569 results found.
... 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 "COMPACT STRUCTURES": WHAT NEXT?We know that immense molecular clouds drift through interstellar space, but a new denizen has now made itself known through its ability to diffract quasar radio signals. Although constituted only of ionized gases, these new objects are called "compact structures." "' Compact means that these objects are about as big as the earth's orbit around the sun, and therefore larger than all but the biggest stars. They are, however, much smaller than the clouds that previous observations have detected in interstellar space. They reveal their presence by diffracting the radio waves coming from distant quasars. .. .. . "The objects move too fast to be near the quasar -- to be that far away, they would have to go at 500 times the speed of light -- so the observers conclude that they are in our own galaxy. Previous observers didn't see them, [R .L .] Fiedler says, because they didn't observe the same quasar at close enough intervals." If these ionized clouds are spherical. they have masses comparable to the asteroids; but, if they are elongated, their mass is anyone's guess. No one knows how they are formed, how long they last, or where the energy comes from to maintain them in an ionized state. Extrapolating from the five instances recorded so far, the observers speculate that these ...
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... at Velikovsky's vision of worlds in collision, stated very firmly that the solar system was presently stable and had been so for eons. Now it seems that they may have been a bit hasty and all-encompassing. Not that the Velikovsky scenario is correct or that Mars might at any moment depart from its present orbit, but rather that astronomers must now admit an inability to predict planetary motion over billions of years - even tens of millions of years! For the solar system, if those ubiquitous computers are correct, is not a well-behaved family of planets. J. Laskar concludes from extensive numerical experiments: "The motion of the Solar System is thus shown to be chaotic, not quasiperiodic. In particular, predictability of the orbits of the inner planets, including the Earth, is lost with a few tens of millions of years." (Laskar, J.; "A Numerical Experiment on the Chaotic Behavior of the Solar System," Nature, 338:237, 1989.) Comment. Laskar's comments are directed toward the future, but the same conclusions should apply if we ran the solar system backwards in time. From this very narrow perspective of celestial mechanics, one cannot say positively that the planets, the inner ones especially, could not have radically altered their orbits within the past few millions of years. Reference. See ABB1 in our catalog: The Sun and Solar System Debris for more on the solar system's instability. This book is described here . From Science Frontiers #63, MAY-JUN 1989 . 1989 ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 49: Jan-Feb 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Geomagnetic Reversals From Impacts On The Earth R.A . Muller and D.E . Morris review the evidence tying geomagnetic reversals to the impacts of large bodies with the earth: the tektites and microtektites; the climate changes; the biological extinctions, etc. Then they propose a physical mechanism for geomagnetic reversals: "The impact of a large extraterrestrial object on the Earth can produce a geomagnetic reversal through the following mechanism: dust from the impact crater and soot from fires trigger a climate change and the beginning of a little ice age. The redistribution of water near the equator to ice at high latitudes alters the rotation rate of the crust and mantle of the Earth. If the sea-level change is sufficiently large ( 10 meters) and rapid (in a few hundred years), then the velocity shear in the liquid core disrupts the convective cells that drive the dynamo. The new convective cells that subsequently form distort and tangle the previous field, reducing the dipole component near to zero while increasing the energy in multipole components. Eventually a dipole is rebuilt by dynamo action, and the event is seen either as a geomagnetic reversal or as an excursion." (Muller, Richard A., and Morris, Donald E.; "Geomagnetic Reversals from Impacts on the Earth," Geophysical Research Letters, 13:1177, 1986.) Comment. That the earth's field is generated by internal dynamo action is ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 47: Sep-Oct 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Earth's womb Three recent items indicate that scientists are now recognizing how the earth's crust is tailor-made for biochemical reactions of great variety and complexity. First, E.G . Nisbet explains how subsurface hydrothermal systems are ideal places to make biochemical products, particularly in the light of the discovery that RNA molecules can extrude introns and then behave like enzymes. "The most likely site for the inorgan ic construction or an RNA chain, which would have occurred in the Archaean, is in a hydrothermal system. Only in such a setting would the necessary basic components (CH4 , NH3 , and phosphates) be freely available. Suitable pH (fluctuating around 8) and temperatures around 40 C are characteristic of hydrothermal systems on land. Furthermore, altered lavas in the zeolite metamorphic facies, which are rich in zeolites, clays and heavy metal sulphides, would provide catalytic surfaces, pores and molecular sieves in which RNA molecules could be assembled and contained. If the RNA could then replicate with the aid of ribozymes and without proteins, the chance of creating life becomes not impossible but merely wildly unlikely." The article concludes with a statement that self-replicating molecules synthesized in hydrothermal systems would be pre-adapted to "life" in the open ocean if they "learned" to surround themselves with bags of lipids. (Bag of lipids = a membrane.) (Nisbet, E.G .; " ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 47: Sep-Oct 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects 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 ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 39: May-Jun 1985 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Coming Revolution In Planetology "Current ideas about the moon appear to be mistaken on two fundamental points. First, at least within certain large classes of lunar craters, internal origin (i .e ., some form of volcanism) predominates over impact; this result raises questions about the reality of the 'era of violent bombardment.'Second, the origin of tektites by meteoric impact on the earth cannot be reconciled with physical principles and is to be abandoned. The only viable alternative is origin by lunar volcanism, which implies the following: continuance of (rare) explosive lunar volcanism to the present time; existence of silicic lunar volcanism and of small patches of silicic rock at the lunar surface; a body of rock in the lunar interior, probably at great depth, which is closely similar to the earth's mantle and which contains billions of tons of volatiles, probably including hydrogen; and the origin of the moon from the earth after the formation of the earth's core." " Editor's Note . This article by John O'Keefe puts forth a viewpoint with which most planetologists disagree strongly. On the ground that a fresh airing of the long-standing discussion on lunar volcanism is appropriate, Eos offers this article, untouched by editors or referees, and awaits reply by readers." O'Keefe's article reviews considerable evidence supporting his two points: for Point One; crater ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 48: Nov-Dec 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Geophysiology The concept of the earth-as-an-organism -- the so-called Gaia hypothesis -- keeps popping up. We now have an excellent progress report on current Gaia research; e.g ., the Daisyworld model; by J.E . Lovelock. He defines Gaia in an early paragraph: "In the early 1970s, Lynn Margulis and I introduced the Gaia hypothesis. It postulated the earth to be a self-regulating system comprising the biota and their environment, with the capacity to maintain the climate and the chemical composition at a steady state favorable for life." L. Margulis is an author of Micro-Cosmos and a champion of evolution-via-endosymbiosis; that is, diverse organisms uniting to create new species. Going back to Lovelock's review, there is little that is anomalous on a small scale. Of course, on a large-scale, the data supporting the concept of life-as-a -whole manipulating the atmosphere, oceans, etc., to perpetuate and perhaps improve itself are highly anomalous, because the Gaia hypothesis is far out of the scientific mainstream. (Lovelock, James E.; "Geophysiology," American Meteorological Society, Bulletin, 67:392, 1986.) Comment. Our secret purpose here is to use the Lovelock article as an excuse to out-Gaia Gaia! Lovelock's article plus those preceding on ...
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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 Origin Of The Moon Debated In October of 1984, the Conference on the Origin of the Moon convenved in Kona, HI. The clear favorite among the four contending hypotheses was the earth-impact scenario, which may be stated as follows: "Near the end of the Earth's accretion, after its core had formed and while the growing planet was still molten, an object at least the size of Mars smashed into it at an oblique angle. The cataclysm put large quantities of vaporized or partially vaporized impactor and Earth into orbit. The primitive Moon formed from that material." Conferees turned thumbs down on the theory that the moon was captured by the earth. Still not ruled out are the double-planet hypothesis (earth and moon accreted in their present configuration) and the fission-from-earth theory. (Taylor, G. Jeffrey; "Lunar Origin Meeting Favors Impact Theory," Geotimes, 30:16, April 1985.) Reference. See SF#37 for more details on all four theories mentioned above. From Science Frontiers #42, NOV-DEC 1985 . 1985-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 47: Sep-Oct 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Continental graveyard?The seismic waves generated by earthquakes penetrate deeply into our planet and allow geophysicists to, in effect, X-ray the earth. In addition to the hypothesized solid inner core, the fluid outer core, and the encapsulating solid mantle, there seems to be continentsized inhomogeneities in the vicinity of the mantle and the outer core. The anomalous seismic signals can be interpreted as huge blocks of different composition and/or temperature. T.H . Jordan, from MIT, ventures: ". .. that what they have mapped are 'continents' on the core-mantle boundary. 'What we've seen is something really incredible,' he says. According to Jordan, the anomalies are analogous to continents on the surface of the earth, because they can't be accounted for by temperature variations but must reflect some compositional change as well. These features 'represent the scum or slag that sits up on the outer core boundary, just as continents sit on the outer surface of the earth,' he says." Some have even speculated that these subterranean chunks of debris are pieces of surface continents that were subducted at the plate boundaries long ago. There are, after all, missing pieces in the continental drift jigsaw puzzle. There might even be substantial chunks of asteroids and comets down there waiting, like the Titanic, to be explored by scientific instruments. Can once-subducted continents and ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 47: Sep-Oct 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Oceans from outer space?Back in SF#44, we related how L.A . Frank, at the University of Iowa, had detected dark spots on satellite images of the earth's dayglow. Frank thought that the spots might be due to clouds of water vapor released as small, icy comets hit the atmosphere. P. Huyghe has recently written more about Frank's discovery, his theory, and its reception by the scientific community. "These comets are not occasional visitors, he [Frank] says, like the one that comes by every 76 years and -- lucky for us -- never actually drops in. No, these are very small, cometlike objects that enter our atmosphere at a rate of 20 per minute, he says. These comets, which he believes must contain about 100 tons of water apiece, vaporize on impact with the atmosphere and fall as rain or snow. Now that may seem like one sizeable cold shower, but on a yearly basis he says it's actually only a tiny fraction of the annual preciptation. Then again, over a span of 4.5 billion years, which is about how old the earth is, that's enough water, he says -- trumpets blaring -- to create the oceans." Naturally, such a theory is very disturbing because it runs counter to the widely accepted idea that the oceans were created by the ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 41: Sep-Oct 1985 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Anatomy Of A Magnetic Field Reversal "A highly detailed record of both the direction and intensity of the Earth's magnetic field as it reverses has been obtained from a Miocene volcanic sequence. The transitional field is low in intensity and is typically non-axisymmetric. Geomagnetic impulses corresponding to astonishingly high rates of change of the field sometimes occur, suggesting that liquid velocity within the Earth's core increases during geomagnetic reversals." The time period required for the field to reverse was about 4500 years, as measured at Steens Mountain, Oregon. There were three periods of very rapid change (impulses), which hint at radical changes in the core. The average magnetic field at the earth's surface decreased to 20% of normal during the reversal. (Prevot, Michel, et al; "How the Geomagnetic Field Vector Reverses Polarity," Nature, 316:230, 1985.) Comment. The illustration reveals that the reversal was far from a clean 180 flip; there was much meandering. Just what was happening in the core during the reversal is a mystery. When the magnetic field dropped to low levels, flux of cosmic rays and other radiation at the earth's surface probably increased drastically. Terrestrial life might have been adversely affected. The Steene Mountains directional record. The numbers refer to the samples used from the volcanic sequence, in order of increasing age. Dotted lines represent field directions in the ...
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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 Can spores survive in interstellar space?There is good evidence that life appeared on earth just 200-400 million years after the crust had cooled (assuming conventional methods of measuring age). Two hundred million years seems a bit on the short side for the spontaneous generation of life, although no one really knows just how long this process should take (forever?). The apparent rapidity of the onset of terrestrial life has led to a reexamination of the old panspermia hypothesis, in which spores, bacteria, or even nonliving "templates" of life descended on the lifeless but fertile earth from interstellar space. P. Weber and J.M . Greenberg have now tested spores (actually Bacillus subtilis) under temperature and ultraviolet radiation levels expected in interstellar space. They found that 90% of the spores under test would be killed in times on the order of hundreds of years -- far too short for panspermia to work at interstellar distances. However, if the spores are transported in dark, molecular clouds, which are not uncommon between the stars, survival times of tens or hundreds of million years are indicated by the experiments. Under such conditions, the interstellar transportation of life is possible. But perhaps the injection and capture phases of panspermia might be lethal to spores. Weber and Greenberg think not -- under certain conditions. The collision of a large comet or meteorite could inject spores from a life-endowed planet ...
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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 Atmospheric Footprints Of Icy Meteors Serendipity triumphs again. From a dayglow experiment aboard NASA's satellite DE-1 (Dynamic Explorer-1 ) comes an unexpected discovery of considerable potential importance. Looking down on the earth, the DE-1 records the light emitted by atmospheric oxygen at altitudes of about 200-300 kilometers -- 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 ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 40: Jul-Aug 1985 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Planets as sun-triggered lasers Apparently both the earth and Jupiter emit radio energy when triggered by bursts of radio waves arriving from the sun. The outer atmospheres of these planets act like radio lasers, which store radio energy and then release it suddenly when stimulated by weaker solar signals. The earth's laser operates between frequencies of 50 and 600 kilohertz. Its emissions are known as the "auroral kilometric radiation" or AKR. While some of these terrestrial emissions are spontaneous, others are stimulated by Type-III solar radio bursts. The newly discovered Jovian laser operates at hectometric wavelengths and is also triggered by the solar radio bursts. (Calvert, W.; "Triggered Jovian Radio Emissions," Geophysical Research Letters, 12:179, 1985.) Comment. Earth and Jupiter thus act like radio transponders, releasing large bursts in response to small solar stimuli. The role of electricity in the history of the solar system is only beginning to be appreciated. Of course, the radio lasers mentioned above are not very powerful, but what might have occurred during the formative stages of the solar system? Could electromagnetic forces have been more important then than they are now? In this regard, note that electrical forces seem to be strongly involved in the dynamics of Saturn's rings. And Saturn's rings themselves may resemble a miniature solar system in the accretion phase. From Science Frontiers #40, JUL- ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 48: Nov-Dec 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Cosmic Chemistry Of Life C. Ponnamperuma, at the University of Maryland, speculates that the genetic code employed by earth life may, in fact, reflect a universal chemistry. His lab data "suggest that the formation and linking of life's building blocks -- amino acids and nucleotides -- may have been all but inevitable, given the starting chemistry of earth's 'primordial soup.'" Going even further Ponnamperuma believes that "if there is life elsewhere in the universe, chemically speaking it would be very similar to what we have on earth." (Raloff, J.; "Is There a Cosmic Chemistry of Life?" Science News, 130:182, 1986.) From Science Frontiers #48, NOV-DEC 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 46: Jul-Aug 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Cosmic Currents A survey of 390 elliptical galaxies have identified an unexpected streaming effect superimposed on the (postulated) general outward expansion of the universe. A team of seven astronomers first measured the velocities of the elliptical galaxies relative to the earth. Next they subtracted out the velocities of universal expansion and, lastly, the velocity of the earth relative to the 3 K cosmic background radiation. These subtractions enable us to determine how the 390 elliptical galaxies move relative to the cosmic background radiation -- which is about the best fixed reference frame we can come up with. For roughly 50 million parsecs in all directions from earth, the clusters and superclusters of galaxies are streaming through the cosmos in a group. What's more, they lie in and move parallel to a fairly well-defined plane. Just what this coordinated motion means in terms of the origin and evolution of the universe is anyone's guess. There doesn't seem to be anything in the Big Bang theory that would explain these cosmic currents. Something set all these galaxies in motion -- but what? (Waldrop, M. Mitchell; "The Currents of Space," Science, 232:26, 1986.) A giant elliptical galaxy containing many billions of stars. Hundreds of these immense assemblages are moving collectively though the cosmos. From Science Frontiers #46, JUL-AUG 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... magnetometer. During one run, the researchers left the cell in a single position for a long time while the magnetometer was still on. After 20 minutes or so, the magnetic field strength began to drop. 'It was very dramatic to watch this field collapse,' says MacVicar. After about a minute at zero, the magnetic field grew larger again but in the opposite direction." These reversals occurred over and over again at regular intervals. (Peterson, I.; "Tracing Corrosion's Magnetic Field," Science News, 130:132, 1986.) Comment. The self-reversal of magnetic specimens has been observed before under some conditions, but here is a periodic reversal of an electrochemical system. Why place it under the heading of Geology? Because the earth's field seems to reverse on a fairly regular basis. Catastrophists have invoked as teroid or cometary collions to account for these flip-flops, but it might be that the earth contains giant electrochemical cells that spontaneously reverse on a million-year timescale rather than minutes. We know the earth's crust is filled with brines and other conducting fluids. Who knows what electrochemical activity transpires down there? From Science Frontiers #48, NOV-DEC 1986 . 1986-2000 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 The Biological Diversity Crisis If life fills all available energy niches, life must be capable of transforming itself (or of being transformed) into a multitude of different energy transducers or energy utilizers. E.O . Wilson has outlined the diversity of terrestrial life in a recent issue of BioScience. The earth, it appears, is a veritable Gene sis Machine; and it is only one planet among a possible infinitude. So many terrestrial species have already been described that one could easily believe that biological collectors roaming the planet's wild places have just about completed their task. Some recent totals: 47,000 species of vertebrates, 440,000 plants, and 751,000 insects. But we may not even be close to grasping life's diversity on earth! We do well in counting the large mammals and birds, but most insects and microscopic forms of life have escaped description. To illustrate, in 1964, the British ecologist C.B . Williams, combining intensive local sampling and mathematical extrapolation, extimated the insect population as 3 million species. However, by 1985, this figure has been raised ten-fold to 30 million species. Why the huge jump? For the first time, entomologists had found a way to efficiently sample the canopies of tropical forests. This rich stratum between the sunlight and gloomy forest floor 100+ feet below had been largely neglected before. The slick tree trunks and the attacking ...
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... are tuned to measure charged particles of very high energy, especially muons, which penetrate their high rocky ceilings with ease. These two arrays of buried detectors have both picked up fluxes of muons coming from the direction of Cygnus X-3 Now Cygnus X-3 is already classed as a remarkable object because it spews out pulses of X-rays and gamma-rays. It turns out that the muon fluxes arrive in phase with the pulses of gamma-rays and X-rays, and are thus definitely linked to Cygnus X-3 . The problem here is that muons are electrically charged particles that would assuredly be thrown far off course by intergalactic magnetic fields if they originated at Cygnus X-3 . The muons, therefore, must be created by electrically neutral particles arriving at the earth's atmosphere from Cygnus X-3 . Neutrons can be ruled out because they would decay in transit. X-ray photons and neutrinos have also been ruled out. The only alternative left seems to be some unknown neutral particle generated at Cygnus X-3 . Cygnus X-3may be a huge particle accelerator which "may operate in a realm of physics inaccessible on Earth, and the high-energy muons may be the first messengers of that new physics." (Sutton, Christine; "Subatomic Particles from Space, "New Scientist, p. 18, May 23, 1985.) From Science Frontiers #40, JUL-AUG 1985 . 1985-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... the eerie blue holes of the Bahamas appears this intriguing paragraph: "William Hart, of the Smithsonian Institution, and Tom Iliffe, of the Bermuda Biological Station, believe that blue holes are one link in a chain of crevicular habitats -- caves, fissures, rocks of the sea floor -- that stretches from one side of the ocean to the other, from the Americas, across the sea floor and the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, to Africa and the Mediterranean. Related Amphipods are not only found in Bahamian caves but in marine caves in Bermuda, the Pacific, and the Yucatan Peninsula." (Palmer, Robert; "In the Lair of the Lusca," Natural History, 96:42, January 1987.) Comment. With this, the vision arises of an earth-girdling, biologically and geologically connected stratum of life that we know next to nothing about. How porous is the earth's crust, and how far down in these pores and interstices does life survive? From Science Frontiers #50, MAR-APR 1987 . 1987-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Clayton of Rice University after studying observations of the amount of aluminum-26 (26Al) in the interstellar medium." Instruments on satellites (gamma-ray spectrometers) have detected so much aluminum-26 that radical hypotheses seem required. The problem is that aluminum26 is radioactive with a half-life of only about 1 million years -- a very short time astronomically speaking. The aluminum-26 cannot be primordial solar-system stuff; it cannot even be 10 million years old. It had to be created somewhere nearby recently. The best aluminum-26 factory conceived so far is a nova in our vicinity. (Anonymous; "Are We inside a Supernova Remnant?" Sky and Telescope, 69:13, 1985.) Comment. A nova close enough to engulf the earth with its debris must have had a profound effect on the earth and its cargo of life -- perhaps on Saturn's rings, too. See next item . From Science Frontiers #39, MAY-JUN 1985 . 1985-2000 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 Treasures In A Toxonomic Wastebasket The Burgess Shale, in British Columbia, ia all that is left of a Middle Cambrian mudbank that adjoined a massive algal reef. Here, many "experimental" forms of life prospered and succumbed. The Burgess Shale is probably the world's greatest depository of fossils of softbodied creatures. Quoting Stephen Jay Gould: "The Burgess (fortunately for us) occupies a crucial time in life's history. It represents our only 'window' upon the first great radiation of complex life on earth. All but one or two modern phyla originated in a burst of evolutionary activity associated with the so-called Cambrian explosion some 570 million years ago. The Burgess provides our only peek at the soft-bodied forms of this first flowering. All other soft-bodied fossil assemblages are much younger; they represent faunas well past the initial burst and sorting out of Cambrian times." The morphological diversity of the Burgess Shale, incorporating many bizarre forms of life, represents a true biological revolution. Here are found a dozen genera that do not fit into any modern phylum. Most of the novelties never survived into modern times. (Gould, Stephen Jay; "Treasures in a Taxonomic Wastebasket," Natural History, 94:24, December 1985.) Comment. Somewhere on today's earth, there must be mudbanks washed by nutrient-rich waters and bathed in tropical sunlight. Is some ...
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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 The Cretaceous Incineration The worldwide deposit of iridium at the end of the Cretaceous implies, to many at least, that the great biological extinctions of this period were the consequence of a meteorite impact. It has now been discovered that clay samples from the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary also contain 0.36-0 .58% graphitic carbon. It is fluffy stuff and suggests that the planet was once covered by a thick layer of soot. Quantitatively, the soot layer is equivalent to the carbon in 10% of the earth's present biomass. The authors speculate that this soot was created by huge wildfires that consumed much of the earth's vegetation and perhaps fossil fuel as well. Terrestrial life was, of course, devastated -- just as it is in the currently popular "nuclear winter" scenarios. The end-of-the-Cretaceous soot is in fact, thicker and more widely spread than nuclear winter theories predict. (Wolbach, Wendy S., et al; "Cretaceous Extinctions: Evidence for Wildfires and Search for Meteoric Material," Science, 230:167, 1985.) Comment. Questions arise, though: How could a single meteorite impact ignite worldwide wildfires? Why haven't other meteorite impacts, recorded abundantly by large craters and astroblemes, also set fire to the planet and left iridium layers? From Science Frontiers #43, JAN-FEB 1986 . 1986-2000 William ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 40: Jul-Aug 1985 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Genetic code not universal!Most current textbooks pronounce that the genetic code is not only universal to life but that it must. Alterations in the code, the reasoning goes, would garble genetic messages. Such dogma, however, is based on another dogma, which states that all life on earth derives from a single ancestral line in which the genetic code is fixed and has always been fixed -- a "frozen" accident hit upon "by chance" on the primitive earth. Recently, though, small deviations from the code have turned up in ciliated protozoons and mycoplasmas, much to everyone's surprise. (Scott, Andrew; "Genetic Code Is Not So Universal," New Scientist, p. 2l, April 11, 1985.) Comment. No major deviations from the standard genetic code have been found; but then no one has really looked, because everyone knew the code was universal. It would be quite a shock if terrestrial life were found to have several genetic foundations and as many schemes of evolution. From Science Frontiers #40, JUL-AUG 1985 . 1985-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Salt structures on venus?The following quotation is the abstract of a paper appearing in the Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. "The discovery of a surprisingly high deuterium/hydrogen ratio on Venus immediately led to the speculation that Venus may have once had a volume of surface water comparable to that of the terrestrial oceans. We propose that the evaporation of this putative ocean may have yielded residual salt deposits that formed various terrain features depicted in Venera 15 and 16 radar images. "By analogy with models for the total evaporation of terrestrial oceans, evaporite deposits on Venus should be ar least ten to hundreds of meters thick. From photogeologic evidence and insitu chemical analyses, it appears that the salt plains were later buried by lava flows. On Earth, salt diapirism leads to the formation of salt domes, anticlines, and elongated salt intrusions -- features which have dimensions of roughly 1 to 100 km. Due to the rapid erosion of salt by water, surface evaporite landforms are only common in dry regions such as the Zagros Mountains of Iran, where salt plugs and glaciers exist. Venus is far drier than Iran; extruded salt should be preserved, although the high surface temperature (470 C) would probably stimulate rapid salt flow. Venus possesses a variety of circular landforms, ten to hundreds of kilometers wide, which could be either megasalt domes or salt intrusions colonizing impact craters. Additionally, arcuate bands seen in the Maxwell area of Venus could be salt intrusions formed in a region of tectonic stress. These large structures may not ...
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... exist between Antarctic and non-Antarctic meteorites, and the significance of this is only now beginning to be recognized. Dennison et al point out that relative to non-Antarctic falls, the Antarctic population is underabundant in iron and stony iron meteorites, among others." Trace-element studies: ". .. demonstrate a statistical unlikelihood that both sample populations derive from the same parent population." One reason for the differences is that the Antarctic ice has been accumulating meteorites for many thousands of years longer than modern man has been picking up non-Antarctic meteorites. (Lipschutz, Michael E., and Cassidy, William A.; "Antarctic Meteorites: A Progress Report," Eos, 67:1339, 1986.) Comment. If Antarctic meteorites differ because they impacted the earth over a longer span of time, it must be that the meteor population in the vicinity of the earth has been changing. Why? From Science Frontiers #50, MAR-APR 1987 . 1987-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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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 Neptune's partial rings Neptune's rings cannot be seen directly. Instead, earth-based astronomers watch for occultations or dimmings of stars as they pass behind the rings. This seems straightforward enough in theory, but the occultations have been perplexing in practice. First, one member of a closely spaced double star will be occulted normally by the rings but its companion won't . Second, some terrestrial observatories will record an occultation but another a few thousand miles away will not. Such experiences have led to the hypothesis that the rings are discontinuous; that is, they are arcs rather than complete rings. Why should Neptune's rings be different from those of the other major planets? On speculation maintains that the arcs are the consequence of one or more recently satellites. Another hypothesis, by J.J . Lissauer, has the arcs gravitationally shaped and maintained by two moons, one of the shepherd type (as with Saturn's rings), the other at a Lagrangian point in the arc's orbit. (Kerr, Richard A.; "Neptune's Ring Arcs Confirmed," Science, 230:1150, 1985. Also: Lissauer, Jack J.; "Shepherding Model for Neptune's Arc Ring," Nature, 318:544, 1985.) Comment. The theories employing "shepherd" moons to gravitationally mold and maintain planetary rings have been weakened by the apparent ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 46: Jul-Aug 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Solar Neutrino Update Our terrestrial neutrino detectors catch only about 1/3 as many solar neutrinos as stellar theory requires. We frequently refer to this anomaly because at risk here is our basic theory of how stars work. Is our knowledge of stellar furnaces fundamentally in error or are some of the solar neutrinos somehow removed from the stream of neutrinos bound for earth? Recent calculations by Hans Bethe have brought sighs of relief to all astrophysicists. Without going into all of the details, Bethe finds that the interactions of the electron-neutrinos emitted by solar thermonuclear reactions with atoms constituting the solar mass change a substantial fraction of them into muonneutrinos. Since our terrestrial neutrino detectors register only electron-neutrinos, we may really be seeing only a fraction of the total number of neutrinos being emitted by the sun. If Bethe's calculations turn out to be correct, he may have eliminated a Class1 anomaly. But at a price! It seems that his calculations also predict a mass of only 0.008 electron-volts for the muon-neutrino. This is much too small for neutrinos to account for the "missing mass" of the universe -- something cosmologists had devoutly hoped for. (Maddox, John; "Hans Bethe on Solar Neutrinos," Nature, 320:677, 1986.) From Science Frontiers #46, JUL-AUG 1986 . 1986-2000 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 Underground Weather Most residents of central Oregon can tell you tales about winds blowing out of the ground, about roaring and whistling sounds emanating from their wells, and of mysterious holes in the winter snow on Mount Bachelor. Central Oregon is geologically young and plastered with lava flows and cinder cones. It is like a sponge, with many cubic miles of holes, air channels, and open fissures. The air in this rocky sponge is usually on the move in response to changes in atmospheric pressure. The earth absorbs air during barometric highs and expels it during lows. In some spots the expelled air is captured to cool homes during the summer. In the High Cascades, though, the underground winds pose hazards to skiers by creating blowholes in the snow. These blowholes are actually mildly anomalous because they blow out a gentle 40 F breeze regardless of the barometric pressure. Some of Oregon's blowing caves also "breath" without re gard to barometric pressure. Also, the water wells north of Fort Rock Basin often blow for days during periods of high barometric pressure -- times when they should be taking air in. (Chitwood, Larry; "Central Oregon's Underground World Filled with Wind That Roars, Whistles," The Oregonian, Octo ber 3l, 1985. Cr. R. Byrd) Comment. See category GHG2, in Earthquakes, Tides, Unidentified Sounds, for material on blowing wells, etc. ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 45: May-Jun 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Disparity Between Asteroids And Meteorites Since the meteorites we pick up on earth (Antarctica and elsewhere) are thought to have come from pulverized asteroids, it is something of a shock to find profound dissimilarities between asteroids and meteorites. "The problem is that while reflectance spectra of some meteorites measured in the laboratory appear to correspond to spectra of various asteroids, the S class, which makes up about half of all asteroids in the inner belt, doesn't appear to match any common meteorite class, and conversely, common meteorite classes (e .g ., Ordinary Chondrites) appear to match only a few asteroids." (Harris, Alan W.; "Asteroid 29 Amphitrite Is a Topic of Interest," Geotimes, 30:25, June 1985.) Comment. Note that the visual meteors or shooting stars that burn up high in the atmosphere are believed to be cometary debris (SF#44) and mostly ice and dust. The meteors large and substantial enough to make it through the atmosphere and arrive at the surface as meteorites must have a different source -- something more palpable, such as the asteroids, but the spectral disparities reported above may force a reevaluation of this theory. From Science Frontiers #45, MAY-JUN 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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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 Tunnelling Towards Life In Outer Space Most books on biology begin the history of life in those apochryphal warm ponds of primordial soup. Leave comfortable earth for a moment and consider the immense, cold clouds of gas and dust swirling between the stars and galaxies. At near-absolute-zero, sunless and waterless, these clouds hardly seem the womb of life. Yet, there may be found the atoms necessary to life -- H, C, O, N, etc -- and in profusion. Collisions of cosmic rays can promote the synthesis of fairly large molecules. We have already detected molecules as complex as formaldehyde in the interstellar medium. But surely the immensely more complicated molecules of biology cannot be synthesized near absolute zero. This may not be true either because at extremely low temperatures the quantum mechanical phenomenon of "tunnelling" becomes important. To achieve molecular synthesis, repulsive barriers must be overcome. The warm temperatures in that terrestrial pond can provide the extra kinetic energy to climb over these barriers. In cold molecular clouds we must look elsewhere. The laws of quantum mechanics state that there is always a very low probability that atoms and molecules can tunnel through repulsive barriers -- no need to climb over them via thermal effects. "Specifically, entire atoms can tunnel through barriers represented by the repulsive forces of other atoms and form complex molecules even though the atoms do not have the energy required by classical chemistry to overcome ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 50: Mar-Apr 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Lunar Magnetic Mollusc From the abstract of a paper in Science: "Behavioral experiments indicated that the marine opisthobranch mollusk Tritonia diomedea can derive directional cues from the magnetic field of the earth. The magnetic direction toward which nudibrachs spontaneously oriented in the geomagnetic field showed recurring patterns of variation correlated with lunar phase, suggesting that the behavioral response to magnetism is modulated by circa-lunar rhythm." The magnetic and lunar-phase detectors of this mollusc are not known. In fact, the authors remark in their introductory paragraph that, even in organisms possessing ferromagnetic materials in their systems, there exists no "direct neurophysiological evidence implicating ferromagntic particles in the the detection of magnetic fields." (Lohmann, Kenneth J., and Willows, A.O . Dennis; "LunarModulated Geomagnetic Orientation by a Marine Mollusk," Science, 235:331, 1987.) From Science Frontiers #50, MAR-APR 1987 . 1987-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 47: Sep-Oct 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects 1986: "TIRED LIGHT" REVIVED AGAIN Back in 1929, F. Zwicky proposed that the redshifts astronomers observed in the spectra of celestial objects might not be due to universal expansion but rather to "tired light." In other words, the wavelengths of the photons entering our telescopes are redshifted because they have lost energy through interactions with matter en route to earth. The "tired light" theory was eclipsed by the esthetically appealing concepts of the Big Bang and Expanding Universe. But not everyone has forgotten Zwicky's tired light. P. LaViolette has: ". .. compared the tired light cosmology to the standard model of an expanding universe on four different observational tests and has found that on each one the tired-light hypothesis was superior. The differences between the rival cosmologies are most apparent at large redshifts, however, and it is in this region that observations are most difficult to make." (Anonymous; "New Study Questions Expanding Universe," Astronomy, 14:64, August 1986.) Gratuitous comment. In all three of the foregoing items, observations are challenging fundamental astronomical hypotheses: the Big Bang, the Expanding Universe, redshifts as cosmological yardstocks, etc. With more and more such data accumulating all the time, the strains in the key girders of astronomical thought are beginning to show. Of course, most astronomers will vehemently deny this assertion. Those who care to read the biological ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 40: Jul-Aug 1985 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Back To Guadeloupe Again Just how old are those modern-looking human skeletons in those chunks of Guadeloupe limestone? (Opposing views were discussed in SFs #27 and 34.) The basic problem is the dating of the limestone in which the skeletons are embedded. If the limestone is truly of Miocene age (about 25 million years old), the presence of human skeletons represemts a major scientific anomaly, since modern man appeared on earth only about 5 million years ago. Most scientists say the limestone is only recently formed beach rock a few hundred years old, and that radiometric dating proves this. But doubters have pointed to 3-millionyear-old coral reefs apparently stratigraphically above the limestone. In a recent issue of Ex Nihilo, a few more cans of gasoline have been thrown on the fire: (1 ) The radiometric date usually served up actually came from another island in the area. (2 ) Beach rock is not now forming at the site, rather the skeletons' limestone is being eroded. (3 ) The skeletons' limestone is harder than marble and not loosely consolidated beach rock. (4 ) True Miocene limestone does exist in the area. (5 ) Geologists have carefully described and mapped the rest of Guadeloupe but have omitted the skeletons' site -- presumably because of the anomalies involved. (Tyler, David J., et al; Ex Nihilo, 7:41, no. ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 50: Mar-Apr 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects "HIGH"-TECH FARMING AT TIAHUANACO One of Tiahuanaco's (or Tiwanaku's ) many puzzles has been how food for such a large city was grown at an altitude of circa 3,850 meters (12,600 feet) in the frosty, windswept Bolivian Andes. This problem along with the fabulous stonework and extensive ruins have precipitated theories involving extraterrestrial visitors and an age for the site in the hundreds of thousands of years. At least the food-supply puzzle now seems to be in hand. Stereoscopic aerial photographs show in startling detail: ". .. immense, curvilinear platforms of earth...these fields form elevated planting surfaces ranging from five to 15 meters wide and up to 200 meters long...Extensive and nearly continuous tracts of these fields -- all of which have been abandoned for centuries -- run from the edge of Lake Titicaca to about 15 kilometers inland, and form virtually the only topographic relief in the broad, gradually sloping plain." Some of the raised fields are remarkably sophisticated in design. At the base is a layer of cobblestones for stability. These are covered by a 10-centimeter layer of clay. On top of the clay are three distinct layers of sorted gravel; all capped by rich organic topsoil. These fields were simultaneously an aquifer for the fresh water percolating down from the surrounding hills and a barrier to the brackish water from Lake Titicaca ...
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... 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 specified. (LaViolette, Paul A.; "Evidence of High Cosmic Dust Concentrations in Late Pleistocene Polar Ice (20,000 ...
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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 "AND SO ON INFINITUM"Connoisseurs of facetious scientific poetry will recognize the above title as coming from a poem about vortices which have littler vortices preying upon them, etc. Well, it seems that matter may not have a basement of truly fundamental, indivisible particles either. If one does not count the rather primitive notion of Air, Fire, Earth, and Water, there are five basic levels of compositeness: (1 ) molecules; (2 ) atoms; (3 ) nuclei; (4 ) nucleons; and (5 ) quarks and leptons. But now physicists are beginning to see regularities in the lowest accepted layer, quarks and leptons, that betoken a sixth layer of compositeness or subdivisibility. In other words, quarks and leptons are not really fundamental and instead are composed of something else, which will undoubtedly eventually receive fanciful names. In this article, O.W . Greenberg delves into this sixth stratum and the "regularities" it engenders. The article is really too technical for Science Frontiers, but we thought our readers might like to be warned that our concepts of matter are based on infinite quicksand. (Greenberg, O.W .; "A New Level of Structure," Physics Today, 38:22, September 1985.) Comment. With ever-more-gigantic galactic superclusters being charted and the possibility of Big Bangs occurring "somewhere else," matter may also be infinitely ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 49: Jan-Feb 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Radar glories on jupiter's moons "Three ice-covered moons of Jupiter, in comparison with rocky planets and the Earth's moon, produce radar echoes of astounding strengths and bizarre polarizations. Scattering from buried craters can explain these and other anomalous properties of the echoes. The role of such craters is analogous to that of the water droplets that create the apparition known as 'the glory,' the optically bright region surrounding an observer's shadow on a cloud." Eshleman, Von R.; "Radar Glory from Buried Craters on Icy Moons," Science, 234:587, 1986.) From Science Frontiers #49, JAN-FEB 1987 . 1987-2000 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 The Mysterious Tumuli Of New Caledonia The Isle of Pines, New Caledonia is spangled with about 400 large tumuli or mounds, ranging from 30 to 165 feet in diameter. Their heights are 2 to about 15 feet. All of the material making up the mounds seems to come from the immediate surroundings: coral debris, earth, and grains of iron oxide. The larger tumuli enclose a block of tuff, about 5 feet high and 6 feet in diameter, comprised of tumuli material held together by a calcareous cement or mortar. Some who have investigated these mounds believe that the presence of cement, presumably man-made, is proof-positive that the tumuli are the product of human activity. Other archeologists doubt this because the early settlers of New Caledonia did not use cement. Besides, there seem to be no other signs of human involvement. This has led to the hypothesis that the mounds were built by huge, now-extinct, flightless birds for the purpose of incubating their eggs. Some birds do indeed incubate their eggs in mounds today; and some 5,000 years ago New Caledonia did boast a giant bird (Sylviornia neocale doniae), which was 5-6 feet tall. The authors of the present paper feel that the giant bird hypothesis is just as reasonable as the theory that these mounds were built by ancient humans who knew how to make cement. (Mourer-Chauvire, Cecile, and Poplin ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 48: Nov-Dec 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Water, water: how far down?The upper 10-15 kilometers of the earth's continental crust is different in several ways from the lower crust. The top layer is electrically resistive, seismically transparent, the source of almost all earthquakes, and responds to stress elastically. In contrast, the lower crust is electrically conductive, contains many reflectors of seismic energy, provides few quakes, and responds like a ductile material to stress. The diverse characteristics of both regions can be explained if the entire crust contains saline water. In the up-per crust the water is thought to be in separated cavities, while deep down it forms an interconnected film on crystal surfaces. (Gough, D. Ian; "Seismic Reflectors, Conductivity, Water and Stress in the Continental Crust," Nature, 323:143, 1986.) In an accompanying commentary, B.W .D . Yardley notes that the Soviet deep borehole on the Kola peninsula has found water down to at least 12 kilome ters. (Yardley, Bruce W.D .; "Is There Water in the Deep Continental Crust?" Nature, 323:111, 1986.) From Science Frontiers #48, NOV-DEC 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... well-documented (and published by Stevenson in 1970) cases of intense paranormal (' telepathic') experiences concerning death or illness of friends of family were analyzed according to the global geomagnetic activity (the aa index) as the times of their occurrence. The characteristics of these cases were representative of the general literature and occurred between the years 1878 and 1967. All 25 experiences were reported to have occurred on days when the geomagnetic activity was less than the means for those months. Repeated measures analysis of variance for the daily aa indices for the 7 days before to the 7 days after the experience confirmed the observation that they occurred on days that displayed much less geomagnetic activity than the days before or afterwards. These results are commensurate with the hypothesis that extremely low fields, generated within the earth-ionospheric cavity but disrupted by geomagnetic disturbances, may influence some human behavior. " (Persinger, Michael A.; "Geophysical Variables and Behavior: XXX. Intense Paranormal Experiences Occur during Days of Quiet, Global, Geomagnetic Activity, " Perceptual and Motor Skills, 61:320, 1985.) From Science Frontiers #42, NOV-DEC 1985 . 1985-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... just the past few years, remarkable colonies of life forms have been discovered congregated around deep-sea hydrothermal vents where sunlight is essentially nonexistent. Still more recently, similar life forms have been found clustered around oil seeps in the Gulf of Mexico. As at the hydro-thermal vents, the clams, worms, crabs, and other organisms depend mainly upon the ability of bacteria to chemosynthesize -- the primary energy source being hydrogen sulfide in the vented water. (Paull, C.K ., et al; "Stable Isotope Evidence for Chemosynthesis in an Abyssal Seep Community," Nature, 317:709, 1985; Also: Weisburd, S.; "Clams and Worms Fueled by Gas?" Science News, 128:231, 1985.) Comment. Since the earth's crust seems honeycombed with fissures and rivers of life-sustaining fluids, subterranean life may be as common as the abyssal chemosynthetic life at the vents and seeps. This versatility of life signals us that we should look for life wherever there is energy of any kind. From Science Frontiers #43, JAN-FEB 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... auroral. "During the last week of August 1970, I was on a trip from Viet Nam to Clark AFB, Philippines. We were cruising at 9000 feet. We had departed Camron Bay between 2 and 3 AM. Upon reaching cruise altitude, I noticed a rather unusual display in the sky. Our magnetic heading from V.N . to Clark was approximately 155 . The display appeared on the horizon in an easterly direction. It consisted of a series of dashes perhaps the color of the moon with a south-to-north directional flow. There was no visible beginning of this display,such as you would see in a comet .. .. . "The awesome feature of this display was its magnitude. I thought if whatever was creating the display collided with our Earth, then we would no longer exist. I also feel that I was seeing only a small portion of the whole. As hindsight I can only regret that I did not report this sighting through Air Traffic Control channels. The crew discussed and speculated on what we had seen, then promptly forgot about it." The account continues, relating how on the next night, when the aircraft departed the Philippines for Guam and Wake Island, the same phenomenon appeared in the east, although the plane's heading was then about 60 . The display appeared unchanged on two more mights on the legs from Wake to Hawaii and Hawaii to California. On the fifth night, however, from California to Washington, DC, nothing was seen. (Silva, John J.; personal communication ...
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... Sourcebook Subjects Blackened, broken stones of the middle east The current issue of Pursuit presents an article by Z. Sitchin in which he expounds his theory about ancient conflicts between gods and men. As evidence of this supposed strife, he reproduced a photograph of a plain in the Sinai Peninsula. Basically white limestone, the plain is thickly strewn with blackish, angular stones. Whence these immense quantities of incongruous stones? Sitchin proposes that they were created when an ancient spaceport was destroyed! (Sitchin, Zecharia; "The Wars of Gods and Men," Pursuit, 18:106, 1985.) Comment. Whatever one thinks of Sitchin's theory, the stones remain and must be accounted for. They are not the only such deposits in the Middle East. Velikovsky, in his Earth in Upheaval, states that 28 such rock fields are found in Arabia, some with areas of 6 or 7 thousand square miles. These are the "harras." Velikovsky thinks they are meteoric debris! Are there other explanations around? Reference. The blackened stones are just one variety of anomalous superficial aggregation of surface rocks. For more, see ESM1 in Neglected Geological Anomalies. Details here . From Science Frontiers #46, JUL-AUG 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... of a spectacular thunderstorm. Some recently reviewed records of a great thunderstorm mention two interesting anomalies: Hailstones 2 inches long shaped like cigarettes Three successive balls of lightning corkscrewing down from the sky. (Meaden, George T.; "Cigarette-Shaped Hailstones and Spiral Descent of Ball Lightning," Journal of Meteorology, U.K ., 10:332, 1985.) Reference. The foregoing anomalies are discussed in our Catalog of Anomalies. See GWT2 in Tornados, Dark Days for tornado burning and dehydration and GWP for oddly shaped hailstones in the same volume. Ball lightning is cataloged in GLB in Lightning, Auroras. Both books are described more fully here . The funnel of the 1955 tornado at Blackwell, Oklahoma, was lit up like a neon tube. Cloud-to-earth electrical currents could be the cuase of the scorching reported above. From Science Frontiers #45, MAY-JUN 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... that these rings are composed of unknown dark material quite unlike that in the high-albedo (bright) rings of Saturn. References. (Kerr, Richard A.; "A Comet's Heart May Be Big But Black," Science, 229:372, 1985. Also: Emsley, John; "Amino Acids from Outer Space," New Scientist, p. 30, December 19/26, 1985. Also: Anonymous; "Fine Particles Viewed in Uranus' Rings Leave Scientists 'Happily Bewildered'." Baltimore Sun, January 28, 1986.) Comment. How and where is star sludge manufactured? Again we have to venture that the venerable "primordial soup" in which life mysteriously assembled itself is located in outer space rather than in warm, sunlit earthly ponds. It also seems strange that all these extraterrestrial amino acids just seem to "fall together," with little urging, in seemingly hostile environments. More on this in the item that follows. From Science Frontiers #44, MAR-APR 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... the pits described by Nelson and Johnson, but how far in time and space can it be stretched? Whales do frequent the North Sea, but we do not know whether they or methane eruptions excavate the many craters observed there. As for the much larger Carolina Bays, which exist by the thousands in sandy, coastal terrain, who can say without further study. The Carolina Bays, like the whale-made pits of the Bering Sea, are oriented. One can imagine that, when the oceans stood higher, whale pits were subsequently enlarged by swift currents. See our catalog Carolina Bays, Mima Mounds for more on seafloor craters and the Carolina Bays. For ordering information, visit: here . Craterlets detected by sonar on the floor of the North Sea, as described in Unknown Earth. From Science Frontiers #50, MAR-APR 1987 . 1987-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... on redshift quantization appeared in the Astrophysical Journal, the Editor felt constrained to add a note to the effect that the referees: "Neither could find obvious errors with the analysis nor felt that they could enthusiastically endorse publication." Even today, after much more evidence for redshift quantization has accumulated, scientific resistance to the idea is extreme. We shall now see what all this fuss is about. Tifft first became suspicious that the redshifts of galaxies might be quantized; that is, take on discrete values; when he found that galaxies in the same clusters possessed redshifts that were related to the shapes of the galaxies. The obvious inference was that the redshifts were at least partly dependent upon the galaxy itself rather than entirely upon the galaxy's speed of recession (or distance) from 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 ...
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... The more he looked, the more Harper was convinced that there, in the middle of the continent, was a substantial chunk of ancient ocean crust. The implications: continental drift and terrane plastering have been in operation for billions of years: ". .. from their very beginnings continents have been built up from the bits and pieces of plate tectonics." Some other geologists concur and point to similar rocks in northern Canada and around the Great Lakes. (Kerr, Richard A.; "Plate Tectonics Is the Key to the Distant Past," Science, 234:670, 1986.) Comment. If the continents have been slapped together in such a disorganized manner, have stratigraphy and geological dating been compromised? Reference. "Exotic" terranes are discussed in ESR9 in Inner Earth. Information on this catalog here . Pangaea circa 200 million years ago. The stippled areas represent ancient terranes in the oldest parts of the continents. Containing greenstone belts, these areas are now thought to mark closures of ocean basins. From Science Frontiers #49, JAN-FEB 1987 . 1987-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 49: Jan-Feb 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Recent explosion on sirius?Speaking of transient events, such as the optical bursters (above), the apparent recent color change of Sirius is now receiving theoretical attention. (See SF#43.) Sirius seems to have been a bright red star in medieval times, whereas now it shines with bluish-white light. The latest theory is that Sirius B recently experienced a thermonuclear runaway event. (Bruhweiler, Frederick C., et al; "The Historical Record for Sirius: Evidence for a White-Dwarf Thermonuclear Runaway?" Nature, 324:235, 1986.) Comment. Such an event should have been visible from earth, but we know of no such observation on record. From Science Frontiers #49, JAN-FEB 1987 . 1987-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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