361 results found.
... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 59: Sep-Oct 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects THE NEW ARCHAEOPERYX FOSSIL A new fossil of Archaeopteryx has been found in a private collection, where it was misclassified as a small dinosaur. The specimen was actually found many years ago by an amateur in the Upper Jurassic Solnhofen limestone in Bavaria, in about the same area as the Berlin and Eichstatt Archaeopteryx fossils. Under low-angle illumination, the new specimen shows parallel impressions originating from the lower arm of the left "wing." These impressions are "interpreted" as imprints of feather shafts. Thus, the new fossil reinforces the mainstream position that Archaeopteryx really did have feathers and was a link between reptiles and birds. Evolutionists will rest easier now. Two bothersome observations intrude, however. First, although the report on the new specimen states that the question of forgery does not arise here, even though the specimen's tail has been restored to the length deemed by the owner. In addition, the new Archaeopteryx is 10% larger than the London specimen, 30% larger than the Berlin specimen, and fully twice the size of the Eichstatt specimen. Is there more than one Archaeopteryx species? (Wellnhofer, Peter; "A New Specimen of Archaeopteryx," Science, 240:1790, 1988. Also: Wilford, John Noble; "Fossil May Help Tie Reptiles to Birds," New York Times, June 24, 1988. Cr. J. Covey) Comment. We wonder if Hoyle and ...
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... . Do young sandstones with identifiable granitic sources show more inclusions than older sandstones? Do desert sands, beach sands, and other unconsolidated quartz grains show any flaws? Has anyone really examined fresh quartz grains weathered from granite to determine how the number of flaws in a grain varies with the grain size? (Cox, Douglas E.; "Missing Mineral Inclusions in Quartz Sand Grains," Creationist Research Society Quarterly, 25:54, 1988.) Comment. Most geologists will complain that we are going out of our way to make trouble. But consider the possibility that some unflawed quartz grains in sandstones may have actually been precipitated from gases and fluids and not be granitic at all. And what about those sandstone dikes and other sand-stone intrusive bodies? Where did their quartz grains originate? Not all sandstone is sedimentary. From Science Frontiers #59, SEP-OCT 1988 . 1988-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 150: Nov - Dec 2003 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Australians First in the New World? Origin of Clovis Culture Disputed A "Magic Number" Encoded in Three of the World's Major Pyramids Astronomy Mapping and Analyzing Dark Matter Biology Frog Poison Factory Puffin Tongue Trick? Human-chimp DNA Dissimilarities Four-Dimensional Biology A Squid's Eyes that Look Up and Down Tuberculosis and the Extinction of the Megaforna Dark Matter in our Genome Unknown Source of Animal Diversity Communication among Bacteria Geology When the Earth Gets Cracking Subduction Doesn't Check Out Chicxulub Didn't Do It! Geophysics Squishy Ball Lightning Far-Floating Fowl Psychology Natural-Born Readers Physics Mixed Anomalies ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 144: Nov-Dec 2002 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology A dirty story from Amazonia From door to door to what or -- perhaps -- to whom? Astronomy Mercury: Magnetic and sinistral Tunguskas forever Biology Animal antics Processionary sperm The Changeux paradox A statement we never thought we'd see Geology Something went 'splat' in Bolivia Death in the pits Geophysics Complex ball-lightning events Revisiting the Spanish hydro-meteors of January 2000 Psychology So out-of-body experiences originate in the brain? False recovered memories Unclassified Three reasons why ETs have not contacted us ...
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... s headdress. The head's workmanship is excellent and comparable to that seen in the nearby Great Pyramid. The Sphinx's body, on the other hand, is highly eroded, even though it was completely buried under sand for centuries. This severe erosion led R.M . Schoch to proclaim that the Sphinx is actually thousands of years older than the Giza pyramids, much to the annoyance of conventional Egyptologists. (SF#79) Be that as it may, no one denies that the Sphinx's head and body are quite different. Riddle 2. The head of the Sphinx seems too small for the body. None of the many other sphinxes carved by the ancient Egyptians show such an error of proportion. To answer both riddles, R. Waters suggests that the original Sphinx was actually carved as a complete lion several millennia before the Giza pyramids were erected. It was these later pyramid builders -- those master craftsmen in stone -- who recarved the head into human form, necessarily reducing its size relative to the body. (Waters, Richard; "The Lion King," Fortean Times, p. 54, no. 91, October 1996) Comment. Waters is not the first to reinterpret the Sphinx's head. Others have noticed that the surviving facial features of the Sphinx do not match those of the Pharaoh Chephren, the supposed builder of the adjacent Great Pyramid. J.A . West, in his 1979 book Serpent in the Sky , advances this idea. The lion-head surmise has also been mentioned in the recent ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 119: Sep-Oct 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Mounds Of Mystery Unlike many controversies in science, the debates over the origin of the Mima Mounds have been friendly. No one gets overly passionate over bizarre heaps of earth; the Mima Mounds are "fun phenomena." Nevertheless, the biggest of them on the Mima Prairie, near Little Rock, Washington, are very impressive. They are closely-packed, some 6-8 feet high and about 30 feet across. It's kind of eerie walking among them; but they are also fun to ride over in vehicles -- they create a sort of natural roller-coaster effect. There are thousands upon thousands of mounds on the Mima Prairie. Before farmers began leveling them, they stretched for more than 20 miles. If, as some have estimated, they are about 6,000 years old, they were originally twice as high before the elements wore them down. The big question is and always has been: How were these large heaps of churned-up sand, fine gravel, and decayed vegetable matter formed? One has to smile at the dominant theory: pocket! Sure! pocket gophers are bundles of digging energy, but each Mima Mound contains about 100 tons of soil. Multiply that figure by the thousands of mounds, and you begin to wonder about the gopher theory. Also counting against the gophers is the fact that no one has ever found gophers in the mounds, nor has a ...
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... : Sep-Oct 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Who Built The Kaimanawa Wall?Some 30 kilometers south of Lake Taupo, in New Zealand, stands an enigmatic array of stone blocks. It "looks" like a wall; a human-built wall. It also "looks" old; perhaps 2,000 years old according to some. Who built it? Passions are running high in New Zealand, where three hypotheses are being advanced: The wall was built some 2,000 years ago by the first settlers of New Zealand, the Waitahas, who were subsequently nearly exterminated by the Maoris, who arrived only 800 years ago. There are political problems with this theory, for the Maoris insist they are the original New Zealanders and therefore are due compensation for lands expropriated by later Europeans. The wall is merely what's left of a sawmill built only 50 or so years ago. The wall is simply a natural rock formation that has happened to split neatly into rectangular blocks -- like those slabs of beach rock that comprise the controversial Bimini "road" in the Bahamas. Future study of the "wall" will doubtless narrow the list to one. Meanwhile, let's take a 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 ...
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... ,200 Years Ago?The Tyrolean Iceman died in the Alps about 5,200 years ago, but his mummified body is exceptionally well-preserved -- so well-preserved that 15 groups of tattoo marks on his body stand out vividly. These punctures do not seem to be ornamental, like those on a sailor's biceps, nor are they on parts of the body usually displayed. What is most interesting are their locations; some groups are placed at traditional Chinese acupuncture points. Bolstering this suspicion is the determination from computer tomography (noninvasive imaging) that the Iceman suffered from arthrosis of the lumbar spine. The Iceman's body is punctured at the points usually used by acupuncturists to treat this condition! "These findings raise the possibility that the practice of therapeutically intended acupuncture originated long before the medical tradition of ancient China (approximately 1000 B.C .) and that its geographical origins were Eurasian rather than East-Asian, consistent with far-reaching intercultural contacts of prehistoric mankind." (Dorfer, Leopold, et al; "5200-Year-Old Acupuncture in Central Europe?" Science, 282:242, 1998.) From Science Frontiers #121, JAN-FEB 1999 . 1999-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 111: May-Jun 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Extraterrestrial Handedness Human life forms favor right-handedness over left-handedness by a 9:1 ratio. Other terrestrial animals are also asymmetrical in various ways. But on the molecular level, terrestrial biochemistry is all left-handed. As far as scientists can determine, only left-handed amino acids are incorporated into proteins. In nonlife (if such a state really exists), amino-acid molecules are right- and lefthanded in equal numbers -- as least this has been the theory up until now. Amino acids are found in substances we assume are non-life or of abiotic origin. In fact, amino acids are present in meteorites, often in substantial amounts. They are profuse in Australia's Murchison meteorite, a carbonaceous chondrite. However, analysis of the Murchison's amino acids indicates that there are slightly more (7 -9 %) left-handed than right-handed amino acids present. This extraterrestrial handedness is of great import to both cosmologists and biologists, because the carbonaceous chondrites are thought to have formed 4.5 billion years ago -- long before life on earth originated. Furthermore, some of the Murchison's amino acids have never been found in terrestrial life, and they are also slightly left-handed. For some unfathomed reason, chemical and biological evolution both tilt to the left! (Bada, Jeffrey L.; "Extraterrestrial Handedness?" Science, 275 ...
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... . (For details, see SF#60 or p. 238 in Science Frontiers, the book) The first anomaly is the strength of the glow itself. It is not all thermal radiation emitted by the 350 C water spewing forth from the vents; in fact, it is 19 times more intense than expected from theory. Something else is contributing energy, but no one knows what it is so far. The unexpected intensity of the vent glows also asks some provocative questions of the biologists: Is the glow strong enough to sup port photosynthesis? Quite likely, seems to be the answer. Are life forms in the vicinity of the vents employing photosynthesis? We don't know yet, but some bacteria do photosynthesize. Might not life and perhaps photo synthesis, too, have originated at the vents rather than on the planet's surface? This is an attractive possi bility, because very early in the earth's history the surface was con tinually blasted by meteorites, comets, etc. -- a very inhospitable place. The above questions are so fascinating that we might easily neglect another vent anomaly; one involving those blind shrimp. Like many cave creatures, these shrimp dispensed with eyes long ago. This being so, how do they find the vents, those rich oases of energy and food on the otherwise bleak sea floor? Rather than re-evolve their eyes, they "somehow" grew light-sensitive patches on their backs. Apparently, these patches guide the shrimp to the vents. (Monastersky, Richard; "The Light at the ...
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... Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The black death and ccr5-delta 32 Plagues are not all bad, and the Black Death (bubonic plague) that swept into Europe from Asia in 1346 was no exception. It is now common knowledge that bacteria, insects, plants, and even humans can build up resistances to poisons, diseases, and antibiotics. Mutations are always occurring; some good, some neutral, some bad. It has been found that a human mutation designated CCR5-delta 32 confers immunity to AIDS if inherited from both parents. People carrying the CCR5-delta 32 mutation lack the receptors to which the AIDS virus must attach itself if it is to infect the person. What has all this to do with the Black Death? "Although the origin of the mutation is obscure, it appears to have suddenly become relatively common among white Europeans about 700 years ago. That increase suggests that something must have occurred about that time to greatly favor the survival of people carrying the mutation." What biological catastrophe decimated Europe 700 years ago? The Black Death. One-quarter to one-third of the Europeans succumbed between 1347 and 1350. The Black Death strongly modified the European gene pool, increasing the frequency of CCR5-delta 32. This mutation may not have had any direct effect on the plague itself. It may just be a quirk of fate that the survivors of the Black Death had a higher frequency of the CCR5-delta 32 mutation, and it is doubly quirky that the mutation confers a resistance to AIDS, which ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 119: Sep-Oct 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The End Of The Old-Model Universe That cosmology is in flux is apparent in the following sentence found in Nature: " The standard ideas of the 1980s about the shape and history of the Universe have now been abandoned -- and cosmologists are now taking seriously the possibility that the Universe is pervaded by some sort of vacuum energy, whose origin is not at all understood." Does this mean that the Big Bang, the mainstay of the astronomy we were taught in school, is now being cast aside? After all, the Big Bang does model fairly well three important observations: The apparent expansion of the universe; The 3 K microwave background; and The abundances of the light nuclei. But try as they may, cosmologists have not been able to coax the Big Bang model to explain the large-scale lumpiness and structure of the galaxies and galaxy clusters. One problem with the Big Bang is that it has too many free parameters -- too much theoretical slack. Many cosmologists are now looking for a better model. This better model, to use the words of P. Coles, should be more "exciting" and "stranger," something "perhaps not even based on General Relativity." (Coles, Peter; "The End of the Old Model Universe," Nature, 393:741, 1998.) Questions. Isn't cosmology already already "strange" enough? Since when ...
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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. 117: May-June 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Accelerating Universe Many laymen are uncomfortable with the idea that the entire universe originated at an infinitesimal point and is now expanding away from this cosmic navel. Many astronomers are equally disturbed by the recent discovery that all these fleeing stars and galaxies are not being reined in by the force of gravity. In fact, observations of distant supernovas indicate that this exodus of matter is actually speeding up. Some universal repulsive force, it seems, is operating on very large scales of distance. From an unknown somewhere energy is being added to all constituents of the cosmos. The universe is more than a cloud of debris flying away from the Big Bang's Ground Zero. Somewhere, perhaps beyond the ken of our 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 ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 107: Sep-Oct 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Subversive Cancer Cells It has been generally believed that most cancers originate in a single founder cell, which then multiplies to create the tumor. But cancer is more insidious than expected. A precancerous founder cell may actually subvert nearby noncancerous cells and turn them into cancerous cells. In this sense, the first precancerous cell recruits and transforms healthy cells, enlisting them in its destructive operations, and thereby turning them against the body that produced them. No one yet knows how this subversion is effected or how it evolved. (Why is there cancer anyway?) The basis for this claim involves a few rare human mosaics, whose bodies are built of cells with two different genetic complements. Cancers in human mosaics have been found to contain both types of cells and, therefore, did not grow from a single cell alone. (Day, Michael; "Cancer's Many Points of Departure," New Scientist, p. 16, June 1, 1996) Comments. Curiously, some "primitive" animals, such as sharks, seem to have evolved defenses against cancer that mammals lack. With reference to "mosaics," see item in SF#105 on "Mixed-Up People." Also relevant is BHH25 "' Insidious' Properties of Cancer Metastases" in Humans II . For information on this book, visit here . From Science Frontiers #107, SEP-OCT 1996 . 1996-2000 William R. ...
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... view directly. As the last segment of the sun dipped below the horizon, a blue 'horn' formed at each end of it, as shown in sketch (a ), and these then closed up to form a bright-blue arc, as shown in sketch (b ). " (Leslie, A.J .; "Blue Flash," Marine Observer, 66:115, 1996) Comment. The blue flash is a shorter-wavelength version of the green flash. The basic phenomenon is explained in terms of dispersion of the sun's spectrum by the atmosphere near the horizon. Even so, many enigmas remain about these low-sun phenomena. There have been observed: multiple flashes, flashes preceding sunset, complex flash structures, and the apparent psychological origin of some flashes. For details, see GEL1 in Rare Halos, Mirages. This book is described here . From Science Frontiers #108, NOV-DEC 1996 . 1996-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... the top showed the west and north top edges were also welldefined. The object appeared solid but did not cast a shadow. "As Johns watched in astonishment, the object began moving toward the front porch. He could clearly see two sides of it as it approached. As the top passed under the eaves, the bottom bent backwards over the bushes which border the 71-cm high porch, in the manner of a man's leg bending at the knee, forming an obtuse angle. At this point, he lost sight of it, grabbed his .38 handgun, and quickly went to the windows on the other three sides of the house, hoping to again see the object in the ample illumination, but without success. Although the object had moved very slowly from its original position, total viewing time was less than ten seconds. There was no sound at any time during the sighting." When Johns reported the above incident, he was advised to see the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which an eerie monolith is a key player. Johns did so and commented that said monolith "blew his mind." It was just what he had seen, except that it was wider and shorter. (Olsen, Thomas M.; "Sighting Alert," report, 1996) Comment. We can understand why the monolith of 2001 appeared: (1 ) to protohumans; (2 ) to lunar explorers; and (3 ) in orbit around Jupiter; but WHY in Kentucky in 1996? From Science Frontiers #109, JAN-FEB ...
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... couple billion years ago -- the "face" would have been smack on the equator of Mars-to-be, gazing downward perpetually upon the doomed planet. The "face" thus had a cultural purpose, a sort of cosmic "Big Brother." Carrying these thoughts to their logical conclusion, the inhabitants of the planet had colonized their "moon" and built those controversial "structures." (Van Flandern, Tom; "New Evidence of Artificiality at Cydonia on Mars," Meta Research Bulletin, 6:1 , 1997. Journal address: P.O . Box 15186, Chevy Chase, MD 20815.) Comment. We cannot resist adding two more thoughts to all this speculation: If life on Mars really did (does) exist, it probably really originated on the supposed exploded planet! Could the explosion of this planet have seeded the earth with life, say, at the time of the unexplained Archean Explosion? (See under BIOLOGY.) Reference. The asymmetry of the surface of Mars and other unusual geological features are collected in Chapter AME in our Catalog The Moon and the Planets. For more on this volume, go to here . Eastern hemisphere of "two-face" Mars. Cratered highlands (white); lowland plains (shaded). From Science Frontiers #113, SEP-OCT 1997 . 1997-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Although high winds and a wetted surface seem necessary, controversy persists about the need for other conditions, especially ice sheets. On the basis of experiments with a wetted Racetrack surface (soft mud about 3 cm deep), we find the effective coefficient of friction to be surprisingly high, about 0.8 . Movement by wind alone of moderate-sized (20 kg) rocks with cubic shape requires sustained winds close to the ground of about 80 m/s (about 180 mph). Larger flat-lying rocks require much higher winds." The authors of this paper, J.B . Reid, Jr., et al, precisely mapped a large number of the enigmatic tracks. Their maps revealed many "mated pairs" of rocks, whose curving tracks matched near their origins to within a few centimeters, even though the tracks were separated by up to 830 meters (over 0.5 mile!). Apparently these mated rocks were locked into a huge ice sheet resting -- almost floating -- on slippery mud. Sustained winds blowing over the large areas of ice generated enough horizontal force to propel the ice sheets with their cargos of rocks. Measurements showed that some of these ice sheets had to be at least 850 x 500 m (about 100 acres!) in extent. That's big, to be sure, but hardly anomalous. (Reid, John B., Jr., et al; "Sliding Rocks at the Racetrack, Death Valley: What Makes Them Move?" Geology , 23: 819, 1995) Comment ...
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... , maybe there weren't such things as "days" as we now know them back when the universe was very young. In fact, "time" then might have been different from "time" now. This sounds like so much physics-speak; but, seriously, during the birth pangs of the universe, there seems to have been what cosmologists call a "phase change," a mysterious moment when the laws of physics suddenly became more complex. You can reasonably ask: "How can supposedly immutable physical laws change?" The answer seems to be that anything can happen when something is being made from nothing! This apparent plasticity in the laws governing the cosmos is suggested by observations of how galaxies in the early universe were distributed. The standard theory for the origin of the universe predicts that clumps of galaxies of all sizes were created early on. This is not what a survey by S. Sarkar et al, at the University of Oxford, found. A split second after the Big Bang, galaxies were organized in structures about 300-million light years across. The standard model of particle physics cannot account for this preferred size. The theorists' recourse is a phase change, a point in time when the warp and woof of the universe changed; that is, change the rules until they fit. (Chown, Marcus; "In the Beginning," New Scientist, p.7 , April 25, 1998.) Comment. Hang onto your hats. If a phase change happened once, it can happen again. Things may ...
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... is just a branch of thermodynamics, and there is no sudden beginning of life, but a gradual systematic development toward more efficient ways of degrading energy. .. .The chemical energy available inside a planetary body is then more likely to have been the first energy source and surface creatures -- like elephants and tigers and people -- which feed indirectly upon solar energy are just a specific adaptation of that life to the strangely favorable circumstances on the surface of our planet." (Gold, Thomas; "An Unexplored Habitat for Life in the Universe," American Scientist, 85:408, 1997.) Undiscovered microbial life may exist kilometers beneath the surfce. These microbes may be the source of the biological molecules found in the oil shown seeping upwards. Gold believes this oil was originally abiotic. From Science Frontiers #114, NOV-DEC 1997 . 1997-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... 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 is certainly explosive speciation -- real biological punctuation! But, perhaps as water levels fell, the original cichlids found refuges in surviving pools and then repopulated the lake when the waters rose. But is it reasonable to believe that they all sorted themselves out so perfectly that many species are found nowhere else in the lake? The probability seems high that cichlid speciation has been very rapid -- too rapid, one would think for random mutation and the slow feedback of natural selection to accomplish this daunting task in just a century or two. Might there not be some additional nonsupernatural factor at work? (Goldschmidt, Tijs; Darwin's Dreampond , Cambridge, 1996, p. 125.) From Science Frontiers #110, MAR-APR 1997 . 1997-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... called "structure" is 600 feet long and 90 feet high. Said to be about 10,000 years old, it obviously predates the edifices of the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians. The "structure" is now under about 75 feet of ocean near a small island named Yonaguni southwest of Okinawa. During the Ice Ages, it would have been exposed, just like the Bering Land Bridge to the north. Of course, the crucial question is: Is it really artificial? R. Schoch, the Boston University geologist who vouches that the Sphinx is also about 10,000 years old (SF#79), described the "structure" as a series of huge steps about 1 meter high. Schoch is impressed by the 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" ...
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... within the laws of thermodynamics. This strange "force" exerted by entropy may explain some puzzling biological phenomena, such as the expulsion of nuclei from mammalian red blood cells before they enter the bloodstream as sacks of hemoglobin. The idea being that the increasing entropy of the proliferating hemoglobin molecules (analogous to the smaller spheres) is maximized when the nuclei (large spheres) are squeezed out of the cells altogether. (Kestenbaum, David; "Gentle Force of Entropy Bridges Disciplines," Science, 279:1849, 1998.) Comments. The red-blood-cell example presented in the article is on shaky ground, because while mammalian red blood cells do lack nuclei those of birds and reptiles retain theirs. (See BMC6 in Mammals II .) In the above context, the origin of life (more order) anywhere in the universe can be thought to be due to the "gentle force" of entropy; that is, the result of increasing disorder elsewhere. See? It's all very simple!! When many smaller spheres are added to a sytem of larger spheres, the "gentle force" of entropy "pushes" the latter into a corner and a state of higher order From Science Frontiers #117, MAY-JUN 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... cataclysm must have left a large and inescapable crater somewhere. The problem is that no one has yet found it. (Ref. 1) Many lines of evidence suggest that the missing crater is in Indochina. C.C . Schnetzler and J.F . McHone located four likely structures in Laos from Landsat images. However, visits to these areas found no evidence of an impact. (Ref. 2) So, this mystery persists. How were the Muong Nong tektites formed? Muong Nong tektites are unusually large (up to 24 kilograms), layered tektites. They are found in an area 1,000 kilometers in extent from Hainan Island to southern Indochina. Their large sizes imply that they are probably close to the missing crater mentioned above. Still unresolved is whether they were originally puddles of molten rock near the elusive crater or local ejecta analogous to volcanic bombs. (Ref. 1) Is the "age paradox" finally resolved? Some Australian geologists have stratigraphically dated the Australasian tektites as being just a few thousand rather than 770,000 years old. (SF#8 ) The 770,000-year figure is derived from the presence of Australasian microtekites at the Brunhes-Matuyama magnetic reversal and is, therefore, a "magnetostratigraphic" date. Recent excavations by now seem to confirm R. Fudali's assessment that all tektites and microtektites in the Australasian strewn field are definitely 770,000 years old. (Ref. 3) References Ref. 1. Taylor, S.R .; "Tektites: Some Unresvolved Problems," Meteoritics and ...
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... -covered beads. In a sense, the bipolar spindle is a puppetmaster, and the microtubules are the strings. The puppet show can go on without the puppets (chromosomes). (Hyams, Jeremy; "Look Ma, No Chromosomes," Nature, 382:397, 1996. Also: Heald, Rebecca, et al; "Self-Organization of Microtubules into Bipolar Spindles around Artificial Chromosomes...," Nature, 382:420, 1996. Travis, John; "Mitotic Mischief," Science News, 150:14, 1996.) Comments. Obviously, neither the chromosomes, the genes, nor the DNA are the master of the show. They are merely passive players in cell division. It is fair, therefore, to ask how these microtubules originate and operate. Whence the information and instructions (" program") required to put on the show? "Self-organization" is the current answer of mainstream biologists, but this term has no explanatory value. Microtubules separating chromsomes prior to cell division. Left: early anaphase. Right: late anaphase. From Science Frontiers #111, MAY-JUN 1997 . 1997-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... s oldest rocks may contain substantial oil reserves. So far, no one has seriously looked for oil in Precambrian rocks because of the two preconceptions noted above. (Palmer, Douglas; "Any Old Oil?" New Scientist, p.22, March 14, 1998.) Comments. Large quantities of oil and bitumen 3.5 billion years old have profound implications. Far from being lifeless, the most ancient of our planet's seas may have been thick soups of bacteria and other simple life forms. So much terrestrial life so soon after the formation of the earth could imply that there was an extraterrestrial inoculation of biotic material that gave terrestrial life a jump start -- assuming that this ancient oil and bitumen are truly biogenic! The possible (and highly anomalous) abiotic origin of oil and natural gas are covered in some depth in Anomalies in Geology. From Science Frontiers #119, SEP-OCT 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... inner core and the fluid outer core that lies around it. In the presence of the Earth's magnetic field, these currents generate massive forces that tug on the inner core. And because the outer core has a relatively low viscosity, the inner core can spin freely." (Stokstad, Erik; "Earth's Heart Is in a Spin," New Scientist, p. 18, July 20, 1996. The basic paper is: Song, Xiadong, and Richards, Paul G.; "Seismological Evidence for Differential Rotation of the Earth"s Inner Core," Nature, 382:221, 1996) Comments. Awesome as this gigantic natural electric motor may be, it doesn't challenge any paradigms; in fact, it reinforces current notions concerning the origin of the geomagnetic field. The anomalist, however, inevitably asks questions and makes iconoclastic connections. Why couldn't this planet-size piece of rotating machinery actually be a generator rather than a motor? The kinetic energy of the faster-spinning inner core might actually create the geomagnetic field. What happens when the geomagnetic field reverses, as it has often done according to the magnetostratigraphic record? Does the earth's motor go into reverse? If the inner core can slip relative to the crust and mantle, why cannot the crust-plus-mantle slip, too -- perhaps catastrophically? Pole-shift proponents will like this idea! *Title idea from A. Rand's Atlas Shrugged . Of course, Rand's hero was talking about a different kind of ...
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... the University of Cologne, fed the bacterial virus M13 to a mouse, snippets of the M13's genes turned up in cells taken from the mouse's intestines, spleen, liver, and white blood cells. Most of the alien DNA was eventually rejected, but some was probably retained. In any event, alien DNA in food seems to make its way to and survive for a time in the cells of the eater. (Cohen, Philip; "Can DNA in Food Find Its Way into Cells?" New Scientist, p. 14, January 4, 1997.) Comment. We are only half-kidding when we ask if food consumption could affect the evolution of a species. After all, our cells already harbor mitochondria, which are generally admitted to have originally been free bacteria that were "consumed" by animal cells. The process even has a name: "endosymbiosis." See: SF#47/189. From Science Frontiers #112, JUL-AUG 1997 . 1997-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 118: Jul-Aug 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Broadside Against Small Icy Comets In a late-1997 issue, Geophysical Research Letters published a group of five papers that detailed five different lines of evidence that are inconsistent with the claim by L.A . Frank and J.B . Sigwarth that the earth is bombarded daily by 30,000 house-size icy comets. If such bombardment has really been occurring, scientists would have to rethink the origins of the earth's oceans, terrestrial life, and the formation of the solar system. No wonder the icy-comet hypothesis is strongly challenged! Three of the more interesting points made by this group of papers are as follows: Our moon could not escape the icy-comet bombardment. Roughly 1,000 craters 50 meters in diameter and splashes of debris 150 meters in diameter must occur each. There is no evidence that the moon is thus afflicted. Comets also carry the noble gases argon, krypton, and xenon. These gases should accumulate in the atmosphere as the comets disintegrate. The amounts of these gases actually measured are 10,000 times less than those the postulated bombardment would produce. The icy comets should break up near the earth and produce clouds of ice crystals. Sunlight reflected from such 30-ton clouds would be brighter than Venus and easily visible before they disperse. Such objects are rarely seen, implying that small icy comets do not exist in the numbers claimed. Preceding this series of five ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 108: Nov-Dec 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Life Forms In Meteorites?Few could have escaped the recent gushy press coverage of NASA's announcement that an Antarctic meteorite, possibly of Martian origin, seems to have carried vestiges of life forms from that planet to ours. No need to recapitulate all that hype. What we do add is the observation that this same sort of excitement has swept through the scientific community at least twice before. Back in 1961, B. Nagy et al discovered tiny particles resembling fossil algae in carbonaceous chondrites. They called these particles "organized elements." Ultimately, these curious particles were explained as natural crystals and terrestrial contaminants. (Ref 1.) Much earlier, in 1881, Hahn, an eminent German geologist, asserted that he had examined thin sections cut from chondrites and found fossils of sponges, corals, and crinoids. In fact, the extraterrestrial coral that Hahn found even received the scientific name Hahnia meteoritica ! In the end, though, Hahn's meteoric life forms met the same fate as the "organized elements" of Nagy et al. (Ref. 2) Ref. 1. Urey, Harold C.; "Biological Materials in Meteorites: A Review," Science, 151:157, 1966. Ref. 2. Bingham, Francis; "The Discovery of Organic Remains in Meteoritic Stones," Popular Science Monthly , 20:83, 1881. Both references can be found in our Handbook Mysterious ...
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... 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Earthquakes And Mima Mounds In a recent paper in Nature, P.B . Umbanhower et al described how they created regular geometric patterns in a layer of fine particles (only 0.15 mm in diameter) spread on a vibrating surface. At various forcing frequencies, they saw the layer of tiny brass spheres heap up into hexagonal honeycombs, circular piles, and even stranger shapes. (Umbanhower, Paul B., et al; "Localized Excitations in a Vertically Vibrated Granular Layer," Nature, 382: 793, 1996) Comment. Nothing anomalous here, you say? Quite right, but perhaps there is in this experiment an explanation of a long-recognized geological anomaly: The origin of the famed Mima Mounds found scattered by the thousands in various regions of the planet, such as Mima Prairie near Puget Sound, in Washington State. Actually, the demonstration of Umbanhower et al was preceded by a similar experiment back in 1990. In that year, A.W . Berg reported in Geology how he had covered a piece of plywood with a thin layer of fine sand (loess) and subjected the plywood sheet to impacts simulating earthquakes. Lo and behold, the sand rose up in an array of Mima Mound-like heaps. (See: SF#69 and p. 201 in the book Science Frontiers. This book is described here . Umbanhower, a physicist, probably doesn't read Geology , but the results of his team's experiments certainly ...
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... is not restricted to this Finger Lake, for a letter from G. Kuchar describes a modern "bombardment" of "lake guns" heard at Lake Cayuga about 15 miles east of Lake Seneca. "In the early morning hours of August 8th, 1996 (maybe about 6:30 or 7:00 AM), I was awoken by what I thought were loud explosions of thunder. It was a very loud, abrupt sound, sort of like close-by thunderclaps except that they seemed somewhat distant and yet had no reverberations or rumblings. I went to the window which faced a large building across the way...The early morning appeared warm, humid, and overcast. The explosive "thunderclaps" happened again, a whole series of them, and they seemed to originate up in the air and to my right, but I could detect no flashes of light, and the blasts seemed to come at random points in the sky (which was not very visible to me because of the big building looming across the lawn). I couldn't figure out where the storm cloud was that was producing these blasts, since everything was uniformly overcast, and there was no darkness moving in or evident in my field of view. From the sound of the blasts, which were very impressive, powerful noises, I pictured in my mind's eye that huge cloud-to-ground bolts of lightning must be erupting somewhere aloft and to the right and out of sight of my position at the window. But they seemed too scattered about, and then ...
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... record that substantiates the claim of Wray at al. Thus, molecular biology directly contradicts the findings of paleontology. Not to worry say supporters of the new and much more comfortable scenario: The Precambrian animals were so soft and "squishy" that they did not fossilize well. (Ref. 3) Comment. The molecular biologists are a bit arrogant in their assertions. They seem to assume that because they can quantify molecular divergences; that is, fill their journal contributions with numbers; that their data is more sound than fossiliferous strata. But their crucial assumption of constant DNA divergence in time may be their undoing. References Ref. 1. Anonymous; "Deflating the Biological Big Bang," Science News, 150: 335, 1996. Ref. 2. Perlman, David; "Origin of Animals -- 1.2 Billion Years Ago," San Francisco Chronicle, October 25, 1996. Cr. J. Covey. Ref. 3. Wray, Gregory A., et al; "Molecular Evidence for Deep Precambrian Divergences among Metazoan Phyla," Science, 274:568, 1996. Homology vs. DNA. Until the molecular biologists recently arrived on the scene, evolutionary family trees were based upon similarities in appearance; that is, homology. Animals that look alike must be closely related. But molecular biologists have discovered that some animals that seem identical to the eye differ significantly in their DNA complements. Thus, the Pacific skinks may undermine homology. Inhabiting many, far-separated Pacific islands, these small lizards all look pretty much alike externally. For ...
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... Life: Act Ii The final issue of New Scientist for 1996 carried an article entitled "Death Knell for Martian Life." Was all that media hype for naught? What will NASA do now? Wait! Another putative Martian rock may save the day. Picked up in Antarctica in 1974, meteorite EETA 79001 weighs 7.9 kilograms and is superficially unimpressive. Inside, though, researchers I.P . Wright and C.T . Pillinger found a surprising quantity of organic compounds -- actually 1.5 parts per thousand by mass. This fraction is so large that terrestrial contamination seems remote. Furthermore, the organic component contains 4% more carbon-12 (relative to carbon-13) than the adjacent carbonate minerals. This is strong evidence that the organics had a biological origin. Similar tests on the media-hyped Martian meteorite ALH 84001 yielded the same carbon ratios. Pillinger remarked: "These results offer the strongest support yet for the hypothesis that life once existed on the planet." So far so good, but EETA 79001 conveys two additional facts -- both very tantalizing: (1 ) This meteorite was blasted off the Martian surface only about 500,000 years ago; and (2 ) It probably came from a different hemisphere than ALH 84001. From all this, a somewhat shaky conclusion: Life on Mars existed not only recently (and perhaps is still present) but was (or is) widespread on the planet! (Anonymous; "Life on Mars: Part Two," Sky and Telescope, 93:12, January 1997 ...
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... and it may carry a message. Over a decade ago, M.H . Engel and B. Nagy reported that the organic molecules in the Murchison meteorite were not split 50:50 between left- and right-handed versions. So contrary to expectations was this finding that most scientists assumed that the analysis was contaminated by terrestrial organic molecules. Now, M.H . Engel and S.A . Macko have refined the analytical techniques and apparently avoided any taint of contamination. Their conclusion: the Murchison amino acids still lean to the left. From all this arise several intriguing possibilities: Life on earth started split evenly between left- and right-handed amino acids, but was nudged to the left by the influx of organic-laden meteorites like the Murchison. Terrestrial life actually originated elsewhere in the universe where much matter is left-handed, including life, if it exists there. In other words, our philosophical expectation of symmetry in the universe-as-a -whole is incorrect. The universe on the average is evenly split between left- and right-handed molecules, but there are "islands" or "pockets" which are left- or right-handed. Earth life is one of these "islands." Given the chance, amino acids and other organic molecules would exist evenly split, but physical phenomena, such as circularly polarized light, tip the scales -- to the left, in the case of terrestrial life. But that would mean that some physical phenomena are not symmetrical! (Engel, M.H ., and ...
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... A SUBMARINE ORGAN?Exactly two years ago, we reported on strange seismic signals detected by German geophysicists near Mount Semeru, in Java. These signals consisted of a fundamental tone and evenly spaced harmonics. Sometimes, the fundamental tone rose and fell. This "natural trombone" was thought to be a gas-filled subterranean cavity capped at the top by rock, with a pool of magma at the bottom. Volcanic vibrations resonated in this chamber. As the magma pool rose and fell, the fundamental tone changed. More recently, a network of seismic stations in French Polynesia has picked up more mysterious seismic signals. These differ from those in Java in that each fundamental tone is "pure"; that is, there are no harmonics. Dubbed "T -waves," the sounds originated from an active volcanic ridge in the South Pacific. Suspicion fell on one flat-topped volcano that rose to within 130 meters of the ocean surface. But, how could this peak generate such a pure tone? The theory is that the active volcano spews out a column of steam bubbles bounded at the bottom by the flat volcano and by the ocean at the top. Computer simulations proved that sound could resonate in a column of bubbles just as it does in an organ pipe. Since the height of the column remains fixed, so does the fundamental tone. Certainly harmonics are generated, too, but the bubbles damp out the higher frequencies, leaving a pure tone. (Schneider, David: "A Blue Note," Sci entific American , 277:18, August 1997 ...
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... 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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... : (1 ) The slim, flowing human figures remind one more of the Tassili rock art found in Africa's Sahara rather than that of the Australian Aborigines; (2 ) The objects at the left are enigmatic and technical-looking; and (3 ) The symbols (? ) at the top are undeciphered. The article at hand from Antiquity does not attempt to interpret the Bradshaw art. Instead, it discusses the social factors that mold the interpretation of the Wandjina and Bradshaw paintings. When Europeans first saw these paintings they were certain that their "advanced style" was far beyond the capabilities of the Aborigines (colonial prejudice). They must, therefore, be the work of "preAborigines." Today's Aborigines will have none of this condescension. They were the original settlers of Australia, and as such they have bona fide land and title claims. Any recognition of "pre-Aborigines" would undercut these claims. (McNiven, Ian J., and Russell, Lynette; "' Strange Paintings' and 'Mystery races': Kimberly Rock-Art, Diffusionism and Colonialist Constructions of Australia's Aboriginal Past," Antiquity, 71:801, 1997.) Comment. In New Zealand, the Maoris insist they were the first settlers, despite evidence to the contrary. The Maoris, too, have land claims. From Science Frontiers #117, MAY-JUN 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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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 Ironclad proof of the moon's origin? Did earth and moon "coaccrete" at the same time? That is, did two clouds of debris simultaneously collect and coalesce into two rough spheres, which then began orbiting about a common center of gravity? Or, perhaps the earth and moon were once a single mass that ultimately fissioned due to the gravitational tugging of a passing massive object. If either of these scenarios were correct, earth and moon would have similar bulk compositions. This, however, does not seem to be the case. The abundance and distribution of iron on the moon's surface, as measured by the lunar probe Clementine , indicates that the moon is richer than the earth in refractory (high meltingpoint) compounds. The moon, therefore, almost certainly originated elsewhere, contrary to what most astronomers have longbelieved. Given the constraints of celestial mechanics, the most likely hypothesis postulates a colossal impact involving protoearth and the interloping protomoon. After considerable havoc, the two battered spheres settled down into their present configuration. Thus expire the two most popular theories of the moon's origin. (Lucey, Paul G., et al; "Abundance and Distribution of Iron on the Moon," Science, 268:1150, 1995) From Science Frontiers #101 Sep-Oct 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The "inscribed wall" at chatata, tennessee One of our favorite anomalies over the years has been the ancient "inscribed wall" at Chatata, near Cleveland, in Bradley County, Tennessee. The above quotation marks are intended to warn the reader that said wall may not be man-made, and its inscriptions may be natural rather than artificial. An old drawing of a section of the "inscribed wall" at Chatata, TN. Note the triangular marker stone projecting above ground level. The history of the Chatata wall is long and convoluted. Discovered over a century ago, new facts are still coming to light today, as reviewed by D.E . Wirth in a recent issue of The Ancient American. The wall was originally almost completely buried. It attracted attention only because its course was marked on the surface by stones projecting from the ground every 25-30 feet over a gently curving arc about 1,000 feet long. One of these surface stones seemed to be inscribed with strange symbols. Excavations, supported at first by the Smithsonian Institution, revealed a 3-ply sandstone wall-like structure seemingly cemented together by a reddish mortar. Splitting the sandstone sheets revealed diagonal rows of markings like those illustrated. At first, both wall and inscriptions were proclaimed to be artificial. More recent studies by geologists point to natural origins for the wall, the mortar, and even the inscriptions themselves. The latter may be no more than the burrows of mollusks. This interpretation does make sense because the so- ...
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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 A TRIPLE ANOMALY IN A DIAMOND Diamonds as gems have an eerie hold on the human mind. Scientists, too, find them mysterious in several ways. Despite considerable study, the origin(s ) of diamonds remain controversial. In SF#92*, we already mentioned and illustrated the unusual orthogonal arrays of hollow tubes discerned in some diamonds at high magnifications (100X). These tubes remain unexplained, as far as we know. Now, in some diamonds, these tubular arrays are found to be associated with radiohalos. Radiohalos are often seen in some common minerals, such as biotite, but, even there, questions of origin persist. (See SF#25 and SF#58.) No one questions that radiohalos, whether in biotite or diamonds, arise from the the decay of radioactive inclusions; that is, mineral specks carrying uranium, thorium, or some other radioactive element. But how did these radioactive specks get lodged inside the hollow tubes which themselves are encased within diamonds? The problem is that these specks have much lower melting points than the diamond matrix. Why wasn't the liquid radioactive material dispersed throughout the higher melting point diamond matrix long before the latter crystallized? The same question must be asked about the radiohalos themselves, because the application of heat quickly anneals and disperses them. Complicating the picture still further is the fact that some of the radiohalos arise from the decay of polonium-210 ...
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... but where did it come from?October 15, 1991. American Southwest. Photomultipliers in the Fly's Eye telescopes 100 kilometers southwest of Salt Lake City recorded the havoc wrought in the upper atmosphere by the most energetic cosmic-ray particle ever measured. When this tiny subatomic particle slammed into air molecules, the ensuing debris caused the surrounding atmosphere to fluoresce. The amount of light produced indicated that this cosmic ray had an energy of 3 x 1020 electron volts -- that's equivalent to the energy of a bowling ball dropped from waist level. Now that's a lot of energy for a subatomic particle! Because cosmic rays normally lose energy as they collide with photons in their cosmic wanderings, astrophysicists believe that "the big one" had to have a recent, nearby origin in order to still be so energetic. But no one has any idea where it could have come from or how it might have acquired so much energy. Somewhere out there in nearby space there may be a natural particle accelerator orders of magnitude more powerful than our biggest earthbound atom smashers. (Anonymous; "The Deepening Mystery of Cosmic-Ray Origins," Sky and Telescope, 87:12, May 1994.) Comment. Actually, the source of "the big one" need not have been nearby and recent. All anomalists will recognize that this is an assumption based upon the particle's extremely high energy when it hit the earth. Why couldn't the particle's original energy have been much higher than 3 x 1020 ev? Then, it could ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 95: Sep-Oct 1994 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Gamma-ray flashes in the upper atmosphere Something strange is definitely going on in the upper atmosphere, particularly above thunderstorms. We have already reported on the mysterious light flashes (SF90) and radio emissions (SF#94). Now, we record similar, possibly intimately related flashes of energy in a different portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. "Detectors aboard the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory have observed an unexplained terrestrial phenomenon: brief, intense flashes of gamma rays. These flashes must originate in the atmosphere at altitudes above at least 30 kilometers in order to escape atmospheric absorption and reach the detectors." The energies of the gamma rays in the flashes are very high. They are typical of the braking radiation (Bremsstrahlung) from 1,000,000 electron-volt electrons. Since most of the gamma flashes originate over regions where thunderstorms are frequent, it is tempting to associate them with lightning. Ordinary lightning, however, is not energetic enough to generate the gamma flashes and, of course, it does not occur above 30 kilometers altitude anyway. G.J . Fishman et al, who reported on this new phenomenon in Science, speculate that some hitherto unrecognized, high altitude electrical discharges occur high above areas hosting thunderstorms. Possibly, upwardly directed lightning (" rocket lightning") is involved in all three of the newly found flashes in the radio, optical, and gamma portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. (Fishman ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 95: Sep-Oct 1994 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Might diamonds be dead bacteria?How can something as beautiful, pure, and crystalline as a diamond be made from dead, disgusting bacteria? In truth, all diamonds are full of impurities and curious microscopic structures. (See: "Diamonds Are an Anomalist's Best Friend" in SF#92.) The main constituent of diamonds is carbon, but even chemically pure carbon is contaminated in a sense. The contaminant is light carbon; that is, C12 , which is an isotope used preferentially by living organisms. Some diamonds, it is found, contain anomalously large fractions of C12, which suggests they have an organic origin. Some diamonds also contain sulfide inclusions that have sulphur-isotope ratios also symptomatic of a biological origin. The specific diamonds suspected to have an organic origin are the so-called "eclogitic" diamonds. These diamonds may have obtained their carbon and impurities from bacterial communities that once lived around hydrothermal vents that existed along ancient mid-ocean ridges. Subsequent metamorphism (heat and pressure) turned the masses of bacteria into eclogitic diamonds. So, those sparklers of yours may just be clumps of billion-year-old bacterial corpses! (Nisbet, E.G ., et al; "Can Diamonds Be Dead Bacteria?" Nature, 367:694, 1994.) Definition. Eclogites comprise a class of metamorphic rocks formed at extremely high temperatures and pressures. From Science Frontiers # ...
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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. 97: Jan-Feb 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Did the universe have a beginning?" Abstract. The big bang theory postulates that the entire universe originated in a cosmic explosion about 15 billion years ago. Such an idea had no serious constituency until Edwin Hubble discovered the redshift of galaxy light in the 1920s, which seemed to imply an expanding universe. However, our ability to test cosmological theories has vastly improved with modern telescopes covering all wavelengths, some of them in orbit. Despite widespread acceptance of the big bang theory as a working model for interpreting new findings, not a single important prediction of the theory has yet been confirmed, and substantial evidence has accumulated against it. Here, we examine the evidence for the most fundamental postulate of the big bang, the expansion of the universe. We conclude that the evidence does not support the theory, and that it is time to stop patching up the theory to keep it viable, and to consider fundamentally new working models for the origin and nature of the universe in better agreement with the observations." This paper's author, T. Van Flandern, dismisses quickly two pillars of the Big Bang; i.e ., its supposed predictions of the cosmic microwave background and the abundances of light elements in the universe: "The big bang made no quantitative prediction that the "background" radiation would have a temperature of 3 degrees Kelvin (in fact its initial prediction was 30 degrees Kelvin); whereas Eddington ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 95: Sep-Oct 1994 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A DEEP-SEA HYDROTHERMAL VENT INSTEAD OF A WARM LITTLE POND?If earth life didn't arrive from outer space (See under ASTRONOMY.), it may have arisen a couple miles below the ocean's surface at hydrothermal vents. The curious glows recently remarked at these vents (SF#87) have stimulated much speculation as to the potential role of these glows in the origin of life: "The history of hydrothermal activity predates the origin of life, and light in the deep sea has been a continuous phenomenon on a geological time scale and may have served either as a seed or refugium for the evolution of biological photochemical reactions or adaptations." We formally classify this item under GEOPHYSICS because scientists are still pondering how these glows are created. Some of the light is obviously black-body radiation from the very hot (350 C) water but: ". .. other potential, narrow-band sources of light may be superimposed on the blackbody radiation spectrum, including crystaloluminescence, Cerenkov radiation, chemiluminescence, triboluminescence, sonoluminescence, and the burning of methane in supercritical water." (Van Dover, Cindy Lee, et al; "Light at Deep Sea Hydrothermal Vents," Eos, vol. 75, 1994.) Comment. If cold, diffuse molecular clouds in deep space can synthesize glycine, imagine what the hot, chemically-rich fluids around hydrothermal vents might be able to do. ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 27 - 15 May 2017 - URL: /sf095/sf095g16.htm
... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 96: Nov-Dec 1994 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Underwater Thumps "Scientists based on the central California coast are trying to identify the origin of a mysterious underwater sound that disturbed surfers and divers for three weeks -- and then just as mysteriously disappeared. "The sound, made up of thumps occurring at 10-second intervals, was compared by one diver to five or six giant bongo drums going off simultaneously. Most experts have concluded that it was of human origin." As usual in such cases, no governmental or military sources knew anything about the thumps. (Shurkin, Joel N.; "Underwater Thumps Baffle Ocean Scientists," Nature, 371: 274, 1994.) From Science Frontiers #96, NOV-DEC 1994 . 1994-2000 William R. Corliss ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 27 - 15 May 2017 - URL: /sf096/sf096g13.htm
... " head from precolumbian mexico The miniature clay head illustrated below was discovered in 1933 in a burial offering in the archeological zone of Tecaxic-Calixtlahuaja, Mexico. The burial has been dated as from the 12th-13th centuries AD. The features of this little head can hardly be described as typical of Precolumbian Mexicans. In fact, it is often termed a "Roman" head. But is it really? And how did it get into a Pre-columbian burial site? Theory #1 . Some Mexican archeologists insist it is a post-Columbian artifact that somehow "filtered" down into a Pre-columbian site. Given that the head was retrieved from beneath three floors of stone and Indian cement, this theory seems questionable. Theory #2 . The head is truly of Roman origin and was transported to Precolum-bian Mexico from Southeast Asia by Chinese or Hindu voyagers. Theory 3. The author of the present article, R.H . Hristov, favors a Viking origin. The cap on the head and even the physiognomy have Norse overtones. The chronology is right, too, for the Vikings were exploring North America's east coast in the 11th century. Did they venture as far south as Mexico? Hristov points out: "It is well known that in this area very significant political-cultural perturbations occurred among the autochthonous civilizations between the 10th and 13th centuries AD. These were produced by a small group of white immigrants with beards who came from the Atlantic Ocean." (Hristov, Romeo H.; "The Little 'Roman' Head ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 25 - 15 May 2017 - URL: /sf096/sf096a01.htm
