262 results found.
... Science Frontiers Sourcebook Project Strange reports * Bizarre biology * Anomalous archaeology From New Scientist, Nature, Scientific American, etc Archaeology Astronomy Biology Geology Geophysics Mathematics Psychology Physics Guides available Biology Catalogs Biology Handbook Archeology Handbook Geophysics Catalogs Geological Catalogs Astronomy Catalogs Astronomy Handbook Science Frontiers Sourcebooks Ordering details Omni Edge Science Winner December 1996 Publishing History 2007: Dark Days, Ice falls, Firestorms and Related Weather Anomalies (Geophysics) 2006: Archeological Anomalies: Graphic Artifacts I 2003: Archeological Anomalies: Small Artifacts 2003: Scientific Anomalies and other Provocative Phenomena 2001: Remarkable Luminous Phenomena in Nature 2001: Ancient Structures (Archeology) 1999: Ancient Infrastructure (Archeology) 1998: Biological Anomalies: Birds 1996: Biological Anomalies: Mammals II: 1995: Biological Anomalies: Mammals I 1994: Science Frontiers, The Book 1994: Biological Anomalies: Humans III 1993: Biological Anomalies: Humans II 1992: Biological Anomalies: Humans I 1991: Inner Earth: A Search for Anomalies (Geological) 1990: Neglected Geological Anomalies 1989: Anomalies in Geology: Physical, Chemical, Biological 1988: Carolina Bays, Mima Mounds, Submarine Canyons (Geological) 1987: Stars, Galaxies, Cosmos 1986: The Sun and Solar System Debris 1985: The Moon and the Planets 1984: Rare Halos, Mirages, Anomalous Rainbows (Geophysics) 1983: Earthquakes, Tides, Unidentified Sounds (Geophysics) 1983: Tornados, Dark days, Anomalous Precipitation (Geophysics) 1982: Lightning, Auroras, Nocturnal Lights (Geophysics) 1982: Unfathomed Mind 1981: Incredible life (Biology) 1980: Unknown Earth (Geological) 1979: Mysterious Universe ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 106: Jul-Aug 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Impact craters: the party line revised and re-revised 100 years ago. Back in 1900, a geologist risked his reputation by suggesting that Arizona's Meteor Crater was an impact structure. It had to be volcanic or perhaps due to a steam explosion! 50 years ago. In 1950, a geologist risked his reputation by suggesting that large impact structures existed; that is, bigger than 10 kilometers in diameter. 0 years ago. Today, geologists converse blithely about 100-kilometer structures buried beneath the Yucatan and Chesapeake Bay. They are, however, exceedingly chary about long chains of impact structures. Those eight craters in a row. Geologists are questioning whether the eight structures stretching from Kentucky to Kansas (mentioned in SF#105) are all impactcaused. In a letter to Astronomy. A. Goldstein asserts that only three are impact craters; the other five are cryptoexplosion structures; that is, due to internal activity of some sort. However, Goldstein adds that there are actually three additional structures on this long line in Kentucky. (Goldstein, Alan; "Multiple Strike Stricken," Astronomy, 24:20, July 1996) Comment. Even if eight of the eleven structures on the line are cryptoexplosive in origin, one has to wonder why these are all lined up. A long line of weakness in the crust? Meanwhile, in Africa. 1994 radar images from the Space Shuttle have revealed a ...
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... to emerge that the Norse did indeed establish a settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, circa 1,000 AD. This Viking outpost may have been only a short chapter in a long book on the Norse pre-Columbian presence in North America. Mainstream archeologists contemptuously dismiss the Kensington Stone Rhode Island's Newport tower, and those runestones from Oklahoma; but hard-to-explain artifacts continue to crop up in the Canadian Arctic. Recently, there have been purported rivets from a Viking longboat and strand of Norse yarn from the Arctic tundra -- the latter carbon-dated as 800 years old. The Canadian Arctic is also the location of strange stone towers, stone foundations, and standing stones like that illustrated. Canadian author, F. Mowat, asserts that these structures in the far north are neither Eskimo nor Viking in origin. In his new book, The Farfarers, he claims that some 200 years before the Vikings built L'Anse aux Meadows, voyagers from northern Scot-land crossed the Atlantic in walrus-hide boats and established a colony in Newfoundland. Mowat bases his conjectures upon the strong similarities between the stone structures in the Arctic and those on the Orkneys and other islands in the north of Scotland. Quite understandably, the Icelanders, to whom Leif Ericsson is a national hero, greatly resent Mowat's theory. (Nickerson, Colin; "New Clues Emerge on Viking Voyages," Boston Globe, February 14, 2000. Cr. M. Colpitts.) Comment. The same argument -- similarity of rude stone structures ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 129: MAY-JUN 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Hidden 'Gardens'Some of the world's strangest "gardens" appear as green dots on the simmering deserts of the island of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf. These green dots are not your usual oases. Rather, they are springs that once fed long chain-well systems that carried water to villages at their lower ends. Called "qanats," these multimile subterranean structures were invented about 750 B.C . for trans-porting water efficiently in the dry desert climes of the Middle East. Cross section of a typical Iranian qanat. Unlike the exposed spring of the Bahrainian qanat, the water source here is at the bottom of a deep well. (From: Ancient Infrastructure) In our recent catalog, Ancient Infra-structure , we describe the qanats of Iran. (See figure.) Some of these shaft-tunnel structures run for miles and re-present a prodigious amount of labor. How prodigious? In Iran alone there are about 37,500 qanats with an aggregate length of some 100,000 miles! Qanats rank right up there with the Inca roads and the Great Wall of China as wonders of the ancient world. After reading our catalog section on Iranian qanats, E. von Fange informs us that the qanats of Bahrain pose a set of different problems. The Bahrainian qanats are easy to follow across the desert because the access shafts protrude a few feet above the sand. ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 133: JAN-FEB 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Fingers of God We present the following quotation without comment because "tfv" (the author) has obliged in his review of a recent article in Science: Large-scale structure of the universe. A vast redshift survey of over 100,000 galaxies shows hundreds of superclusters and "Great Wall"-like structures, but also "the ends of the biggest structures in the universe". Vast clumps and dark voids are seen. [tvf: No comment is made [in Science] on the clumps and voids both being elongated in directions along our line of sight. This phenomenon is called "the fingers of God" because galaxies seem to line up in filaments pointing at us. The simplest non-theological way out of this dilemma is to jettison redshift as a reliable distance indicator.] (Van Flandern, Tom; Meta Research Bulletin, 9:48, 2000. Citing: Science, 288:2121, 2000.) From Science Frontiers #133, JAN-FEB 2001 . 2001 William R. Corliss Other Sites of Interest SIS . Catastrophism, archaeoastronomy, ancient history, mythology and astronomy. Lobster . The journal of intelligence and political conspiracy (CIA, FBI, JFK, MI5, NSA, etc) Homeworking.com . Free resource for people thinking about working at home. ABC dating and personals . For people looking for relationships. Place your ad free. ...
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... possess, such as mobility, unique sensors, and even a modicum of intelligence. Since superorganisms do not reproduce as superorganisms, how can natural selection operate on these superorganisms? Salps. Books dealing with the unexplained sometimes include a photograph of a huge marine creature identified as a sea monster. This famous photo is real and so is the monster in it. But this creature is not reptilian; it is really a salp, a colonial tunicate. Tunicates are tiny, primitive marine organisms usually classified as invertebrates. Some species of tunicates have somehow acquired the habit of aggregating in immense numbers to create long, hollow, snake-like tubes called "salpa." Salps may reach lengths of 45 feet, with diameters of 3 feet. No wonder they are falsely identified as sea monsters. Structurally, the tunicates comprising the salp are embedded in a gelatinous wall facing inward. Each possesses a siphon that pumps nutrient-carrying sea water. Working in unison, the tunicates create a surprisingly strong current of sea water through the tube, and the salp becomes jet-propelled. Thus, we have a mobile monster, but no ship-swallowing leviathan. (Griffin, D.J .G ., and Yaldwyn, J.C .; "Giant Colonies of Pelagic Tunicates..," Nature, 226:464, 1970) Slime molds. Moving down life's ladder to even smaller and simpler organisms, some amoebas have a bizarre life cycle that ends as a superorganism called a "slime mold." If you viewed an amoeba through the microscope in biology ...
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... pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Are We Merely Fancy Crystals?Just about everyone will concede that when sodium and chlorine atoms arrange themselves to build salt crystals that they are simply obeying the well-known laws of physics. In other words, salt crystals are "natural." "Intelligent design" need not be invoked in explaining their existence. This is OK for salt crystals but can we say the same for biological forms such as proteins and, ultimately, human beings? Are these more complex biological forms also natural; that is, reducible to and explainable by the laws of physics? Human beings certainly seem irreducible; and some proteins are so large and complex that one is unsure that physics is up to the task of explaining these tangled structures consisting many hundreds of atoms. Some of these doubts have been relieved by recent advances in protein chemistry. It appears that the different types of protein folds, which number in the thousands, can be classified and sorted into distinct structural families -- just like the much simpler crystals of salt, quartz, galena, etc fall into orderly classes. The clear implication is that protein folds and, by extension via further research, the protein molecules themselves, are also natural and reducible just like the salt crystals. If proteins are natural, perhaps even more complex biological forms are also, and so on up the complexity ladder to viruses (which often look like crystals through the microscope), bacteria, and even (gasp!) mammals. This is, of course, reductionism in ...
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... under the ensemble with startling results. The balls swarm around inside the plastic dish as the magnet rotates. At first the swarm is disordered. But after a minute, it breaks up into a set of concentric rotating rings. Within each ring, the balls follow one another along precise tracks, as if hugging the rim of an invisible roulette wheel. Soon the balls in each track are perfectly equidistant. Finally, one ball in each ring comes to a dead stop. The other balls in each track line up behind the leader in a tiny arc, even though the magnet is still whirling away below. Example 2. In water, large, fatty molecules (phospholipids) are observed to self-assemble into double layers with their water-loving bonds pointing outwards. This sort of structure closely resembles that of the biological membranes so vital to terrestrial life. This potentially biologically useful structure self-assembles! It seems that on the mesoscopic scale, under certain conditions, ensembles of particles (e .g ., iron balls and large molecules) may snap into "dominant states" that exhibit unexpected properties. In this context Nobelist R. Laughlin remarks: The discoveries that matter are the grand surprises that occur when matter organizes itself. Of course, the question has always been whether something "special" or "vital" has to be done to an ensemble of molecules to confer life upon it. In his Darwin's Black Box, M. Behe insists that life is irreducibly complex and requires intelligent design. (Designer unidentified!) This is seen as a ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 128: MAR-APR 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects 100-Mile-Long Wall in Africa A 100-mile-long wall? Well, sort of! Sungbo's Eredo, as it is called, is really an earthen embankment with an accompanying ditch. Whatever you call it, it does enclose an area 25 miles north-tosouth and 22 miles east-to-west. That's a lot of earth-moving, for at some spots the "wall" measures 70 feet from the bottom of the ditch to the top of the embankment. Today, this impressive structure is mostly concealed by the Nigerian jungle. A thousand years ago it enclosed a flourishing African kingdom. Sungbo's Eredo is hardly a military structure. Blow could a 100-mile-long embankment be defended with a reason-able number of warriors? Instead, it might have been a boundary marker or perhaps a "spiritual barrier." In fact, shrines are located along the wall where locals still leave offerings to protect themselves from outsiders. (Onishi, Norimitsu; "A Wall, a Moat, Behold! A Lost Yoruba Kingdom," New York Times International, September 26, 1999. Cr. R. Swanson) Comment. An interesting parallel to Sungbo''s Eredo is seen in Offa's Dyke, the largest ancient earthwork in Dritain. It is also an embankment-plus-ditch. Offa, the king of Saxon Mercia, had ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 137: SEP-OCT 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects An Expanding Semicircle Of Light In The Night Sky A. Kosa-Kiss, a Romanian scientist, has submitted the following observation to the Journal of Meteorology. At dawn on 1 September 1986, I was preparing to terminate my astronomical observations when suddenly at 0200 UT in the north-north-east a small [luminous 1 'bubble' -- convex side upward appeared in the sky as viewed between two nearby buildings and the farther trees. The bubble ascended slowly, higher and higher, and developed into a huge semicircular cupola or dome before halting for a few minutes. Its homogeneous, uniform structure was striking as it shone with a strong, silvery-bluish light in the absolutely black sky. By then, the cupola almost completely covered the Big Dipper (Ursa Major) whose five or six brighter stars clearly sent their rays through the phenomenon. The cupola had sharply-cut edges all round it, until later when a thin arm-like feature separated from its right topside and bent in the direction of the cupola, while remaining slightly apart from it. The semicircle (cupola) of light soon began to shrink and fade. By 02.23 UT it had disappeared. Rosa-Kiss suggested that the phenomenon may have been a precursor earthquake light associated with the Vrancea earthquake of August 31. 1986. that occurred in the Carpathians. (Rosa-Kiss, Attila; "Earthquake Lights, or Celestial ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 133: JAN-FEB 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Strange Red Slime In Mine In the 1960s, an abandoned mine in Wisconsin flooded with groundwater. Scuba divers could not resist the challenge. As they explored the murky depths, they chanced upon deposits of spongy, red slime. When analyzed, the slime was found to contain the first naturally produced nanocrystals. Nano-crystals, like those described above under BIOLOGY, had previously been grown only in the lab. Also like the artificial nanocrystals, those in the red slime did not aggregate randomly; they "rotate into structural accord with the adjacent particles." Whence the slime's 2-3 nanometer clumps of iron oxyhydroxide? Iron-oxidizing bacteria excreted them! (Anonymous; "Strange Crystal Growth Found in Mine," Science News, 158:207, 2000.) Question. Was the red slime a biofilm? From Science Frontiers #133, JAN-FEB 2001 . 2001 William R. Corliss Other Sites of Interest SIS . Catastrophism, archaeoastronomy, ancient history, mythology and astronomy. Lobster . The journal of intelligence and political conspiracy (CIA, FBI, JFK, MI5, NSA, etc) Homeworking.com . Free resource for people thinking about working at home. ABC dating and personals . For people looking for relationships. Place your ad free. ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 130: JUL-AUG 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects There are More Pyramids in Sudan than All of Egypt The kingdom of Cush (or Kush) flourished south of Egypt along the Nile from the Eighth Century B.C . to the Fourth Century A.D . Here the rulers of Cush built some 228 pyramids, three times as many as the Pharaohs managed to pile up! We rarely hear or see anything of these strange, steeply pointed structures. They are usually less than 100 feet high and not as impressive and mysterious as those farther north beyond the Aswan Dam. The Sudanese pyramids are smaller, steeper, and more recent than those to the north in Egypt. The Cushite kingdom's passion for pyramids was probably acquired in the Eighth Century B.C ., when it actually ruled Egypt for a few years until the Assyrians pushed its armies back south in 671 B.C . With them, the Cushites took the pyramid idea, Egyptian art forms, and hieroglyphics. They liked pyramids so well that the Cushite rulers kept on building them until the kingdom's demise in 350 A.D . -- some 2,000 years after the Egyptians had abandoned this form of architecture altogether. There is nothing in the Cush pyramids that can be called anomalous. It's just so surprising to learn there are so many of them and that they are so neglected in the TV documentaries. The Cush empire did leave us one enigma: an alphabetical ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 129: MAY-JUN 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects From Nature's Atelier One of geology's more fascinating mysteries concerns the formation of concretions. Concretions are structures within rock that differ in form and/or composition from the matrix. Often, they form around an impurity of some sort, say, a tiny fossil. If concretions were all nicely spherical or crystalline in shape, we might be able to explain them as we do with the oyster's pearl and winter's snow-flake. Unfortunately for the theorists, concretions usually come in bizarre shapes -- shapes an avant garde sculptor might appreciate. Not only do concretions come in weird geometries but they may be replicated in prodigious numbers, like the famous Kimmeridge "coal money." Additionally, some flint concretions are arrayed in thick chalk beds in amazingly regular three-dimensional arrays that tax the ingenuity of any theorist. To illustrate the extremes of nature's inorganic-chemical imagination, we now provide some illustrations from a recent two-part article in Rocks & Minerals and one of our catalog volumes. (Dietrich, R.V .; "Carbonate Concretions,' Rocks & Minerals, 74:266 and 74:335, 1999. ESA3 in Neglected Geological Anomalies.) Carbonate concretions (" imatra stones") from Finland. Virtually identical concretions occur in the Connecticut River Valley. Vertical lines of flint concretions in chalk cliffs near Norfolk, England. Presumably the 3-dimensional array ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 106: Jul-Aug 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects It's a mole-rat, jim, but not as we know it Naked mole rats are the most social of all the mammals. They live in underground colonies with a social structure like that of ants and termites. There are castes of workers, and only the queen, an oversized female, breeds. Naked mole rats are also intensely xenophobic; they avoid or fight with other mole-rat colonies. But such tightly closed societies lead to inbreeding with all its deleterious effects. For naked mole rats to survive over the long term, a biological solution to the inbreeding problem had to be found. The response of the species to this threat is the occasional production of a "dispersive morph." The largest and most successful colonies produce -- somehow -- a larger-than-normal individual, almost always a male, that is fuelled with extra fat and possesses a yen to travel. He is disinclined to mate with the resident queen, preferring to leave the colony for amorous adventure elsewhere. Thus, intercolony gene flow is established. (Gee, Henry; "It's a Mole-Rat, Jim, But Not As We Know It," Nature, 380:584, 1996. O'Riain, M. Justin, et al; "A Dispersive Morph in the Naked Mole-Rat," Nature, 380:619, 1996) Comment. Of course, the ...
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... Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Hailstorms as Imaginative Sculptors June 29, 1984. Padis Plateau, Romania. This plateau is located in the Transylvanian Western Carpathians. The weather was pleasantly warm even though the ground was still covered with snow. In the south there suddenly appeared a cumulonimbus capillatus whose top seemed to me to be about 14 kilometres or 42 000 feet. As the cloud took on the character of cumulonimbus incus and gradually covered the entire sky, thunder could be heard more and more loudly. The flock of sheep grazing in the deep valley gathered together just as they do before sunset because they too felt the approaching storm. At 16 UT the first raindrops fell. A weak shower of rain followed, and then loose-structured 20-mm-diameter discs of ice. Soon afterwards what was to be 30 minutes of "sky fire" set in. Stone-like pieces of ice streamed to the ground, very heavily and violently. Some of the hailstones were the size of a nut or plum. Within minutes a white carpet covered the plateau of Padis at an altitude of 1200 metres (3900 feet), and the air grew very cool. The landscape was covered by a milky-white veil of fog which rose from the cold ground to a height of 1 to 1.5 metres to embrace the whole dolomite plateau. Then for three minutes the hailstorm paused, before restarting! It lasted for 55 minutes, and it was in these freezing conditions that I began studying and classifying the pieces ...
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... running the maze during waking hours. From the patterns, it was even possible to tell exactly where a rat dreamed it was in the mazes. Whether the rats worked out better maze solutions in their dreams and thereby made their dreaming worthwhile could not be determined from the article. Simple memory-review does not seem to have much survival value. (Anonymous; "Lab Rats Found to Dream of Mazes, Researchers Say," Baltimore Sun, January 25, 2001.) Humans conceptualize and create while dreaming. A few anecdotes suggest that human dreaming may be innovative. The following three oft-told tales are truthfully no more convincing to a scientist than many UFO anecdotes. When carbon atoms danced through the dreaming brain of A. Kekule, they led the waking Kekule to conceive the structure of the benzene molecule. I. Lowe awoke from a dream one night, jotted down a few notes, and fell back to sleep. On waking, he could not decipher his scrawl. Happily, the next night the dream recurred. Lowe raced to his lab, performed the experiment outlined in his dream, and thereby developed a new theory of brain activity. In 1869, D. Mendeleyev was puzzling over the disparate properties of the 63 elements then known. Was there any pattern? One night he fell asleep and in a dream the elements fell into their proper places in the Periodic Table. (Mazzarello, Paolo; "What Dreams May Come?" Nature, 408:523, 2000.) Comments. These mammalian anecdotes involving sleep and dreams are amusing, but ...
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... back farther to when birds split away from the reptilian line. The music of birds and whales incorporate some of the complexity and sophistication of Beethoven's Fifth. The genes that have led to such musical talents may be ancient indeed, as speculated in the Science article under review. The authors go so far as to ask: Do musical sounds in nature reveal a profound bond between all living things? Such profundity requires some factual support, and the Science article compares human and whale music in some detail. Humpback rhythms are similar to ours. Humpbacks use phases similar in length to human music. They also create themes out of the phrases. Whale songs have lengths between those of a human ballad and a symphony movement, suggesting a similar attention span. Some whale songs are similar in structure to human compositions. The tone and timbre of many whale notes are similar to human musical sounds. Humpback songs contain repeating phrases that form rhymes, again this is similar to human music. The list paraphrased in part above, in which the word "similar" is repeated again and again, is longer ; but the point is adequately made that the genes that lead to whale music may be the same ones we have inherited but which are only now being expressed. (Gray, Patricia M. , et al; "The Music of Nature and the Nature of Music ," Science, 291:52, 2001.) Comment. Many questions arise after reading the above article. Two will have to suffice here. First, music is so complex, sophisticated, and packed ...
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... tiny chunks are believed to have been blasted off the Martian surface by five or six impacts of much larger meteorites. All save one of these Martian meteorites have formation ages of about 1.3 billion years. The only part of the Martian surface believed to be 1.3 billion years old is the TMOM (Tharsis Montes and Olympus Mons) region. The rest of Mars -- about 90% of it is much older. To have 12/13ths. of the Martian meteorites originate from 1/10th. of the planet's surface is highly unlikely. Something is wrong somewhere; probably a bad assumption. And what about that 13th. meteorite that did not get ejected from the TMOM region? This is ALH 84001, the controversial meteorite that contains strange worm-like structures resembling terrestrial bacteria. (See SF#130, #116, #110, #108, and #101.) (Taylor, Richard L.S ., and Mittlefehldt, David W.; "Missing Martian Meteorites," Science, 290:273, 2000.) From Science Frontiers #134, MAR-APR 2001 . 2001 William R. Corliss Other Sites of Interest SIS . Catastrophism, archaeoastronomy, ancient history, mythology and astronomy. Lobster . The journal of intelligence and political conspiracy (CIA, FBI, JFK, MI5, NSA, etc) Homeworking.com . Free resource for people thinking about working at home. ABC dating and personals . For people looking for relationships. Place your ad free. ...
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... University of Valencia found none of the microorganisms that would identify the ice chunks as falling off aircraft with leaky toilets. One frozen projectile hit an automobile, but the driver was not hurt; another glanced off the shoulder of an elderly woman living in Almeria. As to be expected, the Spanish news-papers played the phenomena for all they could. Also to be expected were a few fraudulent reports. It was all great fun, but scientific explanations for the bona fide hydrometeors are lacking. (Anonymous; "Fortean Ice," New Scientist, p. 5, January 29, 2000. We also referred to several items posted on the Web. Cr. E. Murphy and COUD-I .) Comment. It is extremely rare for ordinary meteorites to hit humans or their structures. Yet, in this icy Spanish fusillade involving only a small handful of ice chunks there were two humans Involved. Suspicious! From Science Frontiers #128, MAR-APR 2000 . 1997 William R. Corliss Other Sites of Interest SIS . Catastrophism, archaeoastronomy, ancient history, mythology and astronomy. Lobster . The journal of intelligence and political conspiracy (CIA, FBI, JFK, MI5, NSA, etc) Homeworking.com . Free resource for people thinking about working at home. ABC dating and personals . For people looking for relationships. Place your ad free. ...
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... with ease and alacrity. The 2.5 million multiton limestone blocks in the Great Pyramid are more than ample proof of their ability to work this soft stone. But how about the polished black granite walls of the King's Chamber in the Great Pyramid and the hollowed-out sarcophagus of obdurate chocolate-colored granite in the same room? These granites are much harder than limestone and even harder than the copper saws and drills that the Egyptian stoneworkers had at their disposal. So, how did they work their granite? [No lasers allowed!] The King's Chamber in the Great Pyramid is encased with multiton blocks of hard-to-work granite. For some reason the five granite slabs in the ceiling were finished on only their bottom sides. (From: Ancient Structures) As a matter of fact, there is little mystery here despite what you read in the popular magazines. The Egyptian workers simply dribbled quartz sand beneath the copper saws and drills. This abrasive is harder than the mica and feldspar components of granite but not the quartz. Nevertheless, granite will yield slowly to the abrasive, as do the copper tools themselves. In 1999, D.A . Stocks tested the efficacy of copper saws and drills on the granite in the Aswan quarries 500 miles up the Nile. The copper saw in his test was 1.8 meters long, 15 centimeters in depth, and 6 millimeters thick. Stocks experimented with both wet and dry sand and smooth and notched saws. In one test, workmen cut a slot 3 centimeters deep and 95 centimeters ...
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... the seasonal movements of the sun. This is precocious astronomy by any measure. (Lima, Pedro; "L 'Incroyable D couverte d'une Pal o-Astronome," Science et Vie, p. 77, December 2000. Cr. C. Maug .) Comments. C. Jegues-Wolkiewiez is identified as an "independent" paleoastronomer," which seems to mean that he is not part of the French scientific establishment. It should he remarked that about 5,000 years ago, the New Grange passage grave in Ireland was constructed with a special channel to admit light to the central chamber only at sunrise on the year's two equinoxes. A stone chamber in the Gungywamp Complex, in Connecticut, possesses a similar light channel. (See MSU1 in Ancient Structures.) Evidently human minds far-separated in time and geography have similar ideas. From Science Frontiers #134, MAR-APR 2001 . 2001 William R. Corliss Other Sites of Interest SIS . Catastrophism, archaeoastronomy, ancient history, mythology and astronomy. Lobster . The journal of intelligence and political conspiracy (CIA, FBI, JFK, MI5, NSA, etc) Homeworking.com . Free resource for people thinking about working at home. ABC dating and personals . For people looking for relationships. Place your ad free. ...
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... an intrinsic, dipole magnetic field like the earth's . Although Ganymere's magnetic field is like that produced by a permanent bar magnet, its core is much too hot for permanent magnetism. Again like the earth, Ganymede's field is theorized to be generated by the convection of electrically conducting liquid in its core -- a dynamo of sorts. All well and good, but Ganymede is so small that it should have cooled off billions of years ago thereby freezing its metallic core. So then, whence its magnetic field? One way out of this box it to suppose that about a billion years ago Ganymede was circling Jupiter in an orbit that took it much closer to this ponderous planet. Then, Jupiter's powerful gravitational field would have gently kneaded Ganymede's structure creating what is called "tidal heating," which kept the core liquid and able to generate a magnetic field. (Johnson, Torrence V.; "The Galileo Mission to Jupiter and Its Moons," Scientific American, 282:40, February 2000.) Comment. Sounds good, but there is a puzzle piece missing: What catastrophic event catapulted Ganymede into its pre-sent orbit? It's as big as Mercury! From Science Frontiers #128, MAR-APR 2000 . 1997 William R. Corliss Other Sites of Interest SIS . Catastrophism, archaeoastronomy, ancient history, mythology and astronomy. Lobster . The journal of intelligence and political conspiracy (CIA, FBI, JFK, MI5, NSA, etc) Homeworking.com . Free resource for people thinking about ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 105: May-Jun 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Eight Little Craters All In A Row The recent impact upon Jupiter of a procession of chunks from Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 has encouraged geologists to look for crater chains here on earth. Such have been spotted on the moon, and it is unlikely the earth escaped such bar rages. Of course, older terrestrial craters are harder to identify due to the ceaseless geological activity here on earth. In the first 1996 number of Geophysical Research Letters, M.R . Rampino and T. Volk describe a possible swath of meteoric devastation across the North American Midwest. "Eight circular geologic structures ranging from about 3 to 17 km in diameter, showing evidence of outwarddirected deformation and intensive brecciation, lie within a linear swath stretching about 700 km across the United States from southern Illinois through Missouri to eastern Kansas. Based on their similar geological characteristics and the presence of diagnostic and/or probable evidence of shock, these structures, once classified as 'crypto volcanic' or 'cryptoexplosion' structures, are more confidently ascribed to hypervelocity impact. No other similar occurrence of aligned features is known, and we calculate the probability of a chance alignment to be less than 10- 9 ." The craters are all roughly the same age: 310-330 million years. Rampino and Volk suspect they were formed all at once by a string of asteroids or comets. (Rampino, Michael R., and Volk, Tyler; "Multiple Impact ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 104: Mar-Apr 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Reinventing The Neandertals The public image of the Neandertal is that of a brutish, hardly human creature clad in a ragged skin and unable to speak save for a few grunts. Forget that picture. Several hundred meters deep inside a cavern near Bruniquel, in southern France, spelunkers stumbled across a complex quadrilateral structure, 4 x 5 meters in extent, built up from chunks of stalactites and stalagmites. Within its "walls" they found a piece of burnt bear bone that was later carbondated as at least 47,600 years old. A burnt bone and a geometrical structure certainly suggest the work of an intelligent creature, as does the site's great distance from the surface. Torches would have been a necessity that far in. That 47,600-year figure, though, presents a problem. The first Cro-Magnons didn't filter into western Europe until about 35,000 BP. According to the accepted anthropological schedule, only those subhuman Neandertals inhabited that part of France in 47,600 BP. So, we must conclude that the Neandertals knew well the sophisticated use of fire. They also had enough curiosity to venture deep into the earth, where for some unknown purpose they piled together an enigmatic structure. All this also seems to require more information transfer than possible with a few "ughs"! (Balter, Michael; "Cave Structure Boosts Neandertal Image," Science, 271:449, ...
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... to bear out this symbiotic relationship between mathematics and the physical world. However, P. Davies points out that that there are uncomputable numbers and operations. In fact, there are infinitudes of them. All the world's computers could chug away forever and not come up with answers in these cases. So far , Nature has been kind, or we have been lucky, because we have been able to nicely mirror Nature with "doable" math. Davies wonders if it has been entirely a matter of luck: "Einstein said that God is subtle but not malicious, and we must hope that the laws of physics will turn out to be computable after all. If so, that fact alone would provoke all sorts of interesting scientific and philosophical questions. Just why is the world structured in such a way that we can describe its basic principles using 'do-able' mathematics? How was this mathematical ability evolved in humans?" Are our minds and, therefore, our computers so structured that we can understand (compute) only a limited portion of Nature? Have other entities evolved in ways such that what we know of Nature is uncomputable to them? (Davies, Paul; "Is Nature Mathematical?" New Scientist, p. 25, March 21, 1992.) From Science Frontiers #82, JUL-AUG 1992 . 1992-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... , CT, could indicate pre-Columbian contacts. Here are some details: "This underground site is built into a rocky hillside in an isolated region. A 37 ft. passage of straight-sided drywall stonework is interrupted after 8 ft. by a 3 ft. collapsed section. It then continues on for 20 ft. to a little corbelled chamber whose end wall is cut into a roughly quarried and levelled ledge. On the slope around the souterrain are about 100 cairns, some carefully constructed; others appear to be the result of field clearing." (Anonymous; "An Arm-Chair Field Trip," NEARA Journal, 26:87, Winter/Spring 1992.) NEARA = New England Antiquities Research Association. Comment. The prevailing explanation of such New England lithic structures is that they were simply colonial root cellars or something of the kind. The structure figured is certainly a very ambitious root cellar! Reference. Our handbook Ancient Man investigates these New England chambers in some detail. For more on this book, visit: here . From Science Frontiers #82, JUL-AUG 1992 . 1992-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 85: Jan-Feb 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Europe's mystery people The researches of R. Frank, a scholar at the University of Iowa, suggest that the Basques were far-advanced in navigational skills and other aspects of technology long before the rise of the Roman Empire. The Basques, she believes, are the last remnants of the megalith builders, who left behind dolmens, standing stones, and other rock structures all across Europe and perhaps even in eastern North America. Two facts set the Basque peoples apart from the other Europeans who have dominated the continent the past 3,000 years: (1 ) The Basque language is distinctly different; and (2 ) The Basques have the highest recorded level of Rh-negative blood (roughly twice that of most Europeans), as well as substantially lower levels of Type B blood and a higher incidence of Type O blood. Some probable technological feats of the Basques or their ancestors are: Stonehenge and similar megalithic structures oA unique system of measurement based on the number 7 instead of 10, 12, or 60 Regular visits to North America long before Columbus to fish and to trade for beaver skins. Recently unearthed British customs records show large Basque imports of beaver pelts from 1380-1433. The invention of a sophisticated navigational device called an "abacus." (No relation to the common abacus.) (Haddingham, Evan; "Europe's Mystery People," World Monitor , p. 34, ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 104: Mar-Apr 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A HOLLOW, TRIANGULAR ICICLE We swore that we were not going to pass along any more "weird" icicle observations -- and there are many of them--but this one is the weirdest of the weird. The scene is a Norwich, England, garden, wherein one night a plastic saucer full of tap water was placed. The night was clear, cold, and windless. In the morning, T. Bushnell found protruding from the saucer a "strange tubelike structure" about 3 inches long. His color photograph cannot be conveniently reproduced here, but it clearly shows his icicle growing upward at about a 45 angle. Bushnell wrote further: "What may not be apparent from the picture is that the tube is triangular in cross section and it is completely hollow down as far as the unfrozen water lying underneath the thick layer of ice. The fairly robust tube was an integral part of the underlying ice pool. We noticed that the outside of the tube was segmented in appearance, as though the ice had built up layer by layer." (Bushnell, T.; "Ice Surprise," New Scientist, inside back cover, October 7, 1995) Comment. The other "weird" icicles we have reported were all solid and roughly hexagonal prisms. (SF#79, SF#100, SF#102) From Science Frontiers #104, MAR-APR 1996 . 1996-2000 ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 80: Mar-Apr 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Possible Chain Of Meteorite Scars In Argentina A string of linear depressions characterizes the Rio Cuarto crater field In the January 16, 1992, issue of Nature, P.H . Schultz and R.E . Lianza describe a curious chain of grooves incised in the Argentine pampas near Rio Cuarto. "During routine flights two years ago .. ., one of us (R .E .L .) noticed an anomalous alignment of oblong rimmed depressions (4 km x 1 km) on the otherwise featureless farmland of the Pampas of Argentina. We argue here, from sample analysis and by analogy with laboratory experiments, that these structures resulted from lowangle impact and ricochet of a chondritic body originally 150-300 m in diameter." There are ten gouges in all, strung out along 50 kilometers. The scars are young, perhaps only a few thousand years old, well within the time of human habitation. Schultz and Lianza also found pieces of meteoritic rock and glassy fragments of impact melt. (Schultz, Peter H., and Lianza, Ruben E.; "Recent Grazing Impacts on the Earth Recorded in the Rio Cuarto Crater Field, Argentina," Nature, 355:234, 1992. Also: Monastersky, R.; "Meteorite Hopscotched across Argentina," Science News, 141:55, 1992.) Comments. Note the similarities to the much more numerous Carolina Bays. See ETB1 in our catalog ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 87: May-Jun 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The bottle-green icebergs of antarctica Antarctic icebergs frequently incorporate sediments that turn them dark, even zebra-striped on occasion. But it is the bottle-green icebergs that provoke the most interest, for it is not certain why they are green. Is it due to intrinsic optical properties of the ice or impurities? A recent paper by J. Kipfstuhl et al suggests the latter and tells us where these translucent, strikingly green bergs originate. "A comparison of samples from a translucent green iceberg with a core from the Ronne Ice Shelf revealed an excellent agreement in isotopic composition, crystal structure, and incorporated sediment particles. Marine shelf ice which constitutes the basal portion of some ice shelves is considered to be the source of green icebergs. It [the green ice] most likely results from 'ice pump' processes which produce large amounts of ice platelets in the water column beneath ice shelves. These subsequently accumulate and become compacted into bubble-free, desalinated ice." The inclusions in the green ice are probably trapped by the accumulating platelets. Since the green ice is confined to the bottoms of the bergs, it becomes apparent only after the bergs capsize. The green icebergs in the Weddle Sea originate mainly from the Amery Ice Shelf. (Kipfstuhl, J. et al; "The Origin of Green Icebergs in Antarctica," Journal of Geophysical Research, 97:20,319, 1992.) Similar phenomenon ...
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... Smith-Tuttle. At a conference in Sydney last October, astronomer D. Steele announced that comet SmithTuttle is heading towards a possible impact with earth on August 14, 2116. This 3.1 -mile-diameter chunk of ice would have the destructive power of 20 million megatons (1 .6 million Hiroshima bombs). (Anonymous; "Astronomer Predicts Comet Collision," Baltimore Sun, October 26, 1992.) Some recent meteorite impacts. Turning from the dire consequences discussed above, just what sort of astronomical debris actually does hit the earth on a day-to-day basis? Fist-sized meteorites strike our planet about every two hours. These are the ones we read about in the newspapers; and they have left a surprisingly large legacy of damage to human structures. C. Spratt and S. Stephens, in a survey published in Mercury in 1992, listed 61 verified meteorite strikes since 1790 in which buildings and other human works were damaged. (Of course most fell harmlessly in the sea and unpopulated areas.) Spratt and Stephens also provide a table of 26 nearmisses of humans plus one confirmed human impact. At least one horse and a dog have been killed by meteorites. These lists make engrossing reading, but we cannot take the space to reproduce them here. (Spratt, Christopher, and Stephens, Sally; "Against All Odds," Mercury , 21: 50, March/April 1992.) From Science Frontiers #85, JAN-FEB 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... minutes to hit bottom, for this research drill hole has now penetrated to 7.5 kilometers. It is the second deepest man-made hole, after the Soviet 12-km hole in the Kola Peninsula. Drilled solely for scientific purposes, the rocks and strata encountered by the KTB drill bits have forced the redrawing of German geological maps. The "real" subterranean world turned out to be quite different from that inferred from both surface indications and the seismic and electrical probing of the depths. Three specific surprises are worth mentioning: Temperatures in the drill hole rose far faster than predicted. The expected boundary (" suture") between two old tectonic plates thought to exist at 3 km according to surface geology had not yet appeared at 7.5 km. Most interestingly, crevicular structure (crevices and pores) existed at almost all depths, even though theory said they could not because of intense pressures. And these voids were filled with fluids. P. Keher, a KTB scientist, was amazed at what the drill found: "When I started 25 years ago, the idea was that the deeper you go into the crust, the drier it gets." (Kerr, Richard A.; "Looking -- Deeply -- into the Earth's Crust in Europe," Science, 261:295, 1993.) Comment. Deep-living bacteria were not mentioned in the above article, but Soviet scientists claim to have pumped them up from 12 km down! Outer space may not be our final frontier despite the introductory blurb to Star Trek ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 81: May-Jun 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Indigestible Supernova Leftovers There seems to be a mysterious "central compact object" lurking amid the debris of Supernova SN1987A. Prevailing supernova paradigms cannot account for this high density remnant. While some aspects of standard supernova theory were supported by observations made during and since the 1987 explosion, astrophysicists are left with several puzzles in addition to the mystery object itself: "Other puzzles include the largescale asymmetries observed in the heavy element ejecta (Fe-group line emission), the supernova envelope (optical polarization), and the circumstellar medium ([ O III] ring), which are in addition to the complex structures resulting from hydrodynamic instabilities." (Chevalier, Roger A.; "Supernova 1987A at Five Years of Age," Nature, 355:691, 1992.) From Science Frontiers #81, MAY-JUN 1992 . 1992-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... dynamo would have to flow at speeds of several kilometers/hour. No one has ever contemplated molten rock moving at such speeds in the core! (Appenzeller, Tim; "A Conundrum at Steens Mountain," Science, 255:31, 1992. Lewin, Roger; "Earth's Field Flips Flipping Fast," New Scientist, p. 26, January 25, 1992.) Could it be that the prevailing dynamo theory is incorrect? To make matters more interesting, it now seems that the paths taken by the reversing poles follow similar routes with each flip-flop. One preferred path is a band about 60 wide running northsouth through the Americas; the other path is 180 away cutting through east Asia and just west of Australia. The implication is that some unknown structure in the core somehow guides the reversing poles. (Anonymous; "A New Path to Magnetic Reversals," Eos, 72:538, 1991.) Reference. Additional doubts about the dynamo paradigm are expressed in EZF3 in our catalog: Inner Earth. For further information, visit: here . From Science Frontiers #80, MAR-APR 1992 . 1992-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... statistically significant periodic component with an underlying periodicity, formally equal to 26.6 Myr, and a recent maximum, close to the present time. The cycle may not be strictly periodic, but a periodicity of 30 Myr is robust to probable errors in dating of the geologic events." The obvious question is: What could cause a 30-million-year periodicity? Internally, the earth's innards might be periodic, possibly in terms of plume eruption, mineral phase changes, core convection, etc. Externally, comets and asteroids are cyclic. Rampino and Caldeira point out that the solar system crosses the heavily populated plane of the Galaxy every 30 million years. (Rampino, Michael R., and Caldeira, Ken; "Major Episodes of Geologic Change: Correlations, Time Structure and Possible Causes," Earth and Planetary Sci ence Letters , 114:215, 1993.) Reference. We catalog crater periodicity in ETC4 in Carolina Bays, Mima Mounds. This catalog described here . From Science Frontiers #87, MAY-JUN 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Brazil at least 50,000 years ago. F. Parenti, with N. Guidon, presented their data at a recent Paris meeting. The main site studied was the sandstone rock shelter of Pedra Furada, which is one of several hundred painted rock shelters discovered in northeastern Brazil. Guidon began her work in 1978; Parenti, in 1984. The fourvolume, 7-kilogram report (actually Parenti's doctoral thesis) concentrates on three lines of evidence: A coherent series of 54 radiocarbon dates ranging from 5,000 to 50,000 years. Crudely flaked stones, some 6,000 of which are deemed of human manufacture, even when the most stringent criteria are applied. Many of these came from Pleistocene strata 50,000 years old or older. Some 50 Pleistocene "structures" consisting of artificial arrangements of stones, some burned, some accompanied by charcoal. These are likely ancient hearths. (Bahn, Paul G.; "50,000-Year-Old Americans of Pedra Furada," Nature, 362:114, 1993.) Comment. With the Brazil and Chile (Monte Verde) sites looking more and more convincing, it is reasonable to ask why even older sites have not been found in North America, which is nearer the famous Bering Land Bridge. As a matter of fact, controverted human artifacts have been found at such sites as Calico Hills, California, which are claimed to be much older than 50,000 years. It will be interesting to see how the Pedra Furada data are received in the States. From Science ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 88: Jul-Aug 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The star of the star-nosed mole (Left) Tenticle-like rays surrounding one nostril of the star-like mole. (Right) The number of rays around the other nostril give the density of sensory receptors. The star-nosed mole is one of North America's more bizarre mammals. Its nostrils are surrounded by mobile, Medusa-like appendages that are richly suppled with nerves and blood vessels. These tentacle-like structures form the "star," which has long been considered a tactile organ used for feeling for prey. However, behavioral experiments by E. Gould et al indicate that the star may be more than a tactile organ. It seems to sport electrical sensors that detect the minute electrical fields surrounding worms, leeches, insect larvae, and other favorite mole tidbits. This conclusion derives from experiments in which starnosed moles preferentially attacked the parts of worms that are most strongly electrical. Actually, scientists have been puzzled as to how this mole found its prey, for this mammal is semiaquatic and somehow locates its dinner in muddy water even though it has poor eyesight. Although some fish possess electrical sensors, they are uncommon in mammals. Half way around the planet, another strange creature, also classified with the mammals, frequents muddy waters looking for the same sort of prey favored by the star-nosed mole. The Australian platypus also has weak vision and employs search techniques similar to those of ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 87: May-Jun 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Amazons In The Sky No, we are not talking about the jet streams. Rather, we refer to the curious "filamentary structures" seen on water-vapor maps of the troposphere. (The troposphere is roughly the lower 10-20 kilometers of the atmosphere.) These filaments are many times longer than they are wide, and deserve to be called "rivers." These aerial streams of water vapor develop in regular patterns and persist as they are translated through the troposphere. It is the huge quantity of water vapor carried by these aerial rivers that make them worthy of note here. Especially remarkable is the river that frequently flows south from Brazil to east of the Andes and thence southeast into the Atlantic. "A typical flow in this South American tropospheric river is very close to that in the Amazon (about 165 x 106 kg sec-1 ). There are typically five rivers leading into the middle latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere and four or five leading into the Northern Hemisphere. The rivers persist for 10 days or more while being translated generally eastwards at speeds of 6 m sec-1 ." (Newell, Reginald E., et al; "Tropospheric Rivers?-A Pilot Study," Geo physical Research Letters , 19:2401, 1992.) From Science Frontiers #87, MAY-JUN 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... less well known that life's domain extends down much further. The hard rocks and strata of earth's crust -- seemingly sterile and inert -- are continuously being transformed by bacteria and other life forms. In fact, it was easy to find three examples of such processes from the literature collected from the past two months. Although the discoveries reported below may seem dull to anomalists ued to more exciting fare, it may well be that life from "inner space" has been and will be more important to humankind than life from "outer space," as implied in third item! Bacteria and placer gold. "Lacelike networks of micrometresize filiform gold associated with Alaskan placer gold particles are interpreted as low-temperature pseudomorphs of a Pedomicrobium -like budding bacterium. Submicron reproductive structures (hyphae) and other morphological features similar to those of Pedomicrobium occur as three-dimensional facsimiles in highpurity gold in and on placer gold particles from Lillian Creek, Alaska." In short, bacteria help create placer gold deposits. The author believes that bacterioform gold is widespread. (Watterson, John R.; "Preliminary Evidence for the Involvement of Budding Bacteria in the Origin of Alaskan Placer Gold," Geology , 20:315, 1992.) Microorganisms and iron deposits. At least 500 million years ago, filamentous bacteria and/or fungi were already playing vital roles in the deposition of iron from hydrothermal fluids. Abundant microbial filaments indicative of biological activity are found in the Cambrian ironstones in Australia's Thalanga deposit. (Duhig, Nathan C., et al; ...
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... growth" seen in metals under some conditions. "Scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration are scratching their heads over how a tiny patch of something managed to grow even though it was exposed to the harshness of outer space for nearly six years. "The mystery growth has been found in a toothpick-sized region on what is known as the Long Duration Exposure Facility. The bussized LDEF was launched in 1984 and was retrieved by a space shuttle in January 1990, a few weeks before its decaying orbit would have sent it crashing back to earth. .. .. . "NASA scientists in Huntsville, Ala., discovered the growth while examining a brownish discoloration on a Tefloncovered section of the satellite. "Using an electron scanning microscope, they saw tiny, stalactite-like structures on the Teflon. Tiny means the longest were about seven microns in size. That's about one-tenth the width of a human hair. "At first NASA scientists thought the growth might be a fungus or a mold that had contaminated the LDEF upon its return. However, their tests came up negative," (Anonymous; "Odd Space Growth on Satellite Baffles NASA," Arkansas Demo crat-Gazelle , September 9, 1992. Cr. L. Farish) From Science Frontiers #84, NOV-DEC 1992 . 1992-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... was a bad move, for he immediately experienced a numbing and burning in his mouth. The reason for this, it turned out, was because the skin and feathers of pitohuis are loaded with homobatrachotoxin, a type of poison. This discovery makes the pitohuis the first known poisonous birds. Like many other poisonous animals, the pitohuis also emit a foul odor and advertise their unsavory nature with bright colors. (Dumbacher, John P., et al; "Homobatrachotoxin in the Genus Pitohui : Chemical Defense in Birds?" Science, 258:799, 1992. Also: Anonymous; "Bird with a Sting in Its Tail," New Scientist, p. 10, October 31, 1992.) Comment. As we see from the diagram, homobatrachotoxin possesses a rather complex chemical structure. One wonders how the pitohuis acquired the ability to synthesize it through random mutations. The puzzle deepens when one discovers that homobatrachotoxin is also manufactured by the New World poisondart frogs. Although far-separated taxonomically, both species traveled along the same path of random mutations to achieve this evolutionary convergence. From Science Frontiers #85, JAN-FEB 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 86: Mar-Apr 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Math's mystery In extolling J. Barrow's new book, Pi in the Sky , T. Siegfried first reiterates a point made in past issues of SF, namely, that mathematics is a logical system and that we have no right to expect it is correspond structurely with a physical system. In other words, math and nature are fundamentally different entities. Nevertheless, as Barrow stated in a recent interview: "If we were just inventing mathematics from our everyday experience, we would find that it would work really rather well in those areas from which that intuition was gained. But we find almost the opposite...It works most powerfully and persuasively in areas that are farthest removed from the everyday experience that has led to it." Mathematics, for example, leads to verities in quantum mechanics far outside the realm of daily experience. Why is this so? The puzzle deepens when one discovers that there are different kinds of math based upon different forms of logic (as in Euclidian and non-Euclidian geometries). Some brands of mathematics mirror reality better than others. Why? In trying to dispose of these "whys," both matematicians and scientists fall back on the anthropic principle with all its unsatisfying tautological overtones: ". .. the universe is the way it is because that's the way it has to be for anybody to be around to study it. And perhaps math works ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 80: Mar-Apr 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Spider Swordplay Ventral view of D. raptor . The claws are on the tips of the bottom two pairs of legs. Greatly enlarged photos reveal them to be wicked-looking fang-like structures. D. raptor, a Hawaiian spider, has lost its ability to spin webs and therewith capture prey. This unusual spider, however, has evolved: ". .. one of the most remarkable morphological features ever found in spiders (immense elongations of the tarsal claws)." These claws, just visible on the two lowermost pairs of legs in the sketch, are employed to skewer passing insects in flight: "The spider is strictly nocturnal, spending most of the activity-period hanging upside down from silk threads. Small insects are snagged directly from the air using a single long claw. For larger insects the spider uses both long claws on legs I, or sometimes all the long claws." (Gillespie, Rosemary G.; "Impaled Prey," Nature, 355:212, 1992.) Comment. Nature has produced many remarkable creatures. They become anomalous only if they cannot be explained as the products of small, random, cumulative mutations. From Science Frontiers #80, MAR-APR 1992 . 1992-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 66: Nov-Dec 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Memory Structure Of Autistic Idiot Savants The first two paragraphs of this study by N. O'Connor and B. Hermelin provide some interesting background concerning the idiot savant phenomenon. "There are two basic questions which arise from the phenomenon of the idiotsavant. One is whether the specific memory of the idiot-savant is categorically organized or not and the second is whether this memory is IQ independent or IQ related. The first problem needing consideration is therefore concerned with the nature of the memory system which is involved. In the idiot-savant this has, until recently, been deemed to be a relatively unorganized rote memory. It is supposed to be mechanical, inflexible and extremely concrete. However, in a number of studies we have demonstrated that the outstanding memories of idiotsavant calculators and musicians are founded on strategies which are rule based, and which draw on a knowledge of the structure of the calendar or of music. "In addition to evidence concerning the organized nature of the specific memories of idiot-savants for dates and music, we have also accumulated evidence that the eliciting of rules and the development of rule-based strategies tended to be specific in the particular areas of ability of these subjects. For example, although able to calculate past and future dates rapidly, calendrical calculators were often quite poor in the addition and subtraction of numbers unrelated to the calendar. Similarly, in one experiment, musical memory in an idiot- ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 76: Jul-Aug 1991 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects New Insights As To The Structure Of Matter Possible "nuclear-molecular" forms of magnesium-24 and carbon-12. Inside the atom. Physicists have long visualized the atomic nucleus as being a shell-like arrangement of its constituent protons and neutrons. Tantalizing experiments suggest other wise. Magnes ium-24, for example, may under some circumstances exist as two carbon-12 nuclei in tight orbit, as in the illustra tion. Even more startling is the "sausage" form of magnesium-24, in which six helium-4 nuclei (alpha particles) are lined up in a row. This "hyperdeformed" state has not yet been detected in the lab, but it demonstrates new thinking among the physicists. (Kenward, Michael; "Are Atoms Composed of Molecules?" New Scientist, p. 21, April 6, 1991.) Comment. Evidently we do not know everything about nuclear physics. Beyond the molecule. We are used to seeing atoms and molecules arranging themselves into mathematically regular crystals. Now it appears that particles consisting of thousands of atoms also spontaneously organize themselves. A.S . Edelstein et al find that molybdenum particles assemble themselves in cubes with two prominent edge lengths: 4.8 and 17.5 nanometers. The larger cubes show up in micrographs as 3x3x3 groupings of the smaller cubes. The smaller cubes each contain about 7000 atoms. (Edelstein, A.S ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 67: Jan-Feb 1990 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Astronomers up against the "great wall"" For more than a decade now, astronomers have been haunted by a sense that the universe is controlled by forces they don't understand. And now comes a striking confirmation: 'The Great Wall.'" The Great Wall is the largest known structure in the universe at present, having superceded sundry superclusters and clusters of superclusters. The Wall is a "thin" (15 million-light-year) sheet of galaxies 500 million light years long by 200 wide; and it may extend even farther. It is emplaced some 200-300 million light years from earth. It helps outline contiguaous parts of vast "bubbles" of nearly empty space. Both the Wall and the adjacent voids are just too large for current theories to deal with. All popular theories have great difficulties in accounting for such large inhomogeneities. To illustrate an important observable -- the 2.7 K cosmic background radiation -- which is usually described as the afterglow of the Big Bang, ar gues for a very smooth, uniform distribution of galaxies. Great Walls are definitely anomalous. M.J . Geller, codiscoverer of the Great Wall with J.P . Huchra, remarked: "My view is that there is something fundamentally wrong in our approach to understanding such large-scale structure -- some key piece of the puzzle that we're missing." (Waldrop, ...
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... Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Found: the lost pyramids of rock lake The purported pyramids found on the muddy floor of Wisconsin's Rock Lake are so fascinating that we must pass on the following report, even though it comes from outside the group of publications we usually rely on. In fact, we have never seen anything on these pyramids in the scientific press, although in SF#30 we did present an earlier report on them from the Wisconsin State Journal. So, caveat emptor! The first sketch of the Rock Lake Pyramid from a 1970 issue of Skin Diver , as presented in Ancient Man. The author of this article, F. Joseph, states that beneath the surface of Rock Lake lie at least ten structures. Two of these have been mapped and photographed by skin divers and sonar. Structure #1 , which has been dubbed the Limnatis Pyramid, has a base width of 60 feet, a length of about 100 feet, and a height of 18 feet, although only about 10 feet protrude from the silt and mud. It is a truncated pyramid, built largely out of round, black stones. On the truncated top, the stones are squarish. The remains of a plaster coating can be discerned. The Rock Lake structures are made more believable by the presence, 3 miles away, of the Indian site of Aztalan. There, there are two truncated, earthen pyramids, partially surrounded by a tall stockade, which was originally plastered. Aztalan seems to have been occupied as late ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 74: Mar-Apr 1991 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Gaia on mars?H.L . Helfer, University of Rochester, noting the absence of extensive cratering on the northern plains of Mars, suggests that some 2-3 .5 billion years ago these plains were covered with oceans. These ancient seas, perhaps as much as 700 meters deep, protected the plains from direct impacts. Further, crater density counts for Chryse and the Martian highlands imply that Mars possessed a fairly dense atmosphere until about 1.5 billion years ago. In his Abstract Helfer speculates as follows: "With both early Earth and early Mars having similar atmospheric compositions and not too dissimilar atmospheric structures, it is reasonable to suppose that the warm Martian oceans, like the ancient oceans of Earth, would develop anerobic and aerobic photosynthesizing prokaryotes and structures like stromatolites. Their development might have changed the Martian atmosphere. Their fossils might be found along the fringes of the old oceans, the northern lowland plains." (Helfer, H.L .; "Of Martian Atmospheres, Oceans, and Fossils," Icarus, 87:228, 1990.) Comment. The Gaia influence is seen in the molding of the Martian atmosphere into something more conducive to the development of life. One can also speculate that, if life did develop on Mars, it could have seeded the earth via bits of debris blasted off by meteorite impacts. Several meteorites picked up in Antarctica are thought to have come from Mars ...
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... in rock type when drilling through such a strong discontinuity. It was widely expected that, at the Conrad Discontinuity, drillers would find the granitic rocks typical of the continents changing suddenly into basalt, which is thought to make up the lower reaches of the earth's crust. However, when Soviet drills pierced the Conrad Discontinuity below the Kola Peninsula, they found no such switchover to basalt at all. In fact, they hadn't even found it when they penetrated to 12 kilometers. This was a shocker. Now, no one knows what the Conrad Discontinuity represents. It doesn't signal a change in rock type; neither is there a fault or boundary of any kind. It is important to find out what is wrong here, because much of modeling of the unseen structure of the earth's crust depends upon a realistic interpretation of seismic records. (Monastersky, Richard; "Inner Space," Science News, 136:266, 1989.) Reference. Large-scale structural anomalies of the earth's interior are classified under ECD in the catalog: Inner Earth. This book is described here . From Science Frontiers #67, JAN-FEB 1990 . 1990-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Europe and America. That is 2,000 years earlier than the Great Pyramids of Egypt. It is at least 4,000 years earlier than the Mound Builders of the Ohio Valley. The evidence is cummulative, varied in nature, and most probably highly reliable." (Carter, George F.; "Before Columbus," Ellsworth American, November 23, 1990. Cr. R. Strong.) Sketch from Kadath showing how the setting sun, at the summer solstice, lines up with two ancient standing stones and a cairn in western Massachusetts. The New England Megaliths. The Public TV documentary also provided a glimpse of some of the domens, menhirs, and passage graves sprinkled throughout New England. Long scoffed at as merely the work of Colonial farmers, some of these structures yield radiocarbon dates 3000-4000 B.P . This sort of proscribed data is to be found only in the journals of "shadow archeology." But now European archeologists are beginning to look at these structures. In 1990, the Belgian journal Kadath devoted an entire issue to the subject. This issue comprises 54 pages filled with many photos and drawings of walls, cairns, dolmens, and possible astronom ical sites. We reproduce one of these drawings here, but wish we could provide an English translation of the entire issue. (Anonymous; "Megalithes d'Amerique du Nord," Kadath, no. 72, Spring 1990.) North American Epigraphy. According to the editor of the Review of Archaeology, D.H . Kelley is "an epigrapher of considerable reputation ...
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