319 results found.
... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 109: Jan-Feb 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Rogue wave smashes the queen elizabeth ii September 11, 1995. North Atlantic. Aboard the Queen Elizabeth II enroute from Cherbourg to New York. During this crossing of the Atlantic, the Queen Elizabeth II had to change course to avoid Hurricane Luis. Despite this precaution, the vessel encountered seas of 18 meters with occasional higher crests. At 0400 the Grand Lounge windows, 22 meters above the water, stove in. But this was only a precursor. "At 0410 the rogue wave was sighted right ahead, looming out of the darkness from 220 , it looked as though the ship was heading straight for the white cliffs of Dover. The wave seemed to take ages to arrive but it was probably less than a minute before it broke with tremendous force over the bow. An incredible shudder went through the ship, followed a few minutes later by two smaller shudders. There seemed to be two waves in succession as the ship fell into the 'hole' behind the first one. The second wave of 28-29 m (period 13 seconds), whilst breaking, crashed over the foredeck, carrying away the forward whistle mast. .. .. . "Captain Warwick admits that sometimes it can be difficult to gauge the height of a wave, but in this case the crest was more or less level with the line of sight for those on the bridge, about 29 m above the surface; additionally, the ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 46: Jul-Aug 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Solar Neutrino Update Our terrestrial neutrino detectors catch only about 1/3 as many solar neutrinos as stellar theory requires. We frequently refer to this anomaly because at risk here is our basic theory of how stars work. Is our knowledge of stellar furnaces fundamentally in error or are some of the solar neutrinos somehow removed from the stream of neutrinos bound for earth? Recent calculations by Hans Bethe have brought sighs of relief to all astrophysicists. Without going into all of the details, Bethe finds that the interactions of the electron-neutrinos emitted by solar thermonuclear reactions with atoms constituting the solar mass change a substantial fraction of them into muonneutrinos. Since our terrestrial neutrino detectors register only electron-neutrinos, we may really be seeing only a fraction of the total number of neutrinos being emitted by the sun. If Bethe's calculations turn out to be correct, he may have eliminated a Class1 anomaly. But at a price! It seems that his calculations also predict a mass of only 0.008 electron-volts for the muon-neutrino. This is much too small for neutrinos to account for the "missing mass" of the universe -- something cosmologists had devoutly hoped for. (Maddox, John; "Hans Bethe on Solar Neutrinos," Nature, 320:677, 1986.) From Science Frontiers #46, JUL-AUG 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... ?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 originally. Reference. Data suggesting Martian life are cataloged in AME14 in The Moon and the Planets. For ordering information, visit: here . From Science Frontiers #74 ...
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... . These skeletons are 8,000 or more years old and resemble those recently discovered in Asia. Collectively, they indicate that early Caucasians were farranging indeed. (Also, the Ainus now living in Japan have some Caucasian features.) It is possible that Caucasians preceded or accompanied Asian peoples across that famous Bering Land Bridge. They may even have helped found some of the Native American populations. (Recall the blue-eyed Mandans?) Despite the political incorrectness of Caucasians in "America B.C ." some scientists seem ready to accept the testimony of the bones, even while rejecting later epigraphic evidence. D. Stanford, at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, muses: "I think we're going to see the whole complexion of North American prehistory change real fast." (Rensberger, Boyce; "First Settlers to Reach America May Have Been Caucasoids," Columbus Dispatch , May 5, 1997. Cr. J. Fry via COUD-I .) Comment. Our title refers to B. Fell's controversial book America B.C . . From Science Frontiers #113, SEP-OCT 1997 . 1997-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... been ice-covered for over 15 million years. But now Peter Webb and his coworkers have found pollen and the remains of roots and stems of plants in an area stretching some 1300 kilometers along the Transantarctic Mountains. The Antarctic wood is so recent that it floats and burns with ease. Webb's group postulates that a shrub-like forest grew in Antarctica as recently as 3 million years ago. The dating, of course, is critical, and is certain to be subjected to careful scientific scrutiny. Nevertheless, these deposits of fresh-looking wood do suggest that trees recently grew only 400 miles from the South Pole. Also of interest is the fact that the sedimentary layers containing the wood have been displaced as much as 3000 meters by faults, indicating recent large-scale geological changes. (Weisburd, S.; "A Forest Grows in Antarctica," Science News, 129:148, 1986.) From Science Frontiers #45, MAY-JUN 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Sourcebook Subjects Why Are Dreams Always Retrospective?This question and others regarding dreams have been posed by two French researchers in a new book. One of our French readers has summarized some points made in this new book. "Michel Jouvet, a French specialist of dreams, asks the question: Why do cosmonauts never dream about space? Why do they dream only about the Earth? "According to psychologists, the 'day residue' in dreams is rather important. Half of all dreams allude to events of the preceding day; 89% allude to events of the last 120 days. The older the event, the lower the odds that it will reappear during the night. When people wear colored glasses, they begin very quickly to dream in the same color. People who make a complete change of life; for example, by travelling to a faraway place; do not begin to dream about this new place for weeks or months. A Bassari from Senegal, who was resident in Paris for two extended stays, was asked to write down his dreams. Surprisingly, 88% of his dreams occurred in Africa and only 6% in France. This experiment and others like it are discussed at length in the book, but explanations are lacking. Do we really understand anything about dreams? (Jouvet, Michel, and Gessain, Monique; Le Grenier des Reves , Paris, 1997. Cr. C. Marecaille) From Science Frontiers #113, SEP-OCT 1997 . 1997-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Speculations from gold The item "Restless Gold" in SF#41 has now been amplified by J.-O . Bovin et al. Using a high-resolution electron microscope, magnification 30,000,000, with a real-time video recorder, this group has obtained startling pictures of gold crystals and their environs. "At this magnification, individual columns of atoms in the gold crystals are clearly revealed; it appears that not only are atoms of the surfaces of small crystals in constant motion, hopping from site to site, but also that the crystals are surrounded by clouds of atoms in constant interchange with atoms on the crystal surface. The clouds of gold atoms extended up to 9A from the crystal surface, continually changing their shape and density." The remarkably dynamic nature of solid surfaces, as now revealed, has many implications. (Bovin, J. -O ., et al; "Imaging of Atomic Clouds Outside the Surfaces of Gold Crystals by Electron Microscopy," Nature, 317:47, 1985.) The problem of snowflake growth (SF#38) is probably solvable in terms of clouds of water molecules surrounding crystal nuclei with electrostatic fields guiding the symmetric deposition of molecules. Biological structures, too, are probably encompassed by clouds of atoms and molecules; viz., the crystal-like, polyhedral viruses. Does the highly ordered DNA structure also possess an aura of molecules constantly swapping places ? Such would not be inconsistent with "jumping genes" and M. Kimura' ...
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... lactose. Cairns exposed the E. Coli to a sudden dose of lactose, demonstrating that if the bacteria must have lactose to survive, they quickly cast off the two genes that inhibit their metabolizing of lactose. Of course, the experiments were more complicated than this, but the fundamental finding was that the bacteria mutated so that they could use lactose much, much faster than chance mutation would permit, stastically speaking. The battle lines are forming. A sup-porter of directed mutation, J. Shapiro, of the University of Chicago, is quoted as follows in Moffat's article: "The genome is smart. It can respond to selective conditions. The signifi cance of the Cairns paper is not in the presentation of new data but in the framing of the questions and in changing the psychology of the situation. He has taken the question 'Are mutations directed?' which was taboo, and made it an issue that people will now do experiments on." (Moffat, Anne Simon; "A Challenge to Evolutionary Biology," American Scientist, 77:224, 1989.) From Science Frontiers #64, JUL-AUG 1989 . 1989-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... known to eight significant figures. We only know G to three. What's worse, modern attempts to refine the measurement of G come up with wildly different answers. Torsion-pendulum experiments in the U.S ., Germany, and New Zealand are far apart in their G-measurements. And physicists are perplexed -- to put it mildly. Of course, G is hard to measure. Seismic waves from ocean surf hundreds of miles away can affect the experiments. If a colleague a few offices away brings in some boxes of books for his library, the experiment is compromised. Better instrument science may eventually resolve the too-large discrepancies between the measured values of G, but some physicists worry that perhaps the problem runs deeper. "If experiments find that G is changing slowly over time, for example, physicists would have to rethink how space and time are stitched together in a single fabric. Einstein would groan in his grave." (Kestenbaum, David; "The Legend of Big G," New Scientist, p. 39, January 17, 1998.) From Science Frontiers #116, MAR-APR 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... , bringing theory into line with reality. And just what are these WIMPS? One suggestion is that they are photinos, a particle suggested (but not proved) by recent experiments at CERN (SF#37) (Thomsen, D.E .; "Weak Sun Blamed on WIMPS," Science News, 128:23, 1985.) Comment. WIMPS represent just the kind of particle that Dewey Larson railed against in his book: The Universe of Motion. He maintains that astronomers have to engage in such ridiculous theoretical gymnastics and invention only because they have picked the wrong energy-generating mechanism for stars and refuse to give it up! Larson's theory, on the other hand, solves this and many other astronomical problems, but at the initial cost of a radical change in one's conception of the universe. From Science Frontiers #41, SEP-OCT 1985 . 1985-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... , yellow, etc. Or the phenomenon may be more complex, with Mozart being green; Wagner, red, etc. Most "synesthetites" seem to experience colors, but geometrical figures sometimes appear in response to particular stimuli. As for the stimuli that call forth these exotic sensations; they are usually music or numbers. To some synesthetites, the cardinal numbers are associated with specific colors. The books's author is R.E . Cytowic, and he has provided some very interesting observations about synesthetites: There is much consistency among them; that is, if the number 5 evokes a red sensation with one, it does with most others, too. Also, synesthetites seem to run in families. Perhaps most significant is the observation that synesthetic experiences seem to be correlated with changes in cortical blood flow! (Humphreys, Glyn; "Higher Sight," Nature, 343:30, 1990.) From Science Frontiers #68, MAR-APR 1990 . 1990-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... on incontinence published in the British Journal of Urology by J.W . Splatt and D. Weedon! Does a person's name exert a psychological force of the choice of a career? We have seen no formal studies of nominative determinism, but we have just discovered a closely allied phenomenon that has been scientifically investigated. We call it "monogrammic determinism.' An individual's monogram does not seem to be associated with his or her occupation but rather with longevity. People with monograms such as ACE, WOW, or GOD tend to live longer than those with monograms like PIG, RAT, DUD, or ILL. The study was conducted at the University of San Diego, where 27 years of California death certificates were examined. Only men were chosen because their initials did not change with marriage. They were divided into three groups: (1 ) those with "good" monograms; (2 ) those with "bad" monograms; and (3 ) a control group with "neutral" monograms. Those men bearing "good" monograms lived 4.48 years longer than those in the control group; those with "bad" monograms, 2.8 years less. Manifestly, being called DUD or PIG all your life can shorten it. Being addressed as ACE or GOD can give one a psychological boost that prolongs life. (Anonymous; "Do Initials Help Some Live Longer?" San Mateo Times, March 28, 1998. Cr. J. Covey.) From Science Frontiers #118, JUL-AUG 1998 . 1998-2000 William ...
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... soon wastes away to a puddle of water? If you wish, you can accelerate the substance's demise by touching a match to it; it is packed with potential energy. The substance is methane hydrate, and it is found in prodigious quantities in oceanic sediments. Each cubic centimeter of methane hydrate contains about 160 cubic centimeters of methane at standard conditions; it is a concentrated source of natural gas. In fact, methane hydrate deposits in the world's oceans hold twice as much carbon as all the coal, oil, and gas reserves on land! But methane hydrate may be much more than a future fuel source; it may have been humanity's savior in eons gone by; it may be our future nemesis. You see, methane hydrate is very unstable; changes of temperature or pressure on a global basis can trigger the release of immense volumes of this greenhouse gas from oceanic deposits. For example, when the Ice Ages lowered ocean levels by locking up water in the advancing ice caps, pressures on ocean-bottom methane hydrate lessened and, according to some speculators, released enough gas so that the increased greenhouse heating turned back the Ice Ages. (Was Gaia at work here?) On the other hand, if present human activities are truly stoking the greenhouse effect, ocean temperatures should rise, possibly destabilizing methane hydrate deposits and thereby aggravating the greenhouse effect. Such positive feedback could cook the biosphere. (Anonymous; "Did Methane Curb Ice Ages," New Scientist, p. 24, May 25, 1991. Also: Appenzeller, ...
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... a fresh airing of the long-standing discussion on lunar volcanism is appropriate, Eos offers this article, untouched by editors or referees, and awaits reply by readers." O'Keefe's article reviews considerable evidence supporting his two points: for Point One; crater dimensions and frequencies, craters with dark floors, lunar soil constituents; and, for Point Two; tektite analysis. He also remarks that the ages of the terrestrial tektite fields correlate with biological extinctions. This can be explained in terms of lunar volcanism as follows: lunar volcanos expel material violently, some of which escapes the moon's gravitational field and is drawn toward earth. Some falls as tektites; the rest forms a temporary ring around the earth. The ring shadows parts of the earth, causing radical climate changes and, as a consequence, biological extinctions. (O 'Keefe, John A.; "The Coming Revolution in Planetology," Eos, 66:89, 1985.) Comment. The Editor's Note does not really convey the depth of the antagonism in the controversy about tektite origin. From Science Frontiers #39, MAY-JUN 1985 . 1985-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 38: Mar-Apr 1985 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects GREEN CLOUD WITH LIGHT RAYS "An account of a mysterious 'green cloud' sending out powerful shafts of light and flying in tandem with an airliner appeared in a Soviet newspaper today. The strange cloud was seen over Byelorussia by passengers and crew of a flight from Georgia to Tallinn, and by the crew of an airliner from Leningrad, passing 10 miles away according to Trud. Nikolai Zheltukhin, a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences, said the object was certainly very big. He rejected the idea that the green cloud was an image caused by far-off atmospheric changes because the airman had fixed its location from the shafts of light it sent to the ground." (Anonymous; "Mysterious 'Green Cloud' Appears near Airliner," Baltimore Sun, January 31, 1985, p. 4A.) From Science Frontiers #38, MAR-APR 1985 . 1985-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... hybridization" method simply mixes together strands of DNA from the two species being compared. These are allowed to combine, and then they are heated to see how much temperature is required to force them apart. Chromosome numbers and bandings have little if any effect on these crude comparisons of the bare DNA strands that have been stripped from their genes and chromosomes. The significance of all this transcends the comparisons of humans and chimps. Modern taxonomy of all life forms depends increasingly upon DNA comparisons rather than upon morphology. If DNA comparisons can be as misleading as they are in humans and chimps, those textbook family trees that are supposed to tell us how life evolved may also be giving us an erroneous history of life. To underscore the problem, sometimes DNA genetic differences do not result in big morphological changes. For example, Three-toed Woodpeckers hammer on trees all over the northern reaches of North America and Eurasia. These birds all look alike and interbreed freely. Yet, some of the birds differ so much genetically that they should be classified as different species on that basis. (See BBG1 in Biological Anomalies: Birds.) From Science Frontiers #122, MAR-APR 1999 . 1999-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... hour . The surges may be years apart; and they may occur periodically. The surges start high up on the glacier and propagate down to the foot, which plods along a few inches per day until the surge arrives. Then, it leaps forward, only to return to normality until the next periodic surge. The surges seem to occur when water spreads out under the ice, lubricating its flow. Beyond this we know little. Why do some glaciers surge while those right alongside behave normally? Are the surges really cyclic? The Variegated Glacier, in Alaska, for example, surged in 1906, probably in 1926, in 1947, in 1964-65, and in 1982 -- about 20 years between surges. The surges do not seem to be connected to earthquakes, climatic changes, volcanic heat, or anything obvious. (Beard, Jonathan; "Glaciers on the Run," Science 85, 6:84, February 1985.) From Science Frontiers #38, MAR-APR 1985 . 1985-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... had an excellent record of the curious parade of the hard-to photograph dark bands. "They were clearly seen for 32 seconds before the second contact and a little fainter for 27 seconds after totality. They moved rapidly across the screen from E to W before totality and from NNE to SSW after 3rd contact. Slow motion studies of the video show occasional merging of the bands and at times they seem to move in opposite directions -- probably a stroboscopic effect." The widths of the bands varied from 2.36 to 6.63 centimeters. (Strach, Eric; "Shadow Bands Recorded at February 26 Eclipse," British Astro nomical Association, Journal, vol. 108, 1998. Comment. Theorists have long been challenged by these ghostly, fleeting shadows. Their widths change; their directions and speeds vary; they come in different colors; sometimes more than one set of bands appear; giant bands have been seen. All of these characteristics are difficult to account for in a single theory. Shadow bands sketch during the February 26, 1998, total solar eclipse. (Top) before totality (Bottom) After totality From Science Frontiers #123, MAY-JUN 1999 . 1999-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 38: Mar-Apr 1985 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Geophysics: the sick man of science "In order to be a famed geo-scientist and belong to the inclusive club of fully accepted geophysicists in their unknown thousands, one must kneel on the hassock and swear allegiance to the following tenets regardless of any scientific considerations: "Tenet 1. That the moment-of-inertia of the Earth has never changed. "Tenet 2. That the Earth contains a large central core composed of iron. "Tenet 3. That the continents are drifting as a result of unknown forces. "These must be held with religious fervour, dissenters are just not to be tolerated, the devotees feeling it their right, and indeed duty, to defend the creed against all criticism by any means of chicanery and of sharp-practice within their power, however crude and improper, so long as they judge they can get away with it, but all the time representing themselves to the world as acting with judicial calm in the best interests of their science. It will be shown that all three of these tenets are wrong, and how their (naive) acceptance has hamstrung the believers from making progress in the deep waters of terrestrial science, though not of course in the worldly world of 'modern science.' Shades of Sir Cyril Burt." So begins a long technical article by R.A . Lyttleton, author of many scientific books and papers. (He may lose his ...
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... on observer enthusiasm and active imagination. Modern photographs of coronas provide a much more conservative picture of the eclipsed sun. As for all those old observations of colored coronas, aerosols in the atmosphere, perhaps of volcanic origin, could have added the delicate tints reported. No unusual phenomena were involved. Problem solved! (O 'Meara, Stephen James; "Strange Eclipses," Sky & Telescope , 98:116, August 1999.) E.L . Trouvelot's portrait of the total solar eclipse of July 29, 1878 as seen from Wyoming. Note the geometrical symmetry of the spectacular corona. The TLP Myth. There is a long history of Transient Lunar Phenomena (TLPs). Almost as soon as the telescope was invented, observers began seeing flashes of light, color changes, and other luminous phenomena on the moon. Reddish glows around the rims of the craters Aristarchus and Alphonsus have long been accepted as objective scientific observations. The most popular explanation of these color phenomena involves the eruption of gases around the craters. In 1964, in an attempt to better understand TLPs, NASA organized a network of amateur lunar observers with communication links to the Corralitos Observatory in New Mexico. Corralitos possessed a 5-inch reflector equipped with color filters which could checkout network sightings. In almost 3,000 hours of surveillance, no color phenomena were recorded using the Corralitos instruments -- even when the network reported a colored TLP in progress. Are all TLPs therefore illusory? The NASA program certainly suggested that TLPs might be subjective phenomena, perhaps something like the colored coronas observed ...
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... volcanic sources are grossly inadequate. So are all other possible terrestrial sources. Therefore, some scientists, such as D. Deming, University of Oklahoma, have been looking spaceward. Deming ventures that extraterrestrial sources of water and carbon may be four or five orders of magnitude greater than suspected. Obviously, a steady bombardment of icy comets might fulfill Deming's requirements. Down the long eons of geological time, they could have filled the oceans and showered all that excess carbon onto the planet's surface. Deming ups the stakes in the icy-comet controversy when he links these fluffy snowballs to the well-known vagaries of life on earth. "The extraterrestrial influx rate may also act as the pacemaker of terrestrial evolution, at times leading to mass extinctions through climatic shifts induced by changes in accretion rates with concommitant disruptions of the carbon and nitrogen cycles. Life on earth may be balanced precariously between cosmic processes which deliver an intermittent stream of life-sustaining volatiles from the outer solar system or beyond, and biological and tectonic processes which remove these same volatiles from the atmosphere by sequestering water and carbon in the crust and mantle." (Deming, David; "On the Possible Influence of Extraterrestrial Volatiles on Earth's Climate and the Origin of the Oceans," Palaeo , 146:33, 1999. Cr. P. Huyghe) Comment. Need we mention the book Living Comets , by F. Hoyle and C. Wickramasinghe? Why stop at water and carbon? From Science Frontiers #126, NOV-DEC 1999 . 1999-2000 William R. ...
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... . Cr. J. Cieciel.) Early Australians. A new BBC documentary entitled Ancient Voices proclaims that the first settlers of the New World were from Australia and Melanesia. Skulls thought to be 9,000-12,000 years old have been unearthed in Brazil with features that closely match those of Australians living about 60,000 years ago. Evidence of even earlier contacts comes from stone tools and charcoal at Serra da Capivara, in northeastern Brazil. These artifacts indicate human habitation as long as 50,000 years ago. These very early Australians, however, seem to have been exterminated by a later wave of Mongoloid invaders. W. Neves, University of Sao Paolo, has measured hundreds of skulls between 7,000 and 9,000 years old. He notes a marked change in skull shape during that period going from exclusively Australian to totally Mongoloid. (Anonymous; BBC Online Network , August 26, 1999. Cr. M. Colpitts. Comments The claimed Mongoloid invasion of Brazil jibes nicely with claims of early Chinese visits to the New World. The artifacts at Serra da Capivara support the findings of N. Guidon at Pedra Furada, Brazil -- also said to be about 50,000 years old. (SF#112, #108, #105) The three references given above are not science journals, so caution is advised. From Science Frontiers #126, NOV-DEC 1999 . 1999-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... of theropod dinosaur. (3 ) For his part, Chjatterjee asserts that Protoavis' skull has 23 features that are fundamentally bird-like, as are the forelimbs, the shoulders, and the hip girdle. "His reconstruction also shows a flexible neck, large brain, binocular vision, and, crucially, portals running from the rear of the skull to the eye socket -- a feature seen in modern birds but not dinosaurs." (1 ) Just why is there so much fuss over a handful of poorly preserved bones? If Protoavis is really a bird, it places the origin of birds 75 million years earlier and dethrones Archaeopteryx as a tran sitional link between dinosaurs and birds. In fact, Protoavis essentially denies that birds evolved from the dinosaurs. In short, Protoavis could change a limb or two on that Tree of Life you see in all the textbooks. References 1. Anderson, Alun; "Early Bird Threatens Archaeopteryx's Perch," Science, 253:35, 1991. 2. Ostrom, John H.; "The Bird in the Bush," Nature, 353:212, 1991. 3. Monastersky, Richard; "The Lonely Bird," Science News, 140:104, 1991. From Science Frontiers #78, NOV-DEC 1991 . 1991-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... New Scientist, some of which are worth recording here. W. Smith supposed that because the flamingo has exceptionally long, thin legs that it was difficult for its heart to return blood from its feet. Therefore, by standing on one leg and occasionally switching, the flamingo prevents blood from collecting in its feet. L.J . Los replied with reference to a phenomenon of which we were unaware: "Farm animals are well known for letting sleep be linked to half of their brain at a time. In this way they can maintain a measure of alertness -- even while looking fast asleep. "Flamingos roost upon one of their legs while the other half of their body is in the sleep stage. When the other half of their brain and body earns a rest, they change legs. A leg that is in the sleep stage would not support the bird as a whole." But P. Hardy had the best answer: "Why do flamingos stand on one leg? So ducks only bump into them half the time." (Various authors; "Flamingo File," New Scientist, p. 52, August 17, 1991.) From Science Frontiers #78, NOV-DEC 1991 . 1991-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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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 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 ...
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... bit. The groundbreaking experiment was carried out onboard the Mir space station last year as part of the French-Russian Perseus mission. By warming a copper-and sapphire-walled cell filled with a drop of liquid sulfur hexafluoride and one tiny bubble of gaseous sulfur hexafluoride in near-zero gravity, scientists triggered a slight compression of the bubble. That gentle squeeze raised the temperature of the gas above that of the cell walls. For this to happen, heat must have been transferred from the cooler walls to the hotter gas, scientists report in the 1 May Physical Review Letters. This weird phenomenon can be tossed off as a "transient temperature overshoot." The Second Law didn't really apply because the system was not in thermodynamic equilibrium. Also, the Second Law really concerns changes in entropy rather than temperatures. (Sincell, Mark; "Backward Heat Flow Bends the Law a Bit," Science, 288:789, 2000.) From Science Frontiers #130, JUL-AUG 2000 . 2000 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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... seems very unlikely as a general explanation. Many events have been very large and very elaborate; they have occurred widely about the country (sometimes several on the same night in counties far from each other); there have been very few cases of detection of hoax, despite massive surveillance in the Mariborough/Devizes area, where so many of the events took place; circles (including a dumbbell formation) occurred within visual and radar range of a hi-tech watch mounted by [G .T .] Meaden and supported by anti-hoax equipment without a trace of human action. It is clear that hoax cannot account for all we have been seeing. "Very recently, laboratories in the US, acting in collaboration with CCCS's Crop Research Panel, have reported interesting physical changes in crops and soil collected from circle formations as compared with control samples. Other 'hard' evidence is accumulating for the action of some short-lived force in the formation of genuine events, and its nature seems to be such that human activity cannot account for it. It may or may not be evidence for the operation of Meaden's 'plasma vortex' (in whatever form he decides to develop it). The only thing to add at this stage is that if the "plasma vortex" is in question, it seems capable of far more elaboration in the creation of crop formations than Meaden has yet allowed. For sheer exuberance and inventiveness, there has been no force in scientific history to match it." (Noyes, Ralph; Letter to UFO Brigantia, ...
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... 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. (Van Flandern, Tom; "Proof That the Cydonia Face of Mars Is Artificial," Meta Research Bulletin, 9:22, June 15, 2000. Journal address: P.O . Box 15186, Chevy Chase, MD 20825-5186.) Comment. Will conspiracy buffs suspect that something is awry in all this? You bet they will! (Left) The Face as actually photographed by MGS in 1998. (Center) Lighting switched from southeast to northwest. (Right) Viewing angle changed from 45 to overhead. (Processing by M. Kelly, www.electrobus.com) From Science Frontiers #132, NOV-DEC 2000 . 2000 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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... exceeding that of his wife -- as the time-of-delivery approaches. Interestingly, the father's testosterone levels are also elevated prior to birth but fall immediately afterward. As the wife's day-of-delivery approaches, the levels of prolactin, which plays a key role in breast-feeding, increase in both husband and wife. (Rubin, Rita; "Dads Get 'Nurturing' Hormones after Birth," Chicago Sun-Times, June 20, 2000. Cr. J. Cieciel) Comment. Male lactation, which is rare in humans, is probably associated with this increased production of prolactin. Male lactation is also known in other mammals, such as fruit bats. (See SF#93) The mind is driving all of these chemical changes in the father-to-be. The question is HOW? And, maybe WHY? 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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... 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 lab, you know that they are very tiny, very simple, and most certainly not very bright. But given enough food, some species of amoeba divide and keep dividing until they clump together in a "slug" that sends out streamers and sort of flows along the surface. We now have a mobile superorganism searching for food (mostly bacteria). Eventually, the moving colony of amoebas anchors itself. Some of the superorganism's cells specialize to create a stalk called a "fruiting body." The amoebas in the fruiting body change into spores and are wafted away on the wind. In this way, the simple, lowly amoebas are transformed into a radically different entity. One wonders how this superorganism, this slime mold, is controlled. Where are its sensors and its information processing center, if it possesses one? (Stewart, Ian; "Spiral Slime," Scientific American, 283:116, November 2000.) This question becomes more difficult to answer when we learn that slime molds can display rudimentary intelligence in the sense that they can solve mazes in their search for food. They are not as clever as rats, but they do optimize their travels through the maze. (Nakagaki, Toahiyuki, et al; "Maze-Solving by an Amoeboid Organism," Nature, 407:470, ...
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... biological extinctions. If verified, the claimed phenomenon would also "reset" archeological models of the settlement of North and South America. To illustrate, we may have to add as many as 10,000 years to site dates in much of North America! (Firestone, Richard B., and Topping, William; "Terrestrial Evidence of a Nuclear Catastrophe in Paleoindian Times," The Mammoth Trumpet, 16:9 , March 2001. Cr. C. Davant III. This off-mainstream journal is published by the Center for the Study of the First Americans, 355 Weniger Hall, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331-6510.) Comment. Thus we add another potential cause of an often-hypothesized, 12,500-BP catastrophe that is said to have changed the world's history. Competing theories involve asteroid impact, volcanism, a Venusian side-swipe, etc. Sites discussed in the region purported to have been zapped by a burst of neutrons circa 12,500 B.P . From Science Frontiers #135, MAY-JUN 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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... 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 catalog: Biological Anomalies: Humans III. For information on this book, see: here . From Science Frontiers #57, MAY-JUN 1988 . 1988-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... therefore, seem to be a bad evolutionary gambit. But, C. Koch and F. Crick may have an answer. They speculate that: It may be because consciousness allows the system to plan future actions, opening up a potentially infinite behavioural repertoire and making explicit memory possible. (Koch, Christof, and Crick, Francis; "The Zombie Within," Nature, 411:893, 2001.) Questions. Could our zombie agents, primitive though they may be, be the source of those flashes of genius that appear out of nowhere, or perhaps that "dreamwork" from which solutions to problems appear fully formed upon wakening? The quotation from the Nature article presumes that consciousness does have survival value, else it would not have evolved. What sort of highly innovative genetic changes would lead to such a remarkable brain function? Did consciousness evolve in small Darwinian steps or in some grand, lucky mutation? Did any nonhuman animals progress beyond their inheritance of zombie agents? From Science Frontiers #138, NOV-DEC 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. 49: Jan-Feb 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Moho Vicissitudes For a long time the Moho (Mohorovicic discontinuity) has been considered a stable plane dividing the crust from the mantle. It is at the Moho that seismic wave velocities change abruptly. There is something there, but no one knows just what. At the recent Second International Symposium on Deep Seismic Reflection Profiling of the Continental Lithosphere, a lot of doubts about the stability and character of the Moho surfaced. Under the North American Cordillera, which runs from Alaska to Mexico, the Moho is flat, continuous and oblivious to the faults, terrane plastering, mountain "roots," and the geological phenomena above it. In other areas, though, several Mohos are stacked up. Some Mohos are discontinuous, jumping from one depth to another. Others are strongly influenced by overhead geological structures. Gone is the neat, so simple Moho figured in all the textbooks. (Barton, Penny; "Deep Reflections on the Moho," Nature, 323:392, 1986. Also: Weisburd, S.; "The Moho Is Immutable No More," Science News, 130:326, 1986.) From Science Frontiers #49, JAN-FEB 1987 . 1987-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... into an oval 21,000 kilometers in length. By early November, it had developed into a planet-encircling band. Apparently, Saturn had "burped," expelling hot gases from its interior. [Saturn emits 50% more heat than it absorbs from the sun.] So far, this is not too beguiling to the anomalist. But now it seems that other white spots, not as large, have been recorded in 1876, 1903, 1933, and 1960. Could the white-spot phenomenon be periodic--like a percolator? More food for thought is found in Saturn's orbital period around the sun: 29.4 years -- not too different from the potential "burp" cycle! (Anonymous; "New White Spot on Saturn Grows, Changes," Science News, 138:325, 1990. Also: Brown, William; "Giant Bubble of Gas Rises through Saturn's Atmosphere," New Scientist, p. 22, October 20, 1990.) Reference. Historical observations of white spots on Saturn are covered in our handbook: Mysterious Universe. To order, visit: here . From Science Frontiers #73, JAN-FEB 1991 . 1991-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... intense activity was observed on the starboard side of the ship where the phenomenon appeared to stretch as far as the horizon. At this stage, it did not appear localized, just a mass of high-speed interacting bands of light. The effect is shown in the first sketch. As is usual on an 'all aft' ship, you become 'deaf' to the constant background noises, but I gradually became aware that the pulses of light seemed to match those of the main engine's throb, that is, about two per second. The radar (3 -cm radar, running on the 24 n. mile range), and the echo-sounder (indicating a water-depth of about 35 fathoms), were switched off in turn to see if any change was discernible, but there was not. "However, at about this time, the ship passed a localized revolving system, distance off appeared to be about 150 m. My impression was that of a catherine wheel revolving and casting out waves in an angular motion, as shown in the second sketch. How many spokes it had I'm not sure owing to the speed of the pulsations, but I think that there were at least three. If viewed from above, the system rotated in a clockwise direction wheeling itself along the ship's track. No central hub was visible, just a dark area devoid of activity. One or two systems were visible farther out to starboard." (Lakeman, J.D .; "Bioluminescence," Marine Observer, 56 ...
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... obtained with their experiment were unreasonably overruled by the negative data from the other two experiments. At a recent scientific meeting in Washington, they stated: "It is more likely than not that our experiment detected life on Mars." Their research in the decade following the Mars landings has only strengthened their belief. Further, they have demonstrated that one of the other life-detection experiments producing negative results was not sensitive enough to detect low population levels of microorganisms. Realizing that the no-life-on-Mars dogma is well-entrenched, they looked for other kinds of evidence for life. "In support of their claims, the two researchers presented two photographs of a Martian rock taken years apart by a camera on one of the landers. The photographs show greenish patches which had changed over time. Spectral analysis of the photographs compared favorably with the spectra given out by lichen-bearing rocks on Earth, as seen through a replica of the lander's camera." (Anonymous; "Is There Life on Mars After All?" New Scientist, p. 19, July 31, 1986.) From Science Frontiers #48, NOV-DEC 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... , we don't have any more contradicting data (of which there is plenty), but we do have: (1 ) A new theory which shows how noncosmological redshifts can occur; and (2 ) Laboratory demonstrations of "spectral noninvariance" that show how a non-Doppler component can be added to light's redshift. The physicist behind this new research is E. Wolf, at the University of Rochester. His theoretical work was re-ported in the March 3l, 1986, issue of Physical Review Letters. There he showed how quasars and so-called "superluminary" astronomical sources might emit light with a spectrum that evolves as it travels through space. Scientists have always assumed that once light left its source its spectrum remained unchanged. But Wolf shows how spectral changes are "sort of coded into the light due to correlations in the source." Meanwhile, two of Wolf's colleagues have backed up his theory in the lab. The consequences of Wolf's work would in effect shrink the universe, because objects would not be as far away as we now calculate from their redshifts. The size of the universe might contract "by a factor of 100 or more," says Wolf. If this much deflation is accepted by other scientists (It could be quite a fight!), then the age of the universe will also shrink, since it is based in part on our observations of the outer fringe of the universe and the speed of light. (Amato, I.; "Spectral Variations on a Universal Theme,: ...
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... science is in flux. The words "chaos" and "complexity" are the current buzz words. They betoken, finally, the formal recognition by science that nature is frequently: Unpredictable (as in weather forecasting beyond a few days) Complex (as in any life form) Nonlinear (as in just about all real natural phenomena) Discontinuous (as in saltations in the fossil record) Out-of-equilibrium (as in real economics) Eroding fast are the philosophical foundation stones of the clockwork universe: the idea that nature is in balance, that geological processes are uniformitarian, that life evolved in small, random steps, and that the cosmos is deterministic. My view is that anomaly research, while not science per se, has the potential to destabilize paradigms and accelerate scientific change. Anomalies reveal nature as it really is: complex, chaotic, possibly even unplumbable. Anomalies also encourage the framing of rogue paradigms, such as morphic re-sonance and the steady-state universe. Anomaly research also transcends current scientific currency by celebrating bizarre and incongruous facets of nature, such as coincidence and seriality. However iconoclastic the pages of this book, the history of science tells us that future students of nature will laugh at our conservatism and lack of vision. Such heavy philosophical fare, however, is not the main diet of the anomalist. The search itself is everything. My greatest thrill, prolonged as it was, was in my forays through the long files of Nature, Science. the English Mechanic, the Monthly Weather Review, the Geological Magazine, and like ...
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... their way back so unerringly? Furthermore, by tracking the tagged fish, the researchers found the sharks often precisely followed the same paths in what seemed a featureless ocean. How did they do it? It was quickly ruled out that they were following specific ocean currents or the bottom topography. The hammerheads seemed to possess some sort of unrecognized navigation sense. Suspecting they might be sensing the geomagnetic field, Klimley began towing a magne tometer behind the boat. Sure enough, the hammerheads were following paths coincident with lines of high magnetic gradient. And Espiritu Santo itself turned out to be a sort of magnetic beacon from which radiated these magnetic "paths" that the hammerheads followed so exactly. Now the question became: How do hammerheads -- and perhaps other animals -- sense such exceedingly small changes in the geomagnetic field? Some birds and mammals do have small particles of magnetite in their bodies, but no one knows how they might be incorporated into a sensory organ. On the other hand, hammerheads and many other sharks are extraordinarily sensitive to electrical fields, responding to fields as low as 10-8 volt/centimeter. Possibly the sharks' forward motion cuts the magnetic lines of force generating an electrical navigational signal. No one knows as yet. And so one mystery leads to another. (Klimley, A. Peter; "Hammerhead City," Natural History, 104:33, October 1995) Comment. Some marine biologists suspect that some deep-water whales and dolphins inadvertently strand themselves while following magnetic "paths" like those radiating from Espiritu Santo. (See ...
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... Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Hopeful monsters rather than gradual evolution?S. J. Gould, who conducts a monthly column in Natural History reviews the sad history of Goldschmidt and his villification by the scientific establishment. Goldschmidt saw the fossil record as woefully inadequate to justify the assumption of gradual evolution of one form into another. Intermediate forms between separate species do not seem to exist in the fossil record and, if they did, they would probably not have been viable creatures. What good is half a wing? Gould believes that Goldschmidt's "hopeful monster" concept will ultimately be dusted off. The key to "macromutation," Gould feels, is not to be found in major gene reorganizations that might produce a whole wing, feathers included, all at once, but rather in changes in the genes that control the development of embryos. Embryos in their early stages are pretty much alike regardless of species. Gould hopes further that the ruling neo-Darwinians will not be so hostile to new ideas and eventually acknowledge Goldschmidt's important work. (Gould, Stephen J; "The Return of the Hopeful Monster," Natural History, 86: 22, June-July, 1977.) From Science Frontiers #2 , January 1978 . 1978-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 2: January 1978 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Fast-moving dark bands cross halo December 15, 1976. Chelmsford, Essex, England. At 1505 GMT, two groups of closely spaced grey bands were seen crossing the upper arc of contact of a 22 halo from left to right. The first group lasted 10 seconds, with a 15-second quiescent period before the second group. The second group lasted about 5 seconds. About 30 straight parallel, regularly spaced bands appeared during the first observation. Moving steadily, they took 2 seconds each to cross the arc of contact. The most likely cause of the phenomenon was thought to be changes in the orientation of the ice crystals that created the upper arc of contact. However, the author could suggest no physical mechanism for producing such unusual motion in the ice crystals. (Burton, B.J .; "Fast-Moving Dark Bands Crossing the Arc of Contact," Journal of Meteorology, (U .K .) , 2:233 1977.) From Science Frontiers #2 , January 1978 . 1978-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... -Jun 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Arboreal Internets Over a half century ago, Yale scientist H.S . Burr was inserting electrodes into trees to measure how voltage differences varied during the day and lunar month. Y. Miwa, at Waseda University in Tokyo, has gone more than one step farther. He and his coworkers have placed electrodes in the trunks of trees - 250 trees at a time - and measured the voltage differences every 2 seconds. They have discerned intriguing synchrony. "Miwa and his colleages studied primeval forests in Japan's Shizuoka and Nigata Prefectures, recording signals for two days at a time. In each forest, there were several groups of between 20 and 50 trees showing a similar pattern of changes in their potentials, each of which contained about half a dozen species. Neighboring trees were the most likely to be synchronized, but the groups did not have rigid boundaries. The membership of the groups was also not fixed: between the first and second days of recording, individual trees 'joined' and 'dropped out'." Miwa advances the idea that the trees must somehow be communicating with each other to achieve this synchrony. Botanists, though, suspect that environmental conditions force this coordinated behavior. Miwa will next remove a few members from each group to see if his arbicides are noticed by the neighbors. (Endo, Shinichi; "Japan's Ancient Trees Whisper Their Secrets," New Scientist, p. 19, May 13, 1995) Cross reference. This ...
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... Bimini road. Proponents of Atlantis and other radical archeological theories do not deny the similarity of the formations or even that the natural and supposedly man-made blocks are of the same composition. The Atlanteans, they say, obviously made use of readily available materials, and beach rock was their choice. Shinn goes on to prove to his satisfaction that the Bimini block formations are still in place where geological forces left them about 2,200 years ago. Further, he notes, there are absolutely no traces of human workmanship and no human artifacts in the area. One mystery is admitted, however, in this debunking article; and that is the unanswered question of how the Bimini rocks came to be submerged in 15 feet of water, when considerable evidence indicates that no such sea-level changes occurred in the last 2,200 years. (Shinn, E.A .; "Atlantis: Bimini Hoax," Sea Frontiers, 24:130, 1978.) From Science Frontiers #4 , July 1978 . 1978-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... 1949 Under the recent law making most government records available to the public, B.S . Maccabee obtained the FBI's UFO file. His analyses of this file have been serialized in the APRO Bulletin. One of the most unsettling revelations concerns the FBI data on the notorious "green fireballs" of the 1948-1949 era. According to the verbatim transcript of the FBI record, dated January 31, 1949, File No. 5: November 1978 Briefly, the "fireballs" were a brilliant green, sometimes beginning and ending with red or orange flashes. The objects travelled mainly on an east-west line at an average speed of 27,000 miles per hour. They seemed to pass over in level flight at altitudes of six to ten miles. On two occasions vertical changes of course were noted. Size was about one-fourth the diameter of the full moon. Multiple fireballs appeared in two instances. No sound was ever noted. No debris was ever discovered. (Maccabee, Bruce S.; "UFO Related Information from the FBI File," APRO Bulletin, 7, March 1978.) From Science Frontiers #5 , November 1978 . 1978-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... remain true and revert to one or the other of the original species. Although cell fusion has been observed only under laboratory conditions, it seems to represent a near-universal cell phenomenon that might be realized rarely under natural conditions. The implications for the history of life are far-reaching. For example, the mitochondria in human cells that help our bodies use oxygen to obtain energy may well be descendants of bacteria that once fused with primitive cells. The same may be true for the chloroplasts in plant cells. (Thomas, Lewis; "Cell Fusion: Does It Represent a Universal Urge to 'Join Up'?" Science Digest, 86:52, December 1979.) Comment. Natural cell fusion might make large evolutionary steps possible and be much faster than endless small genetic changes. Are we all composite creatures? From Science Frontiers #10, Spring 1980 . 1980-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... nonsense DNA sequences that do not code for protein. The presence of these "useless" bits of genetic material is often explained in terms of gene "expression." Emphasis is always on maximizing the "fitness" of the organism (phenotype). Perhaps this seemingly excess genetic material actually maximizes the fitness (survivability) of the DNA itself. Evolution thus occurs at DNA and gene (genome) levels, despite what transpires at the organism (phenotype) level. (Doolittle, W. Ford, and Sapienza, Carmen; "Selfish Genes, the Phenotype Paradigm and Genome Evolution," Nature, 284:601, 1980.) Comment. We know that mitochondria and chloroplasts have their own genetic material; evolution may be occurring at this level, too, independent of pressures for change on the organisms. Waxing speculative, may there not be other hierarchies where systems are trying to maximize their own survivability, even at molecular, atomic, and subatomic levels? Don't laugh! Is not all life implicitly encoded in the properties of the most fundamental particles? If not, reductionism is a lie. From Science Frontiers #11, Summer 1980 . 1980-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... the atomic unit of time. If these two ratios are truly equal, then G must decrease with time. Beyond the unstable feeling one gets, there is nothing in physics or cosmology to discourage a belief in time-varying gravity. Indeed, some as-tronomical data weakly support the idea. It is geophysics, though, where one finds strong evidence. Measurements of the decreasing length of the day and the expansion of the earth give about the same value for a decreasing G -- after other contributing factors have been eliminated. An interesting consequence of all this is that astrophysical theory seems to require that a decreasing G be balanced by increasing mass. Experiments are now underway to detect the continual creation of mass in terrestrial objects. (Wesson, Paul S.; "Does Gravity Change with Time?" Physics Today, 33:32, July 1980.) From Science Frontiers #12, Fall 1980 . 1980-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 13: Winter 1981 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A Funny Thing Happened Along The Mean Free Path A little anomaly may go a long way. Accelerator experiments at Berkeley have again focussed attention on those few fragments from nuclear reactions that have unexpectedly short trajectories. About 6% of these fragments travel only about one tenth as far as prevailing physical laws say they should. These anomalously short mean free paths are not new, having first cropped up in 1954, but they have gone unexplained for 26 years. Current speculation is that the anomalous fragments somehow change their identities, making them more susceptible to collision (i .e ., their collision cross sections spontaneously increase by ten times). But no known transformations of matter can do this! Consequently, we are left with the possiblity that some entirely new form of matter exists. (Robinson, Arthur L.; "A Nuclear Puzzle Emerges at Berkeley," Science, 210:174, 1980.) Comment. Just a few weeks ago, some nuclear physicists were saying that the advent of quark theory explained everything in their field. From Science Frontiers #13, Winter 1981 . 1981-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 13: Winter 1981 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Remarkably Early Dates For Agriculture B.K . Maloney, of the British Museum, describes his pollen analysis of sediments that have accumulated in the Toba Highlands of North Sumatra, Indonesia. The base of a 9.7 -meter core from the Pea Sim-sim Swamp has yielded a radiocarbon date of 18,496 years. Pollen studies of the core indicate a brief decline of forest pollen about 17,800 BP along with increased sedimentation characteristic of cleared land. Taken by themselves, these data would probably be interpreted in terms of natural climate changes. But extremely early dates for human activity exist nearby: 14,000 BP for agriculture in Thailand and 11,000 BP for forest clearance on Taiwan. It is possible, therefore, that men were clearing land for planting in North Sumatra almost 18,000 years ago. (Maloney, B.K .; "Pollen Analytical Evidence for Early Forest Clearance in North Sumatra," Nature, 287:324, 1980.) Comment. Some archeologists hotly disoute the early dates mentioned above. For more, see our Handbook: Ancient Man. Ordering information for this volume may be found here . From Science Frontiers #13, Winter 1981 . 1981-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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