6 results found.
... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 108: Nov-Dec 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Deflating a paradigm: brazil's pedra furada The paradigm. The New World was peopled from Asia by migration across the Bering Land Bridge about 12,000 years ago, or perhaps a wee earlier. The Pedra Furada site has been dated at 50,000 BP by N. Guidon and her team of archeologists. This challenge to the dominant paradigm is powerful and unambiguous. Picking up the gauntlet, several more-conservative archeologists visited the Brazilian site and penned a blistering critique in Antiquity. (Ref. 1) Their major contention was that the 500+ supposedly human-made stone "artifacts" collected by Guidon's team are actually "geofacts"; that is, they were chipped and flaked naturally as rocks fell one upon the other from nearby cliffs. We discussed this problem in some detail in SF#105. Several other reservations about the Pedra Furada work are also offered in Ref. 1. The reaction of Guidon et al to the Antiquity paper was thunderous to say the least. It revealed the depth of the chasm separating archeologists on the date of human occupation of the New World as well as internecine politics in archeology. (Ref. 2) Guidon et al flung two serious charges at the authors of the first Antiquity paper: (1 ) They had their facts all wrong; and (2 ) Their objectivity was distorted by their loyalty to the aforestated paradigm. Not withholding any punches, ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 57 - 15 May 2017 - URL: /sf108/sf108p01.htm
... 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 Parapsychology: a lack-of-progress report Speculating, as in the above item, is fun; but we need something to deflate balloons before they drift too high into the wild blue. The Skeptical Inquirer is the perfect "something." In the latest issue, ESP or psi takes it on the chin. J.E . Alcock reviews the last 8 years of parapsychological research. His conclusion: "The past eight years have been no kinder to those seeking compelling evidence about the reality of paranormal phenomena than were the previous eighty: The long-sought reliably demonstrable psychic phenomenon is just as elusive as it always has been." Alcock believes that parapsychology is on the ropes and must grasp at straws. One of these straws is the enthusiastic espousal of those quantum mechanical effects which seem to transcend time, space, and even human comprehension. Alcock contends that the admitted enigmas of quantum mechanics are being unfairly twisted by the parapsychologists. [Parapsychologists and their critics will argue interminably about the applicability of quantum mechanics to psi, ceasing only when someone with powerful, undeniable psi powers comes along -- the equivalent of a UFO landing on the White House lawn.] Meanwhile, Alcock identifies an important characteristic of psi, which is truly anomalous, for it is completely foreign to science as we understand it today. This is the generalizability of psi. ". .. psi effects turn up whether one uses cockroaches ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 17 - 15 May 2017 - URL: /sf035/sf035p21.htm
... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 108: Nov-Dec 1996 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology More evidence of precolumbian contacts from asia Deflating a paradigm: brazil's pedra furada Astronomy Life forms in meteorites? Sunspots and planetary alignments Biology Those selfish genes may also be intelligent! Lake victoria's cichlid fishes: can random mutations explain them? Hair rarity The glow below Geology Earthquakes and mima mounds The motor of the world* Geophysics Heard above cayuga's waters A BLUE FLASH Unclassified An innovative computer Are we reall robots? Nominative determinism ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 15 - 15 May 2017 - URL: /sf108/index.htm
... 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 Explaining The Nazca Lines The Nazca lines of Peru have been one of archeology's more enduring anomalies. Books have been written about them; theories abound; what more can be said? Evidently there is more. A.F . Aveni's recent article in Archaeology sets the Nazca lines in perspective and adds some new observations. First, Aveni deflates their mystery a bit. You do not have to be in an airplane to appreciate the lines; most can be viewed from ground level, even better from nearby foothills. Although there are some 1,300 kilometers of lines and about 300 geometric figures, their construction did not really involve much labor or special engineering skills. Even so, the Nazca lines are remarkable, and we really do not know for certain why they were etched on the Peruvian pampa. In his early research on the Nazca lines, Aveni noted their strong similarity to the ceque system of 41 imaginary lines radiating outwards from the Inca's Temple of the Sun, at Cuzco -- the "navel" of the Inca universe. ". .. the ceque system was a highly ordered hierarchical cosmographical map, a mnemonic scheme that incorporated virtually all important matters connected with the Inca world view." Could the Nazca lines have been a forerunner of the ceque system? Aveni also noticed that the Nazca lines and geometrical figures were closely related to watercourses. Also, many of the lines definitely ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 13 - 15 May 2017 - URL: /sf047/sf047p01.htm
... -ported in the March 3l, 1986, issue of Physical Review Letters. There he showed how quasars and so-called "superluminary" astronomical sources might emit light with a spectrum that evolves as it travels through space. Scientists have always assumed that once light left its source its spectrum remained unchanged. But Wolf shows how spectral changes are "sort of coded into the light due to correlations in the source." Meanwhile, two of Wolf's colleagues have backed up his theory in the lab. The consequences of Wolf's work would in effect shrink the universe, because objects would not be as far away as we now calculate from their redshifts. The size of the universe might contract "by a factor of 100 or more," says Wolf. If this much deflation is accepted by other scientists (It could be quite a fight!), then the age of the universe will also shrink, since it is based in part on our observations of the outer fringe of the universe and the speed of light. (Amato, I.; "Spectral Variations on a Universal Theme,: Science News, 130:166, 1986.) Comment. If we divide the currently accepted age of the universe, about 15 billion years, by 100, we are left with only 150 million years. But the radioactive clocks of the geologists register about 5 billion for the earth. There seems to be a problem somewhere! Reference. Wolf's work impinges on the acrimonious "redshift controversy." For details, see our catalog: Stars, ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 13 - 15 May 2017 - URL: /sf048/sf048p06.htm
... . The paleontologists, however, are in a quandry. They see nothing -- or very little -- in the Precambrian fossil record that substantiates the claim of Wray at al. Thus, molecular biology directly contradicts the findings of paleontology. Not to worry say supporters of the new and much more comfortable scenario: The Precambrian animals were so soft and "squishy" that they did not fossilize well. (Ref. 3) Comment. The molecular biologists are a bit arrogant in their assertions. They seem to assume that because they can quantify molecular divergences; that is, fill their journal contributions with numbers; that their data is more sound than fossiliferous strata. But their crucial assumption of constant DNA divergence in time may be their undoing. References Ref. 1. Anonymous; "Deflating the Biological Big Bang," Science News, 150: 335, 1996. Ref. 2. Perlman, David; "Origin of Animals -- 1.2 Billion Years Ago," San Francisco Chronicle, October 25, 1996. Cr. J. Covey. Ref. 3. Wray, Gregory A., et al; "Molecular Evidence for Deep Precambrian Divergences among Metazoan Phyla," Science, 274:568, 1996. Homology vs. DNA. Until the molecular biologists recently arrived on the scene, evolutionary family trees were based upon similarities in appearance; that is, homology. Animals that look alike must be closely related. But molecular biologists have discovered that some animals that seem identical to the eye differ significantly in their DNA complements. Thus, the Pacific ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 13 - 15 May 2017 - URL: /sf109/sf109p08.htm
