The Unusual & Unexplained
Strange Science * Bizarre Biophysics * Anomalous astronomy
Archaeology Astronomy Biology Geology Geophysics Mathematics Psychology Physics
From the pages of the World's Scientific Journals
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Science Frontiers The Unusual & Unexplained
Strange Science * Bizarre Biophysics * Anomalous astronomy
Archaeology Astronomy Biology Geology Geophysics Mathematics Psychology Physics
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Science Frontiers is the bimonthly newsletter providing digests
of reports that describe scientific anomalies; that is, those
observations and facts that challenge prevailing scientific paradigms.
Over 2000 Science Frontiers digests have been published since 1976.
These 2,000+ digests represent only the tip of the proverbial
iceberg. The Sourcebook Project, which publishes Science Frontiers,
also publishes the Catalog of Anomalies, which delves far more
deeply into anomalistics and now extends to sixteen volumes, and covers dozens of disciplines.
Over 14,000 volumes of science journals, including all issues of Nature
and Science have been examined for reports on anomalies. In this
context, the newsletter Science Frontiers is the appetizer and
the Catalog of Anomalies is the main course.
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Search results for: size158 results found.
4 pages of results.... "Temperature 104. Absolute blue sunny skies. No clouds anywhere to be seen, from one horizon to the other for 360. "Out of nowhere, without warning, it poured extremely hard rain, hail, and toads. The hail balls were maybe the size of grapes to the size of peas. The toads were a medium brown in color and approximately the size of an adult's thumbnail. This whole incident lasted for less than 5 minutes, if my memory is correct..... "The highway and ...... Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Due to a fortunate coincidence you can read about a fortunate coincidence There are embedded in the fabric of our universe a number of curious coincidences among the so-called physical constants. Two amusing examples are: The size of a planet is roughly the geometric mean of the size of the universe and the size of the atom; and The mass of man is the geometric mean of the mass of a planet and the mass of the proton. Less hilarious is the observation that ...... the presence of a physical bias that artifactually inflated hit rates when higher dice faces (e.g., the '6' face) were used as targets. Analysis of a subset of 39 homogeneous studies employing experimental protocols that controlled for these biases suggests that the experimental effect size is independently replicable, significantly positive, and not explainable as an artifact of selective reporting or differences in methodological quality. The estimated effect size for the full data base lies more than 19 standard deviations from chance, while the effect size for the subset of balanced ...... impractical, it destroys the whole nest. This usually forces the host birds to lay fresh eggs, giving the cuckoo a chance to parasitize the nest. The most remarkable thing about cuckoo parasitism is the birds' ability to match the eggs of the host species in size, spottedness, background color, and darkness. The eggs of all five species commonly parasitized in Britain are much smaller than a bird the size of the cuckoo would normally lay; but the cuckoo still manages to lay eggs of just the right size. When ...... Télérama, February 21, 1990.) Very briefly, we have roughly 1000 observations by several thousand people, beginning in October 1989 and still continuing. Most witnesses report a dark, triangular object with three bright lights plus a flashing red one in the middle. Size estimates vary from the size of a football field to that of conventional aircraft. The object sometimes hovers for minutes at a time. It also can move very slowly and then suddenly accelerate to high speeds. Some observers report a faint humming sound; others say ...... do display just a hint of mass. Two other candidates now on the table are so bizarre that we marvel at the ingenuity of the theorists. One involves exceedingly large particles, the other unbelievably tiny clumps of particles. At the "giant" end of the size spectrum are galaxy-size particles weighing only 10 -24 as much as an electron, which is itself by no means large. It would be hard to experimentally distinguish such ethereal particles from a hard vacuum. A Princeton team, led by W. Hu, asserts that ...... This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Mallia Table The Mallia Table was discovered in the Central Court of the Minoan Palace of Mallia on Crete. It is a large limestone disk 90 centimeters in diameter and 36 centimeters thick. Around its circumference are 33 cups of equal size. A 34th. cup is larger and is located in a sort of ear that extends beyond the normal circumference of the disk. The larger cup is oriented due south. The disk is set in the stone pavement of a small terrace that is slightly elevated ...... and Similar Devices Auditory Hallucinations Stimulated by Tape Recorders and Similar Devices Odd Perceptions Optical Illusions [PIB PP PSYCHIC BIOLOGY PPA ALLERGY AND ASTHMA Allergies Asthma PPB BODILY PARAMETERS AFFECTED BY THE MIND Temperature Odor Heart Rate Physical Performance Reflexes Alpha-Rhythm Visual Perception Color Blindness Deafness Fatigue Sleep Physical Size (Breast Size) Luminosity Auras [PLG PPC CANCER AND THE MIND Cancer Onset Cancer Remission PPD DEATH Willed Death Suicide Twin Effect Birthday Phenomenon PPE PREGNANCY False Pregnancy Couvade Labor Onset Birth Defects PPG GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS (PSYCHOLOGICAL "FORCES) Hypnotism Faith and Prayer Healing ...... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 29: Sep-Oct 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Genes aren't everything Many species of birds show considerable variation in size, shape, and coloration in various parts of their ranges. Hithertofore, such geographical variations had been considered to be genetically controlled; that is, the genes also varied with the geography. But experiments in which the eggs of redwinged blackbirds were interchanged between nests in northern and southern Florida and also between Colorado and Minnesota seem ...... . What did survive is called an "impact melt." This is debris rich in noble metals, such as iridium, and contains particles typical of a low-metal mesosiderite. Some 600 kilometers of the ocean floor received this debris. Kyte and his associates estimate the size of the impacting object at at least 0.5 kilometers in diameter. No biological extinctions are correlated with the 2.3-million-year date, but there appears to have been a major deterioration of climate at about this time. There was a shift in the marine oxygen isotope records and ...11. A Quick Quasar... Frontiers ONLINE No. 35: Sep-Oct 1984 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A Quick Quasar Quasar 4C29.45 threatens to make quasars even harder to understand. Quasars have always appeared to emit too much energy for their size; that is, our present knowledge of physics does not provide us with a mechanism for generating such huge energy densities. Now, quasar 4C29.45 comes along and pulsates on time scales of 30 minutes and less. These pulsations are sharp and not spread out timewise ...... : Mar-Apr 1991 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Searching For Monster Sharks Tantalizing reports surface now and then lending crediblility to the claim that there exists a very rare, deepwater shark that rivals the blue whale in size. We are talking 50-foot sharks and larger here; sizes that make the hero (or heroine) of the Jaws series seem minnow-like. All of these hints come from the Pacific and focus on the possible survival of the shark Carcharodon megalodon, a monster relative ...... concentric rings around a central crude circle. (Anonymous; "'Mystery Circle' Found in Tunnel," Asahi Evening News (Tokyo), April 5, 1991. Cr. Y. Matsumura via L. Farish) Speculations. Apparently, plasmoids can be of any size: crop circles may be 100 feet in diameter of just a foot or two, and now we may have centimeter-sized expressions of plasmoid activity in the unexpected locale of the subway tunnel! Building upon these observations, it is not unreasonable to ask whether plasmoids ( ...... , but careful observation show that they fight back against predators in subtle ways. Williams and Gilbert, for example, have found that a number of Passiflora species, which are heavily defoliated by the larvae of Heliconius butterflies, have developed tiny structures that closely resemble in size, shape, and color the eggs of these butterflies. Heliconius butterflies, when searching for likely plants on which to lay eggs, tend to avoid plants that already have eggs on them. The plants' fake eggs, then, help protect the plant from ...... 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 ...16. Two Down-falls... DaylightSaving Time (7h 45m UT), a Rue farming couple were in front of their house when they heard a whistling sound "like a big rocket on August 1" (Swiss national holiday). They just had time to see a block of ice the size of a "football" pass in front of their field of vision and crash into the tarred path near to their farm. The block broke up into thousands of pieces and the witness recuperated [sic the largest which was "the size of a skittle. ...... Avian Bills: Unusual Adaptations BBA19 Wing Claws BBA20 Wing Spurs BBA21 The Alula or Bastard Wing BBA22 Some Curiosities of Avian Feet BBA23 Inherited Callosities BBA24 Unusual Pouches on Birds BBA25 Luminous Birds BBA26 Odoriferous Birds BBA27 Egg Complexity and Sophistication BBA28 Bird Eggs: Color, Pattern and Size Curiosities BBA29 Egg Mimicry BBA30 Mimicry of Other Species and the Environment BBA31 Remarkable Convergences of Appearance and Habits BBA32 Frightmolt BBA33 The Hollow in the Back of the Young Common Cuckoo BBB AVIAN BEHAVIOR BBB1 Avian Intelligence BBB2 Complexity and Sophistication of Avian Mental Processes BBB3 Enigmas of ...... Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Orphans Of The Wild West North of San Francisco, all along the Oregon and Washington coasts, the geologically oriented traveller will discover many huge boulders, mostly 10-20 m across, but some 100 m in size. Their constitution varies, but many are coarse-grained basalts that appear to have spent much of their lives at least 30-40 km underground. These boulders are "erratics" in the sense that no one has found surface outcrops that might have given them birth. So ...... The power level of the supernova remnant gamma flash would have had to be about 10 37 watts-- a stupendous figure. If the supernova remnant is a neutron star, as current theories suggest, the neutron star would have to be 10 to 100 times the size of the usual neutron stars. (Anonymous; "Gamma-Ray Burst Comes from Outside the Galaxy," New Scientist, 87:776, 1980.) From Science Frontiers #13, Winter 1981.© 1981-2000 William R. Corliss Other Sites of Interest SIS ...... fish have spare parts The sunlight that filters down into the depths of the sea is exceedingly weak. It is so dark down there that one would expect deep-sea fish to be blind like many cave-dwelling animals. They are not blind; rather many have eyes of fantastic size and novel construction. An unusual feature of some deep-sea eyes is a layered retina. In the conger eel, five layers of photoreceptors are plastered on top of one another. Yet, experiments with conger eel eyes reveal that only one layer of photoreceptors is active ...... ). They moved in an anticlockwise direction until about 3 points abaft the beam where the direction of movement was reversed. On the beam they appeared to be at eye level, at all other times they were just above the surface of the water. The average size of the 'wheels' was 35 metres." (Penman, B.; "Bioluminescence," Marine Observer, 50:114, 1980.) Comment. A similar case of spinning boomerangs was reported in Lightning, Auroras, Nocturnal Lights, where the ...... is widely interpreted as indicating a worldwide catastrophe caused by the impact of a comet or meteor. The increase of iridium concentration over normal levels is much higher in northern latitudes, suggesting that the impact point is in this region. But no impact scar of the proper size and age exists. However, if one looks for scabs rather than scars, one finds that Iceland is formed entirely of volcanic rocks younger than the Cretaceous. To Fred Whipple of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, these facts dovetail nicely. Iceland was form ed by ...... over the other animals. If the cortex can be removed with little mental impairment, what is it for in the first place? (Lewin, Roger; "Is Your Brain Really Necessary?" Science, 210:1232, 1980.) Comment. Brain size, then, may mean nothing in comparing ancient and modern human skulls or human brain capacity with those of animals! Where is the seat of intelligence? In some cases of hydrocephalus, the cortex is only paper-thin, but little mental impairments is apparent. From ...... ) Lightning on Venus, as detected by electromagnetic sensors on Pioneer Venus, seems to be concentrated over two major surface features. (2) Venus has 10,000 to 100,000 times less water than the earth, which is so much like it in size and other parameters. (Beatty, J. Kelly; "Venus: The Mystery Continues," Sky and Telescope, 63:134, 1982.) From Science Frontiers #20, MAR-APR 1982.© 1982-2000 William R. Corliss Other Sites of Interest ...... Structure September 1981. Berkhamsted, England. "I was resting on my settee listening to music on the Third Programme when there was some interference of a crackling kind. Suddenly, a ball of bright light appeared in front of my radio. It was about the size of a large orange. It was dazzlingly white and gave the appearance of dozens of stick crystals 5.0 mm in length jigging about with a crackling sound. By the time I reached the switch it had disappeared, but a loud burst of thunder broke overhead. ...... ' In a second let ter Mrs. Revell drew the ball lightning as a red globe with 16 rays, composed of links like a chain, issuing from it; the rays were rather longer than the diameter of the ball. She said, 'You asked the size. From the ground it looked about four to five yards across, which would be larger than that in the sky. The chains opened from the top to the bottom with a terrific bang." (Rowe, Michael W.; "Unusual Ball Lightning ...... a tremendous explosion and became a large bright orange gaseous fireball, which appeared to be hurled earthwards directly down the observer's line of sight, growing constantly larger and larger. One witness described the fireball as resembling rolling orange smoke. The ball then ceased to increase in size, giving the impression that it had stopped. Its orange colour rapidly gave way to rainbow colours which gradually gave way to white and faded in brilliance until all that remained were several patches of luminous white light, although these were impressive in their own right. ...... valley with a stream. "The dolmen is four feet across the top and has three placed stones holding it above the ledge in a level position approximately six feet from the cliff face. The Ogam on top of the capstone is intermixed with cupule-like depressions ranging in size from 7 "-9" long, 3 "-3" wide and 1 "-1" deep in the center. The cupule-like depressions are very striking because of their uniformity, smoothness, and peculiar shape. The Ogam on the side of the capstone is abundant and occasionally connecting ...... emission-- the effect which makes lasers so powerful-- accounts for up to seven per cent of the total emission. This is not a large amplification factor by laboratory standards, particularly for a CO 2 laser. But, the authors speculate that the sheer size of the natural lasers could make them useful tools in the future for communicating with distant civilizations beyond our own planetary system." The atmospheres of Mars and Venus are almost pure CO 2. The CO 2 molecules are excited by the absorption of energetic solar photons ...... we have attempted to deal with a subject that, for all of its great importance, is almost ghostly in its intangibility. We have broken the subject into its logical elements and attempted a morphological discussion of the possibilities. Table I [not reproduced because of its size presents an overview of many of the ideas discussed here and their respective effects on the equations.... "Some of the branch lines discussed here serve the optimists, while others seem pessimistic to an unprecedented degree. We have laid out only the outline ...... Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Azilian Pebbles Although Bahn's article is primarily about how to spot fake Azilian pebbles, he also provides some fascinating facts about the real ones. Genuine Azilian pebbles seem to have been carefully selected for size and shape. Most are oval or oblong and may be up to 8 centimeters long, 3 centimeters wide, and one centimeter thick. Over a thousand have been found around Europe. They have been considered primitive art, markers for prehistoric games, and possibly ...... meters high have been described. Cox and Gakahu have studied some of these African mounds and find them much like the North American Mima Mounds. They are found well above the range of the rhizomyid mole rat, a rodent similar to the North American pocket gopher in size and behavior. Quantitative measurements indicate the mounds to be constructed from dirt immediately surrounding the mounds. In short, the African mounds and probably those of North America seem to be the products of industrious rodents. (Cox, George W., and Gakahu, ...... have their own parasites. The usual effect of a parasite upon its host is debilitation, often to the point of death. But parasites have to reproduce, and some settle for the modification of their hosts in ways that improve their chances. Parasites can change the size, color, and even the behavior of their host. The object is usually to encourage a specific predator to eat the host so the parasite can continue its life cycle. A classic example is the lan-cet fluke which infests ants and then sheep. The problem ...... Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Flip-flop radio jets? Many radio galaxies and quasars are found to have a double-lobed structure, with one lobe on one side of the nucleus and another diametrically opposite. When examined in detail, these lobes turn out to be quite different in size, shape, and intensity. In particular, very bright regions on one lobe often correspond to gaps or regions of low brightness on the other. So striking are these asymmetries that astronomers think that these huge, tremendously energetic systems are ejecting material first from one ...... ." (Why this forms is not known.) Once inside the host cell, the parasite nucleus and/or the cytoplasm transferred with it dramatically reprograms host cell operations. The host cell shifts into highgear food production, enlarging up to twenty times its normal size. The host cell wall thickens, its nuclei (large black circles) and chloroplasts multiply. Adjacent cells (left) remain unaffected. (Lewin, Roger; "New Regulatory Mechanism of Parasitism," Science, 226:427, 1984.) Comment ...... 27, November 22, 1984.) Reference. For more on the Expanding Earth Hypothesis, see category ETL6 in our Catalog: Carolina Bays, Mima Mounds. This book is described here. Relative bad fit of South America and Africa on a globe of modern size is indicated by the black gaps (gores). The black areas disappear on an earth with a diameter 80% of the modern value. From Science Frontiers #37, JAN-FEB 1985.© 1985-2000 William R. Corliss Other Sites of Interest SIS. Catastrophism ...... happened before. (Pollard assumes that creation occurred like most scientists.) Example 3. The anthropic principle can be interpreted as a restatement of the religious contention that the universe was made-for-humankind. In Pollard's words: "If one imagines an ensemble of universes of different size and duration and equipped with different values of the fundamental constants G, h, c, e and others, this principle selects only that member of the ensemble for which life and its evolution to man is a possibility. But merely stating the problem in this ...... The object disappeared behind clouds, bearing about 170 (T) at an elevation of approximately 35, and lighting the edges of the clouds. The time taken for the passage was around 20 seconds. It was obviously a very large object, judging from its apparent size as seen from sea level. The impression given was that of an object within the atmosphere, easily showing around a one-penny piece held at arm's length." (Edwards, R.A.F.; "Unidentified Flying Object," Marine Observer, 54:82, ...... construction feat must have taken considerable organization and community energy, much like the pyramids then under construction in Egypt. In the absence of stone quarries and with plenty of forests, Hambleton Hill's fortress was simple wood and dirt, but nonetheless very impressive. Even its great size, however, did not save it from conquest and burning. (Mercer, R.J.; "A Neolithic Fortress and Funeral Center," Scientific America,, 252:94, March 1985.) Reference. To learn more about ancient British hill forts ...40. Deeper Mysteries... Gloria is being employed to produce high resolution maps of the seafloor. Apparently previous sonar sounding methods missed startling underwater volcanos, canyons, and immense delta-like deposits. About 170 miles off San Francisco, near a huge volcanic structure, Gloria discovered an underwater canyon comparable in size to the Grand Canyon. No one really knows how it was formed. This great chasm is associated with a delta-like deposit twice the area of Massachusetts. Normally, one expects alluvial fans at the ends of canyons, but in this instance the submarine canyon actually ...41. Forbidden Matter... the molten metal freezes into a thin, metallic ribbon. If it is cooled too fast, a metallic glass results; cooled too slowly, it forms normal metal crystals. But when conditions are just right, icosahedral crystals cluster together in nodules a few microns in size. These icosahedral crystals are not normal in the sense that they have five-fold symmetry. In fact, to a crystallographer, these crystals are the equivalent to ESP in psychology. All the rules of crystallography insist that icosahedral crystals should not exist. One scientist reacted ...... Sourcebook Subjects What is it? a black hole, of course! Radio-telescope measurements of the compact radio source, churning away in the center of our Galaxy, reveal that it is only 20 AU in diameter at radio wavelengths of l.35 centimeters. This is roughly the size of the solar system inside Saturn's orbit. This tiny radio source is so energetic that there seems no escaping the conclusion that it is a blackhole. No other astronomical object is capable of generating so much energy in so small a volume. Since other galaxies also ...... of space in the universe." It is difficult for astronomers to accept such a large "bubble" in the cosmos, because the Big Bang Theory basically produces a "smooth" universe. The author of this paper, H. Arp, comments that the size of the inhomogeneity could be shrunk considerably if redshifts were not taken as measures of distance. (Arp, Halton; "A Large Quasar Inhomogeneity in the Sky," Astrophysical Journal, 277:L27, 1984.) From Science Frontiers #42, NOV-DEC ...... HI. The clear favorite among the four contending hypotheses was the earth-impact scenario, which may be stated as follows: "Near the end of the Earth's accretion, after its core had formed and while the growing planet was still molten, an object at least the size of Mars smashed into it at an oblique angle. The cataclysm put large quantities of vaporized or partially vaporized impactor and Earth into orbit. The primitive Moon formed from that material." Conferees turned thumbs down on the theory that the moon was captured by the ...... now suggests that the extracellular matrix itself may help to propel cells along." (Experiment details omitted here.) "No one knows whether this matrix-driven movement actually occurs in living organisms. But potentially, it could achieve the high-speed movement of cells depending on the size and characteristics of the cells. Considering that many of the events of development occur remarkably rapidly, this is an attractive possibility for cell migration." (" More Clues to Cell Movement," New Scientist, p. 30, September 5, 985. ...... a park ranger in northwestern Tasmania awoke in the dead of night. From force of habit, he scanned the woods, his spotlight punching through black walls of rain. And there in the beam was one of the strangest creatures he had ever seen. About the size and shape of a dog, it was covered with stripes that ran from its shoulders across its back to its thick, rigid, tail. "The animal stood still as the startled ranger counted the stripes, then it nonchalantly gave an enormous jaw-stretching yawn. ...... Specifically, entire atoms can tunnel through barriers represented by the repulsive forces of other atoms and form complex molecules even though the atoms do not have the energy required by classical chemistry to overcome the repulsion." Of course, the reaction rates are slow, but the size of the cosmic pond is vastly greater than any terrestrial puddle. The above quotation is from V.I. Goldanskii who, even before Hoyle, suggested a cold prehistory of life, during which complex organic molecules were synthesized at just a few degrees above absolute zero. ...... developed initially as aerodynamic stabilizers, thermoregulatory systems, sexual attractors or other functions requiring large areas. Gould describes the experiments of Kingsolver and Koehl in which protowings were modelled and tested for their thermoregulatory and flight values. Surprisingly, there was a sharp transition, as the size of the protowing increased, from good thermoregulation but poor flight capability to the reverse-- good flight capability and poor thermoregulation. In other words, a structure developed for one purpose, if enlarged, might be useful for something else! (Gould, Stephen ...... on five occasions during the interval 20,000-14,000 years BP, cosmic dust mass concentrations in the solar system rose by one and two orders of magnitude above present day levels. Moreover if the particles found in these ice core samples are indicative of the particle size distribution which prevailed in the interplanetary medium at that time, then it may be concluded that the space number density of submicron sized particles must have uncreased by a factor of 105 or more. During these times the light transmission properties of the solar system would have ...... complex life keeps getting pushed back farther and farther in time, as evidenced by the following abstract: "Microfossils resembling fecal pellets occur in acid-resistant residues and thin sections of Middle Cambrian in Early Proterozoic shale. The cylindrical microfossils average 50 x 110 microns and are the size and shape of fecal pellets produced by microscopic animals today. Pellets occur in dark gray and black rocks that were deposited in the facies that also preserves sulfide minerals and that represent environments analogous to those that preserve fecal pellets today. Rocks containing pellets and algal microfossils ...
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