... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 125: Sep-Oct 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Power Of A Paradigm Powerful paradigms can stifle scientific research. The truth of this has become apparent at the Topper archeological site near Allendale, South Carolina. The dig was discovered back in 1981 when a local man, named Topper, led A. Goodyear (from the University of South Carolina) to a deposit of side-notched chert points. These artifacts are similar to 10,000-year-old points found elsewhere. Nothing anomalous so far! At depths of 80-100 centimeters, Goodyear came across fluted blanks from which the classic and distinctive Clovis points could be manufactured. This was the culmination of the dig; the archeologists picked up their trowels and headed for other sites. Why? Simply because everyone knew that there were no North American artifacts older than Clovis points. Dated at 10,800-11,200 radiocarbon years, Clovis points supposedly marked the earliest arrival of humans in the Americas. Digging deeper at the Topper site would have been a waste of time. In 1998, however, Goodyear had second thoughts. This was the time when the nothing-older-than-Clovis paradigm was being challenged by finds at Monte Verde, Chile. (SF#120) Goodyear decided to take his trowels back to the Topper site. "After some 40 cm of essentially barren deposits, the excavators began finding small flakes and microtools. The lower level, exposed over 28 square meters, ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 17: Fall 1981 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Were the british megaliths built as scientific instruments?Alexander Thom and his son have meticulously surveyed nearly 100 megalithic sites in Britain and nearby Europe. Archeologists generally applaud the Thoms' careful work but vehemently attack their conclusions. The Thoms see in their surveys evidence that the early Britons built megalithic astronomical instruments with scientific capabilities far beyond their needs for calendar-keeping. Actually, they suggest that these "primitive" people built a society so strong that it could devote time and labor to a program of astronomical research generations in extent. In short, they were precociously bright and socially strong; so much so that they could indulge their scientific desires. The Thoms' prehistoric scenario departs radically from that of the current archeological establishment, which has searched for flaws in the Thoms' work. Naturally, some defects have emerged. Clive Ruggles, the author of the present article, is one of the skeptics. He feels that the megalithic sites are impressive and intriguing but not the work of mental giants. After all, Ruggles says, 72 points of the compass have some lunar significance. Almost any circle of stones built for simple ritual purposes would have some significant lunar alignments! (Ruggles, Clive; "Prehistoric Astronomy: How Far Did It Go?" New Scientist, 90: 750, 1981.) Comment. The kind of statistical argument reminds one of those monkeys who will eventually type out the works of Shakespeare. Presumably, the ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 102: Nov-Dec 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Remnants of tunguska When something exploded over Siberia on June 30, 1908, flattening more than 2,100 square kilometers of forest, it left no crater of consequence and no obvious pieces of itself. Scientists have claimed all along that it was a comet or asteroid that detonated in the atmosphere. A few less conservative people ventured that it was an alien spaceship that blew up! G. Longo and colleagues, Universita di Bologna, have apparently found a way to determine the true nature of this invading object. They examined the resin in the conifers surrounding the site of the blast to see if any particulate debris had been trapped in the sticky goo -- much as ancient insects have been preserved in amber. "Longo and associates used a scanning electron microscope to examine 7,163 particles recovered from the site and from two control sites. They found anomalously high abundances of elements such as iron, calcium, aluminum, copper, gold, zinc, and oxygen in the Tunguska-site samples, strongly peaking around 1908." Their conclusion: The impactor was a stony meteorite of normal density. (Anonymous; "Remnants of Tunguska," Astronomy, 23:26, October 1995.) From Science Frontiers #102 Nov-Dec 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 110: Mar-Apr 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Circles Of Contention No, this is not about crop circles, although these are easily as controversial -- at least among anthropologists. The story broke last September (1996), in Sydney, Australia, and has been simmering ever since. We have let the story cook for a while, hoping to get some confirmation of the dates involved. This will have to come later. These "circles of contention" are engraved on tall boulders (about 2 meters high on average) arranged in arcs hundreds of meters long at a site the aborigines call Jinmium. Jinmium is located near the western boundary of Australia's Northern Territory. The circles are obviously the work of humans. There are thousands of these etchings all told. Dimensions: 2-3 centimeters across and about half as deep. No one doubts that the Jinmium site is ancient. Judging from the sediments that cover the lowest circles, these engravings are about 60,000 years old. If this date survives scrutiny, the Jinmium carvings will be the oldest human art on the planet -- twice as old as anything found in Europe. No wonder the circles have created a stir. Actually, though, a larger issue is at stake. In the sediments around the engraved boulders, anthropologists have discovered what seem to be even-more-ancient signs of human activity: stone tools stratigraphically dated at 116,000 and 176,000 years. The ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 22: Jul-Aug 1982 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Old hannah's explosions December 10, 1899. Staffordshire, Eng land, near Old Hannah's Cave. Two men heard explosions like rifle shots. "Realizing that no one was shooting, they looked up the cliff and witnessed an explosion which emitted a flash from a hole or fissure in the upper part of the cliff. This had a bluish column 'not of steam or fire or smoke, but apparently of aqueous vapour,' which travelled with immense force across the valley (approximately 12 m wide). Within minutes another discharge from higher up the cliff and then 'several ones with crackling sounds producing semi-transparent wavy streaks in the air, not smokey in appearance.' Next came a very loud explosion which 'we had the good fortune to see plainly.' Wardle describes this as 'like a gun but with crackling, a series of continuous reports, cleaving the air in a zigzag or riverlike course in a narrow band about 15 cm to 20 cm broad, of bluish colour." Several other reliable descriptions exist of detonations and flame-like discharges around old Hannah's Cave. The supposition is that natural gases liberated by decaying organic material and, perhaps, geochemical reactions are ignited by static electricity. A recent landslip seems to have extinguished this curious phenomenon. (Pounder, Colin; "Speculations on Natural Explosions at Old Hannah's Cave, Staffordshire, England," National ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 34: Jul-Aug 1984 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Ancient old-world lamps turn up in new england In 1980, at a Boston antique fair, a Greek lamp, probably dating from the Sixth Century B.C . turned up. The antique dealer stated that the lamp had been dug up at an Indian site in Manchester, NH. (Totten, Norman; "Late Archaic Greek Lamp Excavated at Amoskeag Falls," Early Sites Research Society, Bulletin, 10:25, no. 2, 1983.) In 1952, a Byzantine oil lamp was found in the Clintin, CT, harbor shell-midden after plowing. The finder described it as an Indian pipe, but it is actually typical of the Mediterranean area circa 750-800 A.D . (Whittall. James P., II; "Byzantine Oil Lamp from Connecticut," Early Sites Research Society, Bulletin, 10:26, no. 2, 1983.) From Science Frontiers #34, JUL-AUG 1984 . 1984-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... 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 The ancient-humans-in-europe controversy Many times in the published pages of SF appears the question: "When did humans first arrive in the Americas? It is amu sing to find that European archeologists have an analogous problem, only there the accepted date is about 1,000,000 years ago, compared to 12,000 years for the Americas. Most European archeologists believe that primitive humans migrated northward from Africa into Europe, but the timing has always been a little fuzzy. The Europeans are willing to consider minor adjustments in the million-year figure. However, there are now several sites seeming to boast human artifacts that are about 2.5 million years old. This is just too old, and a debate has commenced. The most controversial site is Saint Eble, just below Mont Coupet, in southcentral France. Here one finds quartz fragments that look manmade to some archeologists, but seem products of natural fracturing to others. These crude objects are what some American archeologists call "Carterfacts," after G. Carter, who has found similar rock fragments in the Americas and dates them much, much earlier than 12,000 B.P . In Europe, there is little argument about the 2.5 -million-year-date for the stratum in which the controversial rocks are found. The debate is over whether they are natural or products of human manu facture. The French champion of ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 83: Sep-Oct 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Checking Out Some Texas Ghost Lights Some members of the Houston Association for Scientific Thinking (HAST) have visited the sites of the famed Marfa Lights (West Texas) and the less-publicized Saratoga Lights (East Texas). With binoculars, telescopes, and road maps, it was fairly easy for them to ascertain that the Saratoga Lights were simply the headlights of automobiles traveling along Route 787. The Saratoga display is a bit eerie but not at all mysterious, according to HAST. The Marfa Lights turned out to be more impressive and, in consequence, quite a tourist attraction. The favorite viewing site is on Highway 90, 9 miles east of Marfa. HAST logged a total of 9 hours of observation there on three successive nights. All of the lights observed were easily attributed to cars traveling north from Presidio to Marfa. People at the viewing site who knew of the Presidio-Marfa road had no trouble identifying the lights as those of automobiles. But those unaware of the road called the lights mysterious. As for the frequent reports of Marfa lights cavorting and executing strange maneuvers, HAST thought they were probably due to low-flying aircraft in the neighborhood of the Chianti Mountains some 40 miles away. In fact, just such a plane was observed during a daylight trip to Shafter, a town near the mountains. Admitting that the Marfa Lights are indeed entrancing and even mildly mystical, the report closes (rather incongruously ...

... Lunar Landslide Lights Moonwatchers have reported light flashes, strange red glows, and mist-like patches emanating from certain lunar locales, particularly the huge craters Alphonso and Picard. Hundreds of such observations have accumulated since the Middle Ages. Modern more-systematic scrutiny indeed confirms that the moon is not such a dead place after all. (See ALF in The Moon and the Planets for much more on this fascinating subject.) Moonquakes, gaseous emissions, and even volcanic activity have been the favorite explanations of these TLPs (Transient Lunar Phenomena), but these are only surmises. The many close-up photos of the lunar surface taken in 1994 by the lunar satellite Clementine gave B. Buratti, K. Herkenhoff, and T. McConnochie the opportunity to search for geological common denominators connecting the sites where TLPs have been most frequent. The suspicious sites are characterized by bluish spectra that usually indicate unusually fresh deposits of lunar debris. Furthermore, these areas are usually found along the inside edges of large craters. Buratti et al opine that these are the sites of recent landslides that have cascaded off the crater edges. The dust and volatile gases released by these events might account for the observed luminous phenomena. (Cowen, Ron; "Explaining a Lunar Mystery," Science News, 150:314, 1996.) Reference. To order the book The Moon and the Planets (mentioned above), visit here . The lunar crater Gassendi on April 30 and May 1, 1966. The shaded areas mark the red glow observed on those dates by astronomers. From Science Frontiers # ...

... below the Midwestern soil. Archeologists got a shock in 1998, when drillers installing a drainage system at huge, terraced Monk's Mound in Illinois discovered that the mound was not all dirt after all. Some 40 feet below one of the terraces they ran into a 32foot-thick layer of stones. Hidden for centuries, no one knows the extent or purpose of this huge mass of stones. (SF#117) Now, just 3 years later, scientists using magnetic and other noninvasive equipment have discerned a buried circle of "something" measuring 90 feet across. Like the stones in Monk's Mound, the find was entirely serendipitous. The locale is Paint Creek Prairie, Ross County, in Southern Ohio. There are run-of-the-mill mounds at the site but no one supposed there was anything of significance beneath the surface. (Sloat, Bill; "Mysterious Circle Found Buried beside Mounds," Cleveland Plain Dealer web site, September 6, 2001. Cr. P. Huyghe) Comment. The Hopewell Culture flourished in this region from about 400 BC to 400 AD. In fact, they held sway from the Great Lakes to the Gulf. Above ground, they left abundant mounds, earthen walls in various enigmatic geometries, and, of course, the Great Hopewell Road running 60 miles long through central Ohio. (SF#127) Who knows what else a culture of this power and sophistication might have built underground? From Science Frontiers #138, NOV-DEC 2001 . 2001 William R. Corliss Other Sites of Interest SIS ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 28: Jul-Aug 1983 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Bones Of Contention Introduction. This item needs an editorial because it shows how a very tiny and obscure brick in the Temple of Science, long thought to be structurally sound, might lead to widespread collapse. Are there other sleepers? A group of burrowing lizards (the amphisbaenians) possess a heavy bone in their heads that helps them ram their ways through the soil. In surface-living lizards this structure is merely a soft, flimsy cartilage. It was long assumed that the bone in the burrowing lizard developed from the cartilage of its surface-living kin. But a study of embryos now shows that the head bone of the burrowing lizard actually developed from a membrane instead of cartilage. The two similarly located structures are not homologous after all. They had different origins. Superficially this doesn't seem very anomalous and especially not very exciting. But vertebrate evolution in particular has been charted on the basis of homologous structures. If these structures have different biological origins -- even in just some cases -- the evolutionary family trees may be drawn wrong. (Anonymous; "Lizard Bone Shakes World of Taxonomy," New Scientist, 98:221, 1983.) Comment. No one yet knows how serious this problem really is. Basically it means that some animals that look alike (at least bonewise) need not be closely related. To use an analogy, if nature has the plans for a house stored in ...

... 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 Roads of Easter Island When the Fourth Dynasty Egyptians set about building the Great Pyramid, they built a stone-paved road from the Giza Plateau to the dock on the Nile where barges arrived from quarries upriver. The road's hard, smooth surface eased the task of hauling the huge blocks of limestone and granite to the construction site. Three thousand years later, the Easter Islanders faced a similar transportation problem in moving their huge stone heads -- some weighing as much as 90 tons -- from the quarries to stone platforms (ahu) on the coast, where the monstrous heads would stare out across the empty Pacific. Much has been written about how the more than 800 stone heads were dragged from the quarries by brute force and then erected on the ahu. Thor Heyerdahl and others have even managed to duplicate some phases of the operation. However, the voluminous Easter Island literature is not as forthcoming about the roads the natives built to accelerate this Ethic traffic. The Easter Island roads have turned out to be as curious as the statues themselves. During the summer of 2000, geologist C.M . Love and a crew of 17 students excavated sections of the three main roads that carried statue traffic. Parts of these roads were actually carved into the island's bedrock-lava flows mainly. Strangely, the roads were not flat but V- and U-shaped in cross section. They averaged 3 ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 55: Jan-Feb 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Archeological Stonewalling And Shadow Science In past issues of SF, we have presented considerable evidence for the existence of humans in America well before 12,000 years ago -- the "acceptable" limit. For example, in SF#54, we mentioned the 300,000-BP site in Brazil. There are many more. Of course, controversy hangs over all these sites and the dates assigned to them. The controversies about the specifics are good; but now the archeological establishment seems to be trying to enforce the 12,000-year dogma through authoritarian pronouncements in key publications. By way of illustration, we have P.S . Martin's article in Natural History, entitled "Clovisia the Beautiful!", bearing the subtitle: "If humans lived in the New World more than 12,000 years ago, There'd be no secret about it." Now, some archeologists are even trying to roll forward the 12,000-year date. See, for example, R. Lewin's review in Science (referenced below), which is subtitled: "In recent years anthropological opinion has been shifting in favor of a relatively recent date (not much more than 11,500 years ago) for the first human colonization of the Americas." In all of these articles, anomalous data are simply labelled "erroneous." (Martin, Paul S.; "Clovisia the ...

... in different ways, the "Face" reappears looking more artificial than ever. T. Van Flandern elaborates: The MGS spacecraft took a high resolution photo of the "Face on Mars" in April 1998. That image suffered from four handicaps: a low viewing angle; a low sun angle from the direction of under the "chin"; an almost complete lack of contrast; and enough cloudiness to scatter most of the light and eliminate shadows. To add to these difficult circumstances, JPL-MIPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory-Mission Image Processing Laboratory] personnel, apparently judging that the controversy over artificiality would not be ended when the actual photo was released, processed the image through two filters having the effect of flattening and suppressing image details. This step is documented at a JPL web site. Here we do image processing correctly and present the results of computer corrections to compensate for the poor lighting and low viewing angle. The actual image shows clearly the impropriety of the JPL-MIPL actions because the visual impression of artificiality persists. However, appearances after a discovery are not a valid basis for drawing conclusions, but only for forming hypotheses for further testing. This is called the a priori principle of scientific method. The 1976 Viking imagery allowed the formation of competing hypotheses, natural vs. artificial origin, and tests to distinguish them. When applied to the high-resolution MGS image of the Face, all artificiality predictions were fulfilled despite a lack of background noise. The combined a priori odds against the natural origin of the Face on Mars are 1021 to 1. ( ...

... Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Inca walls and rockwall, texas First, we have what seems to be a new Inca wall of impressive proportions. This story began when R.Chohfi, a UCLA graduate student was examining aerial photos of the Machu Picchu region in Peru. He noticed a straight line where no archeological ruins had been recorded. Friends put up money for Chohfi to journey to Peru and investigate. His hunch was that, since straight lines are rare in the jungle, something manmade must be there. He was right. He found a wall more than 7 feet thick. at least that high, and more than 1,000 feet long. Other structures were also found in the area, suggesting the existence of a major new archeological site. (Dye, Lee; "Incas: UCLA Student May Have Opened a New Door," Los Angeles Times, October 4, 1986. Cr. E. Krupp.) Next, let us consider Rockwall, Texas, a small town named for a strange wall, mostly buried, that exists in the area. We have had inquiries about this structure but have little in the way of substantial data. Just arrived is a facetious newspaper item that relates how, some 50 years ago, R.F . Canup excavated part of this wall. He dug 8 feet down and eventually unearthed about 100 feet of the wall. That was enough to convince him that it was the masonry wall of an ancient city. Geologists, on the other hand, ridicule this idea, ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 98: Mar-Apr 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Emf fertilizer?In 1986, the U.S . Navy began operating a 90-kilometer-long radio antenna stretching pole-to-pole through a Michigan forest. Broadcasting at only 76 hertz, this long antenna can communicate effectively with submerged submarines. Although the antenna produces electromagnetic fields about the same as those from a large household appliance, some of the trees adjacent to the antenna have enjoyed an unexpected spurt in growth, according to D. Reed and G. Mroz of the Michigan Technological University. "The researchers have been gathering data on the growth of trees since 1985, making measurements at two sites, one near the antenna and the other 50 kilometers away. The results seem to suggest that the electromagnetic field has a subtle influence on the forest. They found that two species of trees, northern red oak and paper birch, do not seem to be influenced by the antenna at all. But red pines near the antenna grew taller than red pines at the distant site, while aspen and red maple grew thicker than their counterparts further off." (Kiernan, Vincent; "Forest Grows Tall on Radio Waves," New Scientist, p. 5, January 14, 1995) Trees are not the only plants affected. Algae in the upper Ford River, where the field is only 10% as strong as that near the antenna, increased chlorophyll production sharply after the antenna started operation. The cause ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 56: Mar-Apr 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Ubiquity Of American Archeological Anomalies An inscribed stone from Connecticut. Interpreting the marks as ogam writing; Face 1 (left) reads up, Face 2 (right) reads down. Adapted from the Bulletin of the Early Sites Research Society and the Occasional Publications of the Epigraphic Society. One would think that all North American archeological anomalies worth mentioning would already be firmly ensconced in the professional literature. This does not seem to be the case, unless one is very conservative about defining "worth mentioning." Ancient coins, anomalous inscriptions, and other intriguing tidbits are being found all the time, but few hear about them. The conventional journals, such as American Antiquity and the American Anthropologist disdain such discoveries. One place to find them is in the Occasional Publications of the Epigraphic Society. The 1987 compilation of these papers is at hand, and it is chock full of fascinating things. The following data are from Volume 16 for 1987. Ancient coins. A bronze coin of the ancient Greek city of Amisos was found about six years ago by Doyle Ellis, who was searching for gold with a metal detector in the channel of the Snake River in Idaho. It was deeply embedded in the gravel. In a small Indian mound at Deer Creek, near Chilicothe, Ohio, a Numidian bronze coin was recently uncovered. It has a BC date. "Oddly, those same coins, regarded in the Old World as artifacts of ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 112: Jul-Aug 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects We've Known It All Along!An archeologist really risks his or her reputation if he or she suggests that the Americas were peopled before 12,000 years ago. At least that's the way it was until early 1997, when a select "jury" of a dozen skeptical archeologists visited the Monte Verde site in southern Chile. There, T. Dillehay, made his case for a culture that preceded North America's Clovis culture by at least 1,000 years. Monte Verde artifacts go back at least to 12,500 years before the present. The Monte Verde tour, backed by two very detailed reports, convinced some of the most obstinate skeptics. The "jury" was "in," and the Clovis culture was "out," at least as being the first New World culture. Naturally, some still-skeptical archeologists bristled at the suggestion that a "jury" could decide for them. [But isn't that the way science always works?] Regardless, the once formidable 12,000year barrier now seems to have been officially breached. The Monte Verde dates imply either: The Bering land bridge, thousands of miles to the north, was crossed a few millennia before 12,500 BP, or The Monte Verde people arrived by some other route, perhaps by ship! (Wilford, John Noble; "Human Presence in Americas Is Pushed Back a Millennium, ...

... 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 Bog Breath Yes, bogs do breathe albeit rather erratically. The slow heaving of their surfaces is a poorly understood phenomenon as the following abstract demonstrates. The surfaces of bogs and fens in northeastern Minnesota may rise and fall by as much as 36 cm in a single day. This phenomenon, known as Mooratmung, or bog breathing, has been traditionally attributed to changes in water storage. However, the surface deformations recorded by static GPS [Global Positioning System] stations on bog and fen sites within the Red Lake peatland are more frequent and out of phase with precipitation events. These vertical fluctuations instead appear to be related to a complex interplay among climate, hydrology, and microbial gas-production. Climate-driven re-charge on bogs, for example, stimulates the production of biogenic gases by advecting root exudates deep into the peat profiles. Seasonal droughts, however, favor the formation of transient confining layers that trap biogenic gases into discrete pockets... Bog breathing may therefore be a surface manifestation of the accumulation and release of greenhouse gases in peat deposits. (Glaser, Paul H. et al; "Bog Breathing: the Curious Interplay of Climate, Ground-water, and Greenhouse Gases in Boreal Peatlands," Eos, 80:F47, 1999.) Spontaneously igniting, biogenic gases are found in many marshy places. These eruptions were observed on an English mud flat in 1902. Comment. When bogs breathe ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 57: May-Jun 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Yeti evidence too hard!In SF#51, we printed a news item about photographs taken in the Himalayas by A.B . Wooldridge that were thought to show a Yeti. The latest issue of Cryptozoology contains a letter from Wooldridge in which he tells of his return, in 1987, to the site where the 1986 photos were taken. The bush in the 1986 photos was still there; the Yeti wasn't ; the snow was somewhat deeper. Wooldridge and some companions took more pictures of the site: "Stereo pairs of photos taken in 1987 have been used to produce a threedimensional map of the terrain near the bush. When this is used to derive an absolute scale for pairs of photos from 1986, it shows that, whatever I photographed in 1986, lies below the snow level in the 1987 photos. The object is leaning slightly uphill, and no movement can be detected when comparing photos taken at different times in 1986. The apparent change in position relative to the bush in some photos taken from different camera positions is caused by parallax. This evidence demonstrates beyond a reasonable doubt that, what I had believed to be a stationary, living creature was, in reality, a rock." (Wooldridge, Anthony B.; "The Yeti: A Rock After All?" Cryptozoology, 6:135, 1987.) Reference. More information on the Yeti is available in BHU7 in the ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 54: Nov-Dec 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Egyptian pyramids actually made of synthetic stone?The assertion of the title above has been around for a while, but now it has been detailed in a paper before the American Chrmical Society. "An authority on ancient building materials reported evidence Friday that the Egyptian pyramids were built of a remarkable synthetic stone that was cast on the site like concrete. "The new theory challenges the widely accepted belief that the pyramids were built from natural stone obtained from quarries and laboriously moved to the site on wooden rollers. "Dr. Joseph Davidovits said that the synthetic pyramid stone was made with cement far stronger than modern portland cement, which binds together the rock and sand in concrete. Portland cement has an average span of about 150 years, he said, but cements like those used in the pyramids last thousands of years. .. .. . "Davidovits said that a new deciphering of an ancient hieroglyphic text now provides some direct information about pyramid construction and supports his theory that synthetic stone was the construction material. .. .. . "Davidovits said the cement used in the pyramids binds the aggregate and other ingredients together chemically in a process similar to that involved in the formation of natural stone. "Portland cement, in contrast, involves mechanical rather then molecular bonding of the ingredients. Thus, pyramid stone is extremely difficult to distinguish from natural stone. "He cites a number of other pieces of evidence to support his ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 53: Sep-Oct 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The perseus flasher: mystery solved!So goes the title of an item in Sky and Telescope. Instead of ending with an exclamation point, a question mark would have been more appropriate. The Perseus Flasher, a recurring flash of light in Perseus described in SF#39 and #49, is a topic upon which astronomers also wish to "close the book." So, we must ask ourselves how accurate the above title is. Photographic records of the Perseus Flasher site show no flashes at all in 3,288 hours of monitoring. In fact, a Harvard plate, which was being exposed at the same time that a 0-magnitude flash was reported by naked-eye observers, revealed nothing! The passages of some artificial satellites through the Perseus site have been correlated with naked-eye-observed flashes, suggesting that the flashes are only sun glints. One meteor observer, N. McLeod, claims that there is a background level of flashes from other parts of the sky which can also be attributed to satellite glints. The Sky and Telescope item concludes: "So the mystery is solved!" (Anonymous; "The Perseus Flasher: Mystery Solved!" Sky and Telescope, 73:604, 1987.) Comment. So, science in its relentless, inerrant progress has positively solved still another mystery. (Triumphal background music here!) In case you haven't noticed, the three ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 47: Sep-Oct 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Humans in the americas 32,000 years ago?The following abstract is from Nature. Ir relates to one of the most controversial digs in the New World: Pedra Furada, in Brazil. "The view that man did not arrive on the American continent before the last glaciation has been supported by the fact that until now the known and dated archaeological sites have not been of very great antiquity. But now we report radiocarbon dates from a Brazilian site which establish that early man was living in South America at least 32,000 years ago. These new findings come from the large painted rock shelter of Boqueirao do Sitio da Pedra Furada, the walls and ceiling of which are decorated with a rich set of prehistoric paintings. We have excavated a sequence containing abundant lithic industry and well-structured hearths at all levels. Carbon-14 dates from charcoal establish a continuous chronology indicating human occupation from 6,160 130 to 32, 160 100 years BP. A date of 17,000 400 BP, obtained from charcoal found in a level with fragments of a pictograph fallen from the walls, testifies to the antiquity of rupestral art in the region of Brazil." (Guidon, N., and Delibrias, G.; "Carbon-14 Dates Point to Man in the Americas 32,000 Years Ago," Nature, 321: 769, 1986.) Comment. The Nature article just abstracted and other reports ...

... 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 Microorganisms complicate the k-t boundary Ancient bacteria, it appears, have tampered with the K-T (Cretaceous-Tertiary) boundary of some 65 million years ago. A key marker of this boundary is a thin "spike" of iridium that is found worldwide, and which was supposedly deposited by the asteroid impact that helped finish off the dinosaurs. For many scientists, the asteroid-impact scenario has become a "non-negotiable" brick in the Temple of Science. The problem they have faced is that the iridium layer is variable in thickness and concentration from site to site. Sometimes iridium can be detected well above and below the K-T boundary. This variability has tended to undermine the asteroid-impact theory. Recent experiments at Wheaton College by B.D . Dyer et al have demonstrated that bacteria in ground water can both concentrate and disperse iridium deposits. In other words, bacteria could smear out an iridium spike, perhaps partially erase it, or even move it to a deeper or shallower layer of sediment. (Monastersky, R.; "Microbes Complicate the K-T Mystery," Science News, 136: 341, 1989.) Comment. An obvious question now is how bacteria might have affected other chemicals, such as oxygen and carbon isotopes, widely used in stratigraphy. From Science Frontiers #67, JAN-FEB 1990 . 1990-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... NOV-DEC 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Born To Enumerate Einstein once said in connection with his celebrated mathematical insights: Words and language...do not seem to play any part in my thought processes. A French scientist, S. Dehaene, sees in this declaration support for his claim that human brains possess a "number sense" that is independent of language and symbols, including even the numerals we use in arithmetic! The numerals, says Dehaene, are needed only in "exact arithmetic," which is a cultural invention and unrelated to the "number sense." Exact arithmetic, in fact, is an activity of our left brain where language is processed. Our general number sense, though, is sited elsewhere; the parietal lobe, to be specific. Dehaene's experiments with babies demonstrate that, even before they can speak or do exact arithmetic, they can do "approximate arithmetic"; that is, they can distinguish between these two sequences of tones: beep-beep, beep-beep, beep-beep beep-beep, beep-beep, beep-beep-beep. This number sense is apparently hardwired in a specific part of the human brain and the brains of a few other animals that have been tested (monkeys and rats). (Baiter, Michael; "What Makes the Mind Dance and Count?" Science, 292:1635, 2001.) Comment. Superficially, distinguishing between strings of beeps would appear to be a trivial phenomenon. Not ...