... such as morphic re-sonance and the steady-state universe. Anomaly research also transcends current scientific currency by celebrating bizarre and incongruous facets of nature, such as coincidence and seriality. However iconoclastic the pages of this book, the history of science tells us that future students of nature will laugh at our conservatism and lack of vision. Such heavy philosophical fare, however, is not the main diet of the anomalist. The search itself is everything. My greatest thrill, prolonged as it was, was in my forays through the long files of Nature, Science. the English Mechanic, the Monthly Weather Review, the Geological Magazine, and like journals. There, anomalies and curiosities lurked in many an issue, hidden under layers of library dust. These tedious searches were hard on the eyes, but they opened them to a universe not taught by my college professors! And the end is not in sight. To wax Whitmanesque, when presently recognized anomalies are duly interred under an overburden of theory, more will arise. And this, dear reader, is as philosophical as I can afford to get. William R. Corliss December 1993 Glen Arm, Maryland. ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 137: SEP-OCT 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Mysterious Losses And Acquisitions of Color Vision The eyes of most mammals incorporate two types of color-sensitive cones; one for seeing blue light, the other for green light. Such mammals have bichromatic vision and discern colors rather well. Humans and the other primates are blessed with trichromatic vision, for their eyes have cones that register red light. Does this indicate evolution superiority? Hardly, birds possess five types of color-sensitive cones that sense two additional parts of the spectrum. How and why these enhancements in color vision occurred are not well-understood. Nor do we know why they were restricted to mammals and birds; although it is easy to fabricate several survival-of-the-fittest scenarios. The "how" part of the mystery is particularly hard to grasp in neo-Darwinian terms because the complex pigments that confer spectral sensitivity upon the cones represent remarkable, complex chemical syntheses. Also mysterious is the apparent loss of color vision in 14 species of toothed whales and seals. (Only 14 species were examined; there may be more.) These particular whales and seals lack the blue-sensitive cones, even though they are descended from mammals with bichromatic vision (hippos and otters, respectively). This deficiency is doubly perplexing: Sensitivity to blue light is highly desirable in the ocean environment because it is blue light that penetrates seawater well. The loss occurred in two mammalian lineages not particularly closely related on ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 138: NOV-DEC 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Remarkable Animal Talents And Capabilities Looking backward with genital photoreceptors. Photoreceptors are sensitive to light but do not produce images. They are found in many groups of animals. Even humans possess photoreceptors besides their eyes; specifically, in the pineal gland and, perhaps, the knees. (SF#116, SF#117) The pineal gland (our "third eye") may have registered photons at some stage in our evolution, but it is now useless or adapted to other purposes. The arthropods, however, still find photoreceptors useful. Crayfish have them on their abdomens, where they initiate an escape response when illuminated. Additionally, the blind shrimp that collect around the glowing deep-sea vents have photoreceptors perched on their backs, presumably to guide them to their prey located around the luminous vents. Recently, the Japanese yellow swallowtail butterflies were discovered to sport photoreceptors on their genitalia. These I are used during mating to confirm the position of the female's ovipositor.(Arikawa, Kentaro; "Hindsight of Butterflies," BioScience, 51:219, 2001.) Barn-Owl auditory neurons multiple signals. Barn Owls can locate rustling mice in the dark with high precision. They discern their prey by sound rather than light. To achieve the high accuracy needed to home in on small rodents in the black of night, their ears are slightly offset so that they can draw a bead by using microsecond time ...

... and hard-to-explain form of ball lightning. When the BL appeared suddenly from behind the tree, it caught the attention of the witness who said that it looked like it "sat down on to the tree." It had the dimensions of "a small truck tyre, not as large as a tractor one," and it had a definite torus shape. What made the dark object an even stranger sight was a considerable number of "Xmas candies", all hanging down from its underside 15 to 20 centimetres long and "sparkling", which means changing brightness with an emission of sparks at the same time. A humming and sizzling sound was associated with the optical effect, but there was no static electricity. The strange light was not blinding, but irritated the eyes of the witness who looked at it only intermittently. Mrs. Reisinger continued her work in the shed, not moving closer to the object and getting more nervous over the 10 minutes that the phenomenon lasted. Her eyes started to water towards the end of the observation. Another phenomenon that she remembers was the irregular extinction of the "candies" which went out piece by piece. (Keul, Alexander G.; "More on a Torus Ball-Lightning Case," Journal of Meterology, U.K ., 25:49, 2000. The initial report was presented in the same journal, 24:178, 1999.) Comment. The buzzing sound remarked upon above leads us to the even weirder phenomenon recorded below. From Science Frontiers #132, NOV-DEC ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 106: Jul-Aug 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Multiple Phosphorescent Wheels This is the sketch mentioned in the Marine Observer article. April 17, 1995. Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. Aboard the m.v . British Reliance, enroute Fujairah to Kharg Island. Observers: the Master and Second Officer. "At 1525 UTC whilst in the westbound lane of the Traffic Separation Scheme and shortly after settling on a course of 270 , a small amount of blue phosphorescence was noticed in the sea waves ahead (the swell being very low). Suddenly, the wind appeared to blow quite strongly, swirling around the vessel and then for as far as the eye could see and all around the vessel, phosphorescent cartwheels of bright-blue light began forming. The bands of light were roughly 30 cm thick while the maximum diameter of the wheels was 15-18 m. "Their direction of movement seemed random and they were spinning at high speed, some chasing each other, others spinning in opposite directions next to each other, see sketch. "Whole groups dumbbelled around each other, all spinning in apparently random directions. The display lasted for about 18 minutes before petering out." A comment by P.J . Herring of the Southampton Oceanography Centre followed. "A quite extraordinary account of phosphorescent wheels occurring in one of the places where they are most often seen. In the 200, or so, cases of this phenomenon reported in the last 100 years, ...

... the Algonkian-speaking tribes, such as the Ojibwa. This same haplogroup occurs in Europe and the Middle East, especially Israel. It is notably absent in Asia. Furthermore, the data suggest that haplogroup-X was resident in North America thousands of years before the Vikings and Columbus made landfall. (Schurr, Theodore G.; "Mitochondrial DNA and the Peopling of the New World," American Scientist, 88:246, 2000.) Comment. The European mtDNA could have been injected into North America by the Solutreans or other early Atlantic crossers. But it could also have diffused across Asia and thence across the Bering Strait. This route would be consistent with the recent discoveries of Caucasoid mummies in Asia and Kennewick Man. We wish we knew which haplogroup includes the blue-eyed, light-skinned Mandan Indians? From Science Frontiers #131, SEP-OCT 2000 . 2000 William R. Corliss Other Sites of Interest SIS . Catastrophism, archaeoastronomy, ancient history, mythology and astronomy. Lobster . The journal of intelligence and political conspiracy (CIA, FBI, JFK, MI5, NSA, etc) Homeworking.com . Free resource for people thinking about working at home. ABC dating and personals . For people looking for relationships. Place your ad free. ...

... Sourcebook Subjects Is caddy a mammal?" Caddy" is short for Cadborosaurus , the speculative sea animal seen rather frequently off the British Columbia coast and as far south as Oregon. Professor P. LeBlond, University of British Columbia, recently presented a paper on Caddy at a joint meeting of the Canadian and American Societies of Zoology. Of all the supposed sea serpents, Caddy seems closest to respectability. Not only are there many sightings on record, but the remains of a 3-meterlong carcass of an apparent juvenile specimen of Caddy was discovered in the stomach of a sperm whale. Adult Caddys are about 7 meters long. "The descriptions [of Caddy] are generally similar. They suggest a long-necked beast with short pointed front flippers, a horse-like head, distinct eyes, a visible mouth and either ears or giraffe-like horns. Often Caddy is described as having hair like a seal, and sometimes a mane along its neck." Most interesting is Caddy's body hair, which implies a mammal rather than a reptile. But if it is a mammal, how does it get air, since it surfaces so rarely? Some have suggested that the giraffe-like horns are snorkels! But E. Bousfield, a colleague of LeBlond, thinks that the tubercules reported along the animal's back might be gill-like tissues that would allow a mammal to extract oxygen from seawater! With so little hard evidence, speculation can get pretty wild. (Park, Penny; "Beast from the Deep Puzzles Zoologists," New Scientist, ...

... is #8 , the ventilation shafts are #6 . The arrow marks the location of the newly discovered "door" and possible chamber. (Adapted from: W. R.; Pyramid Odyssey , 1978 A German roboticist, R. Gantenbrink, was hired to clean out the debris clogging the 8-inch-square "ventilation" shafts in the King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid at Giza. Remotely controlling a robot resembling a miniature tank, Gantenbrink subsequently explored the cleared shafts. Finding nothing worth noting there, he requested permission to send the robot crawling up a similar shaft in the Queen's Chamber below. Early archeologists had already plumbed this shaft with long pipes and had concluded that it ended after about 9 feet. Gantenbrink's robot, using its camera eye, found that this shaft did not end where expected but instead veered upward at a 45 angle. Climbing the incline, the robot found that the texture of the limestone walls changed from the rough-hewn, locally quarried limestone to the highly polished tura limestone often found in the entryways of tomb chambers. "At the end of the polished section was what appears to be a door, made of the same tura limestone and with tongue-and-groove fittings on the side that suggest it can be raised and lowered. It has two corroded copper fittings in the center; a piece of one fitting had broken off and was found lying in front of the stone. A small gap exists at the bottom of the stone, but the camera could not peer through it." ...

... awful. I was terrified, could see and hear, but it was different -- hard to explain. Demons were all around me. I could hear them but could not see them. They chattered like blackbirds. It was as if they knew they had me, and had all eternity to drag me down into hell, to torment me. It would have been the worst kind of hell, trapped hopeless between two worlds, wandering lost and confused for all eternity. "I had to get back into my body. Oh my God, I needed help. I ran to the house, went in through the door without opening it, cried out to my wife but she could not hear me, so I went into her body. I could see and hear with her eyes and ears. Then I made contact, heard her say, 'Oh, my God.'" His wife then grabbed a knife, ran to the shed, and cut her husband down. An emergency squad revived him. (Grayson, Bruce, and Bush, Nancy Evans; "Distressing Near-Death Experiences," Psychiatry , 55:95, 1992.) Comments. The above case might well be classified under "telepathy." It is also interesting that UFO contactee tales also have their upsides and downsides, from meeting benevolent "space brothers" to entities that perform vile experiments on the percipient. From Science Frontiers #83, SEP-OCT 1992 . 1992-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... particularly the complex ones, are evidence that extraterrestrial intelligences are attempting to communicate with us. There is also a middle ground upon which stands G.T . Meaden, a physicist, and a few other scientists. Meaden has summarized this third position in the following paragraph: ". .. we believe that the formation of real crop circles is a rare phenomenon resulting from the motion of a spinning mass of air which Professor Tokio Kikuchi has modelled by computer simulation and calls a nanoburst. This disturbance could involve the breakdown of an up-spinning vortex of the eddy or whirlwind type. On this theoretical model such a process leads to plain circles and ringed circles -- types which are known from pre-hoax times in Britain and other countries, and are the only species which credible eye-witnesses have seen forming. All other so-called crop circles reported in the media news in recent years are likely to be the result of intelligent hoaxing, while the so-called paranormal events to which Deardorff alludes are nothing but the consequence of poor observation and/or exaggeration by susceptible mystics and vulnerable pseudoscientists. In the absence of hoaxing the subject would still be unknown to the general public because the average number of real-circle reports per annum is small (indeed in some years it may be zero)." (Meaden, G. Terence; "Crop Circles: The Real and the Hoaxed," Weather, 47:368, 1992. Deardorff, J.W .; "Crop Circles: Someone Had to Say It!" Weather, 47: ...

... Project Sourcebook Subjects The Hunt For The Magnetoreceptor When magnetite particles were found in organisms from bacteria to bats, it was assumed that here was the long sought magnetoreceptor which animals used for magnetic navigation. But so far, biologists do not have the slightest notion how such magnetite particles can be turned into a "magnetic sense," which sends the brain information on the direction of the geomagnetic field or, perhaps, draws a magnetic map of sorts. A completely different sort of magnetreceptor is now under investigation, one that humans may also unknowingly possess. It utilizes special photoreceptors that employ an electron-spin resonance process which is modulated by the geomagnetic field. Some of our very sensitive magnetometers use similar phenomena. The biological version of such a receptor would be connected to the brain, as the eye is, and send signals as to the direction of the earth's magnetic field. Sounds interesting, but is there any basis for thinking such a sophisticated gadget could have evolved? It seems that some experiments with newts by J.B . Phillips and S.C . Borland support the idea. The newts were first trained to orient themselves in a certain direction with respect to the geomagnetic field. "When tested under one of four artificial field alignments (magnetic north at geographic north, east, south or west), the newts kept their training directions constant relative to the magnetic rather than the geographic system of reference, but they selected different angles with respect to the magnetic field when they were illuminated by either short (about 450 nm) or long-wavelength light ( ...

... -keeping and navigation. The outward manisfestation of time-keeping is in the precise timing of the colony's nomadic phase of 15 days (during which larvae are growing) and the 20-day stationary phase (during which pupae develop). The queen's egg-laying also conforms with this schedule. Raids into the rain forest occur in both phases. Perhaps more remarkable is the systematic orientation of the raids in the stationary phase. These raids are separated by an average 123 , as diagrammed. This scattering allows time for new prey to enter the previously raided areas. But how does the colony determine direction in the dense rain forest? Probably from polarized sinlight, thinks Franks. But here we have a problem: each army ant, instead of having multi faceted compound eyes like most insects, has just a single facet in each eye. "The mystery is how the colony can navigate with each of its workers having such rudimentary eyesight. In my wildest dreams, I imagine that the whole swarm behaves like a huge compound eye, with each of the ants in the swarm front contributing two lenses to a 10- or 20-m wide 'eye' with hundreds of thousands of facets." (Franks, Nigel R.; "Army Ants: A Collective Intelligence," American Scientist, 77:139, 1989.) Comment. By analogy, the human body is a colony of individual cells, most of which are specialized in some way. Individual human cells can be grown alone, but they are as directionless as the 100 ants ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 65: Sep-Oct 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Why the hammer head?You probably thought, as we did, that the function of the hammerhead shark's weirdly shaped head was to separate the eyes and thus improve binocular vision. This is not the case. The visual fields of the hammerhead's eyes do not overlap at all. Each eye presents the brain with a separate, completely different image to integrate. What, then, could be the purpose of the hammer head? No one really knows, but three suggestions are as follows: The head acts as a hydrofoil and gives the heavier-than-water, swimbladderless shark better swimming control. Grooves on the hammer head channel water toward the nostrils, providing "stereoscopic sniffing." The head is a platform for electromagnetic sensors that help locate prey. Stingrays are a favorite food of the hammerhead, and the shark may de-tect them electromagnetically, as surmised by the author of this article in the following encounters: "I have observed great hammerheads swimming close to the bottom, swinging their heads in wide arcs (a motion common, in a lesser degree, to all large sharks) as if using the increased electroreceptive area of their hammer like the sensor plate of a metal detector. Sometimes, these animals would doubleback to scoop up one of several stingrays hiding in the bottom silt. The minute electrical pulse that keeps the stingray's heart and spiracles operating betrays their presence to a hungry ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 69: May-Jun 1990 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Extinction Countdown Some plants may, as described below, have environment-sensitive genes that help them adjust to external pressures. Amphibians and birds do not seem to be so pliable. The worldwide precipitous decline of amphibian populations is alarming. Her-petologists are literally seeing species disappear before their eyes. Here is a typical anecdote: "In 1974, Michael Tyler of the University of Adelaide, Australia, described a newly discovered frog species that broods its young in its stomach. The frog was once so commo 'an agile collector could have picked up 100 in a single night,' Tyler says. By 1980 it had completely disappeared from its habitat (a 100-square-kilometer area in the Conondale Ranges, 100 miles north of Brisbane). It has not been seen since." Similar stories emanate from Brazil, Japan, Mexico, Norway, and elsewhere. Many environmental causes have been proposed, but it is significant that the frogs are also disappearing from nature preserves where environmental pressures are small. D. Wake, a biologist at Berkeley, has remarked: "[ Amphibians] were here when the dinosaurs were here, and [they] survived the age of mammals. If they're checking out now, I think it is significant." In this context, Wake believes that there is a single, global, still-unidentified cause operating. (Barinaga, Marcia; "Where Have All the ...

... 5 -mm beaten gold, was excavated in 1808 AD from the Bush Barrow, 1 km from Stonehenge. "Until now, it has been assumed that the plaque was only decorative. After examination and measurement, the patterns of its carefully inscribed markings are believed to be identifiable as a calendar fashioned for use at Stonehenge. Found over the breast of a skeleton of a tall man, its symmetrical shape and correct corner angles make it appear probable that the plaque had something to do with the four cardinal points and solstitial sunrises and sunsets. Markings on a gold lozenge excavated near Stonehenge. Some interpret the lines as indicators of solar and lunar positions on astronomically significant days. If so, this lozenge represents surprising sophistication 3600 years ago. "By fixing the flat lozenge on a table at eye level and orientating it with its shorter diagonal on the meridain, an observer could use an alidade while watching sunrise or sunset throughout the year. Were the bronze rivets, found nearby, the remains of the alidade? Markings exist on the plaque which indicate that the 16-month calendar was in use. Guide lines exist for inserting the intercalary leap day. Eight additional lines can be identified as indicating moonrise and moonset at the equinoxes' standstills. Using actual horizon altitudes at Stonehenge and azimuths shown by the lozenge, calculation shows that the average discrepancy of the solar lines is 0.36 days and that it was made about 1600 BC. "Was this ceremonially buried gold artifact a copy of a more robust working calendar, or was it the original master copy? "The lozenge ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 79: Jan-Feb 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Mercury's polar caps and icy minicomets Mercury, closest planet to the sun, should be baked bone dry, seeing that equatorial temperatures reach 800 F. When Mariner 10 flew past Mercury in 1974, its camera eye reinforced the baked-cinder model. To everyone's surprise, recent radar images obtained with powerful earth-based antennas, revealed a highly reflective patch at Mercury's north pole. Could it be ice, for ice reflects radar waves well? Quite possibly, for when Mercury's polar temperatures are calculated, away from the sun's direct glare, they plunge to -235 F. This means that some of the water vapor in the planet's thin atmosphere might freeze out in the poles, creating ice or frost caps. Wouldn't Mariner 10 have seen such a remarkable deposit? Not necessarily, for the spacecraft viewed only half the planet and, if the 640 x 300-kilometer ice patch were covered with dust, it could have been invisible to the camera. But it would still be a bright patch on terrestrial radar scopes, because radars see through thin dust layers. So, polar ice is not physically impossible on Mercury, although it is defi nitely surprising so close to the sun. All that is needed is a little water in the planet's atmosphere. Mainstream thinking is that "passing comets and asteroids" might bequeath Mercury some of their H2O ...

... tusks and an unusual digestive system (for a pig). Taxonomists are a bit puzzled over the babirusa. They aren't sure whether its closest relatives are modern pigs, peccaries, or hippos. The babirusa's "tusks" pose more questions about its evolution: "The creature's oddest characteristic is the two impressive pairs of curving tusks grown by the males. One pair are simply extended lower canines, but the second are actually upper canines, the sockets of which have rotated, resulting in tusks that grow through the top of the muzzle and emerge from the middle of the animals's face. The effect is bizarre and startling. The males fight with their dagger-like lower canines and probably deflect opponents' blows with the upper set, thus protecting their eyes. Indonesians say the tusks are similar to deer antlers, giving the babirusa its name, which means 'pig deer.'" (Rice, Ellen K.; "The Babirusa: A Most Unusual Southeast Asian Pig," Animal Kingdom, 91:46, March/April 1988.) Comment. Turning a pair of teeth 180 in the upper jaw is a fascinating evolutionary accomplishment. It is difficultto-explain on the basis of random mutations, especially in view of the fact that many pigs, with lower tusks only, get along quite well. Reference. For more on the peculiarities of the babirusa, refer BMA34 and BMF3 in catalog volumes: Biological Anomalies I and II , respectively. These books are described here . From Science Frontiers #66, NOV-DEC ...

... show any fluid tendencies, i.e . no variation in speed, line or strength. There was no visual aberration either in front, above or below the advancing line. "After crossing the field on a shallow arc the 'line' dropped to a position about 1 o'clock and radially described a circle 75 ft radius in about 4 seconds. The agency then disappeared." Meaden, a champion of the plasma-vortex theory, believes that the observation reported by Barnes is consistent with this theory. During a later interview, Barnes stated that a hissing noise accompanied the phenomenon. This, thinks Meaden, could be due to electrical discharges within the plasma cloud. (Meaden, G.T .; "Circle Formation in a Wiltshire Cereal-Crop -- an Eye-Witness Account and Analysis of a Circles-Effect Event at Westbury," Journal of Meteor ology, U.K ., 14:265, 1989.) Comment. Still at issue are the formation of a large, swirling mass of ionized air, its mysterious motion, the precision of the circles, and the diverse, almost too-neat geometrical patterns. From Science Frontiers #67, JAN-FEB 1990 . 1990-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Eclipse shadow-band anomalies Shadow bands moving across the face of a house during the total eclipse of December 22, 1870. J.L . Codona, in a long article in Sky and Telescope, described eclipse shadow bands in these words: "There mysterious gray ripples are sometimes seen flitting over the ground within a minute or two of to tality. The bands are initially faint and jumbled; but as totality approaches, they become more organized, their spacing decreases to a few centimeters, and their visibility improves. After totality ends the bands can reappear and become progressively fainter and more disorganized until they disappear. "Shadow bands seem to move perpendicularly to their length, but this is only an illusion. It stems from a lack of features that allow the eye to track motion along the length of the bands." Codona explains the shadow bands as basically a twinkling effect involving the thin solar crescent just before and after totality. The twinkling is created by turbulence only tens or hundreds of feet above the ground. The eclipse shadow bands, like so many other "well-explained" phenomena, display idiosyncracies that do not dovetail well with theory. Codona mentions two of these: (1 ) Bands of different colors, travelling at different speeds, are sometimes seen superimposed on each other; and (2 ) Bands of giant size have been observed. (Codona, Johana L.; "The Enigma of Shadow Bands," Sky and Telescope, 81: 482, 1991.) Comment. Still other shadow-band anomalies are cataloged ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 60: Nov-Dec 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A NEW FACE ON MARS?The face on Mars does not seem to go away! Could it, after all, really be artificial? M. Carlotto, writing in Applied Optics, presents the results of his analysis of the photos of this engimatic "face." "The image enhancement results indicate that a second eye socket may be present on the right, shadowed side of the face; fine structure in the mouth suggests teeth are apparent." "Teeth?" This Martian face is becoming too human-like to be an accident of nature! Carlotto also tersely summarizes his impression of the face's features. ". .. results to date suggest that they may not be natural." (Hecht, Jeff; "Computer Does a Double-Take on the Face of Mars," New Scientist, p. 39, July 7, 1988. Also see: Applied Optics, 27:1926, 1988.) In a more light-hearted manner, P. Jones asserts that a second Martian face exists, and that somehow scientists have managed to keep it under wraps. A photo of the second face appears in the August 25, 1988, issue of New Scientist. Jones remarks on the second face as follows: "If faces are what you are looking for, it's reasonably convincing, perhaps more convincing than its better-known sibling. It has symmetry, two eyes ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 57: May-Jun 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Eels Strike Back Credit cards and bank cards are commonly kept in holders made from eelskin. So what! Who likes eels anyway? Well, there may be more to eelskin than meets the eye. Thousands of bank cards, when taken out of their eelskin holders, have failed to work in bank machines. The electronic coding on the cards has somehow been erased or scrambled. Perhaps, says one theory, the eelskins have bits of magnetite in their skins for navigational purposes. (Some other animals have such magnetic particles in their bodies to help orient them.) But could these tiny particles be powerful enough to erase card information? Another theory is that magnetic clamps on purses and handbags are the culprits. (Anonymous; "Credit Cards Fall Prey to Primitive Fish," New Scientist, p. 30, March 3, 1988.) Banking-business bane. From Science Frontiers #57, MAY-JUN 1988 . 1988-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... W. Noyes of Harvard-Smithsonian (Center for Astrophysics), the observations gathered by an extraordinarily sensitive camera show that the bright exploding star, or supernova, is actually two points of light, very close together, one about 10 times brighter than its companion. Since neither was present before the explosion, astronomers assume both arose from the same blast, but how this could happen is a mystery. .. .. . "The supernova and its apparent companion lie in the Greater Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way, at a distance of 150,000 light years from earth. The instrument used by the Harvard-Smithsonian group measured the distance between the two supernova elements as about one-twentieth of an arc second. This is about the separation a human eye would see between the headlights of a car some 6,000 miles away "Dr. Noyes said this distance was equivalent to an actual distance between the two bright objects of only about 3,000 Astronomical Units, where one Astronomical Unit is the distance from the sun to the earth, about 93,000,000 miles. This is a tiny distance in astronomcial terms; but if both objects stemmed from the same explosion, Dr. Noyes said, they must have been moving apart at more than half the speed of light -- an immense and surprising speed." (Browne, Malcolm W.; "Stellar Explosion Reported to Spawn Mysterious Twin," New York Times, May 23, 1987. Cr. J. Covey.) Comment. In modern supernova theory ...

... a year of preliminary calculations to plan -- physicist Clayne Yeates has found and photographed what seems to be a population of fastmoving objects near earth that range between 8 and 16 feet in size. These previously undetected bodies match Frank's predictions concerning the speed, direction and number of pro posed comets flying by earth, says Yeates, a scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. " (Monastersky, R.; "Cometary Controversy Caught on Film," Science News, 133:340, 1988. See also: Hecht, Jeff; "Snowballs from Space 'Filled Earth's Oceans'," New Scientist, p. 38, May 12, 1988.) Comment. Now all this does not mean that Frank's hypothesis is proven in the eyes of all scientists. Far from it, there is too much at stake; namely, our whole view of the small-scale structure of the solar system and, even more important, the heretical notion that the earth's oceans have slowly filled with extraterrestrial water. It has not been an easy two years for Frank. His reputation has been at risk. Huyghe hinted at this when he recorded Frank's reactions to the new photographic evidence: "Looking at the data, seeing those streaks, has made a lot of people's hearts stop," says Frank. He is thrilled at this result, but he dreads what will follow. "For the past two years I paid the price for being wrong. Now I'll pay an equal price for ...

... Idaho. It was deeply embedded in the gravel. In a small Indian mound at Deer Creek, near Chilicothe, Ohio, a Numidian bronze coin was recently uncovered. It has a BC date. "Oddly, those same coins, regarded in the Old World as artifacts of the highest importance, are never regarded at all by archeologists in America, who blithely declaim the 'absence' of Old World artifacts in America." (p . 14) Ogam inscriptions . A stone inscribed in ogam was recently reported from Connecticut. (See: the Bulletin of the Early Sites Research Society, vol. 12, 1985.) B. Fell translates the ogam as follows: "In this small stone lies the power of averting sickness/The ogam protects from the debilitation of the Evil Eye." In Wyoming and extraordinary rebus/ ogam panel was discovered in 1986. An excellent photograph of the inscription may be found in the Occasional Papers in an article by R.E . Walker. (p . 304) Comment. The implication of these ogam inscriptions is that North America was visited by Celtic peoples long before Columbus. Nos Ancetres Chinois. This article. by M. Chatelain, happens to be in French, which is too bad because Americans are generally poor linguists. Anyway, the article summarizes evidence for ancient Chinese visits to North America. (p . 290) Above we have only a sampling from this 334-page volume. We must pass over the Oklahoma runes, stick-chart naviga tion in Micronesia, and the course in "fantastic archeology" ...

... strange. "The bottom of the rim was about 20 feet off the ground, and had doubtless a few moments before destroyed our house as it passed. The interior of the funnel was hollow; the rim itself appearing to be not over 10 feet in thickness and, owing possibly to the light within the funnel, appeared perfectly opaque. Its inside was so slick and even that it resembled the interior of a glazed standpipe. The rim had another motion which I was, for a moment, too dazzled to grasp. Presently I did. The whole thing was rotating, shooting past from right to left with incredible velocity. "I lay back on my left elbow, to afford the baby better protection, and looked up. It is possible that in that upward glance my stricken eyes beheld something few have ever seen before and lived to tell about it. I was looking far up the interior of a great tornado funnel! It extended upward for over a thousand feet, and was swaying gently, and bending slowly toward the southeast. Down at the bottom, judging from the circle in front of me, the funnel was about 150 yards across. Higher up it was larger, and seemed to be partly filled with a bright cloud, which shimmered like a fluorescent light. This brilliant cloud was in the middle of the funnel, not touching the sides, as I recall having seen the walls extending on up outside the cloud. "Up there, too, where I could observe both the front and back of the funnel, the terrific whirling could be plainly ...