style. The male is thought to represent Osiris, the female Isis. (Thompson, Gunnar; "Egyptian Statuettes in Mexico," Ancient American, 2:12, no. 8, 1995.) In the same issue of The Ancient American , the issue of whether the ancient Egyptians reached the New World is joined with pro and con articles. The first is entitled: "The Egyptians Were Here!" It is written by R.A . Jairazbhoy, like G. Thompson an ardent diffusionist and author of the recent book Rameses III: Father of Ancient America . No need to ask what Jairazbhoy's position is on the issue! The second article is a rebuttal to the whole Egypt-in-America business by E. Lurio. His title: "Point: No Egyptians in Ancient America." Lurio is also the author of the 1990 book: A Fractured History of the Discovery of America . Lurio concludes: " ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 32 - 15 May 2017 - URL: /sf098/sf098a01.htm
