... Langbien sends this English summary of an article that has appeared in a German magazine: " Magazin fur Grenzwissenshaften has received information about a Celtic monument from an amateur archeologist. Walter Haug contacted us and described this prehistoric structure. He had attempted to bring about an investigation by German federal agencies. However, this was refused. The professional archeologists are of the opinion that they are dealing with a quarry. MG investigated the matter. We visited this alleged early quarry and discovered a few things! We thought it odd that that it's been classified as a Roman or Celtic quarry. "The site itself is located in the Sternenfels district about 25 km west of Pfortzheim/Baden-Wurttemberg. "The structure consists of: An almost central dome-hill laid in brick, surrounded by natural, hewn stones. The dome-hill (height: 15-18 m; length: 100 m; width: 60-80 m) was stacked blockwise with Keuper sandstones and clay slate. The structure's volume is estimated at about 60,000 cubic meters, which corresponds to about 100,000 tons of rock. The encompassing artificial rock walls are thought to have served as a quarry for the manufacture of the dome stratification. These rock walls were hewn artificially with tools after the quarrying of the dome stones...a place of worship? According to the map, this dome structure forms a connecting axis with other Celtic sites in this area." Summarizing additional data from the translation: (1 ) This is the largest pyramid in Europe; (2 ...

... a tremendous explosion deep in the Siberian taiga near the Tunguska river caused trees over an area of 40 km in diameter to be flattened in a radial pattern and produced a pressure wave in the atmosphere which circled the Earth." June 17-27, 1975. On the moon. ". .. an unusual meteoroid 'storm' was detected by the array of seismometers placed on the moon during the Apollo missions. The peak impact rate on the moon of 0.5 -to-50-kg objects was about 10 times the normal background during this interval. Such a high rate was not recorded at any other time during the 8-year operation of the Apollo passive seismic network." Hartung links all three events to the comet Encke and the closely related Taurid Complex of naturally occuring space debris. Some chunks in this wide stream of space debris are measured in kilometers and, if they hit the earth, would far outclass the infamous Siberian projectile of 1908. (Hartung, Jack B.; "Giordano Bruno, the 1975 Meteoroid Storm, Encke, and Other Taurid Complex Objects," Icarus, 104:280, 1993. Comment. Since we will not mail this issue of SF until the first week in July, you are safe for another year (? ) if you are reading this! From Science Frontiers #94, JUL-AUG 1994 . 1994-2000 William R. Corliss PRECAMBRIAN NUCLEAR REACTORS! Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 94: Jul-Aug 1994 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 104: Mar-Apr 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects An invisible information superhighway?The eclectic nature of anomaly research occasionally uncovers connections between diverse areas of research. We recount one such instance here. On one hand is the neurological research of M.A . Persinger, at the Laurentian University, inquiring into the claimed effects of minute electromagnetic signals, such as those observed in the geomagnetic field, upon human consciousness and perception. On the other hand, we have R.G . Jahn's work in the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) program, which looks into the anomalous information transfer between humans and the environment, as claimed to be seen in psychokinesis and remote viewing experiments. The research goals and methodologies differ, and the resulting reports couched in different terminologies, but the similarities are what is really important. Both scientists are exploring unconventional information pathways connecting the human brain (consciousness) and the environment. The pathways are open in both directions. First, we quote the summary from a recent Persinger paper. The jargon may be technical, but one can readily visualize the human brain immersed in a sea of signals -- nominally electromagnetic but possibly of other sorts. "Contemporary neuroscience suggests the existence of fundamental algorithms by which all sensory transduction is translated into an intrinsic, brain-specific code. Direct stimulation of these codes within the human temporal or limbic cortices by applied electromagnetic patterns may require energy levels which are within the range of both geomagnetic activity and contemporary ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 99: May-Jun 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Ancient Modern Life And Carbon Dating Pursuant to the possible effect of the earth's recent envelopment by a molecular cloud on the accuracy of carbon dating (SF#98), we now look at the potential distortion caused by the ingestion of primordial carbon (carbon-13) by plants and animals. Primordial carbon may come from limestone or natural gas welling up from the earth's interior. Modern life forms that metabolize primordial rather than atmospheric carbon dioxide, with its cosmic-ray produced carbon-14, will appear extremely old when carbon-dated. For example, M. Grachev et al carbon-dated flatworms and a sponge collected from a bacterial mat near a thermal vent 420-meters deep in Lake Baikal. The apparent ages of these living organisms ranged from 6860 to 10,200 years. (Grachev, M., et al; "Extant Fauna of Ancient Carbon," Nature, 374:123, 1995) Even animals eating these apparently ancient life forms may take up their carbon-13 and, in effect, be drained of carbon-14. They would appear to age rapidly. Such false aging has actually been induced in the laboratory with mice fed on brewer's yeast grown in natural gas. These mice, living in cages at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California, were carbon-dated as being 13,000 years old, and were expected to attain a ripe old ...

... , these roughly conical depressions may span 350 meters or more and be up to 35 meters deep. No trivial phenomenon, some pockmark fields exceed 1,000 km2. Like the curious abyssal ridges (SF#97), sea-bed pockmarks are rarely discussed despite their great geological and economic importance. Recent issues of Geology contain three fascinating papers relating to giant sea-bed pockmarks. In Ref. 1, J.T . Kelley et al describe a pockmark field in Belfast Bay, Maine. Here, the density of the pockmarks reaches 160 per km2, and they are apparently the largest pockmarks yet discovered. The Belfast Bay field is "fresh" and "active" in the sense that the pockmarks are sharply defined and methane bubbles still stream up from buried organic matter. Natural-gas plume rising from the sea-floor off the Carolina coast. Another pockmark field is the subject of P.R . Vogt et al (Ref. 2). It occupies a strip about 1.3 km wide and 50 km long between Greenland and Spitzbergen. This strip of pockmarks seems to be underlain by a deposit of methane hydrate 200-300 meters thick. [Methane hydrate is a weird substance that looks like dirty ice. When brought to the surface, the methane fizzes away, leaving only a puddle of dirty water!] Lastly, in Ref. 3, C.K . Paull et al report on the release of plumes of methane bubbles from the Carolina continental rise at a depth of 2167 meters. Here, the sediments are riddled with methane ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 103: Jan-Feb 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Seeing Is Feeling It's all done with mirrors! By properly positioning a mirror, an arm amputee can see the image of his flesh-and-blood limb appearing where his lost limb would normally be -- in a sense visually resurrecting the lost limb. In this way, scientists can explore the effects of vision upon the multitude of very strange "phantom-limb" phenomena reported by amputees. V.S . Ramachandran et al have described some of their findings in Nature. "Nine arm amputees were studied. A tall mirror was placed vertically on the table, perpendicular to the patient's chest, so that he could see the mirror reflection of his normal hand 'superimposed' on the phantom. In the first seven patients, when the normal hand was moved so that the phantom was visually perceived to move in the mirror, it was also 'felt' to move; that is, a vivid kinaesthetic sensation emerged. (These sensations could not be evoked with the eyes closed.) In patient D.S ., kinaesthetic sensations were evoked even though he had not experienced movements in the phantom for the preceding 10 years." Several patients that experienced pain in their phantom limbs (pain that can be excruciating) found that the pain disappeared when they could "see" their phantom limb in the mirror. Those who complained of the so-called "clenching spasms" in their phantom ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 101: Sep-Oct 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Death waves and seebars A comprehensive, 12-page article on seiches appeared in the July/August issue of American Scientist, and it was awash with curious observations. A seiche (pronounced "saysh") is a rhythmic rocking motion of a body of water that has been disturbed by natural forces, such as sudden weather changes and, especially, earthquakes. A famous example of the latter seichedriving force occurred on March 27, 1964, when the Great Alaskan Earthquake sent seismic waves rippling around the globe. Fourteen minutes after this quake, the tremors reached the U.S . Gulf coast and triggered numerous seiches in bays, harbors, canals, bayous, etc. Some crest-to-trough waterlevel oscillations reached 2 meters in amplitude. Startling though these seiches were to Gulf fishermen, most seiches are wellexplained. Bodies of water that are mostly enclosed have natural frequencies of oscillation or "sloshing," just as do coffee cups and bathtubs. The Alaskan quake just operated on a larger scale than a bump to your coffee cup! Short-period oscillations in the tidal record from Puerto Princesa, Palawan Island, Philippines. These are coastal seiches, but hardly "death waves"! So far, so good. But there are exists an interesting -- and sometimes dangerous -- class of related events that affects open coastal waters. The Irish call them "death waves." In the Baltic, they are ...

... Semeru, a German scientific team noticed that the seismic waves were much more regular than one would expect from deep volcanic activity. Their recordings revealed a series of evenly spaced harmonic frequencies. They likened it to a musical instrument emitting a fundamental note accompanied by overtones. Sometimes, the fundamental tone would rise and fall, as if the mountain were playing a tune for them. The Germans, V. Schlindwein et al, postulated that the vibrations originated in a gas-filled cavity, presumably cylindrical -- something like an organ pipe -- capped at the top, with a pool of molten magma at the bottom. Volcanic vibrations resonated in this chamber and, as the magma pool rose and fell, so did the fundamental tone. Rather than a fixed organ pipe, it was a natural trombone! Unfortunately, the "earth music" was always in the infrasound range, 8 Hertz and less, and could not be heard by the researchers directly -- only their instruments could "listen." (Schneider, David; "Country Music," Scientific American, 273:28, November 1995.) Comments. There is no physical reason why such a subterranean trombone cannot play in the audible range. Such a mechanism might explain some of the mysterious hums heard in various localities, such as the Taos hum. (SF#88) Many unusual natural sounds are cataloged in Chapter GS in our catalog: Earthquakes, Tides, Unidentified Sounds. Ordering information here . Some animals can hear infrasound. Pigeons, for example, have special organs on their legs (of ...

... and harder to dismiss. Instead, the search is on for explanations of the rapid field changes. Three possibilities have been advanced -- all of them unpalatable to geophysicists: The Steens Mountain rocks are not faithful recorders of the main geomagnetic field. Should this be actually so, the whole field of paleomagnetism, including plate tectonics, is undermined, for it depends upon similar measurements. The earth's molten core can change rapidly, at least in some regions, in response to forces still unrecognized. This, of course, is not really a satisfying "explanation." The dynamo theory of the origin of the geomagnetic field is incorrect. (Coe, R.S ., et al; "New Evidence for Extraordinarily Rapid Change of the Geomagnetic Field during a Reversal," Nature, 374:687, 1995. Merrill, Ronald T.; "Principle of Least Astonishment," Nature, 374:674, 1995.) Reference. More puzzles of the geomagnetic field are provided in: Inner Earth. For details, visit: here . From Science Frontiers #101 Sep-Oct 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... yet seen anything in the English-language journals. These phenomena have a bearing on the still-enigmatic Tunguska event of 1908 -- customarily attributed to a celestial projectile of some sort -- and perhaps even those bizarre "cookie-cutter" holes found in the U.S ., Canada, Norway, and elsewhere. One of our Russian correspodents has summarized what is known about the Sasovo explosions, and we are pleased to be able to present part of his (lightly edited) letter here: "On April 12, 1991, a strange explosion took place near the Russian town of Sasova (350 km to the southeast of Moscow). After the explosion, a crater, diameter about 30 m and depth 3m, was found. At first, several ideas about its nature were proposed, but now almost all of them are abandoned, except one: that it was a tectonic (endogenic, to be exact) origin. This is proved by geophysical research in the region and a secondary, weaker explosion (a crater also appeared) taking place in 1992 in a sparsely populated area about 9 km away from the first one. For some years before the explosions, there were signs of increased tectonic activity in the region: a great number of 'fireballs' and so-called UFOs, evidence of slow ground deformation, and so on. For about several hours before the 1991 explosion, in many places, people saw numerous 'fireballs,' often accompanied by rumbling and even ground vibrations. In many houses, animals began to be anxious. Some ...

... a thousand years ago, sail reliably from one speck of land to another, thousands of miles distant? The archeology of Oceania confirms that the Polynesians made such voyages centuries before they learned about compasses and navigation satellites. But were these voyages anomalous; that is, did the Pacific peoples possess devices or talents unrecognized today by mainstream science? For the most part, the answer seems to be NO. While the navigational abilities of the Polynesian seafarers seemed supernatural to early European explorers, it has been convincingly demonstrated -- through modern voyages -- that the senses of sight, hearing, smell, touch, and time-passage are and were sufficient for most interisland voyages. The early Pacific navigators were adept at observing the waves, stars, birds, clouds, winds, and several other natural phenomena that carry subtle directional cues. There are, however, modern instances in which Pacific navigators bereft of the usual sensory cues seem to employ an anomalous "sense." B. Finney, in his study of the possibility of human magnetoreception, tells how one native Hawaiian navigator, though wellschooled in traditional Polynesian navigational techniques, conquered the dread doldrums on a 3,000mile voyage from Hawaii to Tahiti in a way we might call "psychic.". In the doldrums, the sky is often overcast and the seas leaden, expunging the usual cues. This particular navigator, Nainoa Thompson, entered the doldrums on a black night, with 100% cloud cover. The wind was switching around and the waves cueless. Nainoa's own words were: "It was like I ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 95: Sep-Oct 1994 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Music Of The Hemispheres The playing and composition of music has always been considered the near-exclusive province of the brain's right hemisphere. This turns out to be far from the truth. For example, non-musicians use both hemispheres in musical matters; the right side for recognizing melody and intonation, the left for such analytical matters as rhythm and notation. However, professional musicians, as their brain waves demonstrate, use their left hemispheres for just about everything of a musical nature. So much for the right-hemisphere theory! The comparison of magnetic resonance images of 27 right-handed musicians and 27 right-handed nonmusicians have shown that even their brain structures differ. The corpus callosum -- that inter-hemisphere information highway -- is 10-15% thicker in musicians who began their training while young than it is in nonmusicians. Our brain structure is apparently strongly molded by early training. The corpus callosum in musicians is essential in such things as finger coordination. Like a weight-lifter's biceps, it enlarges to accommodate the increased tasks assigned to it. (Anonymous; "Music of the Hemispheres," Discover, 15:15, March 1994.) Comment. It would be interesting to compare the brain structures of mathematicians and nonmathematicians where the dexterity factor is absent. From Science Frontiers #95, SEP-OCT 1994 . 1994-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... Younger, but very similar, structures have been found in Central Asia. A. Betts of the University of Sydney has been exploring these walls and attempting to discern their purpose. The best explanation seems to be that the ancient inhabitants of the region drove herds of wild animals into the wide mouths of the kites and then slaughtered them when they were trapped at the corral-like ends. The worst explanation is that extraterrestrials built them for some unknown purpose! (Anderson, Ian; "Prehistoric Prey Met Death through a Keyhole," New Scientist, p. 15, September 24, 1994.) Comment. Some kite walls extend 30 kilometers (18 miles) and represent a considerable investment of labor. See also: Field, Henry; "Early Man in North Arabia," Natural History, 29:32, 1929. Of course, aliens could have herded ancient humans into the kites. Remember the classic sci-fi story: "To Serve Man"? From Science Frontiers #96, NOV-DEC 1994 . 1994-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... between the Earth and a solid object: an asteroid or comet. Ice-cores drilled from Greenland show no evidence of large-scale volcanic activity at that time, so Professor Baillie and others now believe a cosmic impact is more likely. The result would have been to throw up a huge veil of dust and debris, cooling the Earth and producing widespread crop failures." (Anonymous; "Raining Death and Dark Ages," London Times, July 27, 1994. Cr. A. Rothovius) In the scientific literature, Baillie has elaborated on the cosmic-projectile theme, adding that the dust veil could also have been created when the solar system passed through a cloud of cosmic dust. (Baillie, M.G .L .; "Dendrochronology Raises Questions about the Nature of the AD 536 Dust-Veil Event," The Holocene , 4:212, 1994. Cr. L. Ellenberger) Comment. The scientific literature hints of dust-veil events in more recent times: (1 ) the white-sky phenomenon of 1912; and (2 ) the "dry fog" of 1783. See details in GWC1 and GWD4 in Tornados, Dark Days, etc. Ordering information here . From Science Frontiers #96, NOV-DEC 1994 . 1994-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... to see in the ultra-violet portion of the spectrum. Can it be only coincidence that the urine trails of the voles happen to absorb ultra-violet light strongly? Kestrels can see these trails as dark streaks in the grass below and zero in on their prey. Finnish scientists, led by E. Korpimaki at the University of Turku, have demonstrated the above ultraviolet connection by somehow acquiring enough vole urine to lay out artificial trails in voleless areas. Sure enough, hunting kestrels were attracted to the experimental site and searched and searched the artificial vole highways -- volelessly. (Aldous, Peter; "Vole's Urine Is Their Downfall," New Scientist, p. 15, February 4, 1995. Gee, Henry; "In the Eye of the Kestrel," Nature, 373:387, 1995) Comment. Even as you read this, evolution is surely helping the voles by altering the ultraviolet signature of their urine! Sure, this is a bit facetious, but predator-prey relationships are always seesawing. We see this vividly in organisms with very short generation times, such as in antibiotic-resistant malaria. From Science Frontiers #99, MAY-JUN 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... 's book Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets . It seems to have escaped or been ignored by the scientific press. We quote from Steel's book, in which he complains that such events get little publicity despite their ominous implications for the future of humanity. "It is therefore not surprising that the 10-meter-or-so asteroid that blew up over a largely vacant area of the western Pacific on February 1, 1994, producing an explosion equivalent to at least ten times that of the Hiroshima bomb (and possibly rather more), was not seen prior to impact. Surveillance satellites registered it as the brightest such explosion that they have picked up so far. Despite the efforts of numerous scientists in this area of study to make the military aware that such detonations do occur naturally, it appears that the U.S . President was awakened because the Pentagon thought that this incident might be a hostile nuclear explosion." From Science Frontiers #102 Nov-Dec 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... following crop circle streamline configurations: an upper layer, with an inward directed swirl of stems as viewed from above, and underneath a lower layer swirled outwards and orthogonal to the upper layer. This was the situation for the 17 m circle discovered by Busty Taylor at Headbourne Worthy, which appeared overnight on 1 August 1986 (Delgado and Andrews 1989). Its stem "streamlines" were sketched by Meaden and Andrews (Noyes 1990). Somehow the source-mechanism of this circle apparently first swirled every other stem outwards while leaving the remaining stems standing, then swirled the remaining stems inwards and at right angles to the layer below, again without any appreciable breakage of crop stems. "Not only does this rule out any hoax, since it defies all imagination, but it rules out any natural vortex as the cause. We have no recourse but to consider an intelligent source (Watts 1991). Readers of Weather should be aware that whenever 'plasma vortex' (Meaden 1989) is used to 'explain' the patterns in crops, 'UFO' could as well be subsituted. Paranormal events associated with the 'plasma vortex' and crop circles have been observed before by UFO witnesses since 1947, including the object's ability to undergo huge accelerations, to shroud itself in luminosity, to vanish abruptly even in daylight, and to cause an eerie stillness just before or after making its presence known to an observer close by (Meaden 1990)." References Delgado, P., and Andrews, C.; Circular Evidence , London, 1989. Meaden, G ...

... a Malaysian forest, where scientists are sampling canopy wildlife with nets: "When the researchers captured a group of bats in a wide-ranging effort to survey animals that inhabit the Malaysian canopy, they were dumbfounded to see that the eight adult male Dyaks [a species of fruit bat] in the net all had visibly swollen breasts that produced milk upon being gently squeezed." No other wild male mammals are known to give milk, although inbred domestic male goats and sheep will -- rarely -- lactate. It is not known if the male bats actually nurse the young. (Angier, Natalie; New York Times, February 24, 1994. Cr. J. Covey. Also: Francis, Charles M., et al; "Lactation in Male Fruit Bats," Nature, 367:691, 1994. Fackelmann, K.A .; Science News, 145:148, 1994.) Comment. In their book Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine, G.M . Gould and W.L . Pyle record several cases of human males lactating and even suckling infants. From Science Frontiers #93, MAY-JUN 1994 . 1994-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... groups, one of which trends approximately parallel to the asteroid's long axis, but is offset by some 15 , the other is approximately perpendicular to this trend. The first of these directions falls along a family of planes which parallel three extensive flat facets identified by Thomas et al. The occurrence of grooves on Gaspra is consistent with other indications (irregular shape, cratering record) that this asteroid has evolved through a violent collisional history." (Veverka, J., et al; "Discovery of Grooves on Gaspra," Icarus, 107:72, 1994.) Comment. The pits along Gaspra's cracks, as on Phobos, suggest the violent expulsion of gases. Where could these gases have come from? "Sandblows" are sometimes formed during terrestrial earthquakes as natural gases and other fluids are squeezed out of the earth's porous outer crust. Could Gaspra harbor primordial methane? If so, is it biogenic or abiogenic? Reference. An entire chapter on the anomalies of asteroids can be found in our catalog: The Sun and Solar System Debris. Details here . From Science Frontiers #94, JUL-AUG 1994 . 1994-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... popular media. Everyone expected that the impact of this comet on Jupiter would provide us with some very interesting phenomena, but most thought that the debris kicked up by the impacts would reveal something new about Jupiter -- not about comets, since everyone knows what they are! Instead, the long-held theory that comets are simply dirty iceballs is now questioned. Shoemaker-Levi-9 was originally classified as a comet because: (1 ) Its fragments all appeared to be surrounded by comas like all well-behaved comets; and (2 ) It was easily torn apart by Jupiter's strong gravitational field as it narrowly missed Jupiter in 1992. This is just what one would expect from a loosely compacted dirty iceball. But doubts about Shoemaker-Levi-9 's true nature have arisen because of two observations: (1 ) No water vapor has been detected in the plumes thrown up by the impacts of the fragments; and (2 ) The comet's Fragment M, which was supposed to have vaporized in 1993, as comets are wont to do, apparently did not and left a scar on Jupiter like the other fragments. So, Shoemaker-Levi-9 had no discernible ice (unlike comets; it was fragile and easily fragmented (unlike rocky asteroids); and Fragment M did not have a coma (unlike comets but like asteroids)! Was Shoemaker-Levi-9 really a comet? (Roylance, Frank D.; "Is That Really a 'Comet' Hitting Jupiter?" Baltimore Sun, July 20, 1994. ...

... out of the question. Instead, the glow was some form of reflection from dew-covered leaves, and only from certain species of trees at that. "Later nocturnal expeditions with a powerful flashlight (a proceeding that aroused dark suspicions in at least one local gamekeeper) showed that it favoured only certain types of conifer and a few shrubs such as the yew and rhododendron. The explanation lies in the contact angle of the droplets on the leaves: as this rises above 90 degrees or so, the proportion of light from the car's headlamps that is reflected back towards the occupant increases, and for angles above 140 degrees, the retroreflection becomes spectacular. Blue spruces show the glow particularly well." (Matthews, Lindsay; "Reflections on a Summer's Night," Nature, 369:441, 1994.) From Science Frontiers #95, SEP-OCT 1994 . 1994-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... shot down all the time. Several have thought they had found a massive black hole at the center of our own galaxy. This no longer seems likely. (Ref. 4) Conclusion. Don't be too quick to accept such bizarre constructs as black holes, whether small or massive. References Parker, Barry; "Where Have All the Black Holes Gone?" Astronomy, 22: 36, October 1994. Flam, Faye; "Theorists Make a Bid to Eliminate Black Holes," Science, 266:1945, 1994. Cowen, R.; "New Evidence of a Galactic Black Hole," Science News, 147:36, 1995. Goldwurm, A., et al; "Possible Evidence against a Massive Black Hole at the Galactic Center," Nature, 371:589, 1994. From Science Frontiers #99, MAY-JUN 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... with their flicking tongues. In general exploration, when chemical trails are absent, snakes seem to wave their tongues up and down in a distinctive manner, avoiding surfaces. Herpetologists usually ascribe this action to chemical "sniffing." However, W.T . Vonstille and W.T . Stille, III, venture a different explanation: "The fact that moist air is conductive for the electric charges that exist on the Earth's surface could be very important to a snake's survival. The airborne plumes of moisture exhaled by animals and flowing out from under cover are invaded by static charges from the Earth and could be detected by snakes." (Vonstille, W.T ., and Stille, W.T ., III; "Electrostatic Sense in Rattlesnakes," Nature, 370:184, 1994.) From Science Frontiers #96, NOV-DEC 1994 . 1994-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... an unpalatable species, as with mimics of the Monarch Butterfly. That is, there seems to be no evolutionary advantage to looking alike. (Miller, Julie Ann; BioScience, inside front cover, March 1994. Miller's editorial remarks are based upon a later article by H.F . Nijhout, who also supplied the photographs. Nijhout's article explains how butterfly wing patterns may have evolved.) Comment. Cases of remarkable mimicry also occur among geographically separated species. For example, the North American Meadowlarks are dead ringers for the African Yellow-throated Longclaw. "Convergent evolution" names the phenomenon but doesn't tell how or why long chains of random mutations can come up with the same designs where there seems to be no "guidance" by the forces of natural selection. Perhaps genomes contain "subprograms" for those patterns and structures often used in biology. Of course, Sheldrake's idea of "morphic resonance" also applies here! From Science Frontiers #95, SEP-OCT 1994 . 1994-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... indeed craters in the polar regions of Mercury. These craters match up well with the radar reflectivity anomalies recorded earlier. So, it now seems likely that ice does exist on Mercury. And, since our moon also boasts permanently shadowed crater areas, ice probably survives there, too. This is good news for future lunar colonists. But where could the ice on Mercury and the moon have come from? One source might have been the gases seeping out from the bodies' interiors. Also, cometary impacts could have added water vapor to the atmospheres. This would then have been deposited as frost in cold crater bottoms, just like the frost seen on winter window panes. (Harmon, J.K ., et al; "Radar Mapping of Mercury's Polar Anomalies," Nature, 369:213, 1994.) Comment. But are comets really the water bearers the astonomers say they are? See the item under ASTRONOMY. From Science Frontiers #95, SEP-OCT 1994 . 1994-2000 William R. Corliss ...