... close, the sun will suddenly burst above the horizon weeks ahead of schedule. This is the Novaya Zemiya Effect, and it is basically a polar mirage. Even when the sun is still 5 below the horizon, its light can become trapped between thermoclines and be transmitted over the usual horizon. The atmospheric ducts act much like flat light pipes. In the Novalya Zemlya Effect the sun's image is grossly distorted, quite different from the high quality mirages sometimes seen over hundreds of miles in the polar latitudes. (Anonymous; "New Light on Novaya Zemlya Polar Mirage," Physics Today, 34: 21, January 1981.) Reference. Related atmospheric phenomena are collected in Section GEM in our Catalog: Rare Halos. More information on this book here . Triple Novaya Zemlya Effect ... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 15: Spring 1981 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Novaya Zemlya Effect Rarely, as the long polar night draws to a close, the sun will suddenly burst above the horizon weeks ahead of schedule. This is the Novaya Zemiya Effect, and it is basically a polar mirage. Even when the sun is still 5 below the horizon, its light can become trapped between thermoclines and be transmitted over the usual horizon. The atmospheric ducts act much like flat light pipes. In the Novalya Zemlya Effect the sun's image is grossly distorted, quite different from the high quality mirages sometimes seen over hundreds of miles in the polar latitudes. (Anonymous; "New Light on Novaya Zemlya Polar Mirage ...

... 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 ... 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 do image processing correctly and present the results of computer corrections to compensate for the poor lighting and low viewing angle. The actual image shows clearly the impropriety of the JPL-MIPL actions because the visual impression of artificiality persists. However, appearances after a discovery are not a valid basis for drawing conclusions, but only for forming hypotheses for further testing. This is called the a priori principle of scientific method. The 1976 Viking imagery allowed the formation of competing hypotheses, natural vs. artificial origin, and tests to distinguish them. When applied to the high-resolution MGS image of the Face ...

... FISH Titles not yet posted BG GENETICS Titles not yet posted BH HUMANS BHA EXTERNAL APPEARANCE AND MORPHOLOGY BHA1 Human Asymmetry BHA2 The Appearance of Beauty in the Human Lineage BHA3 General Physique Correlated with the Month of Birth BHA4 Human Body Badly Designed for Swimming BHA5 The Apparent Physical Degeneration of Humans BHA6 Human Physical Degeneration and Genius BHA7 Variability of External Appearance BHA8 Discordances in the Appearances of Identical Twins BHA9 Mirror-Image Twins BHA10 The Apparent Primitive Character of Some Features of the Human Body BHA11 Human and Orang-Utan Physiological Similarities BHA12 Significant Morphological Differences between Humans and the Great Apes BHA13 Sports, Monsters, Terata BHA14 Two Separate Populations of Pygmies BHA15 Birth Weight Varies with Month of Birth BHA16 Human Sexual Dimorphism BHA17 Sex-Ratio Variations BHA18 Gradations between Male and Female BHA19 The Sacral Spot BHA20 Pigmentation Peculiarity on ... The Evolution and Persistence of Homosexuality BHB19 Unusual Human Sexual Activity BHB20 The Puzzle of Human Handedness BHB21 Handedness and Longevity BHB22 Handedness and Health BHB23 Handedness and Mathematical and Verbal Abilities BHB24 The Uniqueness of Bipedalism BHB25 Human Asymmetry in Locomotion BHB26 Wolf-Children BHB27 Eminence Correlated with Time of Birth BHB28 General Eminence Correlated with Planetary Position 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 ...

... One fact does seem clear, hypnosis does not help subjects recall nonsense data or information without meaning, such as random numbers and words. When it comes to meaningful phrases, sentences, paragraphs, etc., hypnosis does aid recall to some extent. If the words evoke considerable imagery, as poetry often does, hypnosis seems to help recall even more. Finally, the recall of meaningful visual images and connected series of images is helped most of all by hypnosis. In fact, there is some evidence that eidetic imagery, that vivid, near-total recall of images, which is almost exclusively a talent of childhood, can be recovered by mature subjects under hypnosis. There do not seem to be any theories that explain all these effects of hypnosis on memory. (Relinger, Helmut ... "Hypnotic Hypernesia," American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 26:212, 1984.) Comment. Of course, memory shorn of hypnotic effects cannot really be explained either. The results of Relinger's survey make one wonder whether the human brain is specially "wired" or built to efficiently handle visual imagery that is "meaningful" in the context of human experience and theoretical expectations. This kind of construction is quite different from computer memories which process meaningless data as easily as meaningful data. UFOs, sea monsters, N-rays, etc. might just be eidetic images from human memories evoked by certain stimuli and encouraged by suggestion. From Science Frontiers #38, MAR-APR 1985 . 1985-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... to open some tiny cracks in the earth. In these cracks, still below the surface, appear the tiny burgundy red flowers. These flowers are pollinated by minute flies, but just how the orchid's seeds are dispersed is still a mystery. (Cooke, John; "Hidden Assets," Natural History, 93:75, October 1984.) Bats navigate by somehow constructing an image of the external world from the echoes of their squeaks. Since bats have but two ears, one wonders how they can develop a three-dimensional image from a two-dimensional sensor; ie., two ears give right-and-left information only. The moustache bat makes up for this deficiency by generating echo-locating pulses at three distinct harmonics: 30, 60, and ... kilohertz. Its external ears are so shaped that each of these three frequencies has a different acoustic axis, giving the bat in effect three separate sets of ears pointing in three different directions. Inside the bat's head, in the inferior colliculus of the brain, are three sepa rate sets of neurons sensitive to the three different frequencies. No one knows how the bat processes such information into a "display" it can use in swooping after insects at night. (Anonymous; "The Ins and Outs of a Bat's Ears," New Scientist, 20, August 30, 1984.) Reference. For more on bat navigational prowess, see section BMT3 in our catalog: Biological Anomalies: Mammals II. This volume is described here . The three acoustic axes of the ...

... . The shadows were exactly the same shape as the remaining bright portion of the Sun, by then only a thin arc of light. Why?" This phenomenon is not anomalous but it is entertaining. It is the reverse of the pin-hole-camera effect often seen during total eclipses. People standing in the shadow of a tree will see many bright arcs on the ground -- images of the sun being eclipsed. The interstices between the tree's leaves act as pinholes. The phenomenon happens in reverse when pin-holes are replaced by "pins"; that is, small opaque obstructions, such as gnats. (Scott, Andrew, and Diebold, Mike; "Shadow Dance," New Scientist, p. 93, October 30, 1999.) From ... I noticed many curved shadows about 3 centimetres long dancing on a white paper lying on the ground, formed by a swarm of gnats. The shadows were exactly the same shape as the remaining bright portion of the Sun, by then only a thin arc of light. Why?" This phenomenon is not anomalous but it is entertaining. It is the reverse of the pin-hole-camera effect often seen during total eclipses. People standing in the shadow of a tree will see many bright arcs on the ground -- images of the sun being eclipsed. The interstices between the tree's leaves act as pinholes. The phenomenon happens in reverse when pin-holes are replaced by "pins"; that is, small opaque obstructions, such as gnats. (Scott, Andrew ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 67: Jan-Feb 1990 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Psychotherapy May Delay Cancer Deaths In previous entries, we have reported that imaging, positive thinking, and other psychological stratagems seemed to have some effect on the progress of cancer in humans. Such positive results have generally been pooh-poohed by the medical establishment. In fact, the results recently reported by Stanford psychiatrist D. Spiegel were obtained during an attempt to show that psycho therapy had no effect whatsoever on cancer. Thirteen years ago, Spiegel participated in a short-term program in which group therapy was given to 86 patients with advanced breast cancer. The goal was simply to make the patients feel better and "face their mortality. ... The result was that the patients became less anxious, less fearful, and more positive. They even learned to reduce their pain through self-hypnosis. That was the end of the program. Recently, Spiegel, fed up with claims that positive thinking could help control cancer, tracked down the patients who had received psychotherapy earlier. He expected to find no difference between their fates and those of a control group that had not received psychotherapy. Not so! Those in the control group had lived an average of 19 more months, compared to an average 37 months for those getting the psychotherapy. Spiegel said, "I just couldn't believe it." "What I am flat out certain of is that something about being in groups helped these women live longer. But what it ...

... 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, J. Hamilton has found additional support for Jaynes' theory. His abstract follows: "When a system for communicating with nonverbal, quadriplegic, institutionalized ... was developed, it was discovered that many were experiencing auditory hallucinations. Nine cases are presented in this study. The 'voices' described have many similar characteristics, the primary one being that they give authoritarian commands that tell the residents how to behave and to which the residents feel compelled to respond. Both the relationship of this phenomenon to the theoretical work of Julian Jaynes and its effect on the lives of the residents are discussed." (Hamilton, John; "Auditory Hallucinations in Nonverbal Quadriplegics," Psychiatry, 48:382, 1985.) From Science Frontiers #43, JAN-FEB 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 58: Jul-Aug 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Bacteria One dictionary's definition: "Widely distributed group of microscopic, one-celled vegetable organisms..." As a matter of fact, the nearly universal image of a bacterium is that of a simple, single-cell organism. But: "That view is now being challenged. Investigators are finding that in many ways an individual bacterium is more analogous to a component cell of a multicellular organism than it is to a free-living, autonomous organism. Bacteria form complex communities, hunt prey in groups and secrete chemical trails for the directed movement of thousands of individuals." J.A . Shapiro, author of ... , to form elaborate fruiting bodies." The Myxobacteria also collectively form baglike traps to engulf and digest prey. It is apparent now that as simple as a single bacterium may seem, bacterial colonies are pretty complex. (Shapiro, James A.; "Bacteria as Multicellular Organisms," Scientific American, 258:82, June 1988.) Comment. How are the collective actions of bacteria effected? Is there a central control center? Oh, oh! We are falling into the reductionist trap again! Life forms do not have to operate like computers do, nor do their functions have to be defined in those block diagrams we like so well. There may be holistic forces involved that escape reductionist thought. It is all very remarkable that bacteria which have been around for billions of ...