Science Frontiers
The Unusual & Unexplained

Strange Science * Bizarre Biophysics * Anomalous astronomy
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About Science Frontiers

Science Frontiers is the bimonthly newsletter providing digests of reports that describe scientific anomalies; that is, those observations and facts that challenge prevailing scientific paradigms. Over 2000 Science Frontiers digests have been published since 1976.

These 2,000+ digests represent only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The Sourcebook Project, which publishes Science Frontiers, also publishes the Catalog of Anomalies, which delves far more deeply into anomalistics and now extends to sixteen volumes, and covers dozens of disciplines.

Over 14,000 volumes of science journals, including all issues of Nature and Science have been examined for reports on anomalies. In this context, the newsletter Science Frontiers is the appetizer and the Catalog of Anomalies is the main course.


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Compilations of back issues can be found in Science Frontiers: The Book, and original and more detailed reports in the The Sourcebook Project series of books.


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... anomalous?] 297 pages, hardcover, $19.95, 40 illus., 3 indexes, 1993. 494 references, LC 91-68541, ISBN 0-915554-27-5 , 7x10. Biological Anomalies: Humans III: A Catalog of Biological Anomalies Sorry, Out of print Completing our trilogy on human anomalies, this volume focuses on four areas (1 ) the human fossil record; (2 ) biochemistry and genetics; (3 ) possible unrecognized living hominids; and (4 ) human interactions with other species and "entities " Typical subjects covered: Neanderthal demise * Giant skeletons * Tiny skeletons * Hominid gracilization * Sudden brain expansion * Human chimeras * Sasquatch / Bigfoot, Alma, Yeti, and others * Human-animal communication * Humanity and Gaia * Anomalous distribution of human lice Comments from reviews: "Some fascinating thinking om the frontiers of science", Borderlands. 212 pages, hardcover, $19.95, 44 illus., 3 indexes, 1994. 311 references, LC 91-68541. ISBN 0-915554-29-1 , 7x10. Biology Handbook For a full list of biology subjects, see here . Biological Anomalies: Mammals I: A Catalog of Biological Anomalies Sorry, Out of print The first three biology catalogs deal with human anomalies. Here, we attend to the "other" mammals, and two volumes will be required This, the first, parallels Humans I in focusing on external attributes (1 ) physical appearance; (2 ) behavior; and (3 ) talents and faculties. Typical subjects covered ...
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... named 47 Tucanae. Their method was to look for dark planets crossing the bright disks of the cluster's stars. After patiently watching 34,000 stars, they came up empty-handed. For some unknown reason, planets never formed around the stars in 47 Tucanae -- or in any other globular clusters checked so far. Are globular clusters in general different from the rest of the Milky Way? Possibly, see below. (Anonymous; "No Globular Planets?" Astronomy, 28:34, October 2000. Anonymous; "Planets Come Up Missing in a Globular Cluster," Sky & Telescope, 104:23, October 2000.) Answer. Globular clusters are peculiar in several additional ways. For example, the globular clusters in the Milky Way have a spherical distribution rather than being compressed into a flat spiral with the rest of our galaxy's stars. There is even evidence that the clusters may not participate in the Milky Way's ponderous rotation. See AOB4 in Stars, Galaxies, Cosmos for still more globular-cluster idiosyncracies. A spherical cloud of globular clusters coexists in space with the disc-shaped Milky Way. Each globular cluster is a dense spherical aggregation of tens of thousands of stars. From Science Frontiers #134, MAR-APR 2001 . 2001 William R. Corliss Other Sites of Interest SIS . Catastrophism, archaeoastronomy, ancient history, mythology and astronomy. Lobster . The journal of intelligence and political conspiracy (CIA, FBI, JFK, MI5, NSA, etc) Homeworking.com . Free resource for people thinking ...
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... Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A Lurch of Death Two geophysicists, W. Sager and A. Koppers, have plotted 27 ancient pole positions dated between 120 and 30 million years ago. Using rock samples brought up from submerged Pacific sea-mounts, they find that the earth's magnetic poles shifted 15-20-deg about 84 million years ago. The north magnetic pole was not slowly drifting, it was lurching. It took just a couple million years to shift 700 miles or more; that's more than ten times the rate of continental drift. The earth from afar must have seemed to be a disturbed top---on a geological time scale, of course! What could have perturbed the earth? One suggestion blames a sudden shifting of the planet's mass distribution, some sort of subterranean indigestion, like a subducted ocean plate suddenly plunging through into the lower mantle. (Kerr, Richard A.; "Did the Dinosaurs Live on a Topsy-Turvy Earth?" Science, 287:406, 2000.) The biological consequences of such a sudden tilting could have been severe. The event -- known as rapid true polar wander -- may have been accompanied by worldwide volcanic upheavals and reorganization of tectonic plates that would have played havoc with anything living in the Late Cretaceous period, 65 million to 99 million years ago. Although the notion that an asteroid was the immediate cause of dinosaur extinction about 65 million years ago has won wide acceptance, many paleontologists have argued that volcanic activity may have played a role in changing the climate and ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 131: SEP-OCT 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Will mtDNA Trump C14 and Projectile Points?Do not imagine for a minute that the Clovis Police are successfully suppressing all radical notions in archeology. Revolutionaries are everywhere. Not the least of these are studying the mtDNA (mitochondrial DNA) of Native American peoples and comparing it with the mtDNAs of Asians and Europeans. The geographical distribution of mtDNA haplogroups can trace out the migratory routes of early humans in the New World and, in addition, provide rough times-of-arrival. Some of this mtDNA evidence will undoubtedly attract the attention of the Clovis Police. But do these law enforcers -- mostly archeologists -- dare to challenge genetic data? Can mtDNA lie? There are in the cells of North American Native Americans mitochondria that seem to divide these peoples into four major "haplogroups." These four groups can be readily traced back to Siberia and northeast Asia. No trouble from the Clovis Police here! But there is also a "haplogroup-X " that does not fit the Clovis paradigm. In North America, haplogroup-X is found frequently among the Algonkian-speaking tribes, such as the Ojibwa. This same haplogroup occurs in Europe and the Middle East, especially Israel. It is notably absent in Asia. Furthermore, the data suggest that haplogroup-X was resident in North America thousands of years before the Vikings and Columbus made landfall. (Schurr, Theodore G.; "Mitochondrial DNA and the ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 88: Jul-Aug 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Antipodal Hotspot Pairs Hotspots are isolated areas of the earth's crust where there is an unusually large amount of basaltic volcano activity. At present, over 120 hotspots are recognized by geophysicists -- and they are not distributed randomly about the globe. In fact, many seem to be diametrically opposite one another, as described by M.R . Rampino: "The observed number of antipodal hotspot pairs depends on the maximum allowable deviation from exact antipodality, At a maximum deviation of 700 km, 26% to 37% of hotspots form antipodal pairs in the published lists examined here, significantly more than would be expected from the general hotspot distribution. Two possible mechanisms that might create such a distribution include: (1 ) symmetry in the generation of mantle plumes; and (2 ) melting related to antipodal focusing of seismic energy from large-body impacts." (Rampino, Michael R.; "Antipodal Hotspot Pairs on the Earth," Geophysical Research Letters, 19:2011, 1992.) Similar Phenomenon. On the moon, the magcons (magnetic concentrations) seem to be located diametrically opposite large lunar impact basins. See ALZ3 in The Moon and the Planets. This catalog volume is described here . From Science Frontiers #88, JUL-AUG 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 83: Sep-Oct 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects When Isotropy Confounds Angular distribution of 153 gamma-ray bursts detected by the GRO satellite in 1991 Take a look at the distribution of 153 gamma-ray bursts registered by the Gamma-Ray Observatory (a satellite). There is no pattern, gamma-ray bursters seem to be evenly distributed in all directions. This is not what the astronomers expected, and the implications of this isotropy are staggering. Gamma-ray bursts emanate from highly localized unseen sources. They may last for a few milliseconds or stretch out for several minutes. The energy in the bursts ranges over 26 orders of magnitude. The rise-times of the bursts are so short that the sources can only be a few hundred kilometers across. Before the accompanying map appeared, most scientists thought that the bursters were nearby, probably in the disk of the galaxy, and were due to asteroids being digested by neutron stars or possibly neutron-star quakes. If such were so, the bursters would be concentrated in the plane of the galaxy (the Milky Way), which clearly they are not. Another theory places the bursters in a distant spherical halo about our galaxy. But, in this case, the bursters would have to be much more energetic than astronomers care to contemplate. In fact, if they exist in a galactic halo, we should also be able to detect the bursters in our neighboring galaxies -- but we do not! A ...
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... redshifts are bunched at intervals of 72 kilometers/second and at onehalf and one-third that value. Mainstream astronomers insist that redshifts be interpreted as Doppler shifts due to the expanding universe. Quantized redshifts just don't fit into this view of the cosmos, for they imply concentric shells of galaxies expanding away from a central point -- earth! Even though more recent redshift data have supported the notion of quantized redshifts, cosmologists find them undigestible, even pathogenic. But replication and non-replication are the essence of science, so B. Guthrie and W.M . Napier, at the Royal Observatory at Edinburgh, undertook another study. They selected 89 nearby spiral galaxies that had not been incorporated in any of the previous surveys. These galaxies had very accurately measured redshifts and were distributed all over the celestial sphere. "As expected, the galaxies' redshifts showed a smooth distribution. Clearly, no quantization was being introduced by the radio telescopes or the data reduction process. But after Guthrie and Napier corrected each redshift to account for the Earth's motion around the center of the Milky Way -- a different correction for each location in the sky -- out popped a periodicity of 37 km/sec, close to one of Tifft's values. It was so strong that the chance of it being a statistical fluke was less than 1 in 3,000." Tifft's work therefore seems to have been verified again. But Tifft is now waxing even more iconoclastic, claiming that galactic redshifts have actually changed slightly in just a few years! ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 85: Jan-Feb 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Two Tsumani Tales Only a few years ago astronomical catastrophism was denied as a major factor in geological change. Now one reads everywhere of huge terrestrial impact craters, iridium layers, and tektite deposits. Even so, one necessary consequence of 70% of the large impacts has been neglected until recently: the giant tsunamis and marine incursions that must have swept over the coasts of the continents following impacts at sea. This oversight is now being rectified. 100,000 BP. The South Pacific. A longstanding geological enigma of the New South Wales coastline is the curious distribution of sand dunes. Those headlands less than 40 meters high have lost most of their dunes, leaving only raw, unweathered rock. On the other hand, the higher headlands have retained these dunes. Australians B. Young and T. Bryant hypothesize that a tsunamis 40 meters high swept the lower headlands clean about 100,000 years ago. They can even plot the incoming wave's direction, because a few remnants of the coastal dunes still cling to the southwest corners of the headlands along the NSW coast south of Newcastle. In their scenario, the tsunamis came from the northeast, smashed into the Solomons, southeastern Australia, and northeastern New Zealand. The Great Barrier Reef protected northeastern Australia from the full force of the wave. Young and Bryant favor a Hawaiian landslip as the initiator of the tsunamis, but acknowledge that an asteroid impact could also have done ...
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... of Namibia. Geologically, this feature is a clay pan in the flood plain of the Tsauchah River, which flows on the average only once in a decade. Towering above the clay pan are sand dunes that reach 350 meters elevation above the river bed. They are veritable mountains of sand and the tallest dunes in the world. The potential anomaly at Sossusvlei is not the size of the dunes but rather the mysterious circles of grass that grow upon them. All we have to go on is a photograph showing a dozen or so of the circles situated at some unspecified distance from the photographer. Somewhat irregular in shape, the circles seem to be on the order of 100 meters in diameter. No grass at all grows within the rings of thick grass, but outside grow sparse, evenly distributed grass clumps. The writer of the Sossusvlei article labels the circles "unusual phenomena." (Pupkewitz, Tony; "Sossusvlei," Optima , 36:136, 1988. Cr. P.A . Hill. Optima is a South African publication.) Comment. Are these circles akin to the "fairy rings" found in moister climates? Perhaps also pertinent are the clones of creosote bushes which grow outwards in expanding circles, as mentioned in a fascinating recent article on giant aspen clones, which may be a million years old! (Grant, Michael C.; "The Trembling Giant," Discover, 14:82, October 1993.) From Science Frontiers #90, NOV-DEC 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... been filled in and that seemed to be arranged in an intricate pattern that mirrored the star constellations making up the classical Greek zodiac. But this revelation didn't come until later. After all, pits are common in archeology. Often they contain just rubbish, sometimes human remains. "But the pits at Muggenburg are different. There are 57 of them, each about a meter wide and deep, extending over about half a hectare [about 1 acres] They were certainly not used for storage because the level of the groundwater is too high. Nor were they used as dumps; archaeological evidence shows that they were filled in shortly after they were dug, and some have very little in them." It was only when Therkorn mapped the pits did she see that they were not distributed at random. Connecting them as children do with dot-puzzles, she quickly recognized the constellations Taurus (bull), Canis Major (dog), Pegasus (winged horse), and Hercules. The pits were geoglyphs of a new sort, streching for more than 100 meters, sort of Nazca lines in Holland. About 500 meters from the 57-pit array, still another Taurus pattern of pits was uncovered. The mysterious pits didn't contain much, but there were often a few animal bones. The Taurus pits yielded cattle bones; the Pegasus pits, horse bones; etc.; with the bones matching the zodiac animal in each sign. Therkorn surmised that the animal remains represented ritual sacrifices that were probably time-coordinated with specific celestial positions of the real stellar ...
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... after Anderson wrote a column in the December 1990 issue of Physics Today entitled "On the Nature of Physical Law." Here he recommended the categorical dismissal of all anomalous observations that might tear apart the fabric of science. Although Anderson did not name Jahn specifically, it was obvious to Jahn that his work was the primary target. Jahn's response was a long letter summarizing the stupendous quantity of data he and his colleagues have amassed on psi effects. "We have in hand several prodigious data bases, acquired over 12 years of continuous, intensive experimentation, that clearly establish the existence, scale and primary correlates of certain anomalous influences of human consciousness on a variety of physical systems and processes. In our Microelectronic Random Binary Generators experiment, 95 selected human operators attempted to shift the output distribution means to either higher or lower values than the chance mean, in accordance with their prerecorded intentions. In 3 850 000 experimental sequences of 200 binary samples, the overall results were that means in high intensity runs exceeded means in low intensity runs by 4.38 sigma. (The probability of chance occurrence of this outcome is less than 6 x 10-6 .) Jahn also reviewed the results of other types of psi experiments which also produced positive results. Replying to Jahn, Anderson admitted that he indeed had Jahn in mind when he wrote his original article. "What my piece actually said was within my competence as a theorist, which is to make logical connections, and the logical point I made is that physics as it is practiced, and specifically precise mensuration, is ...
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... is the largest known structure in the universe at present, having superceded sundry superclusters and clusters of superclusters. The Wall is a "thin" (15 million-light-year) sheet of galaxies 500 million light years long by 200 wide; and it may extend even farther. It is emplaced some 200-300 million light years from earth. It helps outline contiguaous parts of vast "bubbles" of nearly empty space. Both the Wall and the adjacent voids are just too large for current theories to deal with. All popular theories have great difficulties in accounting for such large inhomogeneities. To illustrate an important observable -- the 2.7 K cosmic background radiation -- which is usually described as the afterglow of the Big Bang, ar gues for a very smooth, uniform distribution of galaxies. Great Walls are definitely anomalous. M.J . Geller, codiscoverer of the Great Wall with J.P . Huchra, remarked: "My view is that there is something fundamentally wrong in our approach to understanding such large-scale structure -- some key piece of the puzzle that we're missing." (Waldrop, M. Mitchell; "Astronomers Go Up against the Great Wall," Science, 246:885, 1989.) Also: Geller, Margaret J., and Huchra, John P.; "Mapping the Universe," Science, 246:897, 1989. And: McKenzie, A.; "Cosmic Cartographers Find 'Great Wall,'" Science News, 136:340, 1989.) The discovery of ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 66: Nov-Dec 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Globular Clusters Upset Theory Of Galaxy Formation A spherical cloud of globular clusters surrounds the Milky Way galaxy. Each cluster is itself a spherical groups of stars. Through the telescope, globular clusters are beautiful spherical aggregations of bright stars that seem to get ever denser toward the cluster's center. Globular clusters harbor many anomalies (AOB4 and AOB17 in Stars, Galaxies, Cosmos); here, we mention two involving spatial distribution and age. Many spiral galaxies, like our own Milky Way, spin ponderously in the center of a spherical cloud of scores, even hundreds, of globular clusters (see sketch). Not only do the globular clusters surrounding us display a different spatial distribution (spherical rather than flat-spiral), but their individual ages undercut galaxy theory. All of the Milky Way's globular clusters were supposed to have been formed when our galaxy was created. Yet, the ages of these clusters vary by as much as 5 billion years. (Dayton, Leigh; "Globular Clusters Upset Theory of Galaxy," New Scientist, p. 34, May 13, 1989.) Comment. We cannot resist mentioning still another cluster anomaly: The globular clusters do not participate in the galaxy's general rotation. Where did these oddballs come from? Reference. The catalog volume: Stars, Galaxies, Cosmos, mentioned above, is described here . From Science Frontiers #66, NOV-DEC 1989 ...
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... having ten times the angular momentum of the planets, the situation is much worse. According to Asimov, the solar-system angular momentum is split as follows: Oort Cloud 90% All of the planets 9.8 % The sun 0.2 % The total mass of the Oort Cloud is estimated to be roughly that of Saturn. The recent flyby of Halley's Comet created this dilemma. It was discovered that Halley was a chunk containing 140 cubic miles of ice - much larger than anticipated for this "typical" comet. If the estimated 2 trillion comets are, on the average, Halley's size, the Oort Cloud is a thousand times more massive than previously thought. This, combined with estimates of Oort Cloud distance and angular velocity leads to the almost ridiculous distribution of solar-system angular momentum tabulated above. This will keep the theorists busy for a while. (Asimov, Isaac; Frontiers: New Discoveries about Man and His Planet, Outer Space and the Universe , New York, 1989, p. 270. Cr. C. Ginenthal) Comment. Perhaps the Oort Cloud isn't there after all. Or, if it is, it isn't rotating as rapidly as thought. In any case, the accepted theory of solarsystem formation is in trouble. Reference. Details concerning our catalog The Sun and Solar System Debris may be found here . From Science Frontiers #70, JUL-AUG 1990 . 1990-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 73: Jan-Feb 1991 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Malodorous Mystery "A scent squad has been unleashed in Bartlesville, Okla., to trace and identify an elusive odor that has plagued residents for months. The 19-member Bartlesville Odor Mitigation Task Force will distribute about a half dozen devices to trap the scent, which will then be snif fed and characterized by trained noses at a Chicago Research Company. The city has received 60 calls this year about the odor, described as smelling like rotten eggs or butane, but they have been unable to determine the source." (Newman, Steve; "Malodorous Mystery," Baltimore Sun, July 22, 1990.) Comment. We rarely come across olfactory anomalies, although they occasionally crop up in the Fortean literature. From Science Frontiers #73, JAN-FEB 1991 . 1991-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... a cataclysmic event that occurred some 800 years ago. Maori oral history tells of "the falling of the skies, raging winds, upheaval of the Earth, and mysterious devastating fire from space." Even some of the place names in New Zealand relate to some kind of catastrophe. In the province of Otago, there is Waipahi (place of the exploding fire) and Tapanui (big explosion). Oral history is entertaining, but scientists want something more palpable before they will entertain Velikovskian ideas about recent history. Well, if you visit Tapanui (big explosion place), you can find Landslip Crater, a 900 x 600meter depression 130 meters deep. This does not have the appearance of a bona fide meteor crater, but all around it are suspicious signs. For example, treefall distribution from 800 years ago was radially away from Tapanui out to 4080 kilometers. In the same area one finds the trinities, small globules of silicates with tektite overtones. And then there is the extirpation of the moas about this time. To be sure, there are separate, conventional explanations of all these phenomena. But, if you add the Maori oral traditions to all these suspicious physical signs, a Tunguska-like event does not seem impossible. (Steel, Duncan, and Snow, Peter; "The Tapanui Region of New Zealand: A 'Tunguska' of 800 Years Ago?" paper at the Conference on "Asteroids, Comets, Meteors, '91'," Flagstaff, June 1991.) From Science Frontiers #78, NOV-DEC 1991 . 1991- ...
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... but not all, residents of the British Isles. Percipients describe the hum as like a "diesel truck with its engine idling." The electronic environment of Britain has been blamed for the hum: transformers, high-voltage transmission lines, and pulsed radars are all candidate hum-makers. For, it has been discovered, some people somehow convert pulses of electromagnetic energy into a perception of sound. This facet of the British "hum problem" was covered on p.000, where the infamous Soviet "Woodpecker Radar" is mentioned specifically. But are electromagnetic pulses really to blame? The British hum has become a nuisance - to those who can hear it - during the past 20 years. This is just the period during which British Gas has been installing a nationwide gas-distribution system, which employs powerful turbines to pump natural gas through underground pipelines. H. Witherington, an unhappy hum-hearer, has for years driven around Britain at night when things are quieter, plotting places where the hum can be heard. He has found that the sound follows the gas pipelines and extends for several kilometers on each side. Houses, he finds, tend to amplify the sound, because closed rooms sometimes create resonant conditions. (Fox, Barry; "Low-Frequency 'Hum' May Permeate the Environment," New Scientist, p. 27, December 9, 1989.) Reference. Ordering information for our catalog (mentioned above): Earthquakes, Tides may be found here . From Science Frontiers #68, MAR-APR 1990 . 1990-2000 ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 60: Nov-Dec 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Anomalous Geographical Distribution Of Diabetes Mellitus The incidence of diabetes mellitus among children varies dramatically with geography. For children under 15, it is only 1.7 per 100,000 in Japan but rises to 29.5 in Finland. Within the States, it is 9.4 per 100,000 in San Diego and peaks at 20.8 in Rochester, Minnesota. Children of European descent in New Zea land contract it three times as often as Maori children. U.S . whites get the disease more frequently than blacks and Hispanics. "Causes of these 'extraordinary' distribution differences remain unknown .. .. Both genetic and environmental factors appear necessary for the disease." (Eron, C.; "Cold Facts on Diabetes," Science News, 134:117, 1988.) From Science Frontiers #60, NOV-DEC 1988 . 1988-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Mind-bending the velocity vectors of marine algae From the referenced paper's abstract: "A consciousness experiment in which the Doppler shift of He/Ne laser light was used to describe changes in the velocity and vector of a marine alga, Dunaliella, was reported by Pleass and Dey in 1985. Because the subject of the consciousness experiment is living, we expect strings of baseline velocity and vector data which are, at some level, inextricably time-variant. This complicates the statistical procedures which must be used to analyze the data. "This paper examines the variation in baseline data strings, and describes two alternative statistical procedures which have been used to determine the probability of consciousness effects. Two levels of control are applied, allowing global comparison of frequency distributions of experimental scores with similar distributions derived artificially from baseline data. In both cases the null hypothesis is that there is no psi effect. The data quite strongly suggest the rejection of the null hypothesis, although the distributions of run scores contain several values beyond 3 sigma and are nonnormal. This limits the definition of probabilities." (Pleass, C.M ., and Dey, N. Dean; "Finding the Rabbit in the Bush: Statistical Analysis of Consciousness Research Data from the Motile Alga Dunaliella," The Explorer, 3:6 , no. 2, 1986. The Explorer is a publication of the Society for Scientific Exploration.) Comment. Scientifically, these experiments seem to far transcend guessing Zener cards. From Science Frontiers #50, MAR-APR 1987 . ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 55: Jan-Feb 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Zeitoun Luminous Phenomena "Between April, 1968 and May, 1971, hundreds of thousands of people reported complex luminous events over a church in Cairo (Zeitoun), Egypt. Many of these events were photographed. Most of the luminous phenomena (LP) occurred during 1969 when seismic activity within the radius of less than 500 km was approximately a factor of 10 greater than for any single year before or afterwards. Whereas the distribution of epicenters around Zeitoun was randomly distributed for the years 1966 through 1968 and 1970 through 1972, there was a significant focus of their frequency during the year 1970. Most of them occurred off the coast of Gemsa, approximately 375 km to the southeast of Cairo." Analysis of the LP and seismic records demonstrated a significant increase in the number of LP during the month of, or the month before, increases in the number of earthquakes per month. The relationship between LP and quakes was not, however, as strong as it had been for episodes of luminous phenomena in Toppenish, Washington; the Uintah Basin, Utah; Carman, Manitoba; and the New Madrid region in the central US. Still, the Zeitoun phenomena must be considered as supportive of the hypothesis that many LPs are associated with tectonic strain in the earth's crust. (Derr, John S., and Persinger, Michael A.; "Temporal Association between the Zeitoun Luminous Phenomena and Regional Seismic Activity," ...
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... The REG was actually an electronic noise source coupled with circuits that created random positive and negative pulses. The operator mentally tried to increase or decrease the number of counts, or generate baseline data for experiment control. After 33 different operators and over 250,000 trials, there appeared a small but statistically significant indication that the operators were actually able to influence the equipment. Also interesting is the fact that each operator had a private "signature"; that is, individual cumulative deviation graphs (like the one shown) had typical shapes for each operator. Related experiments were carried out with a Random Mechanical Cascade (RMC). In this device 9,000 3/4 -inch polystyrene spheres cascaded down through an array of 330 nylon pegs into 19 bins. According to chance a Gaussian distribution of spheres should be found in the bins. The operators were asked to mentally try and skew the distribution to the right or left, or construct a baseline, as with the REG. Once again, there was statistically significant evidence of a mental influence. Jahn's group also engaged in remoteviewing experiments, in which subjective factors were suppressed as far as possible. An excerpt from the report's Abstract summarizes this phase of the work nicely: "Quantitative analysis of a large data base of remote perception experiments reveals similar departures from chance expectation of the degree of target information acquired by anomalous means. Digital scoring techniques based on a spectrum of 30 binary descriptors, applied to all targets and perceptions in the experimental pool, consistently indicate acquisition of substantial topical and impressionistic information about remote ...
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... existing 2000- m-deep ice borehole there. Previous analysis of ice-cores from the borehole indicate that the ice density can be accurately modeled. Gravity measurements were made to a depth of 1673 meters in the ice, the sub-ice topography was mapped with high-precision radar echo sounding over a 10-km-diameter region, and a series of 24 locations in a 32-km-diameter network around the hole were surveyed with gravity, leveling, and GPS positioning. "When corrected for the sub-ice topography, a gravity anomaly that accumulated to nearly 4 mGal in 1.4 km was observed. We find measured anomalies can be taken as evidence for non-Newtonian gravity, but can also be accounted for in terms of Newtonian physics if a suitable distribution of high densiity masses exist beneath the borehole." (Zumberge, Mark Al, et al; "Results from the 1987 Greenland G Experiment," Eos, 69:1046, 1988.) The paper on the Greenland experiment led to a short article in Science in which differing opinions among the re-search team members about the experiment's significance were aired. Some opted for an unusual density distribu-tion of the rock beneath the experiment to explain the results; others thought that the required density distribution was too unlikely and contrived and consequently favored a modification of Newton's inverse-square law. (Poole, Robert; "' Fifth Force' Update: More Tests Needed," Science, 242:1499, 1988.) Comment. Should we permit this ...
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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 Bacteria One dictionary's definition: "Widely distributed group of microscopic, one-celled vegetable organisms..." As a matter of fact, the nearly universal image of a bacterium is that of a simple, single-cell organism. But: "That view is now being challenged. Investigators are finding that in many ways an individual bacterium is more analogous to a component cell of a multicellular organism than it is to a free-living, autonomous organism. Bacteria form complex communities, hunt prey in groups and secrete chemical trails for the directed movement of thousands of individuals." J.A . Shapiro, author of the preceding quote, attributes the simplistic picture of bacteria to medical bacteriology, in which disease-causing bacteria are classically identified by isolating single cells, growing cultures from them, and then showing that they cause the disease in question. In the microscopic real world, bacteria virtually always live in colonies, which possess collective properties quite different and much more impressive than those of the single-cell-in-a -dish! That old human urge for reductionism has led us astray again. Shapiro seeks to remove the blinders of reductionism in a wonderful article in the June, 1988, issue of Scientific Amer can . We have room here to mention only the Myxobacteria, many of which never exist as single cells in nature. Even those that do are "social" in the sense that ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 59: Sep-Oct 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects How And When The Americas Were Peopled We quote from R. Gruhn's abstract in the journal Man. "A study of aboriginal language distributions supports Knut Fladmark's hypothesis that the initial source of entry of peoples into the New World was along the Pacific Coast rather than through the interior ice-free corridor. The greatest diversification of aboriginal languages, as indicated by the number of language isolates and major subdivisions of language phyla, is observed on the Pacific Northwest Coast, in California, on the northern Gulf of Mexico Coast, in Middle America, and in South America. Following a conventional principle of historical linguistics, it is assumed that the development of language diversification is proportional to time depth of human occupation of an area. A review of the archeological evidence from the areas of greatest language diversification indicates a time depth of at least 35,000 years for human occupation of most of the Americas." (Gruhn, Ruth; "Linguistic Evidence in Support of the Coastal Route of Earliest Entry into the New World," Man, 23:77, 1988. Cr. E. Ferget.) Comment. Did that last sentence say "35,000 years"? Surely this cannot be an American archeological publication. It isn't ? Man is produced by the Royal Anthropological Institute in London. In the States, 12,000 years remains the maximum age of entry of humans into the New World ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 61: Jan-Feb 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Celestial Influences The "Mars Effect" refers to the "significant tendency for champion athletes to have been born at the time of either the rise or the upper culmination of the planet Mars." What has the position of Mars in the earth's sky to do with an athlete's prowess? No one knows! And certainly no scientist who wants to remain employed will try to find out. Distribution in 18 Mars sectors for sports champions (top) and ordinary people (below). Solid lines are observed numbers; dotted lines, expected numbers. The two peaks in the graph occur at the rise and upper culmination of Mars. We have M. Gauquelin to thank for discovering the Mars Effect. Gauquelin began his research with checking out the claims of conventional astrology. He "found no truth whatever behind certain major tenets of the horoscope, including the alleged influence of the signs of the zodiac, the reality of the astrological 'aspects,' the reported role of the 'houses,' or the prediction of future events." That's the good news, now here's the bad. During his work, he recorded the birth dates of thousands of French men and women who were especially successful in various endeavors, especially sports. These data, easily veri-fied, do seem to demonstrate that the Mars effect truly exists! G. Abell, who was a reknowned astronomer, did ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 52: Jul-Aug 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects New Vertebrate Depth Record S. Eckert, of the University of Georgia, has reported that a leatherback turtle fitted with a recording device dove to 1200 meters. This exceeds the previous record for air-breathing vertebrates (sperm whales). Leatherbacks also hold other records, being the largest of living turtles (over 600 kilograms) and the most widely distributed reptile in the world. They are also capable of maintaining their body temperatures sub stantially above the ambient water temperature, although no one has as yet claimed that they are warm-blooded. (Mrosovsky, N.; "Leatherback Turtle Off Scale," Nature, 327:286, 1987.) From Science Frontiers #52, JUL-AUG 1987 . 1987-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... . 54: Nov-Dec 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Fractals, fractals everywhere Anyone who follows the popular scientific literature knows that fractals are now "in." Commonly employed to "explain" patterns in nature, fractals are, from a simplistic viewpoint, mathematical ways to predict the development of a growing structure, be it a crystalline mass, a plant, or the universe-as-a -whole. Yes, the universe-as-a -whole, the clouds of stars and clusters of galaxies, may be mimicked by cellular automata (i .e ., fractals). Imagine the universe as a cubical lattice, and start in one corner, adding one layer of cubes after another. Galaxy distribution could be simulated by using a rule telling us which of the added cubical cells had galaxies in them and which did not. "The rule actually used supposes that the question whether each point in a newly added layer will (or will not) be occupied by a galaxy is mostly determined by the occupancy of the five nearest neighbors in the previous layer, but for good measure, there is a random variable to introduce an element of white noise to the system. To make the process a little more interesting, the determination whether a new site is occupied depends on whether a number characteristic of that site, and calculated by simple arithmetic from the corresponding number for the five nearest neighbors in the preceeding layer, exceeds an arbitrarily chosen number." Comparing this fractal simulation with the observed ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 55: Jan-Feb 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Psyching Out Piezoelectric Transducers Our title is perhaps too flippant. The experiment described below is serious and was conducted at Stanford Research Institute. Five participants were chosen in an attempt to mentally affect an electronic device. "Each participant was asked to influence one of a pair of piezoelectric transducers, operating in a differential mode, so as to produce an event above a predetermined threshold. During the formal data collection, the transducer enclosure was located in a locked laboratory adjacent to the participants' room. Under these conditions, one of the participants produced a total of 11 events above threshold, distributed in three separate effort periods. Control trials were recorded with no one present in the experimental room but with normal activity in the rest of the building. No equivalent, uncorrelated events above threshold were detected in those control periods." The author emphasizes the preliminary nature of the results, but believes they warrant further investigaion. (Hubbard, G. Scott, "Possible Remote Action Effects on a Piezoelectric Transducer," The Explorer, 4:10, October 1987.) From Science Frontiers #55, JAN-FEB 1988 . 1988-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Remote, extrasensory description of mineral samples "A series of remote viewing experiments were run with 12 participants who communicated through a computer conferencing network. These participants, who were located in various regions of the United States and Canada, used portable terminals in their homes and offices to provide typed descriptions of 10 mineral samples. These samples were divided into an open series and a double-blind series. A panel of five judges was asked to match the remote viewing descriptions against the mineral samples by a percentage scoring system. The correct target sample was identified in 8 out of 33 cases; this represents more than double the pure chance expectation. Two experienced users provided 20 transcripts for which the probability of achieving the observed distribution of the percentage score by chance was 0.04." (Vallee, Jacques,; "Remote Viewing and Computer Communications - An Experiment," Journal of Scientific Exploration , 2:13, 1988.) From Science Frontiers #61, JAN-FEB 1989 . 1989-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... is in fact a significant body of circumstantial evidence to suggest otherwise. Our present knowledge of the galaxy population is so biased by a single insidious selection effect that it is entirely possible that Malin 1 is just the first example of a class of such low-surface-brightness giant galaxies that forms a significant constituent of the universe." The "selection effect" mentioned is a consequence of the very bright sky that confronts astronomers. Astronomical interest and instrumentation have focussed on those astronomical objects that are bright. In truth, the universe may be full of "icebergs and crouching giants." (Disney, Michael, and Phillipps, Steven; "Icebergs and Crouching Giants," Nature, 329:203, 1987.) Comment. Since astronomers have built their models of galaxies, galactic distribution, and the evolution of the universe on an unrepresentative portion of the actual cosmos, we may be in for some major changes in our overall view of the universe and its beginning -- if it actually had one. From Science Frontiers #54, NOV-DEC 1987 . 1987-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... ONLINE No. 52: Jul-Aug 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Parasites Control Snail Behavior A species of estuarine snail bearing the larvae of the trematode parasite Gynae cotyla adunca behaves radically different than it does when not infected. It lets itself become stranded high on beaches and sandbars, where it becomes easy prey to crustaceans living in this region. These crustaceans serve as the parasite's next host. Somehow, the parasite is able to modify the snail's behavior in a way that enhances its own chances for success. The question, as always in such cases, is how? And if it is a chemically induced change in behavior, how did it evolve? (Curtis, Lawrence A.; "Vertical Distribution of an Estuarine Snail Altered by a Parasite," Science, 235:1509, 1987.) Comment. Is present human behavior, thought by some to be irrational or suicidal, controlled by some unrecognized parasite that will ultimately benefit? Someone must have written a science fiction story on this theme. From Science Frontiers #52, JUL-AUG 1987 . 1987-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... 75% of the United States. The positive lightning strokes are of longer duration and more liable to start fires than the common negative strokes. But why are they concentrated at one end of the storm complex? R. Orville ventures that in a big mesoscale electrical storm, the prevailing winds blow the positively charged upper portions of the clouds to the northeast, thus establishing bipolarity. (Orville, Richard E., et al; "Bipole Patterns Revealed by Lightning Locations in Mesoscale Storm Systems," Geophysical Research Letters, 15:129, 1988. Also: Anonymous; "New Lightning Theory Strikes," Eos, 69:57, 1988.) Reference. Large thunderstorm complexes are cataloged in GWH3 in: Tornados, Dark Days. For ordering information: visit: here . Lightning distribution across Florida on February 22, 1987, 8:00-9 :00pm. The plus signs designate positive lightning strokes. From Science Frontiers #57, MAY-JUN 1988 . 1988-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 43: Jan-Feb 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Anomalous distribution of large, fresh lunar craters The overwhelming majority of astronomers favors a meteor-impact origin for the giant fresh lunar craters. (Here, "fresh" means post-mare formation.) Such an origin would seem to favor random distribution of these craters. "However, it appears that the distribution of these large, fresh craters is far from random, contrary to what would be expected if their mechanism of formation was by impact. Even the most casual observer of the Moon cannot help but note that the maria contain very few large craters. The more experienced observer will take note of several apparent anomalies. Six magnificent post-mare craters are almost fortuitously located immediately adjacent to mare regions, these being Langrenus, Theophilus, Cavelerius, Aristoteles, Aristarchus, and Copernicus" The author of these observations then buttresses them with a statistical analysis, which indicates a strong, nonrandom distribution of all of these fresh craters. Apparently, the volcano-meteorite controversy is not completely settled after all these years. (Kitt, Michael T,; "Anomalous Distribution of Large, Fresh Lunar Craters," Strolling Astronomer, 31:22, 1985.) Comment. Some of the fresh craters on the mare borders, such as Aristarchus and Copernicus, are well-known sites of lunar transient phenomena. Could they be analogous to the terrestrial volcanos constituting the "ring of fire" around the Pacific Basin? From Science ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 42: Nov-Dec 1985 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Remarkable Distribution Of Hydrothermal Vent Animals Hydrothermal vents support a bizarre array of large clams, mussels, worms and other curious species. These biological communities are unique in that they are supported not by solar energy but rather the earth's thermal energy. What verges on the anomalous is the appearance in both Atlantic and Pacific Oceans of very similar vent communities, with similar or identical species. How did these continent-separated communities originate ? In the words of the author of the present article, "The cooccurrence of a clam, a mussel, and a vestimentiferan worm at widely separated sites in the Pacific and Atlantic represents either an unusual distribution from a single lineage or, even more remarkably, cases of parallel evolution. " (Grassle, J. Frederick; "Hydrothermal Vent Animals: Distribution and Biology, " Science, 229:713, 1985.) From Science Frontiers #42, NOV-DEC 1985 . 1985-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 42: Nov-Dec 1985 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Fabric Of Prime Number Distribution Mathematicians and many non-mathematicians have soft spots in their hearts for numbers that cannot be subdivided; that is, the prime numbers. No one has ever been able to figure out any foolproof system to their occurrence or how to generate them all by formula. Some primes, such as 11 and 13, 17 and 19, etc., come in pairs; but most don't . And some formulas are particularly good at generating primes, but they all fail somewhere. One such formula was discovered by Leonhard Euler, the great mathematician: n2+ n+ 41 This formula works for n = 0, 1, 2,...39; but fails at n = 40. An interesting consequence of Euler's formula can be made apparent when all numbers from 41 to 440 are written in a square spiral, like so: All of the numbers on the diagonal indicated are Euler formula primes, even when the spiral is expanded to 20 x 20. However, when the 20 x 20 spiral is examined closely, many of the other primes -- those not generated by Euler's formula -- also tend to line up on diagonals. This is a most intriguing characteristic, one which goes far beyond the 20 x 20 array mentioned above. The computer-generated display shown below lays out a huge square spiral, with each prime a bright dot. ...
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... ,978 french births The following is an English summary of a paper that appeared in a French scientific journal. "Is there any relationship between the times when babies are born and the synodic lunar cycle? There are published works that show that there is such a relationship. We have looked at 5,927,978 French births occurring between the months of January 1968 and the 31st December 1974. Using Fourier's spectral analysis we have been able to show that there are two different rhythms in birth frequencies: (1 ) A weekly rhythm characterized by the lowest number of births on a Sunday and the largest number on a Tuesday; (2 ) An annual rhythm with the maximum number of births in May and the minimum in September-October. "A statistical analysis of the distribution of births in the lunar month shows that more are born between the last quarter and the new moon, and fewer are born in the first quarter of the moon. The differences between the distribution observed during the lunar month and the theoretical distribution are statistically significant." (Guillion, P., et al; "Naissances, Fertilite, Rythmes et Cycle Lunaire," Journal de Gynecologie, Obstetrique et Biologic de la Reproduction, 15:265, 1986.) From Science Frontiers #48, NOV-DEC 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... findings of John et al are hotly contested by some brain researchers. One obvious conflict is that if up to 100 million brain cells are involved in storing just one simple memory, the brain will quickly use up all available cells. It must be that individual brain cells can participate in the storage of many different memories. The conventional mem-ory-trace theory would have to be replaced by a new type of memory architecture. (Bower, Bruce; "Million-Cell Memories," Science News, 130:313, 1986) Comment. Our thinking about biological memory may be controlled by our preoccupation with the two-dimensional circuits of computer memories. Biological memories might be three-dimensional, or of even higher order. Some scientists have ventured that memory might entail electrical charge distribution patterns in the brain; such need not be limited to two dimensions. The same thinking can be applied to the storage of genetic information. While DNA, RNA, etc., may be pieces in the puzzle, the complete solution may include the ways in which these molecules are bent, twisted, convoluted, arrayed, juxtaposed, and so on. In a letter relating to the above article, P.J . Rosch points out that John's results are consistent with the holographic theory of brain function supported by Pribram and Bohm. "In a hologram, every element of the subject is distributed throughout the photographic plate, making it possible to reconstruct the entire original image from any portion of the picture. In this paradigm, the brain stores memory and deals with interactions ...
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... member (the sun) collected enough star stuff to make it to incandescence. The four, large, outer planets would be merely failed stars. The advantages of this change of perspective are threefold: (1 ) All five central bodies are now compositionally similar as a class, (2 ) In each of the five systems, the angular momentum of the central body is greater than that of its satellites, whereas in the unitary solar system the angular momentum of the nine planets is much greater than that of the sun -- an embarrassing anomaly. (3 ) A final "bonus" appears when the distances of the satellites in the five systems are plotted, as indicated, and compared. The arrangement of the four terrestrial planets (the "solar satellites") closely resembles the distribution of Jupiter's four Galilean satellites. There are loose ends, to be sure, like Pluto and Saturn's rings, but the idea seems worth studying further. (Cole, G.H .A .; "Dynamical Form of the Solar System," Observatory, 105:96, 1985.) Comment. The arrangement of satellites in the figure may have no physical significance, but if you like Bode's Law you should appreciate the situation. Reference. For more information on the book The Moon and the Planets, visit: here . Distribution of orbital radii (r ) of central body satellites, where R is measured in terms of central body radii. Cole terms the similarities 'remarkable'. From Science Frontiers #42, NOV-DEC 1985 ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 44: Mar-Apr 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Space Spume The celestial pot seems to have boiled over "in the beginning." New surveys of the galaxies suggest that they are mostly located on the surfaces of bubbles, not as we thought for so long distributed uniformly throughout the cosmos, the expanding debris of the Big Bang. If further surveys confirm a bubbly universe, the "conventional explanations for the evolution of large-scale structure in which gravity played a dominant role may have to be modified or abandoned." To explain the bubbles, a new scenario has Big Bang #1 creating a population of uniformly distributed, extremely massive stars, which eventually burned out and exploded in a crescendo of supernovas. One stellar detonation stimulating adjacent giant stars to explode in a chain reaction. The bubble-like shock waves expanding outward from these explosions stimulated the condensations of the stars we now see in the heavens. Naturally, these stars and galaxies are concentrated on the surfaces of the shock wave bubbles. (Anonymous; "New 3-D Map Shows the Cosmos with a 'Bubble Bath' Appearance," Baltimore Sun, January 5, 1986.) Comment. The space bubbles are mapped using redshifts as measurements of distance. As all-too-frequently asserted in this book, some redshifts may not be distance yardsticks, in which case these theoretical bubbles would burst. As the structures of the cosmos and the subatomic worlds become more and more foreign to everyday experience ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 44: Mar-Apr 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Of Dust Clouds And Ice Ages Ice cores from the polar ice at Camp Century, in Greenland, have been analyzed for the presence of cosmic dust. "It is concluded that on five occasions during the interval 20,000-14,000 years BP, cosmic dust mass concentrations in the solar system rose by one and two orders of magnitude above present day levels. Moreover if the particles found in these ice core samples are indicative of the particle size distribution which prevailed in the interplanetary medium at that time, then it may be concluded that the space number density of submicron sized particles must have uncreased by a factor of 105 or more. During these times the light transmission properties of the solar system would have been significantly altered resulting in major adverse effects to the earth's climate. Thus it is quite possible that these dust congestion episodes were responsible for the abrupt climatic variations which occurred toward the end of the last Ice Age." Whence these interplanetary dust clouds? The author of this article ruled out terrestrial volcanism (an insufficient source of iridium) and encounters with asteroids and cometary tails (too infrequent to account for the long periods of high dust levels). Rather, the dust source may have been the same event that created the recently discovered dust ring between Mars and Jupiter, which is believed to be only a few tens of thousands of years old. The nature of the "event" is not ...
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... the earth. Then, he found more suggestions of quantization. The redshifts of pairs of galaxies differed by quantized amounts (see figure). More evidence exists for galactic quantization, but this should give the reader a feeling for the conceptual disaster waiting on the wings of astronomy. Can galaxies, like atoms and mole cules, posses quantized states? And do the findings of Tifft and Cocke undermine the redshift-distance relationship? The answer might be YES; and then all of astronomy and our entire view of the universe and its history would have to be reformulated. (Tifft, William G., and Cocke, W. John; "Quantized Galaxy Redshifts," Sky and Telescope, 73:19, 1987.) Redshift differences for double galaxies. Instead of following the expected distribution (dotted line), they tend to fall into bins separated by 72-km/sec. From Science Frontiers #50, MAR-APR 1987 . 1987-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... 47: Sep-Oct 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Oil & gas from the earth's core In central Sweden this summer, drillers will be boring into the rocks of the Siljan Ring, Europe's largest known meteor crater. Oil and gas should not be down there in any quantities according to current theory, but that's what they are drilling for. Isn't it futile to fight such a well-established dogma that oil and gas have biological origins and therefore must be looked for only where life once thrived? Not any longer! Enough anomalies have accumulated to seriously challenge the idea that oil and gas are byproducts of ancient animal life. Here are a few of these anomalies: The geographical distribution of oil seems derived from features much larger in scale than individual sedimentary features. The quantities of oil and gas available are hundreds of times those estimated on the basis of biological origins. The so-called "molecular fossils" found in oil and claimed as proof of a biogenic origin are simply biological contaminants, particularly bacteria that feed upon the petroleum. Petroleum is largely saturated with hydrogen, whereas buried biological matter should exhibit a deficiency of hydrogen. Oil and gas are often rich in helium, an inert gas which biological pro cesses cannot concentrate. The great oil reservoirs of the Middle East are in diverse geological provinces. There is no unifying feature for the region as a whole and, especially, no sediments rich in biological debris that could have produced these immense concentrations of oil and ...
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... this is the so-called "dayglow." The experimenters, L. Frank, J. Sigwarth, and J. Craven, all at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, have found that their dayglow images are speckled with transitory dark spots. "According to Sigwarth, each hole expands like a drop of dye spreading out in a glass of water; within about 30 seconds the dayglow intensity drops by about 95 percent over an area of about 3,000 square kilometers. Then, over the next 3.5 minutes, the dayglow intensity increases toward its normal value as the hole grows to an area of about 25,000 km2 ." The Iowa group thinks that the holes or spots are created by meteors hitting the upper atmosphere because the spots follow the same time distribution as meteors. For example, they are more frequent during the well-known meteor showers. The theory is that the dark spots are formed when ice associated with the meteors is turned into water vapor, which reacts with the atmospheric oxygen producing the dayglow, in effect removing temporarily part of the light source. So far, everything seems relatively nonanomalous. But when quantities are calculated, though, jaws begin to drop. The sizes of the spots imply that the average meteor involved weighs 10 kilograms, mostly ice and far larger than has been thought. In fact, they may be characterized as small icy comets; that is, compositionally like the dirty snowballs that comets are now thought to be, but much, much smaller. The implication is that from 1,000 to 10 ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 42: Nov-Dec 1985 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A Large Quasar Inhomogeneity In The Sky "In an area roughly 20 x 70 on the sky, there exists an excess of bright, high-redshift quasars. Quasars with this distribution of apparent magnitude and redshift have a negligible chance of being drawn from the population of quasars present in other areas of the sky. At a mean redshift distance corresponding to their average z = 2, these quasars would represent an unprecedented inhomogeneity over enormous volumes of space in the universe." It is difficult for astronomers to accept such a large "bubble" in the cosmos, because the Big Bang Theory basically produces a "smooth" universe. The author of this paper, H. Arp, comments that the size of the inhomogeneity could be shrunk considerably if redshifts were not taken as measures of distance. (Arp, Halton; "A Large Quasar Inhomogeneity in the Sky," Astrophysical Journal, 277:L27, 1984.) From Science Frontiers #42, NOV-DEC 1985 . 1985-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 32: Mar-Apr 1984 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Mental Deflection Of Cascading Spheres "9 ,000 polyethylene spheres, 3/4 " diameter, cascade downward through 360 nylon pegs to be collected in 19 bins each equipped with real-time counters and LED displays. The 'Baseline' distribution of terminal bin populations is found closely to approximate Gaussian, so that normal statistics can be applied. Operators attempt, on volition or instruction, to shift the distribution mean to the right or left of the baseline value. Results, plotted as cumulative deviations of the mean, display comparable levels of significance and similar individual 'signatures' of achievement to those obtained by the same operators on our microelectronic random event generator." (Jahn, R.G ., et al; "A Psychokinesis Experiment with a Random Mechanical Cascade," The Explorer, l:7 , November 1983.) Comment. The abstract does not come right out and say it, but some subjects do, with high degrees of statistical significance, slightly alter the cascades of falling spheres. These experiments were conducted at Princeton and constitute some of the best modern evidence for the reality of psychokinesis. From Science Frontiers #32, MAR-APR 1984 . 1984-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 34: Jul-Aug 1984 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A Gathering Of Quasars The universe is supposed to be approximately uniform in all directions -- the evenly distributed smoke from the Big Bang. Halton Arp, an energetic opponent of the standard cosmological view, points out that quasars are socializing in disgracefully large numbers in one region of the sky. In the direction of the so-called Local Cluster of galaxies, between redshifts 1.2 -2 .5 , there are roughly four times as many quasars per unit volume as in the other parts of the sky. This unexpected clumping of quasars affects a region 1,3000 million light years in diameter and 4.875 million light years deep, a rather substantial chunk of the cosmos. Arp's discovery places astronomy in a no-win situation. Either the distribution of quasars is too clumpy for current theory or the redshift/distance law is wrong. Neither situation makes astronomers very happy. (Anonymous; "Quasars and Quasi Quasars," New Scientist, p. 20, May 17, 1984.) From Science Frontiers #34, JUL-AUG 1984 . 1984-2000 William R. Corliss ...
Terms matched: 1  -  Score: 26  -  15 May 2017  -  URL: /sf034/sf034p08.htm
... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 30: Nov-Dec 1983 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Cosmic Rays Not Random Conventional wisdom maintains that the cosmic rays intercepted by the earth are randomly distributed in space and time because of the smoothing action of the galactic magnetic field. But a cosmic-ray telescope buried beneath 600 meters of rock has recently detected bursts of cosmic rays emanating from specific directions. The two major sources are in the direction of the galactic north pole and the constellation Cygnus. Since the galactic magnetic field seems sufficient to randomize all charged particles during their long flights through space, pristine cosmic rays may not be charged particles at all. (Hecht, Jeff, and Torrey, Lee; "Scientists Find Sources of Cosmic Rays," New Scientist, 99:764, 1983.) Reference. The many anomalies of cosmic radiation are cataloged it: Stars, Galaxies, Cosmos. Details on this book at: here . From Science Frontiers #30, NOV-DEC 1983 . 1983-2000 William R. Corliss ...
Terms matched: 1  -  Score: 15  -  15 May 2017  -  URL: /sf030/sf030p03.htm
... of Basle, Switzerland, has what is certain to be a controversial answer. He was led to his conclusion by a series of experiments with psychoactive drugs, performed in collaboration with Professor Max Fink, SUNY, Stony Brook. Left-handers, the study demonstrated, are much more sensitive to drugs that act upon the central nervous system. Irwin believes that this finding is consistent with the known association of left-handedness with epilepsy and learning disorders. "But perhaps the most exciting aspect of Irwin's hypothesis is that it makes evolutionary sense. 'A greater resistance of right-handers to centrally active substances, when Man was a forager and before he learned to identify non-toxic edibles, would have favoured righthanded survival. This might account for the skew in the present handedness distribution that is unique to humans.'" And why should left-handers be more sensitive to psychoactive substances? Irwin thinks they must absorb or metabolize them differently, or perhaps there is a difference in the blood-brain barrier that affects the transport of substances into the brain. (Grist, Liz; "Why Most People Are Right-Handed," New Scientist, 22, August 16, 1984.) From Science Frontiers #36, NOV-DEC 1984 . 1984-2000 William R. Corliss ...
Terms matched: 1  -  Score: 14  -  15 May 2017  -  URL: /sf036/sf036p18.htm
... Explanation "The nitrate deposits in the extremely arid Atacama Desert of northern Chile are among the most unusual of all mineral deposits. In fact, they are so extraordinary that, were it not for their existence, geologists could easily conclude that such deposits could not form in nature. The nitrate deposits consist of water-soluble saline minerals that occur as cement in unconsolidated surficial material -- alluvial fill in valleys, loose rocky debris on hillsides, and windblown silt and sand -- and as impregnations and veins in porous and fractured bedrock. They are found chiefly along the eastern side of the Coastal Range, but also within the Coastal Range, in the Central Valley to the East, and along the lower Andean front. Features of the deposits that appear to defy rational explanation are their restricted distribution in a desert characterized throughout by saline soil and salt-encrusted playas; the wide variety of topography where they occur; the abundance of nitrate minerals, which are scarce in other saline complexes; and the presence of other, less abundant minerals containing the ions of perchlorate, iodate, chromate, and dichromate which do not exist in any other saline complexes. Iodate,, chromate, and dichromate are known to form under such conditions, but no chemical process acting at temperatures and pressures found at the earth's surface is known to produce perchlorate." (Ericksen, George E.; "The Chilean Nitrate Deposits," American Scientist, 71: 366, 1983.) Reference. For more on these nitrate deposits and related phenomena, see ESP3 in our Catalog: Neglected ...
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... The complete report is 6 pages long, with 8 diagrams, so only the highlights can be reported here. As is often the case, this display began with parallel phosphorescent bands (2 sets) rushing toward the ship at about 40 mph. They were 50-100 cm above the sea surface. The bands then changed into two rotating wheels; then a third wheel formed. All three rotated counterclockwise, with their hubs 300, 300, and 150 meters from the ship. The spokes stretched to the horizon. The display ceased for about 20 minutes and recommenced with four systems of onrushing parallel bands, which soon metamorphosed into four rotating wheels. Radar, visible light (from an Aldis lamp), and engine revolution appeared to have no effect on the spectacle. Next, evenly distributed, circular, flashing patches of brilliant blue-white light appeared all around the ship out to a distance of about 150 meters. This system of patches flashed away simultaneously the wheel display. The patches varied from 15-60 cm in diameter, and flashed 114 times per minute. When an Aldis lamp played steadily on the patches, nothing happened. When the lamp was flashed, the whole array of flashing patches disappeared, only to reappear in about 2 minutes. Each patch seemed to consist of worm-like segments 2 cm long, 2 cm apart. The worms were all aligned perpendicular to a vector from the ship. In contrast to the bands and wheels, the worms were located about 5 cm below the surface of the water. Water samples revealed no luminous organisms - ...
Terms matched: 1  -  Score: 14  -  15 May 2017  -  URL: /sf032/sf032p16.htm
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