Science Frontiers
The Unusual & Unexplained

Strange Science * Bizarre Biophysics * Anomalous astronomy
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About Science Frontiers

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

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

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


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... 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 ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 113: Sep-Oct 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects An exploded planet and the "face on mars"Between Mars and Jupiter swirls the main main asteroid belt. In the view of many astronomers, including T. Van Flandern, there resides the debris of an exploded planet. Van Flandern has adduced considerable evidence supporting the exploded planet hypothesis, which we will pass over in favor of a look at the possible effects of said exploding planet upon a large but equally hypothetical satellite of said planet. Such a satellite would have been heavily pelted by debris on the side facing the exploding planet. Furthermore, this battered sphere, having lost its gravitational "anchor," would assume a new orbit around the sun as well as a new orientation in space. Is there any object in the solar system plastered mainly on one side with debris and craters? You guessed it: Mars! What possible connection could there be between this purported cataclysm and the "face on Mars"? The connecting thread is very weak but so beguiling that we must mention it. T. Van Flandern has proposed eight tests for the artificiality of the "face" and its associated "pyramids," "city," etc. One is the three-dimensionality of the "face." Another is the "fractal" test, which is useful in distinguishing between artificiality and naturalness. The "face" readily passes four of the eight tests. A fifth test (bilateral symmetry) cannot be decided ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 132: NOV-DEC 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects It Depends on How you Look at It!The "Face on Mars," that is; that eroded hill in the Cydonia region that vaguely resembles a human face. When a recent photo of the "Face" taken by the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) was published far and wide in the science press, we thought the matter had finally been settled. The photo showed a strange hill obviously sculpted by natural forces. No question about it; there was not a soupcon of artificiality. But it now seems that if you look at the "Face" at other lighting angles and process the same data in different ways, the "Face" reappears looking more artificial than ever. T. Van Flandern elaborates: The MGS spacecraft took a high resolution photo of the "Face on Mars" in April 1998. That image suffered from four handicaps: a low viewing angle; a low sun angle from the direction of under the "chin"; an almost complete lack of contrast; and enough cloudiness to scatter most of the light and eliminate shadows. To add to these difficult circumstances, JPL-MIPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory-Mission Image Processing Laboratory] personnel, apparently judging that the controversy over artificiality would not be ended when the actual photo was released, processed the image through two filters having the effect of flattening and suppressing image details. This step is documented at a JPL web site. Here we ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 83: Sep-Oct 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Flat-faced hominid skulls from china The "African Eve" theory of human evolution was given much play in the media a few years back. According to the "African" view, modern humans arose exclusively in Africa and, about 100,000 years ago, expanded rapidly from there into Europe and Asia, displacing "lesser" hominids. Unfortunately, the DNA studies that stimulated this conjecture have been found to be flawed. And now new fossil testimony casts further doubt. In 1989 and 1990, near the Han River, in China's Hube Province, anthropologists found hominid skulls with the characteristic flat faces of modern humans. These skulls seem to be about 350,000 years old. Although they apparently retain some primitive features, paleoanthropologist D. Erler, of the University of California, asserted, "This shows that modern features were emerging in different parts of the world." In other words, all of the evolutionary action was not confined to Africa. Proponents of the "African Eve" theory retort that the dating of the Chinese skulls is questionable and that flat faces alone are not enough to support the idea that modern humans arose separately in widely separated locales? (Gibbons, Ann; "An About-Face for Modern Human Origins," Science, 256: 1521, 1992. Also: Bower, Bruce; "Erectus Unhinged," Science News, 141:408, 1992.) Comment ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 117: May-June 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Flat Face Of Mars Mars has two puzzling "faces": (1 ) That human-like visage at Cydonia; and (2 ) The whole northern hemisphere or "face." The latter is definitely real and consists of an immense, low-lying plain centered roughly on the planet's North Pole. The opposite face of Mars is occupied by rough, cratered highlands. This sharp, profound crustal dichotomy has been known for many years and has resisted explanation. In SF#113, T. Van Flandern advanced the theory that the rugged southern highlands are composed of the debris from an exploded planet which Mars once attended as a satellite. Be that as it may, there is something puzzling about the northern plains. We now have information from the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS), now orbitting the red planet, that the low-lying northern plains are much flatter than thought. For thousands of kilometers, they are smooth on a scale of hundreds of meters. This is flatter than the lava flows of the lunar maria; flatter than the smoothest central Sahara. These startling data come from the MGS's laser altimeter that can measure elevation of the terrain below it with 10meter accuracy averaged over the beam width of 150 meters. The only known terrain in the entire solar system that can match this flatness is the abyssal, sediment-filled floor of the South Atlantic. Hmmm! Does this ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 59: Sep-Oct 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Nereid: grotesque shape or two-faced?Nereid, a satellite of Neptune, is peculiar in several ways: Its orbit is retrograde and highly elliptical (1 .4 x 9.7 million kilometers) Its brightness changes by a factor of four as it rotates Its diameter, according to M.W . and B.E . Schaefer (Nature, 333:436, 1988) is thought to be at least 660 kilometers. None of these facts taken alone is anomalous, but (2 ) and (3 ) taken together seem incompatible. If the large brightness changes are due to a highly irregular shape, Nereid's 660-kilometer size is too large, because astronomers agree that gravitational forces will sphericize all objects larger than 400 kilometers. On the other hand, if Nereid is two-faced, like Saturn's moon Iapetus (it's carbon-black on one side, light-colored on the other), astronomers are again faced with trying to explain how such a large solar-system object can acquire so much carbonaceous material on one side only. Also, Nereid's eccentric, retrograde orbit surely hints at a history of capture or orbit disruption. (Weisburd, S.; "Neptune's Nereid: Another Mysterious Moon," Science News, 133:374, 1988. Also: Veverka, J.; "Taking a Dim View of Nereid," ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 9: Winter 1979 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A Stone Face From Ungava September 1976. Lac Guerard, Ungava, Canada. A stone face was found on the lake shore by caribou hunters. The back of the sculpture was covered with moss and stained underneath with age; the front was well-weathered. It was a crude sandstone carving -- almost a doodle in stone -- but the facial features were unmistakably Norse. Stylistically, the face resembled nothing carved by Eskimos or the local Indians. The apparent antiquity of the stone and the strongly Nordic features suggest past Norse exploration of this desolate tundra near Hudson Bay. (Lee, Thomas E.; "Who Is This Man?" Archaeological Journal of Canada, 17: 45, 1979.) Comment. Once into Hudson Bay, why not on to Minnesota (and the Kensington Stone), then down the Mississippi to Oklahoma where Viking signs are claimed? From Science Frontiers #9 , Winter 1979 . 1979-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... 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 Facing Up To Divebombers When spring arrives Down Under, the black-backed magpies divebomb everything that moves in the vicinity of their nests. No one is spared: kids, cats, politicians, and even ornithologists are fair targets. But the solution is simple: "The National Parks and Wildlife Service reminds blitzkrieged Aussies that the birds are less likely to attack if they believe they are being watched. So the chic and the sensible don hats with sunglasses propped on top -- facing backwards, of course." (Anonymous; New Scientist, p. 84, February 24, 1996) Comment. The same solution has been adopted by Indians who work in tiger country. They wear human face masks on the backs of their heads. Tigers don't like to be watched either. From Science Frontiers #106, JUL-AUG 1996 . 1996-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 83: Sep-Oct 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Flat-faced chephren not sphinx!J.A . West, mentioned above, holds that the Sphinx was not built by the pharaoh Chephren circa 2500 BC. Rather, the revisionists say, it was constructed some 5000 years earlier by predecessors of the "classical" Ancient Egyptians. Adding fuel to the controversy is a reconstruction of the Sphinx's visage by F. Domingo, top forensic artist of the New York Police Department. Domingo traveled to Egypt to measure first-hand the exact dimensions of the statue's facial features. When Domingo compared the Sphinx's profile as it probably appeared originally with the profile of Chephren taken from a statue in the Cairo Museum, there was scant resemblance. (West, John Anthony; "The Case of the Missing Pharaoh," New York Times, June 27, 1992. Cr. J. Covey) But the story doesn't end there. Orthodontist S. Peck responded to the Times article suggesting an even more radical notion: "The analytical techniques he [West] and Detective Frank Domingo used on facial photographs are not unlike methods orthodontists and surgeons use to study facial disfigurements. From the right lateral tracing of the statue's worn profile a pattern of bimaxilliary prognathism is clearly detectable. This is an anatomical condition of forward development in both jaws, more frequently found in people of African ancestry than in those from Asian or Indo-European stock. ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 68: Mar-Apr 1990 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Two-faced indians trick tigers A significant hazard for fishermen and forest workers in western Bengal is a tiger attack. As these Indians go about their fishing, wood chopping, and honey gathering, tigers are wont to sneak up from behind, spring, and carry off a good-sized meal. But in recent experiments, some 900 volunteers have been wearing human masks on the backs of their heads. This strategem has cut ti-ger attacks drastically. The idea is that tigers, trailing a potential supper, see that human face and figure that the person is alert and watchful. In fact, tigers have been known to track maskwearers for hours without attacking. Pretty clever! How long before the tigers catch on? (Anonymous; "Protective Mimicry in Humans," BioScience, 39:750, 1989.) From Science Frontiers #68, MAR-APR 1990 . 1990-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... 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 A Martian Riddle Adaptation of J. Channon's sketch of the "Face on Mars" emphasizing its similarities to the Sphinx. (From: Pozos, Randolfo Raphael; The Face on Mars , Chicago, 1986, p.50) Once again we return to cold, desertlike Mars, which still clings to a thin, oxygen-less atmosphere and where, some say, the artifacts of a long-dead intelligent race may be seen. A livable Mars in past eons is not a physical impossibility. Some scientists argue that Martian geological and geochemical data: ". .. are consistent with past conditions on Mars that were favorable to earth-like life forms: Abundant liquid water and an atmosphere that was dense and warm, and possibly rich in oxygen." That life -- intelligent life -- once thrived on Mars is suggested by photos taken of the Martian surface by Viking spacecraft: "Images of the surface of Mars showing, at several sites what appear to be three carved humanoid faces, of kilometer scale, and having similar anatomical and ornamental details between all three. Appearing with these objects are numerous other objects and suface features that resemble Earth-like archaeological ruins, of a Bronze Age culture, with no evidence of advanced technology or civilization." The Martian faces, pyramids, and cities are the foundation of the Cydonian Hypothesis: "That Mars once lived as the Earth now lives, ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 23: Sep-Oct 1982 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Facing Up To The Gaps The textbooks and professors of biology and geology speak confidently of the fossil record. Darwin may have expressed concern about its incompleteness, but, especially in the context of the creation-evolution tempest, evolutionists seem to infer that a lot of missing links have been found. Some scientists, however, are facing up to the fact that many gaps in the fossil record still exist after a century of Darwinism. One has even dispaired that "the stratigraphic record, as a whole, is so incomplete that fossil patterns are meaningless artefacts of episodic sedimentation." D.E . Schindel, Curator of Invertebrate Fossils in the Peabody Museum, has scrutinized seven recent microstratigraphical studies, evaluating them for temporal scope, microstratigraphical acuity, and stratigraphical completeness. His first and most important conclusion is that a sort of Uncertainty Principle prevails such that "a study can provide fine sampling resolution, encompass long spans of geological time, or contain a complete record of the time span, but not all three." After further analysis he concludes with a warning that the fossil record is full of habitat shifts, local extinctions, and general lack of permanence in physical conditions. (Schindel, David E.; "The Gaps in the Fossil Record," Nature, 297:282, 1982.) Comment. This candor makes one wonder how much of our scientific philosophy should be based upon such a shaky foundation. From ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 100: Jul-Aug 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A POT POURRI OF MARTIAN CUSIOSITIES (AND WE DON'T MEAN "FACES" AND "PYRAMIDS")A shadow and grid-like pattern. ". .. the recent Phobos probe that the Russians sent to Mars in 1988 -- which met a mysterious and untimely demise -- recorded two quite mysterious Anomalies on the planet before contact was lost with the satellite. One was a strange shadow moving across the planet's surface (not a shadow of either of Mars' moons)! The other anomaly was a strange grid-like pattern at one location on the Martian surface; it was photographed with an infrared camera on Phobos 2, the first such instrument carried on a spacecraft sent to Mars." (Ref. 1) The canals are still there -- in a shadowy way ! Commenting upon the theory that those Martian canals that keep showing up on plates made through terrestrial telescopes are only picture/film defects, D. Louderback points out that the: ". .. canals are also showing up on CCD [Charge-Coupled Device] camera photos like the one taken by Donald Parker with a 12.5 -inch reflector and shown on the cover of the Strolling Astronomer earlier this year. It clearly showed a pentagonal pattern of canals surrounding Elysium. It is almost certain that these were not a 'picture defect'!" (Ref. 1) Searching for explanations, J ...
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... Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Problems Of Aboriginal Art In Australia In SF#117, we reproduced some Australian rock art featuring sylph-like, flowing human figures quite unlike today's aborigines. In our more recent library searches, we have come across an old article that provides additional examples of the socalled Bradshaw paintings -- more of those graceful human forms with long, billowing tresses. Very out-ofplace in today's Outback. The same article adds an even more puzzling human representation to the burgeoning file of mysterious Australian art. It is a carving found in a cave of northwestern Australia. Here is the text accompanying the sketch. "Another cave introduced a fresh problem. Fronting it, high up on the vertical face of a cliff, and unreachable without mechanical aid, had been carved out of the solid stone a human head in profile, which I show. It was 2 feet long and 16 inches across, and 1 -inch thick; and I leave my hearers to say whether it is not a striking and distinguished face. It is absolutely different from the heads of modern Aborigines. The worn edges of the cameo, where it joined the rock-surface, seemed to mark a long interval since it was carved; the difficulty of carving it where it stood must have been immense -- unless, indeed, the rock face had been near the ground at the time, and the ground had worn away since -- which, again, would probably imply antiquity. "What a ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 91: Jan-Feb 1994 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Two-faced planets and moons Several solar-system objects present asymmetrical visages to our telescopes. Mars is a classic case, being much more heavily cratered in its southern hemisphere than its northern. But the dichotomies are not restricted to cratering, as we shall now see. Neptune . Recently, H.B . Hammel, using the University of Hawaii's 2.2 -meter telescope, discovered that Neptune's northern hemisphere is now brighter than its southern -- something never observed before. During the past eight years, the southern hemisphere has been consistently brighter, although the hemispheres were of roughly equal brightness during the late 1970s. The cause of these brightness changes remains a mystery. (Cowen, Ron; "Neptune's Northern Half Grows Brighter," Science News, 144:287, 1993.) Iapetus . This satellite of Saturn is dark on one half and light on the other. Quantitatively speaking, the bright side reflects ten times more incident light than the other. An explanation is suggested by the fact that the dark side points in the satellite's direction of motion. A recent study of 12 Voyager images of Iapetus also imply an exogenous (externally imposed) origin of the dark surface, because they show a gradual rather than sharp transition between the dark and light regions. The thought of planetary scientists is that micrometeoroids bombard the leading hemisphere of Iapetus preferentially and in the process volatilize ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 78: Nov-Dec 1991 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Psychokinetic Control Of Dice For 2000 years, people have been saying: "The die is cast," as if the act of casting relinquished the fall of the die completely to fate. Perhaps not!! "This article presents a meta-analysis of experiments testing the hypothesis that consciousness (in particular, mental intention) can cause tossed dice to land with specified targets face up. Seventy-three English language reports, published from 1935 to 1987, were retrieved. This literature described 148 studies reported by a total of 52 investigators, involving more than 2 million dice throws contributed by 2,569 subjects. The full data base indicates the presence of a physical bias that artifactually inflated hit rates when higher dice faces (e .g ., the '6 ' face) were used as targets. Analysis of a subset of 39 homogeneous studies employing experimental protocols that controlled for these biases suggests that the experimental effect size is independently replicable, significantly positive, and not explainable as an artifact of selective reporting or differences in methodological quality. The estimated effect size for the full data base lies more than 19 standard deviations from chance, while the effect size for the subset of balanced, homogeneous studies lies 2.6 standard deviations from chance. We conclude that this data base provides weak cumulative evidence for a genuine relationship between mental intention and the fall of dice." (Radin, Dean I., and Ferrari, ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 32: Mar-Apr 1984 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Two Remarkable Inscribed Stones The first stone is located in western Colorado on a remote canyon ledge, overlooking a broad valley with a stream. "The dolmen is four feet across the top and has three placed stones holding it above the ledge in a level position approximately six feet from the cliff face. The Ogam on top of the capstone is intermixed with cupule-like depressions ranging in size from 7 "- 9 " long, 3"-3 " wide and 1 "- 1 " deep in the center. The cupule-like depressions are very striking because of their uniformity, smoothness, and peculiar shape. The Ogam on the side of the capstone is abundant and occasionally connecting with lines on the top. The surface of the dolmen was obviously smoothed and prepared for the inscriptions. The actual age is unknown but the desert varnish on the Ogam, the depressions, and the smoothed surface is substantial." The Colorado inscribed dolmen in situ. The top is also inscribed. Barry Fell has translated the markings, which in his view are in Arabic Ogam, as: Top: God is strong. Strong to help his right hand. Front: The Koran is the unique achievement of the prophet pious and tender. (Morehouse, Judy; "A Colorado Dolmen Inscribed with Ogam," Epigraphic Society, Occasional Publications, 11:209, no. 269, 1983.) Comment. A photograph accompanying the ...
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... look at the wall itself. B. Brailsford, of Christchurch, has been the chief investigator of the Kaimanawa wall, aided by American D.H . Childress, and others. The stones that make up the wall are 4-ton blocks of ignimbrite, a soft volcanic rock that could have been easily dressed with stone tools. The wall is topped by a red beech tree 2.9 meters in circumference and over a meter of accumulated humus. According to Brailsford, who was interviewed by the Listener : "There was no doubt that the stones had been cut. The four visible stones in the front wall were a uniform 1.6 metres tall, and 1 metre wide. In one place he could insert his arm into a root-ridden cavity and feel the back face -- and the front face of the next tier. The faces were uncannily smooth, with no saw or adze marks. The interstices where the blocks join were knife-blade thin. "Further up the hill, the tops of other stones protruded, suggesting a more extensive structure was buried in the hill." Supporting the contention that a pre-Maori people lived in New Zealand are the bones of the kiore, a type of rat alien to New Zealand, which was likely introduced by the first settlers. Some kiore bones have been dated as 2,000 years old -- centuries before the first Maoris arrived. Needless to say, New Zealand archeologists and anthropologists are not anxious to drastically revise their fundamental paradigm assigning the discovery and colonization of New Zealand to the Maoris ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 56: Mar-Apr 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Ubiquity Of American Archeological Anomalies An inscribed stone from Connecticut. Interpreting the marks as ogam writing; Face 1 (left) reads up, Face 2 (right) reads down. Adapted from the Bulletin of the Early Sites Research Society and the Occasional Publications of the Epigraphic Society. One would think that all North American archeological anomalies worth mentioning would already be firmly ensconced in the professional literature. This does not seem to be the case, unless one is very conservative about defining "worth mentioning." Ancient coins, anomalous inscriptions, and other intriguing tidbits are being found all the time, but few hear about them. The conventional journals, such as American Antiquity and the American Anthropologist disdain such discoveries. One place to find them is in the Occasional Publications of the Epigraphic Society. The 1987 compilation of these papers is at hand, and it is chock full of fascinating things. The following data are from Volume 16 for 1987. Ancient coins. A bronze coin of the ancient Greek city of Amisos was found about six years ago by Doyle Ellis, who was searching for gold with a metal detector in the channel of the Snake River in 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 ...
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... brief account of a recent strange meteorological occurrence may be of interest to your readers as an addition to the list of electrical eccentricities: During the night of the 24th of October last [1886], which was rainy and tempestuous, a family of nine persons, sleeping in a hut a few leagues from Maracaibo [Venezuela], were awakened by a loud humming noise and a vivid, dazzling light, which brilliantly illuminated the interior of the house. The occupants, completely terror stricken, and believing, as they relate, that the end of the world had come, threw themselves on their knees and commenced to pray, but their devotions were almost immediately interrupted by violent vomitings, and extensive swellings commenced to appear in the upper part of their bodies, this being particularly noticeable about the face and lips. It is to be noted that the brilliant light was not accompanied by a sensation of heat, although there was a smoky appearance and a peculiar smell. The next morning the swellings had subsided, leaving upon the face and body large black blotches. No special pain was felt until the ninth day, when the skin peeled off, and these blotches were transformed into virulent raw sores. The hair of the head fell off upon the side which happened to be underneath when the phenomenon occurred, the same side of the body being, in all nine cases, the more seriously injured. The remarkable part of the occurrence is that the house was uninjured, all the doors and windows being closed at the time. No trace of lightning could afterward be observed in any part ...
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... When The Russians First Arrived In The Aleutian Islands In The Mid-eighteenth Century, They Encountered The Remnants Of A Mysterious Ethnic Group Now Called The "Mummy People." Although These People Did Mummify Their Dead -- like Several Other Ancient Cultures -- they Were Far From Being Cadavers When They Drove The Russians Off The Beach Of Kodiak Island With A Rain Of Sharp Darts, Spears, And Lances. According To A Recent Article In Ancient American, They Also Launched Large Stones At The Russians Using Catapults! Protected By Body Shields Made Of Wood Covered With Rawhide, The Mummy People -- what Was Left Of Them -- were Formidable Warriors. But Who Were They? Actually, The Russians Were Not The First To Meet The Mummy People In Mortal Combat. The Eskimos Had Faced Them In Their Island-by-island Conquest Of The Aleutians Begun Several Centuries Earlier. Today'S Aleuts Carry A Mixture Of Eskimo And Mummy-people Genes. It Is The Uncertain Origin Of The Mummy People That Intrigues The Most. They Are Thought To Have Arrived In The Aleutians Some 7,000 Years Ago -- but From Where? Helping To Answer This Question Are Thousands Of Their Mummies Unearthed Over The Last 300 Years. Their Bones Resemble Those Of The Ainus Still Surviving In Northern Japan. Like The Ainus, The Mummy People Possessed Some Caucasian Features. In Fact, Some Had Reddish Hair. The Ancient American Article Adds That The Ancient Aleuts Used The Decimal System, Manufactured White Parchment, And Made Fires Using Combustible Sulphur And Sparks Struck From Pyrite. (Pettyjohn ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 34: Jul-Aug 1984 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Pouring A Pyramid The ancient Egyptians may have been more clever than we thought. Instead of chipping away laboriously in limestone quarries to precisely shape the stones constituting the pyramids. they may have cast the stones from a slurry of crushed limestone and a special mineral binder. Polymer chemist Joseph Davidovits has examined the limestone casing stones that were used to face the some of the pyramids. (Most of the facing stones were removed for use in modern construction projects.) Davidovits claims that the casing stones contain minerals not found in the quarries, and that they contain as much as 13% binder material. In addition, the casing stones have a millimeter-thick coating of binder. This theory might help explain the precise fitting of the stones. Others have also analyzed the stones and oppose the claims of Davidovits. (Peterson, I.; "Ancient Technology: Pouring a Pyramid," Science News, 125: 327, 1984.) From Science Frontiers #34, JUL-AUG 1984 . 1984-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 34: Jul-Aug 1984 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Our aquatic phase!Elaine Morgan, author of The Aquatic Ape, reviews new evidence supporting the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis. Sir Alister Hardy suggested this hypothesis in 1960 in an attempt to account for several human characteristics that are unique among primates but common in aquatic mammals. Some of these are: position of fetal hair, loss of body hair, subcutaneous fat, face-to-face copulation, weeping, etc. The combination of hairlessness and subcutaneous fat seems almost totally confined to aquatic mammals and humans. Two other characteristics are covered in some depth in this article: The discovery that some prehistoric shell middens consist of deep-water shellfish, which must be the result of breath-held diving. This human skill, again unique among primates, is obviously quite ancient. Furthermore, recent experiments suggest that in humans, in addition to seals and ducks, vascular constriction is not limited to the arterioles but extends to the larger arteries, too. This indicates some degree of specialized adaptation to a diving life. Most animals with a sodium deficiency display an active craving for salt which, when satisfied, disappears. In humans, salt intake has little or no relation to the body's needs. Some Inuit tribes avoid salt almost completely, while people in the Western world consume 1520 times the amount needed for health. In other works, a single African species (assuming humans have an African origin) possesses a wildly different ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 83: Sep-Oct 1992 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology On cuna writing and its affinities Flat-faced chephren not sphinx! Winning by a hair Astronomy Did barnard & mellish really see craters on mars? When isotropy confounds Biology Tangled-tails tales Bc sea serpents Flat-faced hominid skulls from china Geology Earth's water not imported? Geophysics Official foo-fighter records revealed Checking out some texas ghost lights Wrong-way waterspout Crop-circle contest Psychology Is the paranormal only a set of subjective experiences? Distressing near-death experiences (ndes) Chemistry and Physics Cold-fusion update ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 38: Mar-Apr 1985 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Ball Lightning And Blue Flashes May 31, 1982. Wakefield, England. Kitchen: Blue flashes from a white cellar "We live to the south of Wakefield on the ground floor of a large Victorian house with high ceilings, attics and cellars. Our kitchen and living room face roughly S.S .W . In the late afternoon, a very heavy thunderstorm erupted with torrential rain, and thunderclaps and forked lightning occurring not quite, but almost, simultaneously. Towards the end of the storm, about 5.30 P.M ., I was in the kitchen and my mother in the living room, both facing the windows. There was a very loud peal of thunder and a loud crack, rather like the little explosion of a Christmas cracker greatly magnified. I was at the sink, close to the window, on the ledge of which stands an electric Corvette water heater, plugged in but not switched on. Beside me, about four feet from the ground and two feet to the left of me, at the moment of the crack, there appeared for a second or so, electric blue flashes, six to eighteen inches in length coming from a white centre. I felt nothing, but was startled. There was no damage to the water heater or anything else. Just as I exclaimed at the blue flashes, I heard my mother cry out and ran to her in the living room. She ...
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... the "cold fusion" experiments making headlines these days are small, simple, and cheap. In contrast, the "hot fusion" physicists have spent some 30 billion dollars since 1951 on huge, complex machines. We don't yet know the specific thoughts and observations that led the Utah electrochemists to cold fusion, but we hope they were anomalous observations of some sort, such as the detection of unexpected neutrons from electrochemical experiments. If such turns out to be the case, the role of anomalies in scientific research will be underscored. Be that as it may, a genie has been uncorked. Both cold fusion and the re-cent excitement over high-temperature superconductivity demonstrate that a largely unexplored universe exists in the electrochemistry of the solid state. Favorite theories lie in shambles; faces are very red; the most elite of our scientific institutions were caught with blinders on! Beyond these amusements, the practical import for energy production is enormous, and who know what else will eventuate? But what about science itself? First, cold fusion will doubtless generate a brand new crop of anomalies which we are only able to guess at now. Pertinent to our effort to catalog anomalies, it is possible that cold fusion may be occurring deep in the earth giving rise not only to heat but the upwelling flux of helium-3 , now called "primordial" perhaps in error. The icy planets Jupiter and Saturn generate heat, too, and may also be cold fusion reactors! Even the sun, which is undeniably hot (at least on the surface!), may ...
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... -ia brings to mind the Gaia Hypothesis; that is, all life forms work in unison to further the goals of life. The second item is from Nature and is naturally more technical. After reviewing the great difficulties scientists are having in mathematically describing the growth of even the simplest crystal, the author homes in on one of the fascinating puzzles of snowflake growth: "The aggregation of particles into a growing surface will be determined exclusively by local properties, among which surface tension and the opportunities for energetically advantageous migration will be impor tant. But the symmetry of a whole crystal, represented by the exquisite six-fold symmetry of the standard snowflake, must be the consequence of some cooperative phenomenon involving the growing crystal as a whole. What can that be? What can tell one growing face of a crystal (in three dimensions this time) what the shape of the opposite face is like? Only the lattice vibrations which are exquisitely sensitive to the shape of the structure in which they occur (but which are almost incalculable if the shapes are not simply regular)." (Maddox, John; "No Pattern Yet for Snowflakes," Nature, 313:93, 1985.) Comment. It is amusing that this usually fairly open-minded journal Nature once blasted Sheldrake's A New Science of Life as a good candidate for burning. It is in this book that Sheldrake proposed morphogenetic fields as the explanation of crystal growth. Morphogenetic fields seem at least as reasonable as "vibrations". From Science Frontiers #38, MAR-APR 1985 . 1985- ...
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... (2 ) Geological forces somehow slid the older rocks over the top of the younger rocks. Few mainstream scientists give any thought to the first possibility because it implies that evolution did not proceed as presently envisioned. (Rocks are often dated by their fossil contents.) So, geologists are left with the problems of sliding great masses of rock over rough surfaces for great distances. Sketch of the forces acting upon a thrust block being pushed by a wedge-shaped driver Low-angle thrust faulting is not a trivial geological process. To illustrate, the Lewis Overthrust in Montana and adjacent Canada involves the shoving of a block of old strata hundreds of feet thick, hundreds of miles long, over younger rock for a distance of possibly 50 miles. In contemplating such overthrusts, one immediately comes face to face with the Mechanical Paradox. Brief-ly, given the coefficient of friction between the layers of rock, the weight of the thrust block, and the mechanical strength of the rock being pushed, it can be shown that pushing the thrust block at the rear edge will crush it long before it begins to slide. For nearly a century, geologists have been trying to resolve this Mechanical Paradox. Three potential solutions have been proposed: (1 ) Lubricate the sliding surfaces with water under high pressure (the pore-pressure approach); (2 ) Allow the thrust block to slide, not as a unit, but in small discrete areas at different times (the dislocation approach); and (3 ) Push the thrust block not only from the rear edge but along ...
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... look at the light, he attempted to touch it but the light receded as his finger approached within 3 cm of it. The effect died away at about 2340 as soon as rain started to fall." (Smedley, R.; "Corposants," Marine Observer, 69:55, 1999.) Comments. The corposant's six-fold symmetry is like that of snowflakes. Strange as it may sound, they may be a connection. First, recall what J. Maddox once wrote about snowflakes in Nature. "But the symmetry of the whole crystal, represented by the exquisite six-fold symmetry of the standard snowflake, must be the consequence of some cooperative phenomenon involving the growing crystal as a whole. What can that be? What can tell one growing face of a crystal (in three dimensions this time) what the shape of the opposite face is like?" (SF#38) The speculation is that electrical forces may control the long-range symmetry of snowflakes as well as the unusual six-fold symmetry of the corposant described above. It's a thought anyway. The word "corposant" is said to be derived from the Latin for "bodies of the saints." It seems that the corpses of some of the saints have been luminous! (See BHA22 in Humans I .) From Science Frontiers #124, JUL-AUG 1999 . 1999-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... figures are man-made. Indeed, many of them are subtle and not always obvious to the viewer. But that is precisely what contributes to the mystery. There are so many recognizable forms there, that one is tempted to say they must be man-made, or else nature is having a great joke on us. "Daniel Ruzo, a 90-year-old archa eologist who lives near Mexico City, aided us. The figures we saw and filmed in 1989 were both strange and fascinating. We were first greeted by a 60-foot rock called by Ruzo The Monument to Humanity because several different races are recognizable on it. They overlap each other in a unique way, but one can clearly discern a Caucasian youth, a Semitic man, a skull-like face that could be Negroid, and several others. "There are many other faces on the plateau, as well as animals. Some of the animals depicted never existed on the continent, such as the rhino, lion, camel, and a turtle-like creature." (Cote, Bill; "Marcahuasi--A Mystery in Stone," Louisiana Mounds Society News letter , no. 42, p. 1, October 1, 1991.) From Science Frontiers #78, NOV-DEC 1991 . 1991-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... so-called Almas (plural form: Almasti), primitive men who closely resemble Neanderthal Man, or at least what we think Neanderthal Man looked like. Abundant, internally consistent data come from an east-west band running from the Caucacus, across the Pamir Mountains, through the Altai Mountains, to Inner Mongolia. Even today, sightings of these creatures are rather common; and several scientists have seen them. One incident occurred in 1917, when the Reds were pursuing White Army forces through the Pamirs. The troops of Major General Mikail Stephanovitch Topilsky shot an Almas as he was emerging from a cave. "The eyes were dark and the teeth were large and even and shaped like human teeth. The forehead was slanting and the eyebrows were very powerful. The protruding jawbones made the face resemble the Mongol type of face. The nose was very flat .. .the lower jaws were very massive" In some instances the Almasti have even associated with modern man; and cases of successful interbreeding have been reported. After reviewing the mountains of evidence, Shackley feels that the Almasti are very likely surviving Neanderthals, because the physical characteristics of the Almasti and reconstructed Neanderthals are basically identical. This long review article also discusses the many Chuchunaa sightings from northern Russia -- perhaps another relict population of Neanderthals. (Shackley, Myra; "The Case for Neanderthal Survival: Fact, Fiction or Faction?" Antiquity, 56:31, 1982.) From Science Frontiers #22, JUL-AUG 1982 . 1982-2000 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 Voice Of God Back in 1976, Julian Jaynes promulgated a novel hypothesis about ancient man in his book, The Origin of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. "According to Jaynes, consciousness, as we know it today, is a relatively new faculty, one that did not exist until as recently as 2000 B.C . He holds that a basic difference between contemporary and ancient man is the process of decision-making. When faced with a novel situation today, man considers alternatives, thinks about future consequences, makes a decision, ruminates over it, and finally acts. He then reconsiders his action, evaluates it, worries about it, feels good or bad about it, makes resolves about future decisions, and so forth. The cerebral activity that precedes and follows an action response is consciousness. Jaynes believes that man of antiquity had no consciousness -- that when faced with a novel situation, he simply reacted. He reacted without hesitation by following the directions of a personal voice that told him exactly what to do. Ancient man called this voice God; today it is called an auditory hallucination. To ancient man, God was not a mental image or a deified thought but an actual voice heard when one was presented with a situation requiring decisive action." You must really read Jaynes' book to appreciate the evidence he has collected in support of his hypothesis. In the present article, ...
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... BHB29 Eminence in Sports Champions Correlated with the Position of Mars; the "Mars Effect" BHB30 Cultural Creativity Correlated with Solar Activity BHB31 Cultural Flowering Correlated with Climate BHB32 Eminence and Order of Birth BHB33 Periodicity in the Population of Living Eminent People BHB34 Eminence Correlated with Longevity BHB35 Intelligence Correlated with Season of Birth BHB36 Intelligence Correlated with Birth Order BHB37 Intelligence Correlated with Myopia BHB38 A Relationship between Intelligence and Flicker-Frequency Response BHB39 Increasing Intelligence with Vitamin Intake BHB40 The Intelligences of Identical Twins Reared Apart BHB41 Likelihood of College Matriculation and Season of Birth BHB42 Mathematical Ability: Sex Differences BHB43 Intelligence Correlated with Stature Personality Correlated with Astronomy Inheritability of Intelligence Intelligence and Gender Human Intelligence Affected by Past Natural Cataclysms Economic Activity Correlated with Geomagnetic Field Schizophrenia Correlated with Season of Birth Disturbed Human Activity Correlated with Geomagnetic Field Tickling Phenomena Face Preference Correlated with Menstrual Cycle Curious Crowd Behavior (at Train Platforms) Why Do People Stick Out Their Tongues When Concentrating? Intelligence as a Pathogen Behaviorisms Transmitted by Organ Transplants Meme Phenomena Effect of Music (Mozart's ) on Mental Performance Motherhood Improves Learning and Memory BHC CHEMICAL AND PHYSICAL ANOMALIES BHC1 Electric People BHC2 Magnetic People BHC3 Body Potentials Correlated with Lunar Phase BHC4 Brain Electricity (EEGs) BHC5 Very High Body Temperatures BHC6 Unusual Body-Temperature Cycles BHC7 Anomalous Human Combustion BHC8 Retarded Decay of the Human Body BHC9 Imbalances in Element Ingestion and Excretion BHC10 The Human Inability to Synthesize Ascorbic Acid BHC11 Blood-Chemistry Variations BHC12 The Existence of Blood Polymorphisms BHC13 The Complexity, Variability, and Ubiquity of Hemoglobin BHC14 Geographical Anomalies in the Distribution of Blood Groups BHC15 Blood Chimeras Biorhythms BHE THE HUMAN FOSSIL ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 108: Nov-Dec 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Sunspots And Planetary Alignments Many scientists and laymen have noticed that the sunspot cycle and Jupiter's period are both about 11 years. This must be a coincidence, because the tidal forces exerted on the sun by distant Jupiter seem far too weak to disturb the sun's internal operations. (See details in ASO9 in The Sun and Solar System Debris.) Could it be that we are missing something, for there is some evidence that some planetary alignments also exert influence on the number of spots seen on the sun's face? In particular, the Uranus-Neptuneearth conjunction has been investigated by B. Payne, who wrote the following in Cycles: "Sunspots increase when two or more planets line up, an effect I have observed for more than a decade. During the last six years, Uranus and Neptune have been within a few degrees of each other. Their conjunction, which occurs every 137 years, is an ideal situation to validate the hypothesis that sunspot numbers are associated with planetary positions." Payne's lengthy analysis is omitted, but the essence of his study can be seen in the accompanying graph. He concludes: "The results clearly show that sunspot numbers increase markedly during Uranus-Neptune-Earth-sun alignments." (Payne, Buryl; "Sunspot Number Changes during Planetary Alignments," Cycles, 45:146, 1995) Comment. It will take a lot more than ...
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... Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Return Of The Monolith Some readers have asked that UFOs receive more attention in SF. We now address these complaints with a case of adequate strangeness. T.M . Olsen has investigated a bizarre observation from Kentucky. The date was September 28, 1996. "Vance C. Johns, a secondary-school horticulturist, lives a rural area east of Louisville. Sometime between midnight and 1:30 AM, he got up to use the bathroom and saw a strange object outside his bedroom window. His wife, Florence, keeps the drapes open on the center of three picture windows, and he immediately opened the other drapes for a better look. The open view through the windows, which face south, is of a grass lawn sloping to a curved driveway. This 0.8 -hectare cleared area is devoid of trees and other objects. Two large, automatic floodlights illuminate the ground around the entire house, and under a full moon, it was bright enough to read a book. The night was clear and about 10 C with no noticeable wind. No aircraft were in the area. "At a distance of 14 m (measured after the incident) from his vantage at the bedroom window, there appeared on the lawn an object resembling a common railroad cross tie but oriented in a vertical position, with one end on the ground. It was matte black, 2 1/2 - 2 3/4 m high and 30 - 35 cm wide. The ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 109: Jan-Feb 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Indeterminacy In Computers In SF#108, it was remarked that a chessplaying computer will sometimes make different moves when faced with identical boards. R.G . Everit responds that this is not really mysterious. The better chess-playing computers are actually designed to behave unpredictably when confronted by several moves of roughly equal promise. This feature makes it more interesting for human players. Everit also sets us straight in the matter of computer determinacy. "However, contrary to your basic assumption, most computers (even a home PC) can be forced to behave truly unpredictably. This cannot be done using the random-number generators supplied with the software, as these depend upon some mathematical formula and so are determined in advance, even if they appear to show no pattern. But if the machine has an internal clock readable by the programmer, he can determine the machine's choice depending upon the time required for some complex calculation, which will vary according to such factors as minute voltage variations and the aging of the machine's components. For example, the CDC 3600, on which I learned to program in 1975, had an accessible microsecond clock, and my program to calculate the first five perfect numbers* required about 15 minutes of run time; the last few digits of the exact number of microseconds required to run this program each time varied quite unpredictably. In other words, it was a random number, except ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 111: May-Jun 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Levitation And Levity!New Scientist's "Feedback" page, our favorite source for remarkable insights into cosmic phenomena, noted recently that the magazine Omni had announced the winner of its "Theories" contest. The winning entry was revolutionary, to say the least. In the words of the inventor: "When a cat is dropped, it always lands on its feet, and when toast is dropped, it always lands with the buttered side facing down. I propose to strap buttered toast to the back of a cat; the two will hover, spinning inches above the ground." There is a deep profundity in this arrangement. S. Voss recognized immediately that a perpetual motion machine had been proposed. He set out to find a flaw. Somehow, energy was being supplied to keep the cat-toast armature turning. Voss observed that any practical cat-toast motor would have to be suspended over a very expensive carpet, for the simple reason that the probability of the toast landing buttered-side down is well known to be proportional to the cost of the carpet. (Linoleum is very poor in this application.) Furthermore. to maintain the machine's efficiency, the rug would have to be frequently cleaned of falling cat hairs. Carpet cleaning is energy-intensive, and it is here that energy must be supplied, thereby nullifying the perpetual-motion claim! (Anonymous; New Scientist " ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 9: Winter 1979 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology A Stone Face From Ungava The Ancient Dispersal of Useful Plants Astronomy Cartwheels in Space Large, Unseen Mass is Pulling Earth Toward It Venus and Earth: Engaged Or Divorced? A Chilly Martian Night Biology The Hazards of Sewer Exploration Have Magnets, Will Travel Geology Moon-like Craters in the North Sea Floor An Ancient Planet Beneath A Youthful Veneer Tarnished Halos? Geophysics Purple Blobs in Texas Category X Bermuda Triangle in Orbit Transcendental Trivia? ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 10: Spring 1980 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A SUN-AND-SPIRAL CLOCK The astronomical sophistication of ancient humans becomes more obvious each year. A novel method of keeping track of the seasons has been discovered on an isolated butte in New Mexico. Here, the Anasazi, who occupied Chaco Canyon between 400 and 1,300 A.D ., carved spiral petroglyphs into the face of a cliff. Then, they arranged stone slabs so that sharp slivers of sunlight fell on the spirals. The precise position of the sliver of light depends of course upon the location of the sun. The solstices and equinoxes are registered by unique configurations of light slivers and spirals. In contrast to other calendar sites, which rely upon the rising and setting points of sun on the horizon, the New Mexico clock depends upon the altitude of the sun at midday. Slivers of moonlight on the spirals also seem to have astronomical significance. (Sofaer, Anna, et al; "A Unique Solar Marking Construct," Science, 206:283, 1979.) Reference. Our Handbook Ancient Man contains much additional material on archeoastronomy. For a description of this large volume, go to: here . From Science Frontiers #10, Spring 1980 . 1980-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 113: Sep-Oct 1997 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Triangular holes in boulders America b.c . and then some! Astronomy A VANISHED PLANET? An exploded planet and the "face on mars" Biology Who's in charge down there? Acoustical pipes in beaked whales? Sheep foil cattle guards Geology Earth's shifting crust Geophysics Green thunderstorms Ball of light clocked at 1,800 miles/second! Atlantic wave heights increasing Psychology Why are dreams always retrospective? A DREAM INVENTION The view from within Unclassified Where do all good deleted data go? Can computers have ndes? ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 117: May-June 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Flash Auroras Flash auroras are ephemeral auroral displays lasting only a few seconds. They occur when auroral and geomagnetic activity is subdued worldwide. Under such quiet conditions, scientists do not expect to see auroras of any kind. Yet, experienced aurora observers keep on reporting these transient events. June 13/14, 1987. Winnipeg, Saskatche wan. T. Lohvinenko saw a fragmentary active rayed arc in a clear sky at 0644 UT. It lasted for only a few seconds. February 13/14, 1991. Near Glasgow, Scotland. While facing south, A. Simmons observed rays and a luminous patch at an altitude of 45 . The phenomenon lasted 2 minutes. In both of the above instances, the geomagnetic field was quiet and auroral activity virtually zero worldwide. "It is unprofitable at this stage to speculate on the cause or causes of the mid-latitude flash aurora as it is known in the Aurora Section. More authenticated observations need to be built up before they can become statistically meaningful. The geomagnetosphere is a very dynamic and restless organism in which some instability may develop to cause what, in engineering parlance, might be referred to as a short circuit in the magnetospheric dynamo." (Livesey, R.J .; "The Flash Aurora," British Astronomical Association, Journal, 107:36, 1997.) From Science Frontiers #117, MAY-JUN 1998 . 1998-2000 William R ...
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... illustrate, a chess master can usually recall the positions of all the pieces on a chessboard after a quick glance. But if the chessmen are arranged randomly and meaninglessly, his memory is reduced to near-normal. The gist is that long prac-tice and the application of mnemonic devices can vastly improve anyone's memory and, in consequence, memory prodigies are not really so anomalous. (Ericsson, K. Anders, and Chase, William G.; "Exceptional Memory," American Scientist, 70:607, 1982.) Comment. The real anomaly here may be the fact that the human memory and related memory faculties seem orders of magnitude better than needed for survival. How did such capabilities evolve? Of what use is a prodigious memory to an Ice Age man facing a cave bear? Are we dealing with prescient evolution, like the moth described above, holding capabilities in reserve until they are really needed. From Science Frontiers #26, MAR-APR 1983 . 1983-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 123: May-Jun 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Caves As Musical Instruments In past issues of SF, we have reported how some ancient rock art was intentionally painted on rock faces so that echos, as from a handclap, would not only be unusually loud but have some relation to the painting, as in the clatter of hooves. (SF#86) In a similar vein, some manmade chambers, such as New Grange (3 ,500 B.C .) were configured to enhance the subjective effects of ritual chanting. (SF#102) A fascinating article in Pour la Science , has described how ancient paintings in some of Europe's famous decorated caves were placed where sound resonated. To illustrate, examine the accompanying illustration of the north wall of the Jeannel Gallery of Portel Cave, in Arlege. The long, looping dotted line indicates the amplitude of resonating sound at a frequency of 95 Hertz, as the long gallery behaves like a giant wind instrument. The peak occurs smack in the center of the decorated area. At the peak, in the dotted circle, there is a rocky projection in the shape of a (hard-to-see) feline head. On the opposite wall (not shown), the same peak coincides with an ocher circle that dominates a meter-long decorated panel. (Dauvois, Michael, et al; "Son et Musique au Paleolithique," Pour la Science , p. 52, no. 253 ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 133: JAN-FEB 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Roads of Easter Island When the Fourth Dynasty Egyptians set about building the Great Pyramid, they built a stone-paved road from the Giza Plateau to the dock on the Nile where barges arrived from quarries upriver. The road's hard, smooth surface eased the task of hauling the huge blocks of limestone and granite to the construction site. Three thousand years later, the Easter Islanders faced a similar transportation problem in moving their huge stone heads -- some weighing as much as 90 tons -- from the quarries to stone platforms (ahu) on the coast, where the monstrous heads would stare out across the empty Pacific. Much has been written about how the more than 800 stone heads were dragged from the quarries by brute force and then erected on the ahu. Thor Heyerdahl and others have even managed to duplicate some phases of the operation. However, the voluminous Easter Island literature is not as forthcoming about the roads the natives built to accelerate this Ethic traffic. The Easter Island roads have turned out to be as curious as the statues themselves. During the summer of 2000, geologist C.M . Love and a crew of 17 students excavated sections of the three main roads that carried statue traffic. Parts of these roads were actually carved into the island's bedrock-lava flows mainly. Strangely, the roads were not flat but V- and U-shaped in cross section. They averaged 3 ...
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... of intelligence. Since superorganisms do not reproduce as superorganisms, how can natural selection operate on these superorganisms? Salps. Books dealing with the unexplained sometimes include a photograph of a huge marine creature identified as a sea monster. This famous photo is real and so is the monster in it. But this creature is not reptilian; it is really a salp, a colonial tunicate. Tunicates are tiny, primitive marine organisms usually classified as invertebrates. Some species of tunicates have somehow acquired the habit of aggregating in immense numbers to create long, hollow, snake-like tubes called "salpa." Salps may reach lengths of 45 feet, with diameters of 3 feet. No wonder they are falsely identified as sea monsters. Structurally, the tunicates comprising the salp are embedded in a gelatinous wall facing inward. Each possesses a siphon that pumps nutrient-carrying sea water. Working in unison, the tunicates create a surprisingly strong current of sea water through the tube, and the salp becomes jet-propelled. Thus, we have a mobile monster, but no ship-swallowing leviathan. (Griffin, D.J .G ., and Yaldwyn, J.C .; "Giant Colonies of Pelagic Tunicates..," Nature, 226:464, 1970) Slime molds. Moving down life's ladder to even smaller and simpler organisms, some amoebas have a bizarre life cycle that ends as a superorganism called a "slime mold." If you viewed an amoeba through the microscope in biology lab, you know that they are very tiny, very simple, ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 143: Sep-Oct 2002 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Ancient stone road leads to mountain laced with jade The Planet of the Apes: It's archaeology Ice-age faces on cave floors Astronomy From amusing little volcanoes to giant red devils Strange and Stranger astronomy Biology Dark Life A plague on theories Too close to be so far People who are not entirely themselves Geology Three inner-Earth heresies Geophysics Train, whistle, slowdown, bloop A bad assumption may obscure dark matter Psychology Contagious, collective laughter Physics Wordless memeories Chemistry Mechanical chemistry ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 37: Jan-Feb 1985 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects "CRYSTAL" BALL LIGHTNING June 1, 1984. Nottingham, England. Testimony of Mrs. Elsie Haigh. ". .. at approximately 5.45 p.m ., I was in my kitchen. The window and door were both closed. I was standing with my back to the window when I heard a 'boiling noise' and a noise which sounded like glass splintering -- a crash sound. I was very scared and turned around to face the window and saw a large glass-looking ball, approximately 10 inches in diameter (25 cm), slightly oblong (oblate), with a white filament in the middle. This was floating on a bowl of water which was in the sink. I ran to the bathroom, and seconds later I heard an explosion and splintering glass. When it was quiet -- I think a few seconds elapsed -- I returned to the kitchen. The ball had gone and there was no damage. I can only describe it as a miracle." (Meaden, G.T .; "' Crystal' Ball Lightning," Journal of Meteorology, U.K ., 9:218, 1984.) Comment. Other ball lightning observations on file include sounds like "breaking glass." See our Catalog Lightning, Auroras, Nocturnal Lights. For a description of this Catalog, visit: here . From Science Frontiers #37, JAN ...
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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 Feathers fly over fossil 'fraud' How many plays on words do you count in the following paragraph? "Britain's own scientific knight-errant, Sir Fred Hoyle, has fallen fowl of the palaeontologists. He has flocked together with those who think that the best-ever missing link, the reptile-bird Archaeopteryx, is a convenient fake. Creationists are understandably in high feather about it all. But now, it looks as though they may be left with egg on their faces. ' We first reported on the Archaeopteryx Affair in SF#39. In the present article by Ted Nield, the evolutionists seem to be responding to Hoyle's claim with ridicule and innuendo. Referring to the claim of fossil forgery, which Hoyle based on photos taken with a low-angle flash and EN100 film, Nield wonders why it was published in the British Journal of Photography instead of Nature or Science implying that Hoyle's group didn't dare submit their report to high-class journals! As for the "discovery" of double-struck feathers in the Archaeopteryx fossil, which Hoyle thinks were the result of inexpert forgers, Nield remarks that these were noted by naked as long ago as 1954, and are due to two rows of slightly overlapping feathers with faint "through-printing". And while it is true that the two halves of the fossil studied by the Hoyle group are not perfect positive ...
Terms matched: 1  -  Score: 15  -  15 May 2017  -  URL: /sf042/sf042p17.htm
... 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 A JAPANESE PRESENCE IN ANCIENT MEXICO?A. von Wuthenau, a specialist in Precolumbian art, at the University of the Americas in Mexico City, has long been a champion of ancient contacts between the New World and Africa, the Orient, and the Mediterranean region. For example, his book Unexpected Faces in Ancient America contains hundreds of photographs of Precolumbian figurines and other artwork showing facial features typical of the Old World and Asia. His latest find consists of a terra cotta model of an ancient sailing ship manned by figurines of ten oarsmen, all with striking Japanese features. The model boat is one foot long; the oarsmen, two inches high. It was discovered at a burial site in the Guerrero region of Mexico. Von Wuthenau has tentatively dated the boat as 2,500 years old (Anonymous; "Sailors in a Model of an Ancient Ship Found in Mexico Have Asian Features," Boston Sunday Globe, November 10, 1985. Cr. J. Whittall.) A sketch of one of the giant Olmec stone heads from von Wuthenau's book. He believes this particular head, La Venta III, displays Asiatic features. Others seem African. From Science Frontiers #43, JAN-FEB 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 59: Sep-Oct 1988 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Stele with Unknown Glyphs Found Near Vera Cruz All Roads Lead to Chaco Canyon How and When the Americas Were Peopled Astronomy "? " ! ? Nereid: Grotesque Shape Or Two-faced? Memoirs of A Dissident Scientist Biology Nothing Reacts with Something? Periodic Extinctions and Explosions in Terrestrial Life Aids: Another Great Deceiver Geology Going for Gold Is There Truth in the Grains? Did An Asteroid Impact Trigger the Ice Ages? The New Archaeoperyx Fossil Geophysics Fish and Winkle Showers Lightningless Thunder? Psychology The Enigma of Multiple Personality Observations of Luminous Phenomena Around the Human Body ...
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