... reported a wide spectrum of luminosities, some of which were very strange. In the sky, some observed silent sparkings, diffuse glows, and aurora-like stripes. For an account of the more enigmatic EQLs, we quote M. Ouellet: "Fireballs a few metres in diameter often popped out of the ground in a repetitive manner at distances of up to only a few metres away from the observers. Others were seen several hundred metres up in the sky, stationary or moving. Some observers described dripping luminescent droplets, rapidly disappearing a few metres under the stationary fireballs. Only two fire-tongues on the ground were reported, one on snow and the other on a paved parking space without any apparent surface fissure. The colours most often identified were orange, yellow, white and green. Some luminosities lasted up to 12 min." (Ouellet, Marcel; "Earthquake Lights and Seismicity," Nature, 348:492, 1990.) Reference. Many observations of earthquake lights are cataloged in GLD8 in the catalog: Lightning, Auroras. For ordering information, see: here . From Science Frontiers #74, MAR-APR 1991 . 1991-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... life forms, is highly flammable. Lightning could have ignited it almost immediately if it was concentrated enough. A colossal firestorm might have then enveloped the entire planet. The whole atmosphere could have been afire. This, according to B. Hurdle and colleagues at the Naval Research Laboratory, who speculate that the dinosaur hegemony may ended suddenly in flames rather than in a long, drawn-out whimper. (Day, Michael; "Hell on Earth," New Scientist, p. 5, November 20, 1999) 55 million years ago. Ten million years after the dinosaurs may have roasted in a global firestorm, another methane burp may have erupted from the oceans. This burp was slower and did not ignite but was just as lethal. It filled with atmosphere with a highly effective green-house: methane. The result was a pulse of global warming; as seen in a 5-7 -deg C increase in the temperature of ocean-bottom water during that period. Biological evidence for the event occurs in the skeletons of marine animals that litter the ocean sediments laid down in that lethal period. On the land, prior to the methane release, North America was'populated by an odd assortment of unfamiliar mammals; "unfamiliar" to ustoday because they left no descendents. These archaic mammals succumbed to the effects of the sudden global warming and were ultimately replaced by the ancestors of our familiar deer, horses, and canines that streamed across the now-open Bering Land Bridge. Geology, too, provides evidence of this traumatic event. Ocean-bottom cores ...

... looking shrub growing on rocky terrain in Western Australia, where it reaches a height of 2 meters. The fruits of this plant are enjoyed by the white-tailed black cockatoo -- if it can identify them ! Hakea trifurcata , you see, grows fruit that looks like its leaves, and this is very frustrating to the white-tailed black cockatoo: "This shrub according to plant ecologist Byron Lamont of Curtin University of Technology in Perth, exhibits the first known case of self-mimicry in a plant: to avoid losing valuable seeds to predators, it disguises some of its leaves as fruits. Young plants produce only the long, needle-shaped leaves. But mature five-year-old shrubs also grow broad leaves that cluster around the slightly smaller, almost identical-looking green seed-filled fruits." When offered branches stripped of real leaves and bearing just fruits, the cockatoos quickly demolished them. Normal branches bearing both leaves and fruit were attacked at first -- especially the larger leaves. But when the cockatoos found themselves duped a large proportion of the time, they gave up in obvious frustration. (Anonymous; "Fruit Dupes," Discover, 15:16, August 1994.) Comment. An even more amazing case of plant mimicry occurs among Passiflora species, which craft precise copies of the eggs of a butterfly, whose larvae decimate these plants. The butterflies see the fake eggs and go look for places to lay their eggs where there is less competition. (See SF#16) From Science Frontiers #97, JAN-FEB ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 2: January 1978 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Giant Ball Lightning June 8, 1977, Fishguard, Dyfed, West Wales. A brilliant, yellow green, trans-parent ball, the size of a bus with a fuzzy outline, floated down a hillside. Slowly rotating, it seemed to bounce off projections on the ground. It flickered out after 3 seconds. (Jones, Ian; "Giant Ball Lightning," Journal of Meteorology U.K ., 2:271, 1977.) From Science Frontiers #2 , January 1978 . 1978-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... 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 ...

... spherical ball touched the cement it was flattened at the point of contact, and deformed, but it quickly resumed its globular shape when it left the ground. It was not transparent but, rather, like a ball of smoke with glowing 'comma-shaped' electrical 'worms' wriggling about -- sizzling, hissing and flickering. It flattened by 1/4 into the egg shape on each bounce. On reaching the far western end of our verandah it accelerated rapidly and rose at a steep angle of about 45 degrees clearing the apricot tree, wires, and the house next door. At this stage my mother rushed in the back door of the house where we huddled for about 30 seconds before hearing a resounding crash some 250 yards away off to the east. It had hit Green's house at the far eastern end of Campbell Road. It apparently then bounced all the way to the Salvation Army home and demolished the whole house somewhere near Dawson and Florence Streets at Fullarton." The ball rotated slowly and emitted small sparks. (Illert, Theodore Charles; "The Parkside Lightning Ball," personal communication from C. Illert. To be published in "Speak No Evil: A Case Study of Lives and Times of German Settlers in South Australia," by C. Illert) Ball lightning with a wormy or rope-like surface structure. The example sketched above appeared in an English garden, but it is basically the same as the Parkside ball lightning. (See the Catalog of Anomalies) From Science Frontiers #33, MAY-JUN 1984 . ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 41: Sep-Oct 1985 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects An Animal That Photosynthesizes At a recent meeting of the American Society for Photobiology, chemist Pill-Soon Song, of Texas Tech University, reported the discovery of a blue-green, trumpet-shaped protozoan that employs photosynthesis to sustain itself. Called Stentor coeruleus, this protozoan is only 0.2 mm long and swims backward by rotating its cilia. According to the article, this is the first instance of a photosynthesizing animal. (Anonymous; "Animal That Lives on Light," San Francisco Chronicle, June 28, 1985, p. 2. Cr. J. Covey) Comment. Nothing was said about whether the protozoan also ate food in the conventional manner. If verified, this is not a trivial discovery. Of course, some plants eat meat, but animals seem to have found sunlight too weak to utilize for mobility and other energy-rich processes and activities. From Science Frontiers #41, SEP-OCT 1985 . 1985-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... arrives for each species, all plants of the species all over the world flower simultaneously. The various species flower at intervals of 15, 30, 60, or 120 years. (These 15-year multiples and the unknown clocks that determine them are anomalies in themselves.) After a species flowers, all plants die, leaving the fate of the species to a thick carpet of seeds. Until the next flowering, it will extend its domain via vegetative reproduction only. Ten years will pass before the bamboos have grown enough to be a viable pan-da food source. The pandas' only hope is to find a species of bamboo that did not flower. It is hard to think of a plant as malevolent, but here is how P. Shipman describes the situation: "Green and slender, deceptively innocent-looking, it spreads out slowly, year by year, until it has its victims surrounded. Meanwhile the pandas, poor patsies, are eating out of the bamboo's hand. Only when the pandas are well and truly dependent on it does the bamboo deal its coup de grace. It flowers and seeds, thus ensuring its own survival as a species. And then, in an act of sweet self-sacrifice, it dies, taking its archenemy with it." If the pandas manage to survive after the 15-year bamboos have had a try at death-by-death, a time will come when 15- and 30-year bamboos will flow er simultaneously. In the mid-1970s, several species, with different periodicities ...

... . "At 1917 GMT, C.J .A . Cladingbowl, the Second Officer of the s.s . Benattow saw pulsating parallel bands of light rushing toward the ship from 045 T. After two to three minutes, the bands assumed a spoke formation with the center of rotation unseen but in the direction of 315 T. The spokes were about 22 m in width, with 22 m between each spoke. Rotating clockwise, the spokes swept past the vessel at ever increasing speeds, reaching two spokes per second maximum. By 1925, the display had reverted to the parallel band form. Then, the bands changed into a counterclockwise rotating wheel. The performance ended when the display again reverted to parallel bands and faded out altogether. The light from the spokes was white to light green and its intensity increased with the speed of rotation." (Cowie, R.E .; "Bioluminescence," Marine Observer, 47:17, 1977.) Reference. Lightwheels and other weird forms of bioluminescence are cataloged in Chapter GLW of Lightning, Auroras. For details, see: here . A = Locus of Center of spoke formation at beginning B = Ship's course C = Locus of center of spoke formation at end D = Advancing bands of light E = Direction of movement of spoke formation From Science Frontiers #2 , January 1978 . 1978-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... al; "Migration Corridor for Sea Turtles," Nature, 384: 320, 1996. Also: Monastersky, R.; "Do Sea Turtles Stop and Ask for Directions?" Science News, 150:342, 1996.) Rectal gills. Sea turtles are airbreathers that make long, deep dives. To descend deep for long periods, they have evolved a diving adaptation radically different from that employed by the dolphins, whales, and seals; namely, rectal gills. They breathe air at the front end and water at the rear. Water is pulled in through the rectum and directed to sacs lined with blood vessels. These function like fish gills by extracting oxygen from the seawater. The oxygen-depleted water is them expelled and another "breath" is taken. (Green, John; ISC Newsletter, 11:10, no. 3, 1991. Actual publication date: 1997. ISC = International Society of Cryptozoology.) Routes taken by migrating leatherback turtles in 1992. From Science Frontiers #112, JUL-AUG 1997 . 1997-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Official foo-fighter records revealed The famous foo fighters of World War II were bright balls of light, about a foot in diameter, of different colors, that appeared mostly over Germany to both German and Allied pilots. Although the foo fighters could maneuver around and through bomber formations with apparent ease, they were nuisances rather than physical threats. Most of the foo-fighter reports made by Americans came from the 415th Night Fighter Squadron. Recently a microfilm roll containing the Unit History and War Diary of the 415th was obtained from the U.S . Air Force. We quote below three incidents found on Frames 1613 and 1614. The year is 1944: "December 18. In Rastatt area sighted five or six red and green lights in a 'T ' shape which followed A/C thru turns and closed to 1000 feet. Lights followed for several miles and then went out. Our pilots have named these mysterious phenomena which they encounter over Germany at night 'Foo-Fighters.' "December 23. More Foo-Fighters were in the air last night...In the vicinity of Hagenau saw 2 lights coming toward the A/C from ground. After reaching the altitude of the A/C they leveled off and flew on tail of Beau (Beaufighter -- their aircraft, Ed.) for 2 minutes and then peeled up and turned away. 8th mission -- sighted 2 orange lights. One light sighted at 10,000 feet the other climbed until it disappeared. "December ...

... No. 67: Jan-Feb 1990 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Archeological Riddle W. Elliott, of Grand Lake Stream, Maine, reports the discovery of some truly remarkable stone artifacts in eastern Washington County, Maine. These artifacts were extracted from a small cist, or tomb, constructed of slabs of slate laid over a hollow space between a ledge and a row of stones. As the following description attests, these artifacts are anomalous to Maine (and perhaps anywhere in the States.) "Elliott has three stone artifacts that he says came to light when he tilted two or three of the slabs covering one end of the tomb, which lies east-to-west. The grave items consist of a smooth rectangular green stone resembling a whetstone but bearing four letters or symbols; a four-inch pendant that is a flat stone oval bearing on one side and eye and on the other side a face of the sun with four rays, a crescent above, and six or seven letters in an undetermined script below; and a 15- inch ceremonial slate spear point showing on one side a bearded, trousered man in a hat or helmet with one arm severed and one foot missing, and on the other side a bear-like animal with two spears sticking out of him. In front of the bear are marks resembling the Roman numerals for eight, with the V tipped to one side." Members of NEARA (New England Antiquities Research Association) have visited the site; and professional archeologists have ...

... this impressive work in a newsletter. Our readers will have to be satisfied with a mere two paragraphs, in which Buck summarizes some of the incredible synchronies. "More than three centuries later Porter observed a very different behavior in far southwestern Indiana in which, from the ends of a long row of tall riverbank trees, synchronized flashes '. .. began moving toward each other, met at the middle, crossed and traveled to the ends, as when two pebbles are dropped simultaneously into the ends of a long narrow tank of water...' "In 1961 Adamson described a still different type of display, the first from Africa: 'It is then too that one sees the great belt of light, some ten feet wide, formed by thousands upon thousands of fireflies whose green phosphorescence bridges the shoulder-high grass. The fluorescent band composed of these tiny organisms lights up and goes out with a precision that is perfectly synchronized, and one is left wondering what means of communication they possess which enables them to coordinate their shining as though controlled by a mechanical device.' A generation later, a flurry of full- dress bioluminescence expeditions had obtained photometric, cinematographic and electrophysiological measurements from congregational displays in Thailand, New Britain, New Guinea and Malaysia, confirming the reality of mass synchrony and uncovering a variety of types. Contemporaneously, Otto and Smiley photographed group wave synchrony of flying fireflies in central Texas, Ohba recorded two frequencies of synchrony in a Japanese species and Cicero described spectacular and enigmatic bouts of chain-flashing, tightening into synchronized strings, by fireflies on ...

... Planet X AXO2 Infrared Observations of Planet X AXO3 Radio Observations of Planet X AY METEORS AND METEORITES AYB METEOR AND METEORITE FLUX ANOMALIES AYB1 Stationary Meteor Radiants AYB2 Meteor Rates Correlated with Solar Activity AYB3 Meteor Rates Correlated with Lunar Phase AYB4 Meteorites: Geographical Anomalies AYB5 Meteor and Meteorite Temporal Anomalies AYB6 The Unexpected Abundance of Very Large Meteors AYB7 Clouds and Swarms of Meteors AYB8 Micrometeoroid Loss-Gain Imbalance AYE ANOMALIES IN METEORITE COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE AYE1 Isotopic and Inorganic Chemical Anomalies AYE2 Organic Compounds in Meteorites AYE3 Unusual Meteorite-Exposure Ages AYE4 Anomalous Formation Ages of Meteorites AYE5 "Sedimentary" Meteorites AYE6 Annihilation-Radiation Events Ascribed to Antimatter Meteorites AYE7 Meteorite Magnetic Anomalies AYE8 The Unexplained Origin(s ) of Chondrules AYE9 The Brownlee Particles AYE10 Lack of Correspondence between Meteorite and Asteroid Compositions AYO METEORS IN FLIGHT AYO1 The Peculiar Green Meteors and Fireballs AYO2 Erratic Meteors AYO3 Atmospheric Debris Resembling Meteors in Flight AYO4 Large Meteorites with Negligible Craters AYO5 Meteor Collisions AYO6 Meteors of Very Long Duration AYO7 Fireball Processions AYO8 Nebulous Meteors AYO9 Rebrightening of Meteor Trails AYO10 Dark Meteor-Like Streaks AYO11 Long, Hollow Cylinders of Meteoric Dust AZ THE ZODIACAL LIGHT AZO IDIOSYNCRACIES OF THE ZODIACAL LIGHT AZO1 Varying Visibility of the Zodiacal Light with Geographic Location AZO2 Zodiacal Light Observed on Northern Horizons in Northern Hemisphere AZO3 Irregularities in the Shape of the Zodiacal Light AZO4 Irregular and Sporadic Changes in Brightness AZO5 Zodiacal-Light Color Changes AZO6 Correlations of Brightness Changes with Solar Activity AZO7 Seasonal Variations of the Zodiacal Light AZO8 Unusual Extensions along the Ecliptic AZO9 Moon's Shadow Dimming the Zodiacal Light AZO10 Infrared Images of Unexpected Dust Clouds AZO11 The False Zodiacal Light AZO12 The ...