... , and cultural purpose" of present-day "rigorously objective" science, but would: Allow a proactive role for consciousness Be more explicit and profound in the use of interdisciplinary metaphors Permit more generous interpretations of measurability, replicability, and resonance (4 ) Reduce onotological aspirations Permit an "overarching teleological causality. R.J . Jahn heads the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) Laboratory, which over the years has conducted some 50 million experimental trials, mostly in the search for psychokinetic effects on the behavior of a wide variety of mechanical, electrical, and other types of machines. Jahn and Dunne assert that the results of those experiments clearly show the effects of the pre-stated intentions of the machine operators. In other words, mind can affect matter -- as in the distribution of spheres cascading down a peg board. We now list some of the other salient features of the immense corpus of PEAR experimental results: The scale and character of the results are rather insensitive to the type of random devices (machines) employed. Operator learning and experience have no effect on performance. Operators may exert their "intentions" on the machine hours or days before the machine is run and still produce results similar to "on-time" machine operation. The distance between operator and machine has no effect on the results. (Jahn, Robert G., and Dunne, Brenda J.; "Science of the Subjective," Journal of Scientific Exploration, 11:201, 1997.) Comment. That PEAR results are unaffected by by the timing and distance of ...

... 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 ...

... Day The Laws Of Physics Changed Well, maybe there weren't such things as "days" as we now know them back when the universe was very young. In fact, "time" then might have been different from "time" now. This sounds like so much physics-speak; but, seriously, during the birth pangs of the universe, there seems to have been what cosmologists call a "phase change," a mysterious moment when the laws of physics suddenly became more complex. You can reasonably ask: "How can supposedly immutable physical laws change?" The answer seems to be that anything can happen when something is being made from nothing! This apparent plasticity in the laws governing the cosmos is suggested by observations of how galaxies in the early universe were distributed. The standard theory for the origin of the universe predicts that clumps of galaxies of all sizes were created early on. This is not what a survey by S. Sarkar et al, at the University of Oxford, found. A split second after the Big Bang, galaxies were organized in structures about 300-million light years across. The standard model of particle physics cannot account for this preferred size. The theorists' recourse is a phase change, a point in time when the warp and woof of the universe changed; that is, change the rules until they fit. (Chown, Marcus; "In the Beginning," New Scientist, p.7 , April 25, 1998.) Comment. Hang onto your hats. If a phase change happened once, ...

... our expectation that the nine digits should occur with equal probability. Fifty-seven years later, F. Benford, a GE physicist, unaware of Newcomb's paper, observed the same dirty early pages in the logarithm tables. He came up with exactly the same conjecture. Benford didn't stop there. He spent several years collecting diverse data sets -- 20,229 sets, to be exact. He included baseball statistics, atomic weights, river areas, the numbers appearing in Reader's Digest articles, etc. He concluded that his (and Newcomb's ) conjecture fit his data very well. There were notable exceptions, though. Telephone directories and square-root tables didn't support the conjecture. Interestingly, the second digits in numbers are more equitably distributed; the third, even more so. Mathematicians have never been able to prove the Newcomb-Benford conjecture. How could they if it doesn't apply to all tables? Nevertheless, it works for most data sets, and that's still hard enough to explain. (Hill, T.P .; "The First Digit Phenomenon," American Scientist, 86:358, 1998.) From Science Frontiers #120, NOV-DEC 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... only a tiny portion of her language skills, was amazingly narrow." (Bor, Jonathan; "The Woman Who Couldn't Describe Animals," Baltimore Sun, p. A1, September 7, 1992.) The implications of this strange case were described in Science News: "The peculiar inability of a 70-yearold woman to name animals has led scientists to propose that the brain harbors separate knowledge systems, one visual, the other verbal or language-based, for different categories of living and inanimate things, such as animals and household objects." (Bower, B.; "Clues to the Brain's Knowledge Systems," Science News, 142:148, 1992.) Comment. Experiments with animals suggest that the brain's memory is "distributed"; that is, like a hologram, both nowhere and everywhere. Also, it may not be pertinent, but R.O . Becker, in SF#81, hypothesized that the brain utilizes two modes of communication, one digital, the other analog. From Science Frontiers #84, NOV-DEC 1992 . 1992-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 43: Jan-Feb 1986 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology The Mysterious Tumuli of New Caledonia How Old is the Los Lunas Inscription? A Japanese Presence in Ancient Mexico? Astronomy Waiting for Saturn's Rings to Collapse Anomalous Distribution of Large, Fresh Lunar Craters The Planets As Fragments of An Ancient Companion of the Sun A Recent Transformation of Sirius? Biology & Geology The Return of the Tasmanian Tiger Life Seeks Out Energy Sources Wherever They May Be The Biological Diversity Crisis Treasures in A Toxonomic Wastebasket Piscatorial Data Processing Exploring the Suberranean World of Life The Cretaceous Incineration Everglades Astrobleme? Geophysics Underground Weather 1500-pound Ice Chunk Falls From Sky Psychology The Voice of God Chemistry & Physics "And So on Infinitum" The Thorny Way of Truth: Part II ...

... dispersed network of random-number generators (RNGs). A total of 38 RNG stations are presently "listening" for global perturbations in whatever medium carries the supposed human-to-matter influences. The analogy to global weather and seismological stations is appropriate here. On September 9, 2001, the Global Consciousness Project network of RNGs did indeed detect a sort of groaning in the consciousness of the planet's human cargo. The dispersed RNGs produced strings of numbers that were rather far from random, as indicated on the accompanying graph. For three days the RNGs defied probability, with stark non-randomness obvious at 10:12 AM Eastern Daylight Time on September 11. One can hypothesize that collective humanity recoiled at the TV images of the World Trade Center catastrophe. Improbable outputs of a distributed network of RNGs around September 11, 2001. But there are skeptical interpretations. For example, the sharp rise in global communications and radar activity might have somehow perturbed the RNGs. (Bishop, Bill; "Is It Global Consciousness or Mere Coincidence?" Austin American Statesman, October 23, 2001. Cr. D. Phelps.) Comment. Recognizing Nature's frequent symmetry, might not material entities (e .g ., RNGs) influence humans in some subtle ways? From Science Frontiers #139, Jan-Feb 2002 . 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 ...

... those shells coveted by collectors. Meinhardt has devised equations that describe chemical factors that turn pigment-generating cells on and off. In its simplest form, a mathematically modelled seashell is a two-dimensional sheet that grows along only one edge. Cells on this edge may or may not secrete pigment depending upon chemical "influences." B. Hayes describes how this sort of model operates: The triangular pattern on Cymbiola innexa suggests the presence of a "global control element" that turns the pigment-secreting cells on and off in the correct order -- something like a computer-controlled loom! "Given this generating mechanism, some shell patterns are easy to understand. A series of vertical stripes -- that is, stripes running perpendicular to the growing edge -- implies a static distribution of pigment secreting cells in the mantle margin. Where a cell or group of cells is permanently turned on, there is a dark stripe of pigment, and where the cells are dormant, there is an unpigmented space. The complementary pattern -- horizontal stripes, parallel to the growing edge -- results from a temporal rather than a spatial oscillation. All the secretory cells turn off and on in synchrony, so that light and dark bands are left behind on the surface of the shell as the growing edge moves on." All well and good, but some seashells have intricate patterns that require modellers to imagine traveling waves of excitation, oscillating chemical systems, signals that travel faster than chemical diffusion, and longrange synchrony employing a "global control element." These patterngenerating schemes are ...

... that anomalists should at least take note of them. J. Moore et al have been mapping and sampling huge blocks of rock that slid off the sides of Mauna Loa in the socalled South Kona landslide. These blocks of lava and basalt are truly giants. One was measured at 10 kilometers in length, 300 meters in thickness. Some of these colossal chunks of rock slid 80 kilometers (50 miles) out to sea during the late Pleistocene. Imagine the tsunami (tidal wave) this landslide must have generated! (Moore, James G., et al; "Giant Blocks in the South Kona Landslide, Hawaii," Geology, 23:125, 1995.) Comment. The South Kona landslide, or one like it, and the resulting tsunami might account for the curious distribution of sand dunes along the coast of New South Wales, Australia. See Science Frontiers #85. From Science Frontiers #101 Sep-Oct 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... connection of sorts. P.B . Pitluga, of Chicago's Adler Planetarium, proposes that some of the figures may be part of a Zodiac; that is, a terrestrial representation of the constellations. Here follows an abstract of her paper presented before a meeting of the Society for Scientific Exploration . "New field measurements and computer analysis link the gigantic ground drawings to the Andean tradition of dividing up space and time by cycles of the Milky Way. By including ethnoastronomy in the analysis, these conclusions differ from [those of] previous researchers. The first hypothesis tested was that the figures could be considered like labels to the lines. Of the twenty-seven figures, ten are birds, three are whales, and two are seaweed plants. Theodolite measurements revealed a non-random distribution of the directions of lines attached to look-alike figures. The second test showed a physical relationship of present-day Andean plant and animal figures imagined as silhouettes in dark spots along the Milky Way to figure-lines pointing to the rising and/or setting of the same Andean figure 2000 years ago. In the third test, all other lines extending to the desert horizon from a figure center keyed into dark spots and bright stars along the Milky Way at the same Local Sidereal Time in the same year. Finally, the directions of the long axis of each quadrangle related to the same sky in the same year at each site. Linking these findings with what is known about the Nazca culture, an agricultural-ceremonial model is presented describing how this site may have been used ...

... 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 ...

... 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 ...

... 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 ...

... 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 ...

... the 1960s. The object disappeared from sight during the few seconds it took me to call two persons to participate in the observation. It was not apparent how the object had disappeared from view since there were no sources of obscuration evident. Having become puzzled by this observation I continued watching that same region of sky from time to time. "About fifteen minutes later (22:45 local time) and more or less in the same region where the bright light had been observed I spotted a faint luminous object moving slowly toward the zenith. During the first few seconds of observation it had the appearance of a luminous thread, oriented perpendicular to its direction of motion. However, as it approached the zenith, I could see that it was in fact a group of at least 30 lights distributed in a broad, symmetrical V-configuration, reminiscent of a boomerang. Three members of my family who were with me also observed the group of lights. "Each individual light of the group looked like a star of third or fourth magnitude; the color was a pale white similar to a neon light, with a slight tint of yellow. The brightness was rather steady, with no apparent flicker. The angular width of the group was about 4 degrees, and the central angle of the V was about 150 degrees. It was first visible about 20 degrees above the western horizon and disappeared at about that altitude in the east. The disappearance was gradual, probably as a result of atmospheric extinction. Since the group was in view for approximately two minutes, the mean angular velocity ...

... 's outer fringe of planets. In addition, there are unexplained perturbations in the orbits of earth satellites, peculiar periodicities in the sunspot cycle, and equally puzzling regularities in earthquake frequency. Infrared detectors have also picked up unidentified objects in the sky. These anomalies might all be explained by the existence of a large, dark planet with several moons -- or, if the mystery object turns out to be very far away, by a very large, dark stellar companion of our sun with its own system of planets. Several astronomers have been trying to pin down the properties of this Planet X or Massive Solar Companion (MSC). John P. Bagby has recently published a novel solution to this nagging puzzle in celestial mechanics. He suggests that the Massive Solar Companion is actually a distributed system; that is, appreciable mass also occupies the several stable Lagrangian points. The total MSC mass might be as much as half the sun's mass, perhaps 100 Astronomical Units (100 times the earth's distance from the sun.) If the MSC and its attendants are this massive, astronomers will have to revise the mass and density of the sun downward by a good bit. (What they have done in the past is estimate the mass of the solar system as a whole and assumed it mostly resides in the sun.) This would require a large change in our model of the sun and its system of planets. (Bagby, John P.; "Evidence for a Tenth Planet or Massive Stellar Companion Beyond Uranus," paper given at the Tomorrow ...

... 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 ...

... 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 ...