250 results found.
... 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 Deep Quake Deepens Mystery Most earthquakes are shallow. They are concentrated no deeper than 20-25 kilometers down. However, a few extremely deep quakes rumble at depths of about 600 kilometers. On June 8, 1994, what may be the largest deep earthquake of the century -- magnitude 8.2 -- exploded 640 kilometers beneath Bolivia. "Exploded" may or may not be the proper word. Geophysicists are really not certain what causes the very deep quakes, because at 640 kilometers rocks are so hot that they flow rather than snap under geological stresses. The more common, shallow earthquakes are generally created when rocks snap and fracture. Since the deep quakes seem to be concentrated in subducted slabs of terrestrial crust that plunge down deep into the earth's mantle, geophysicists suppose that the increasing heat and pressure applied to the descending slabs may cause "explosive" phase changes in minerals contained in the slabs. Phase changes often involve volume changes that, if sudden, might generate seismic waves. Too, water of hydration in minerals may be explosively turned into vapor. But this is all surmise at present. The Bolivian quake also caused the whole earth to ring like a bell. Every 20 minutes or so, the entire planet expanded and contracted a minute but detectable amount. Another surprise: the Bolivian earthquake was felt a far away as Seattle -- the first time that a quake in that part of South ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 96: Nov-Dec 1994 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Two really deep oceans During our latest anomaly-collecting cycle, we came across two reports on apparently identical phenomena. Neither article mentioned the work of the other! Both groups of scientists processed massive quantities of earthquake records to form "seismic images" of structures deep in the bowels of the earth. (The technique is called "seismic tomography.") Both groups have discerned huge slabs of crust that were once on the planet's surface but were subsequently thrust (" subducted") down under the continents. These slabs are now hundreds of kilometers below the surface, and they have dragged water along with them. In fact, their water inventories may rival today's surface oceans; they may even have been surface oceans themselves millions of years ago before they descended into the infernal regions. Only a few years ago, all geologists maintained that all water in subducted slabs was squeezed out of the rocks by immense pressure and later reappeared at the surface as volcanic steam. Deep ocean #1 . G. Nolet and A. Zielhuis, Princeton seismologists, report a huge reservoir of water about 900 kilometers under present-day Europe. Some 400-500 million years ago, there was an ocean in this locale. (Zimmer, Carl; "The Ocean Within," Discover, 15:20, October 1994.) Deep ocean #2 . H. Wysession, Washington University, has located a water ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 124: Jul-Aug 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Photosynthesis At Deep-Sea Vents The surprisingly rich populations of lifeforms that prosper around the hydrothermal vents have been thought to be utterly dependent upon chemical energy for their survival. Such now seems to be a limited view. There is light at the bottom of the ocean! "Of particular interest is the potential for deep-sea vents and subsurface environments to support geothermally (rather than solar-) driven photosynthesis. Recent work on ambient light conditions at hydrothermal vents indicates that the photon flux generated by thermal radiation of 350 C water should be sufficient to sustain lowlevel photosynthesis, and there is at least one report of a faculative phototroph isolated from water samples taken near a deep-sea vent." A particularly important implication of this undersea light source is that the evolution of photosynthesis need not have been dependent upon the existence of life on land. Also, hydrothermal vents could have served as refuges for photosynthesizing life forms down the geological eons when: (1 ) ocean surfaces were ice-covered; (2 ) the terrestrial surface was exposed to deadly levels of radiation, as when the ozone layer was destroyed; and (3 ) when volcanism or dust from meteor impacts blackened the skies. (Van Dover, Cindy Lee; "Biology in Extreme Environments at Deep-Sea Hydrothermal Vents," Eos, 70:F54, 1998.) From Science Frontiers #124, JUL-AUG 1999 . 1999-2000 William R ...
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... 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 A DEEP-SEA HYDROTHERMAL VENT INSTEAD OF A WARM LITTLE POND?If earth life didn't arrive from outer space (See under ASTRONOMY.), it may have arisen a couple miles below the ocean's surface at hydrothermal vents. The curious glows recently remarked at these vents (SF#87) have stimulated much speculation as to the potential role of these glows in the origin of life: "The history of hydrothermal activity predates the origin of life, and light in the deep sea has been a continuous phenomenon on a geological time scale and may have served either as a seed or refugium for the evolution of biological photochemical reactions or adaptations." We formally classify this item under GEOPHYSICS because scientists are still pondering how these glows are created. Some of the light is obviously black-body radiation from the very hot (350 C) water but: ". .. other potential, narrow-band sources of light may be superimposed on the blackbody radiation spectrum, including crystaloluminescence, Cerenkov radiation, chemiluminescence, triboluminescence, sonoluminescence, and the burning of methane in supercritical water." (Van Dover, Cindy Lee, et al; "Light at Deep Sea Hydrothermal Vents," Eos, vol. 75, 1994.) Comment. If cold, diffuse molecular clouds in deep space can synthesize glycine, imagine what the hot, chemically-rich fluids around hydrothermal vents might be able to do. ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 14: Winter 1981 Supplement Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Eyes of deep-sea fish have spare parts The sunlight that filters down into the depths of the sea is exceedingly weak. It is so dark down there that one would expect deep-sea fish to be blind like many cave-dwelling animals. They are not blind; rather many have eyes of fantastic size and novel construction. An unusual feature of some deep-sea eyes is a layered retina. In the conger eel, five layers of photoreceptors are plastered on top of one another. Yet, experiments with conger eel eyes reveal that only one layer of photoreceptors is active at any one time. R. Shapley and J. Gordon, who carried out these experiments at the Plymouth Lab., surmise that the extra retinal layers are being held in reserve, much like the rows of spare teeth found in sharks' mouths. If so, deep-sea fish are the only animals that have evolved spare stores of visual pigments. (Anonymous; "The Mystery of the Non-Functioning Receptors," New Scientist, 88:366, 1980.) Comment. Why haven't cave-dwelling fish taken the same evolutionary route? From Science Frontiers #14, Winter 1981 . 1981-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 65: Sep-Oct 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Microorganisms At Great Depths It was a surprise when diverse biological communities were discovered around deep-sea thermal vents, where sunlight is nonexistent and the energy for sustaining life must be extracted from the mineral-charged water gushing from the vents. An analogous situation occurs at great depths in the earth's crust itself, as proven by sampling at three deep boreholes in South Carolina. Number of microorganism colony types at various depths at Site P28. The concentration and diversity of microorganisms (mostly bacteria) at depths as great as 520 meters (1610 feet) below the ground's surface are remarkably high. It makes one wonder what will be found even farther down. To illustrate, more than 3000 different microorganisms have been found in the boreholes. Many of the bacteria are new to science. As the following two paragraphs demonstrate, subterranean life consists of many well-adapted microorganisms working together. "The traditional scientific concept of an abiological terrestrial subsurface is not valid. The reported investigation has demonstrated that the terrestrial deep subsurface is a habitat of great biological diversity and activity that does not decrease significantly with increasing depth. "The enormous diversity of the microbiological communities in deep terrestrial sediments is most striking. The organisms vary widely in structure and function, and they are capable of transforming a variety of organic and inorganic compounds. Regardless of the depth sampled, the microorganisms were able to perform the cycling of carbon, nitrogen, sulfur ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 114: Nov-Dec 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Surface life (us!) only a "special case"T. Gold is again challenging our most cherished ideas about geology and life's domain. In the subject article -- his latest paradigm-shaker -- he first reviews the abundant evidence for the existence of large quantities of primordial hydrocarbons deep within the earth and (probably) many other planets throughout the universe. Associated with these hydrocarbons is a "deep, hot, biosphere." By "deep" Gold means 100 kilometers and more. It is this combination of a deep reservoir of hydrocarbons and life forms (probably mostly bacteria) that can account for (among other things): The fact that all helium comes from oil and gas wells The fact that the composition of petroleum is not what one would expect from the decomposition of plants and animals. It is really a mixture of primordial hydrocarbons with some added biochemical by-products; that is, products of that "deep" biosphere. Since carbonaceous material is now known to be common in the solar system (comets, carbonaceous chondrites, etc.), it is likely that many other planets also possess deep stores of hydrocarbons. In these deep, warm, protected, energyrich "wombs," complex biospheres might readily evolve. In Gold's view, deep biospheres may be the rule and surface life the exception! Finally, Gold sees life as merely a natural process with no ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 35: Sep-Oct 1984 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Confusing Seismic Data From The Deep Continental Crust Seismic exploration of the deep continental crust seems to indicate that huge sheets of crystalline rock have been pushed over sedimentary strata. The crystalline sheets, perhaps kilometers in thickness, were forcibly shoved hundreds of kilometers over sedimentary deposits during continental collisions -- so the theory goes. One such crystalline sheet is under the Southern Appalachians. Seismic data say it is about 10 kilometers thick and was pushed westward some 225 kilometers. If it seems intuitively impossible for such a thin sheet to remain intact during 225kilometers of shoving over other rocks, consider a similar sheet in the Basin and Range province of Utah. This sheet was pulled down an inclined fault without coming apart! These sliding sheets with remarkable structural integrities are required to explain what geophysicists see in the seismic reflections; namely, transparent zones of crystalline rock sitting on top of rocks that return strong reflections typical of layered sedimentary strata. However, one such situation in Arizona was explored with a drill bit. When the upper crystalline layer was penetrated, the drill found only more crystalline rocks, nothing sedimentary. In fact, the crystalline rock was not layered and was homogeneous. Thus, the source of the misleading seismic reflections is unknown. (Kerr, Richard A.; "Continental Drilling Heading Deeper," Science, 224:1418, 1984. Also: Anonymous; "Probing the Deep Con-tinental Crust," Science, 225: ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 62: Mar-Apr 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects What is exploding 400 miles beneath our feet?Earthquake statistics as a function of depth. Obviously, something we do not understand is happening at about 600km. (Adapted from Scientific American, 260:48, Jan 1989. The author of the article we review here, C. Frohlich, was also the reviewer of our Catalog volume Earthquakes, Tides, Unidentified Sounds for a scientific journal. He liked the book but pointed out that we had overlooked an important earthquake anomaly: the deep-focus earthquake. He was right; we never realized how anomalous deep quakes are! Frohlich's review and those of other specialists make us realize how many more anomalies there are out there, even though we have produced 25 volumes of descriptions of hard-toexplain phenomena. Be this as it may, let us see what Frohlich has to say about deep-focus earthquakes. Why are they anomalous? Can't quakes occur at any depth in the earth? No! Because below about 60 kilometers, the rocks should be so hot that they become ductile; instead of breaking catastrophically under stress, they just deform or "flow." It would appear, then, that conditions for earthquakes do not exist below 60 kilometers. Nevertheless, since 1964, more than 60,000 earthquakes have been recorded below 70 kilometers - some as far down as 700 kilometers. Conditions way down there cannot be what we think they are ...
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... Scientific American, etc Archaeology Astronomy Biology Geology Geophysics Mathematics Psychology Physics Catalog of Anomalies (Subjects)Overview Astronomy Biology Chemistry/Physics Geology Geophysics Logic/mathemitics Archeology Psychology Miscellaneous phenomena Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online Science Frontiers: The Book Sourcebook Project E GEOLOGY Catalog of Anomalies (Geology Subjects)Within each of these fields, catalog sections that are already in print are given alphanumerical labels. For example, BHB1 = B (Biology)+ H (Humans)+ B (Behavior)+ 1 (first anomaly in Chapter BHB). Some anomalies and curiosities that are listed below have not yet been cataloged and published in catalog format. These do not have the alphanumerical labels. EC Chemical and Physical Anomalies associated with inner Earth ECC CHEMICAL ANOMALIES ECC1 Anomalous Abundances of Some Noble Gases ECD DEEP-DRILLING DISCOVERIES ECD1 Drilling Truth Confounds Surface Science ECG STRUCTURAL ANOMALIES INDICATED BY GRAVITATIONAL ANOMALIES ECG1 Remarkable Gravity Anomalies ECG2 Gravity Trends That Challenge the Continent-Accretion Model ECG3 Gravity Data Indicating Large Mantle Inhomogeneities ECG4 Anomalous Gravity Signals Following Earthquakes ECH HEAT-FLOW ANOMALIES ECH1 Mid-Plate Volcanism ECH2 Hawaiian Hot-Spot Tracks ECH3 Dearth of Continental Hot Spots ECH4 Non-Random Distribution of Hot Spots ECH5 Thermal Plumes Correlated with Other Geophysical Activity EQ SEISMIC PROBING OF INNER EARTH EQA LOCALIZED STRUCTURES IN THE CORE AND MANTLE EQA1 Stratification of Basement Rocks EQA2 Deep Continental Roots EQA3 Deep Penetration of Subducted Slabs EQA4 Lateral Inhomogeneities in the Lower Mantle EQA5 Mysterious Structures at the Core-Mantle Boundary EQA6 Seismic Reflectors EQD SEISMIC DETECTION OF LARGE SCALE DISCONTINUITIES, ZONES, STRUCTURES EQD1 Velocity Discontinuities EQD2 Channels and Zones EQD3 Structural ...
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... . The author believes that bacterioform gold is widespread. (Watterson, John R.; "Preliminary Evidence for the Involvement of Budding Bacteria in the Origin of Alaskan Placer Gold," Geology , 20:315, 1992.) Microorganisms and iron deposits. At least 500 million years ago, filamentous bacteria and/or fungi were already playing vital roles in the deposition of iron from hydrothermal fluids. Abundant microbial filaments indicative of biological activity are found in the Cambrian ironstones in Australia's Thalanga deposit. (Duhig, Nathan C., et al; "Microbial Involvement in the Formation of Cambrian Sea-Floor Silica-Iron Oxide Deposits," Geology , 20:511, 1992.) Deeper implications. The formation of placer gold and ironstone are only part of the repertoire of deep-living microorganisms. A five-year survey of microbial life conducted by the U.S . Department of Energy (DOE) found that bacteria were everywhere -- even 3 kilo meters deep in a Virginia borehole. F. Wobber, the DOE manager of the project underscored the mystery and probable importance of "biogeology": "Besides asking how subsurface bacteria affect geology, he wonders how geologic processes could have carried living things so deep into the planet. 'When you find these organisms at great depths,' he says, 'you have to ask: Where did they come from?' Microbes from the soil could easily infiltrate shallow aquifers...but in very deep sediments, like those in the Texaco well, the microbes may have been entombed when the rock ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 69: May-Jun 1990 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Deep-sixing another hypothesis?T. Gold once said, "In choosing a hypothesis, there isn't any virtue in being timid." Neither have the Swedes been timid in following Gold's lead by drilling for natural gas in the granite of central Sweden. All the experts pre-dicted this quest would come to naught, because there are no source rocks in the area containing biological materials from which the gas could have been generated. But Gold does not believe that the methane in natural gas comes from buried organic debris. Rather, most methane is primordial and abiogenic, a legacy left deep in the earth's crust when our planet was formed. The 72-kilometer-diameter Siljan Ring in central Sweden is generally believed to be of meteoric origin. The granite here has been shattered, perhaps to a depth of 40 kilometers. If Gold's hypo-thesis about the origin of methane is correct, methane might well be found seeping up through this wound in the earth's outer skin. Further, the shattered granite might prove to be a gigantic reservoir of valuable methane. The Swedes decided to drill. After three years and the expendi-ture of $40 million, drilling at the Siljan Ring has been terminated. The drill penetrated to 6.8 kilometers before it got stuck. No significant methane had been found. The experts snickered! But the story is not finished ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 124: Jul-Aug 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The mystery of eugene island 330 Eugene Island is a submerged mountain in the Gulf of Mexico about 80 miles off the Louisiana coast. The landscape of Eugene Island is riven with deep fissures and faults from which spew spontaneous belches of gas and oil. Up on the surface, a platform designated Eugene Island 330 began producing about 15,000 barrels of oil per day in the early 1970s. By 1989, the flow had dwindled to 4,000 barrels per day. Then, suddenly, production zoomed to 13,000 barrels. In addition, estimated reserves rocketed from 60 to 400 million barrels. Even more anomalous is the discovery that the geological age of today's oil is quite different from that recovered 10 years ago. What's going on under the Gulf of Mexico? It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the oil reservoir at Eugene Island is rapidly refilling itself from "some continuous source miles below the earth's surface." In support of this surmise, analysis of seismic records revealed a deep fault which "was gushing oil like a garden hose." The deep-seated oil source at Eugene Island strongly supports T. Gold's theory about The Deep Hot Biosphere . Gold holds: "that oil is actually a renewable, primordial syrup continually manufactured by the earth under ultrahot conditions and tremendous pressures. As this substance migrates toward the surface, it is attacked by bacteria, making it ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 72: Nov-Dec 1990 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Baikal's deep secrets Lake Baikal, in Siberia, requires many superlatives in its description. It is the deepest lake, 1637 meters; the oldest lake, 20-25 million years; and home to the richest array of lake life, both in terms of biomass and recorded species. There are found here 1550 species and variants of animals plus 1085 plants. Over 1000 of these species of life are found nowhere else. The sediments de-posited on the lake floor are of astounding thickness. Bedrock lies 7 kilometers below the lake surface in some spots. With a maximum depth of 1637 meters, we find by subtraction places where more than 5 kilometers of sediment have collected. The diversity of Baikal's life is remarkable in itself, but there are two aspects of it that approach the anomalous: (1 ) Baikal's seals are 1000 kilometers of so from salt water. How did they get there and when? (2 ) Hydrothermal-vent communities have been discovered at a depth of about 400 meters in the northern part of the lake. These communities contain sponges, bacterial mats, snails, transparent shrimp, and fish; some of which are new to science. Baikal's thermal vents are the only ones known in freshwater lakes. Their rela tion to saltwater vent communities has not yet been explored. (Stewart, John Massey; "Baikal's Hidden Depths," New Scientist ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 67: Jan-Feb 1990 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects We Live Atop A Chemical Retort Far down there beneath our feet, the earth's chemicals are bubbling away, aided often by bacteria and other life forms. It's a dark world, but it's also hot, permeated by fluids, and possibly the abode of organisms we haven't dreamed of. Three hints of this nether world follow. Quick oil. Rather than ripening in deep strata for millions of years, as per prevailing theory, some oil is being created in only a few thousand years in the vicinities of ocean-bottom chimneys. Dimesized oil globules have been sighted floating near these chimneys. Analysis of chunks broken off the chimneys by research submersibles reveal the presence of petroleum-like hydrocarbons that are less than 5000 years old. It is thought that high-temperature fluids percolating up through the sediments convert buried organic matter into oil very rapidly. (Monastersky, R.; "The Quick Recipe for a Soup of Black Gold," Science News, 136:295, 1989.) Comment. Not mentioned in this article is T. Gold's theory that oil is actually derived from primordial carbon deep in the crust. Gassy water. Some water wells in Texas also produce much methane. This methane is apparently not related to any oil or gas wells in the region. Rather, surmise has it that bacteria deep in the crust are converting buried organic material into methane and ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 87: May-Jun 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The vent glow and "blind" shrimp In 1988, when the research submersible Alvin was exploring those remarkable hydrothermal vents or "black smokers." Its CCD (Charge-Coupled Device) camera detected a ghostly glow emanating from the vents. Since this mineral-laden water gushing from these cracks in the deep-sea floor exits at 350 -400 C, the simplest explanation of the vent glow is that is is simply thermal radiation from the hot fluid. Indeed, color filters on the camera recorded a spectrum close to that of a 350 C plume. But the deep-sea shrimp camped around the vents have raised second thoughts. The shrimp, only a few inches long, live in the perpetual darkness of the miles-deep vents. They do not need and do not have ordinary eyes. Rather, they sport a mysterious organ on their backs that is connected to their brains by a nerve-fiber bundle much like an optic nerve. This organ is packed with the same light-sensitive pigments found in the eyes of surface creatures. Despite its unusual location on the shrimp, it is an "eye" of sorts. But of what use is it in the Stygian abysses? To find, perhaps, vent glows that betray the presence of chemosynthetic food sources. If this is so, the shrimps' optical organ, which is most sensitive in the blue-green portion of the spectrum, is ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 81: May-Jun 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Deep-sixing 666s On May 1, 1991, the British Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency announced that it would no longer issue automobile license plates bearing the number 666. Cars bearing such plates, it seems, have been involved in too many accidents! (Grossman, Wendy M.; "No More 666s," Skeptical Inquirer, 16:128, 1992.) Comment. Recall that 666 is the "Number of the Beast" in the Bible. From Science Frontiers #81, MAY-JUN 1992 . 1992-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... the planet's integument. Now, K.G . Stetter et al: ". .. report the discovery of high concentrations of hyperthermophiles [viz., bacteria] in the production fluids from four oil reservoirs about 3,000 metres below the bed of the North Sea and below the permafrost surface of the North Slope of Alaska. Enrichment cultures of sulphidogens grew at 85 C and 102 C, which are similar to in reservoir temperatures." Stetter et al favor the theory that these hyperthermophiles were injected into the reservoirs through: (1 ) drilling and secondary-recovery operations; and/ or (2 ) natural penetration via faults and seeps. They pointedly distance themselves from the idea, championed by T. Gold, that subterranean bacteria are actually permanent ancient residents of a deep subterranean biosphere. (Stetter, K.O ., et al; "Hyperthermophilic Archaea Are Thriving in Deep North Sea and Alaskan Oil Reservoirs," Nature, 365:743, 1993.) On the other hand, in their comments on the above paper, J. Parkes and J. Maxwell do not shy away from the theory that these denizens of hot, deep oil reservoirs are really indigenous life forms deposited with sediments in distant geological ages, surviving still and even evolving and conquering the infernal regions. They say: "The results presented do, however, provide firm evidence for the presence of a subterranean biosphere in oil reservoirs; moreover they are consistent with demonstrations of the existence of other deep biospheres in aquifers and marine sediments, which together indicate that the biosphere is ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 67: Jan-Feb 1990 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Really-deep rivers "Ecologists studying rivers have discovered a vast subterranean world filled with dozens of previously unknown species of worms, shrimp, insects and microscopic organisms that live in the groundwater below the stream channel and sometimes for miles on each side." The quotation above once again evokes the concept of "crevicular structure" in the crust. The crevicular world is that immense, unappreciated maze of underground space created by cracks in the rocks, solution channels, permeable gravels, and so on. In the article reviewed here, a crevicular realm has been discovered underneath river beds. But this is just a special case of a subterranean world found many places beneath the surface -- even under the continental shelves. The surface waters we see are just (to use an aquatic metaphor) the tip of the iceberg! Sub-river life lives far under the beds of the great Alaskan rivers and even small desert streams in Arizona. Preliminary exploration has shown that fluid-and life-filled crevicular structure exists at least 30 feet under river beds and may extend several miles to either side. For example, water wells drilled two miles from the Flathead River, in Montana, yield immature stoneflies. J. Stanford, Director of Montana's Flathead Lake Biological Station states, "We have basically enlarged the concept of what a river is." He and his colleagues have found at least a dozen new species in the crevicular ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 121: Jan-Feb 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Oklo: An Unappreciated Cosmic Phenomenon In 1972, French scientists discovered that several natural concentrations of uranium ore had become critical and flared up some 2 billion years ago at Oklo, Gabon. The concentration and configuration of the natural uranium and surrounding materials at that time had been just right to sustain fission. In fact, the analysis of the nuclear waste in the burned rocks demonstrated that plutonium had also been created. This implies that natural breeder reactors are also possible, raising the possibility of hitherto unappreciated, long-lived heat sources deep in the earth, in the other planets, and inside some of the stars. Don't worry that the Oklo phenomenon might occur today on the earth's surface. The concentration of fissionable U-235 has fallen considerably in the last 2 billion years due to its radioactive decay. But, deep inside the earth and other astronomical bodies, nuclear criticality might still be possible due to different pressures, densities, etc. In a stimulating and generally overlooked paper in Eos, J.M . Herndon proffers four important natural phenomena that may involve natural fission reactors. Geomagnetic reversals . In the deep earth, where pressures and densities are high, natural nuclear reactors may generate intermittent bursts of heat -- just as they did at Oklo -- and thereby cause the earth's dynamo to falter and reverse. Planetary heating . Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune emit much more energy than ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 76: Jul-Aug 1991 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Eight Leatherback Mysteries Our subject here is the leatherback turtle. Weighing up to 1600 pounds, it is the largest of the sea turtles. It is also the fastest turtle, hitting 9 miles per hour at times. But weight and speed are not necessarily mysterious; here are some characteristics that are: The leatherback is the only turtle without a rigid shell. Why? Perhaps it needs a flexible shell for its very deep dives. What looks like a shell is its thick, leathery carapace -- a strange streamlined structure with five to seven odd "keels" running lengthwise. These turtles are warm-blooded , and able to maintain their temperatures as much as 10 F above the ambient water, just as the dinosaurs apparently could. The bones of the leatherback are more like those of the marine mammals (dolphins and whales) than the reptiles. "No one seems to understand the evolutionary implications of this." Leatherbacks dive as deep as 3000 feet which is strange because they seem to subside almost exclusively on jellyfish, most of which are surface feeders. Like all turtles, leatherbacks can stay submerged for up to 48 hours. Just how they do this is unexplained. Their brains are miniscule. A 60-pound turtle possessed a brain weighing only 4 grams -- a rat's weighs 8! Leatherbacks' intestines contain waxy balls, recalling the ambergris found in the intestines of sperm whales. The stomachs of ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 84: Nov-Dec 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects It Came From Within Life did, that is! Forget that warm little pond where life incubated according to all the textbooks. Instead, says T. Gold, an iconoclastic Cornell physicist, life began in rocky fissures deep down in the earth's crust. The idea is not as unlikely as it sounds. Look at the most primitive life forms we know, the archaebacteria. They like heat, need neither air nor sunlight, and prosper on sulfur compounds for sustenance. Such bacteria are today found in boreholes as deep as 500 meters, in thermal springs, and around deepsea vents. Gold surmises that these archaebacteria migrated to the surface long ago, where they evolved into higher forms of life. "Gold argues, moreover, that the earth's interior would have provided a much more hospitable environment for proto-life four billion years ago than the surface would have, ravaged as it was by asteroids and cosmic radiation. And if life emerged within the earth, then why not within other planets? 'Deep, chemically supplied life,' Gold says, 'may be very common in the universe.'" (Horgan, John; "It Came from Within," Scientific American, 267:20, September 1992.) From Science Frontiers #84, NOV-DEC 1992 . 1992-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 117: May-June 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Two Catastrophe Scenarios We present below two reconstructions of major terrestrial catastrophes. Both are based on sound geological research: deep-sea cores, seismic profiles, and the like; but the reconstructions of the events are on the speculative side, particularly in matters of the magnitudes of the effects. Both events also purport to explain long-standing puzzles. Scenario #1 . The Bosporus silt plug blows. During the last Ice Age, sea levels dropped hundreds of feet exposing the continental shelves. The planet's great rivers cascaded over the edges in great waterfalls. The rocky sill at Gibraltar kept the Atlantic waters out of the Mediterranean, and this sea began to dry up. Farther to the east, the Black Sea was now cut off from the Mediterranean's salty water by the silt-choked Bosporus, that narrow strait separating Asia Minor from Europe. In consequence, the Black Sea became a vast fresh-water lake fed by Europe's rivers to the north. The Ice Age eventually waned, and the oceans and Mediterranean began to rise. About 7,000 years ago, the hydraulic pressure on the Bosporus silt plug became too great and it popped. Salty Mediterranean water poured into lowlands around the Black Sea. Scientists estimate that 50 cubic kilometers of water surged through the Bosporus each -- 200 Niagaras in one colossal waterfall. Falling some 150 meters, the thunder of falling water might have been heard ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 90: Nov-Dec 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Depths Of Ignorance Oceanographers have been heard to complain that science knows more about the surface of Mars than it does about the topography of the deep ocean floors. Marine biologists, however, have even more reason to feel slighted. To illustrate, the usual picture painted of the abyssal terrain beyond the continental shelves and slopes is one a a frigid biological desert -- endless plains of sterile muck, broken once in a while by oasis-like deepsea vents, where weird tube worms thrive amidst clouds of chemosynthetic bacteria. This is a highly misleading portrayal. The situation, in fact, recalls what happened when biologists first released clouds of insecticides in rain forest canopies, thus precipitating a deluge of uncataloged insects into collecting nets waiting below. Now, instead of a mere million species of insects worldwide, entomologists are thinking perhaps 10 million or more. Will the same diversity prevail in the deepsea muck? C.L . Van Dover believes so: "Away from the vents, in the great ocean plains, life is much less dramatic and often scaled down to minute proportions -- threadlike worms, tiny snails, delicate, transparent clams. Yet, the diversity of animals in the cold abyssal muds, it now appears, may rival the celebrated biodiversity of the tropical rain forests." We now know virtually nothing about this fauna, how it survives, and how it evolved. Millions of undescribed species may be awaiting discovery by ...
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... Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Baikal: The Inland Ocean Lake Baikal, in Siberia, is the planet's deepest lake (1635 meters) and the richest in biodiversity (over 1,000 species of animals and plants existing nowhere else). Even though Lake Baikal is only 20-25 million years old, more than 5 kilometers of sediment have accumulated in some spots. These facts are remarkable as fresh-water lakes go, but Baikal also has features usually found only in salty oceans. It seals sport in fresh water 1,000 kilometers from the nearest salt water. (How did they get there?) Even more interesting are Baikal's thermal vents or chimneys that are otherwise restricted to cracks in the earth's crust in the deep oceans. Further enhancing Baikal's marine attributes, deep drilling and seismic profiles have recently discovered the existence of gas hydrates (methane hydrate, for example). Plumes of gas bubbles have also been detected where gas hydrates have been tectonically disturbed. There are even craters on Baikal's deep bottom where gas hydrates have erupted explosively. (De Batist, Marc, et al; "Tectonically Induced Gas-Hydrate Destabilization and Gas Venting in Lake Baikal, Siberia," Eos, 80:F502, 1999.) Comments. Baikal's gas-explosion craters resemble those on the floor of the North Sea. There, the sudden releases of gases are thought to cause the famous "mist-pouffers" or "fog-guns" heard around the shores of the North ...
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... terrains indicate that the final glacial epoch occurred late in Martian history. Thus, Mars may have had a relatively warm, moist climate and dense atmosphere much later than previously believed." (Kargel, Jeffrey S., and Strom, Robert G.; "Ancient Glaciation on Mars," Geology, 20:3 , 1992.) If Mars was warm and wet not too long ago, as implied above, perhaps life did gain a foothold there through either independent invention or, perhaps, through seeding by template-carrying comets or meteorites. P.J . Boston et al have investigated one possible Martian ecosystem: "We have reexamined the question of extant microbial life on Mars in light of the most recent information about the planet and recently discovered nonphotosynthetic ecosystems on Earth -- deep sea hydrothermal vent communities and deep subsurface aquifer communities. On Mars, protected subsurface niches associated with hydrothermal activity could have continued to support life even after surface conditions became inhospitable. Geochemical evidence from the SNC meteorites and geomorphological evidence for recent volcanism suggest that such habitats could persist to the present time...We suggest a possible deep subsurface microbial ecology similar to those discovered to depths of several kilometers below the surface of the Earth." (Boston, Penelope J., et al; "On the Possibility of Chemosynthetic Ecosystems in Subsurface Habitats on Mars," Icarus, 95:300, 1992.) Comment. Although Boston et al speak in terms of microscopic Martian life, there is no reason why chemosynthetic life forms could not be large -- perhaps even large enough to ...
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... ? But with sleep, come dreams, and maybe an answer is to be seen in them. Cats establish long-term memories during sleep. First, it is relevant that an animal's brain (a cat's brain here) seems to be active even when an animal is sleeping deeply but not dreaming. It seems that during an extremely quiet phase of sleep, when researchers thought that nothing much was happening in the [cat's ] brain, groups of cells involved in the formation of new memories signal one another. The signals, discovered only a few years ago, allow cells in many parts of the brain to form lasting links. Then, when a few cells are stimulated during waking hours, the links are activated and an entire memory is recalled. Deep, dreamless sleep has long been thought to be of little value to an animal. Apparently this is not the case. Deep sleep seems to be valuable in memory activation. Score one for sleep. (Blakeslee, Sandra; "Researchers Link Deep Sleep to Memory Recall," Austin American-Statesman, December 2000. Cr. D. Phelps.) Rats rerun mazes in their dreams. Rats apparently can't escape the rat race, even when they're sound asleep. Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology say they have entered the dreams of rats and found them busily working their way through the same lab mazes they negotiate during the day. The MIT maze-running rats were hooked up to equipment that recorded the neuron-firing patterns in the rats' hippocampus ...
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... purpose of sensing the ambient magnetic field and orienting themselves. Similar bacteria have recently been discovered living in ordinary soil in Bavaria. It is near-certain that they will now be found just about everywhere. J.W .E . Fassbinder et al, who reported the Bavarian bacteria, conclude their Abstract with: "We suggest that the magnetic bacteria and their magnetofossils can contribute to the magnetic properties of soils." (Fassbinder, Jorg W.E ., et al; "Occurrence of Magnetic Bacteria in Soil." Nature, 343:161, 1990.) Comment. It is easy to reach great heights of speculation given the facts that: (1 ) magnetic bacteria exist; (2 ) bacteria in general are exceedingly abundant; and (3 ) bacteria are found deep inside the earth's crust and, seemingly, just about anywhere one cares to look. Now, let's see how ridiculous one can get: Magnetic bacteria and/or their fossils contribute heavily to the magnetic properties of sedimentary rocks and unlithified sediments, such as deep-sea sediments. In fact, magnetostratigraphy and paleomagnetism in general may be based upon bioartifacts and be suspect. Magnetic bacteria and/or their fossils are present in such immense numbers deep in the crust that they contribute significantly to the earth's magnetic field. They "might" even be responsible for most of it, including its his torical behavior. Magnetic bacteria, as agents of Gaia, actually constructed the earth's magnetic field for the specific purpose of erecting a shield against space radiation, ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 48: Nov-Dec 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Water, water: how far down?The upper 10-15 kilometers of the earth's continental crust is different in several ways from the lower crust. The top layer is electrically resistive, seismically transparent, the source of almost all earthquakes, and responds to stress elastically. In contrast, the lower crust is electrically conductive, contains many reflectors of seismic energy, provides few quakes, and responds like a ductile material to stress. The diverse characteristics of both regions can be explained if the entire crust contains saline water. In the up-per crust the water is thought to be in separated cavities, while deep down it forms an interconnected film on crystal surfaces. (Gough, D. Ian; "Seismic Reflectors, Conductivity, Water and Stress in the Continental Crust," Nature, 323:143, 1986.) In an accompanying commentary, B.W .D . Yardley notes that the Soviet deep borehole on the Kola peninsula has found water down to at least 12 kilome ters. (Yardley, Bruce W.D .; "Is There Water in the Deep Continental Crust?" Nature, 323:111, 1986.) From Science Frontiers #48, NOV-DEC 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 137: SEP-OCT 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Ship-swallowers It's happened hundreds of times, and thousands of sailors have lost their lives. The killers are giant, usually solitary, waves that seem to come out of nowhere. These monster walls of water appear in seas that are rough but not fearfully so. Suddenly. a ship will find itself in a deep trough. Then conies a wall of water. 50-100 feet high. (34 meters is the biggest reliable measurement.) The vessel is flooded, perhaps its back is broken. It sinks like a rock without even sending a distress signal. Another ship has been devoured by a rogue wave. Giant solitary waves are usually preceded by deep troughs. as seen in this sketch of a vessel in the notorious A gulhas Current off the coast of South Africa. (From: Earthquakes. Tides....) Just between 1969 and 1994. 60 supercarriers were lost due to sudden flooding. Of this number, 22 were apparently swallowed by rogue waves. The rogue waves appear unexpectedly. They dwarf all surrounding waves. For a long time, the rogues were said to be just chance additions of two smaller waves. But they are too big and occur too frequently to be statistical flukes. In addition, statiticians have trouble in accounting for the fabled and feared "three sisters" -- three massive waves in succession. Consequently, scientists have retreated to a now-familiar ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 87: May-Jun 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Giant impact-wave deposit along u.s . east coast Along the shore from North Carolina to Maryland and also into Chesapeake Bay, deep-sea drillers have charted the Exmore Boulder Bed. No minor deposit this; it is is over 60 meters thick in places and covers more than 15,000 square kilometers. In the bed are found boulders (up to 2 meters in diameter), cobbles, pebbles, and traces of tektite glass and shocked quartz. The youngest microfossils date from the Eocene, and argon dating of the ejecta yield a date of 35.5 million years, which correlates with the North American tektite strewn field. C.W . Poag et al interpret this boulder bed as follows: "On the basis of its unusual characteristics and its stratigraphic equivalence to a layer of impact ejecta at Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) Site 612 (New Jersey continental slope), we postulate that this boulder bed was formed by a powerful bolidegenerated wave train that scoured the ancient inner shelf and coastal plain of southeastern Virginia. The most promising candidate for the bolide impact site (identified on seismic reflection profiles) is 40 km north-northwest of DSDP Site 612 on the New Jersey outer continental shelf." (Poag, C. Wylie, et al; "Deep Sea Drilling Project Site 612 Bolide Event: New Evidence of a Late Eocene Impact-Wave Deposit and a Possible Impact Site, U ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 112: Jul-Aug 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Sea turtles: from one end to the other Leatherback turtles are mysterious in several ways: flexible shell, warmbloodedness, etc. (See SF#76 for more.) Now, we add two more remarkable capabilities to their dossier. Precision navigation. The oily, flexible shells of leatherbacks have made it difficult for researchers to attach radio transmitters to the animals. Their very deep dives (over 1,000 meters) are also inimical to human instrumentation. But S.J . Morreale's group at Cornell have succeeded in attaching pressure-resistant transmitters to the shells on short tethers. This team was able to track female leatherbacks as they left their nesting beach in Costa Rica and headed southward, past the Galapagos, out into the open South Pacific. Surprisingly, all the leatherbacks plied a very narrow corridor each year of the experiment (1992-1995). In fact, the paths were almost for at least 2,700 kilometers southwest of the Galapagos. Highprecision navigation equipment is required here. Among the leatherbacks' "instruments" are probably sensors that detect the angle of the geomagnetic field, the length of daylight, and the identities of the oceanic currents encountered. There are probably other sensors and, of course, a brain to process all the signals; but virtually nothing is known about them. (Morreale, Stephen J., et al; "Migration Corridor for Sea Turtles," Nature, ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 77: Sep-Oct 1991 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Gruyerizaton Of Switzerland An impressive and equally inexplicable variety of the cookie-cutter holes has been reported in Switzerland. In these excavation phenomena, all the material removed from the holes has disappeared instead of being translated intact and set down gently nearby. "The Swiss holes were first observed in 1972. They always occur at night and no one has ever seen them forming. They are circular, drilled deep into the earth, and are created by the total removal of vegetation and soil. A large fleet of lorries would be needed to move the quantities of earth involved, but there are no vehicle marks around the holes. The grass and plants around them exhibit none of the minor damage which would inevitable be caused by any normal process of drilling. The holes have all been excavated directly from above, at an angle of 90 degrees to the surface." Six Swiss holes have been reported from the environs of Lake Geneva. The two largest are at Begnins (December 17, 1982; 18 feet across, 24.5 feet deep) and Confignon (February 3/4 , 1990; 33 feet across, 40 feet deep). Obviously, we are not dealing with minor earth-moving operations here. (Anonymous; "The Gruyerization of Switzerland," The Cerealogist , no. 3, p. 26, Spring 1991. The Cerealogist is a British publication focussing on the crop-circle phenomenon.) ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 107: Sep-Oct 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Antarctica's Lake Vostok Revisited Based upon a Japanese account, we reported the discovery of Lake Vostok in SF#102 almost a year ago. Some details are finally appearing in Western science publications. We can now offer a good cross section of the lake, plus some thoughts about potential ecosystems existing deep under the lake's ice. Although Lake Vostok lies under some 4 kilometers of ice, it remains liquid as geothermal heat seeps up through its floor. Surprisingly, the thick ice cover does not preclude all contact with the surface above. The covering ice sheet moves slowly across the lake and, as it does so, its bottom melts a bit, releasing frozen-in oxygen as well as life forms -- still-living microorganisms and dead creatures that fell onto the Antarctic ice thousands of years ago. Thus, there is a perpetual source of food and new life. Cores drilled from the ice sheet capping Lake Vostok have brought up a great diversity of live microbes that have survived despite the low temperatures and passage of time. A living unicellular alga was found 2,375 meters down in ice about 110,000 years old. Spore-forming bacteria brought up from 2,395 meters are about 200,000 years old and still alive! Although science has proclaimed that Lake Vostok biology must consist entirely of microorganisms, no one really knows what is down there. Another fascinating fact is that some 70 ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 104: Mar-Apr 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Reinventing The Neandertals The public image of the Neandertal is that of a brutish, hardly human creature clad in a ragged skin and unable to speak save for a few grunts. Forget that picture. Several hundred meters deep inside a cavern near Bruniquel, in southern France, spelunkers stumbled across a complex quadrilateral structure, 4 x 5 meters in extent, built up from chunks of stalactites and stalagmites. Within its "walls" they found a piece of burnt bear bone that was later carbondated as at least 47,600 years old. A burnt bone and a geometrical structure certainly suggest the work of an intelligent creature, as does the site's great distance from the surface. Torches would have been a necessity that far in. That 47,600-year figure, though, presents a problem. The first Cro-Magnons didn't filter into western Europe until about 35,000 BP. According to the accepted anthropological schedule, only those subhuman Neandertals inhabited that part of France in 47,600 BP. So, we must conclude that the Neandertals knew well the sophisticated use of fire. They also had enough curiosity to venture deep into the earth, where for some unknown purpose they piled together an enigmatic structure. All this also seems to require more information transfer than possible with a few "ughs"! (Balter, Michael; "Cave Structure Boosts Neandertal Image," Science, 271:449, ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 57: May-Jun 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Subterranean life! (part 3)We almost forgot this recent tidbit from Science News that mentions microscopic life forms: "In recent years, scientists have found bacteria, as far down as 1,150 feet, in wells that penetrate deeply buried aquifers -- porous layers of rock that hold underground water. Such finds have forced hydrologists to question their traditional belief that deep aquifers were devoid of life. But it was not clear whether these bacteria were native residents of the aquifers or just contaminants from the world above, living solely within the wells. Moreover, no one had established how the bacteria were affecting the environment, if at all." Experiments have now shown that these subterranean bacteria are indigenous and are important to groundwater chem istry. The bacteria feed on organic molecules and display a curious propensity for metabolizing the carbon-13 isotope rather than carbon-12. Thus, carbon dissolved in some deep aquifer water is enriched in carbon-13 compared to surface water. None of the bacteria found so far seems dangerous to humans. (Monastersky, R.; "Bacteria Alive and Thriving at Depth," Science News, 133: 149, 1988.) Comment. Subterranean bacteria may be associated with the creation of oil and natural gas. From Science Frontiers #57, MAY-JUN 1988 . 1988-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 121: Jan-Feb 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Lake Champlain's Two Seiches The main body of Lake Champlain is 117 kilometers long, with an average breadth of 6.3 kilometers, and average depth of 29 meters. Although its shoreline in complex, there is a deep channel about 2 kilometers wide with steep sides running lengthwise along the lake floor. When wind blows across the lake's surface, wind-drag pushes surface water downwind. When the wind stops or changes direction, the piled-up water is freed, and standing waves are set up as the water sloshes back and forth in the lake basin. These waves are called "seiches." Lakes usually have characteristic periods of oscillation. For Lake Champlain, it is 4 hours, with amplitudes measured only in centimeters on the surface of the water. What makes Lake Champlain of more than usual interest is the presence of a second seiche, an internal phenomenon not visible on the surface. In the summer, Lake Champlain is stratified with a thermocline separating a layer of warm surface water from much colder deep water. You can only "see" the thermocline if you lower a thermometer into the water. This thermocline also exhibits seiches, but they are startlingly different from those on the surface. In Lake Champlain, the period of the internal seiche is 4 days rather than 4 hours. The amplitudes fall between 20 and 40 meters instead of being in the centimeter range. Just a few meters ...
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... ONLINE No. 37: Jan-Feb 1985 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Recent Pulsations Of Life At a recent meeting of scientists at the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory, E. Vrba, of the Transvaal Museum, in Pretoria, stated: "If we eventually are able to establish a good time resolution with the continental record, I expect to be able to discern synchronous pulses of evolution that involve many groups of fauna and flora. Many different lineages in the biota will respond by synchronous waves of speciation and extinction to global temperature extremes and attendant environmental changes. This is my starting hypothesis." Vrba was speaking mainly about the last 25 million years, a mere flash in geological time. For this brief period, the Deep Sea Drilling Program has provided geologists with a detailed and continuous record of climate changes as they were recorded in deep-sea sediments. By contrast, the faunal history of the continents is rather fragmentary, making it rather difficult to match up pulsations of climate with pulsations of life. Even so, scientists have found rather strong correlations between climatary change and biological speciation and extinction at 15, 5, and 2.4 million years ago. (Lewin, Roger; "The Paleoclimatic Magic Numbers Game," Science, 226:154, 1984.) Comment. Note that this is just the period our ancestors seemed to be evolving rapidly. Also interesting is the general agreement between Vrba's statement about the driving forces behind evolution and McClintock's conclusion quoted earlier under BIOLOGY. ...
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... Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Too Much Order In The Early Cosmos Astronomers are becoming accustomed to the idea that many nearby galaxies are concentrated in spherical shells separated from one another by about 400 million light years. This onion-skin geometry is inferred from the fact that galactic red shifts cluster around specific values; that is, they are quantized. Since red shifts are held to be proportional to distance in the expanding universe paradigm: Voila! We have shells! This evidence of nearby cosmic order does not seriously disturb cosmologists, because in the nearby galaxies we are seeing that portion of the universe that is billions of years old. In other words, nearby there has been enough time for some degree of order to have evolved out of the primordial chaos of the Big Bang. Now though, "deep" surveys of galaxies, looking much farther back in time, still show clustered red shifts -- not the expected increasing chaos required by theory. Although the surveys are incomplete, astronomers are discomfited by this early lumpiness. Their theories say that there was not enough time for galaxies to organize themselves into sheets, shells, and skeins. If further "deep" probings of the cosmos confirm this redshift clustering, we may need a new evolutionary scenario. Good bye Big Bang and expanding universe! (Vogel, Gretchen; "Goodness, Gracious, Great Walls Afar," Science, 274:343, 1996. Vergano, D.; "New Evidence of Cosmic Architecture," Science News, 150:239, 1996) In a related news item, Mexican scientists have proposed ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 21: May-Jun 1982 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects What's ok in the mediterranean is verboten in the atlantic and the pacific Geologists and geophysicists have now satisfied themselves that a few million years ago the Mediterranean dried up nearly completely. The Deep Sea Drilling Project discovered in 1970 and 1975 that layers of evaporites existed beneath the Mediterranean's floor. In addition, over 80 years ago, the bed of the Rhone River was found to consist of river sands and gravels superimposed upon hundreds of feet of oceanic sediments. Beneath these deposits -- some 3000 feet down -- was a gorge cut in granitic rock. Other rivers emptying into the Mediterranean had cut similar gorges into solid rock long ago. No one could provide an acceptable explanation for the deep-cut gorges until the evaporites proved that the water level had been low enough for the rivers to cut the gorges subaerially. In other words, the Mediterranean's level fell several thousand feet, allowing the rivers to erode gorges much as the Colorado does today in the Grand Canyon. (Smith, E.G . Walton; "When the Mediterranean Went Dry," Sea Frontiers, 28:66, 1982.) Comment. The Med's buried gorges are obviously close cousins of the many submarine canyons found around the world's continental shelves. Most geologists strongly resist any explanation of the submarine canyons involving subaerial erosion, because no one believes the oceans ever dropped thousands of feet. True, the ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 47: Sep-Oct 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Something big down there!Off Bermuda, while working large traps at depths between 1,000 and 2,000 fathoms, fishermen proclaim that some huge sea creature has been breaking heavy lines and towing fishing boats about. Some of these deep-sea traps measure 6 x 6 x 3 feet and are used to catch large shrimp (about 1 foot long) and crabs (2 feet, claw to claw). Something down there grabs these traps and refuses to let go. A giant octopus is believed to be the culprit. (Anonymous; "Giant Octopus Blamed for Deep Sea Fishing Disruptions," ISC Newsletter, 4:1 , Autumn 1986. ISC = International Society for Cryptozoology.) From Science Frontiers #47, SEP-OCT 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... very few, however, are captured in huge, fluidfilled tanks built by physicists. These trapped ghostly particles tell tales we do not yet fathom. We have mentioned the solar-neutrino problem before (SF#46/84, for example). It is one of science's more perplexing and enduring mysteries. Even the most modern, sophisticated neutrino detectors count only about one-third the number of neutrinos that the sun "should" be sending in our direction -- according to our best theories on the nuclear reactions simmering away in the solar core. To this classical neutrino problem has been added the discovery that the solar neutrino flux varies in ways difficult to explain. P. Sturrock and G. Walther, at Stanford University, scrutinized 20 years of data from a detector deep in the Homestead Mine in South Dakota and find that the neutrino flux seems to peak every 21.3 days, varying as much as 30% to 100%. It may be that the sun's fusion "engine," long thought to run steadily and smoothly, sputters in a cyclic fashion? If an automobile engine did this, we would take it to the garage! (Holden, Constance; "More Neutrino Mystery," Science, 273:1663, 1996.) The problem deepens: The first 102 days of neutrino data from Japan's new Super-Kamiokande detector suggest that the solar neutrino flux is greater at night than during the day, and that it also varies during the year. (Anonymous; "First Data from New Neutrino Detector, ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 29: Sep-Oct 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Life beyond 100 c Bacteria can survive and multiply in hot springs near and slightly above 100 C -- the boiling point of water at atmospheric pressure. Few scientists have contemplated the possibility of life forms prospering at temperatures well beyond 100 . Recently, however, the discovery of many new and frequently bizarre organisms clustered around deep-sea vents has forced a reexamination of high-temperature life. It seems that bacteria actually flourish in the 350 C water streams from the deep-sea vents. In the lab, these same bacteria multiply rapidly in water at 250 C kept liquid by pressures of 265 atmospheres of pressure. What a surprise! Quoting a concluding sentence from this article: "This greatly increases the number of environments and conditions both on Earth and elsewhere in the Universe where life can exist." (Baross, John A., and Deming, Jody W.; "Growth of 'Black Smoker' Bacteria at Temperatures of at Least 250 C," Nature, 303:423, 1983.) Comment. Ignoring for the moment the extraterrestrial possibilities, the earth is riddled like a Swiss cheese with hot, fluid environments, which we may now consider potential abodes of life. Subterranean life represents a new biological frontier. Who knows what kinds of organisms have developed to feed upon the planet's heat? Could they have con-tributed to our supplies of petroleum and natural gas? From Science Frontiers # ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 95: Sep-Oct 1994 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Blondes in ancient china Evidence of tobacco in ancient egypt Dwarf mammoths in ancient egypt? Astronomy "AN UNPRECEDENTED AND BIZARRE OBJECT" Comets, asteroids, or neither? This was the big one, but where did it come from? Snowballs in hell? Biology It's according to hoyle and wickramasinghe Music of the hemispheres The urge to replicate: part i The urge to replicate: part ii Geology Might diamonds be dead bacteria? Deep quake deepens mystery Geophysics Sylvanshine: a newly recognized optical phenomenon Gamma-ray flashes in the upper atmosphere A DEEP-SEA HYDROTHERMAL VENT INSTEAD OF A WARM LITTLE POND? Psychology The solar wind and hallucinations Physics Cold fusion update: 1994 Miscellaneous A SKEPTIC'S NDE -- NOT SO MYSTICAL ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 9: Winter 1979 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Moon-like craters in the north sea floor During the exploitation of the North Sea oil fields, geophysicists made detailed surveys of sea-floor topography with seismic instruments called boomers. They were startled to discover thousands of elliptical craters or pockmarks in the sediments. The craters are 30-330 feet across, 6-25 feet deep, and located in water about 500 feet deep. The long axes of the craters point roughly in the same direction; and the craters tend to be arranged in lines. The authors suggest that escaping subsurface gases and fluids may have formed the unusual structures. The possibility was underscored on July 30, 1978, when a very large eruption of sediment was detected by sonar. (McQuillin, Robert, and Fannin, Nigel; "Explaining the North Sea's Lunar Floor," New Scientist, 83:90, 1979.) Comment. The North Sea is a prime habitat of mistpouffers (sea-associated booming sounds). There might be a correlation here between natural-gas eruptions and these strange booming sounds. Also, the crude similarity of these sea-floor craters to the Carolina Bays should not be passed over. Reference. All types of unusual craters are cataloged in Section ETC in: Carolina Bays, Mima Mounds. For ordering information, visit: here . From Science Frontiers #9 , Winter 1979 . 1979-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 58: Jul-Aug 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Earlier pages in earth's history revealed Geologists are wont to liken the earth's sedimentary strata to pages in a history book. Well, it seems that seismologists may have discovered a previously unread chapter or two deep beneath the continental United States, in the guise of extensive stratified rocks in the Precambrian basement: "The extent of the layered rocks became evident last summer as the Consortium for Continental Reflection Profiling (COCORP) completed a major deep seismic reflection traverse across Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and part of Missouri. The survey was conducted partly because industrial seismic data and studies by the Illinois Geological Survey showed basement layering in southern Illinois, partly because earlier COCORP surveys also showed such layering in Oklahoma and Texas, and partly because COCORP's broad program calls for comprehensive exploration of the entire continental basement of the United States. "Although the composition and precise age of the Precambrian rocks are yet to be determined, their seismic reflection character suggests a sedimentary assemblage, at least in part. These layers occur within the Proterozoic Granite-Rhyolite province, where drilling typically recovers undeformed granite or rhyolite with ages of 1.3 to 1.5 b.y . Such prominent and orderly layering is surprising, given the widespread occurrence of granitic rocks. If the layered rocks are indeed igneous, the volume of silicic volcanic material is spectacular." (COCORP Research Group; "COCORP Finds Thick Proterozoic (? ) Strata ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 74: Mar-Apr 1991 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Newtonian Gravity May Have Broken Down In Greenland Anomalies in the measurement of gravity in Australian mines have stimulated an experiment in one of the very deep holes drilled in the Greenland ice cap. The hole at location Dye-3 is 2 kilometers deep. Gravity measurements were made at 183-meter intervals between depths of 213 and 1673 meters. Elaborate precautions were taken to assure that proper corrections were made for ice density and the nature of the rock below the ice. Ice-penetrating radar sketched the topography of the icerock surface, and surface-gravity measurements assessed density variations in surrounding ice and rock. The results of this finely tuned experiment are found in the final two sentences of the report's Abstract: "An anomalous variation in gravity totaling 3.87 mGal (3 .87 x 10- 5 m/s 2 ) in a depth interval of 1460 m was observed. This may be attributed either to a breakdown of Newtonian gravity or to unexpected density variations in the rock below the ice." (Zumberge, Mark A., et al; "The Greenland Gravitational Constant Experiment," Journal of Geophysical Research, 95:15483, 1990.) From Science Frontiers #74, MAR-APR 1991 . 1991-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... 's magnetic field possesses four lobes which remain fixed relative to the earth's surface, as demonstrated by 300 years of data. These lobes do not drift westward like the general field. (Ref. 2) "Core-spot pairs" of magnetic intensity seem to move westward and poleward. In the southern hemisphere, they originate under the Indian Ocean and drift under South Africa into the southern Atlantic. This motion reminds one of sunspot motion, except that sun-spots move equatorward. There may be a connection here. (Ref. 2) The general decrease in the earth's magnetic field over the past few centuries may be due to intensifying core spots, which are magnetized in a sense opposite that of the main field. (Ref. 2) Large, deep earthquakes in 1983 and 1984 produced slow, wavelike changes in the local gravitational field at the surface, as measured by new superconducting gravity meters. The periods were 13-15 hours. (Ref. 2) Gravity and magnetism measurements from satellites show strong, coincident anomalies in the Indian Ocean (3 N 81 E). In fact the whole ocean surface is depressed in this region. To explain these overlapping anomalies, geophysicists suggest that a "valley" 5-10 kilometers deep exists at the coremantle boundary. (Ref. 3) References Ref. 1. Dziewonski, Adam M., and Woodhouse, John H.; "Global Images of the Earth's Interior," Science, 236:37, 1987. Ref. 2. Weisburd, Stefi; " ...
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... behave alike, but they also share 98.2 % of their 16S ribosomal RNA sequences. M. Magot asks what an anomalist would ask. "For example, where are these bacteria from? How did they succeed in colonizing these habitats?...Are these microorganisms directly descended from bacteria that were trapped during the formation of the oil, or accompanied its migration through tens to hundreds of millions of years? Did they arrive in the oil field later as a consequence of aquifer activity? What is their mode of maintenance and development in their environment?" (Magot, Michel; "Similar Bacteria in Remote Oil Fields," Nature, 379:681, 1996) Comment. Bacteria have also been extracted from mineral-charged fluids circulating in drill holes over 12 kilo meters deep and also in deep aquifers. There must be an unexplored universe of life thriving not only beneath our feet but also - quite possibly - beneath the forbidding surface of Mars. Reference. Examples of life thriving at great depths in the earth may be found in ESB9 in our catalog: Anomalies in Geology. For a description of this book, visit: here . From Science Frontiers #105, MAY-JUN 1996 . 1996-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... - none obvious to surface observers. This unexpected macrostructure of the ocean surface is shaped by variations in the strength of the earth's gravitational field and sea-bottom terrain. Wherever the gravitational field is stronger, it creates a depression on the fluid surface. German geophysicists, in fact, have drawn a global map of the ocean's large-scale topography, as measured from the European Space Agency's ERS-1 satellite. The surface of the world ocean departs wildly from a smooth sphere. On their colored map: "Brilliant pink and red areas are continental-size mounds of water most notable northeast of Australia, where the sea topography is up to 85 meters (280 ft.) higher than the standard ocean level. Just to the west near India, deep blue indicates a 105-meter (346-ft.) deep depression in the sea surface. Major differences in the gravity fields and terrain underlying the two regions cause a variation of 190 meters (627 ft.) in sea surface topography between these two adjoining areas." (Covault, Craig; "ESA Radar Scans Global Ocean," Aviation Week , p. 42, October 24, 1994. Cr. J.S . Denn.) From Science Frontiers #97, JAN-FEB 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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