... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 139: Jan-Feb 2002 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Ghostly Martian "Forests"NASA's Mars Global Explorer has sent back images of peculiar formations that resemble earthly trees and bushes. Sprouting in the vicinity of the Martian south pole, these "growths" are easily hundreds of yards wide. Since temperatures fall below -200 F in these Martian "forests" this is certainly not "life as we know it"---it is probably not life at all! Current thinking is that these Martian formations are indeed growths, though lifeless ones, much like those mineral spires that sprout around the edges of mineral-rich lakes. The tufa mounds and towers at Mono Lake, California, are good examples, but on a much smaller scale. On Mars, the growths are probably frozen carbon dioxide. The Martian "ghost forests" are probably frost ferns or mineral growths. (Gravitz, Lauren; "Ghost Forests of Mars," Discover, 22:18, November 2001.) Reference. See ETM12, "Curious Columnar Structures" in Carolina Bays, Mima Mounds, etc. From Science Frontiers #139, Jan-Feb 2002 . 2001 William R. Corliss Other Sites of Interest SIS . Catastrophism, archaeoastronomy, ancient history, mythology and astronomy. Lobster . The journal of intelligence and political conspiracy (CIA, FBI, JFK, MI5, NSA, etc) Homeworking.com . Free resource for people thinking about working at home. ABC dating ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 124: Jul-Aug 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Fall Of Hot Globules January 6, 1909. Santa Cruz, California. "It rained hot bird shot at Santa Cruz today for nearly an hour, according to Mrs. W.H . Burns and her neighbors. Some of the shot has been preserved. "Mrs. Burns's curiosity was aroused yesterday by the peculiar antics of a number of barefooted children who were playing in front of her house. When she asked them what was the matter they told her that the air was full of electricity and that hot shot was falling from the clouds. "Then she heard a clatter on the housetop like hail and saw little white threads of steam rising from neighboring roofs. The steam was found to be the result of the dropping of little hot globules on the damp shingles. "This peculiar rain continued from about 3 to 4 o'clock in the afternoon, and varied in intensity. At one time the children, who were bareheaded and unshod, were compelled to take cover." (Anonymous; "Hot Shot from the Sky," New York Times, January 7, 1909. Cr. M. Piechota.) From Science Frontiers #124, JUL-AUG 1999 . 1999-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 124: Jul-Aug 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Ancient Bones On Santa Rosa Just off the coast of Southern California, lies Santa Rosa, one of the Channel Islands. There, recently, two female thigh bones have been dug out of a gully at Arlington Canyon. Radiocarbon-dated at 13,000 years, they are 1,400 years older than the benchmark Clovis sites. The significance of the Santa Rosa bones is explained in the following quotation. "The new discovery is likely to be controversial in part because many scientists say that the old skeletons found in the past few years around the western United States do not resemble modern Native Americans. Detailed examinations of the skulls reveal slender faces, narrower brain cavities, high foreheads and slightly protruding chins that are more typical of Caucasoid peoples. "Some of them bear striking resemblance to a very ancient race called the Ainu, a maritime people who were the forerunners of the Polynesians and long ago occupied Japan and China." (Polakovic, Gary; "Channel Island Woman's Bones May Rewrite History," Los Angeles Times, April 11, 1999. Cr. E. Roy. Abbreviated version in the Houston Chronicle, April 12, 1999. Cr. D. Phelps.) Comments. It should be noted that Santa Rosa is also known for ancient "fire areas" (" hearths"?) where dwarf mammoths were roasted over 13,000 years ago. (See Ancient Man for details. ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 21: May-Jun 1982 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Strange Megalithic Monuments in the Central Sahara The Hueyatlaco Dilemma More on Those Chinese Anchors in California Waters Astronomy The Earth's Other Moons Flattened Sun Means Trouble for Einstein Natural Lasers in the Terrestrial and Martian Skies? Magnetic Tune Played on Saturn's Rings Biology Don't Build Von Neumann Machines Artificial Panspermia on the Moon Geology Bull's Eye Pattern of Magnetic Anomalies What's Ok in the Mediterranean is Verboten in the Atlantic and the Pacific Geophysics Anomalous Sky Flash Psychology Oh Magic, Thy Name is Psi ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 24: Nov-Dec 1982 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Africa Not Man's Origin! Early Chinese Voyages to Australia The Calico Site Revisited Astronomy Mysterious "thing" in Orbit Around Saturn The Spin We're In Islands of Hope for Life Eternal A Hint of Extraterrestrial Oceans Biology Why Cancer? Mice Transmit Human Gene Sequences to Their Progeny Biological Regeneration: Two Anomalies Geology Seismic Ghost Slithers Under California Powerful Earth Current Enters North America From the Pacific The Polyna Mystery Geophysics Balls of Fire Enter Room Through Metal Screens Massive Freak Wave Psychology The Cinema of the Mind ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 89: Sep-Oct 1993 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology A ROBOT'S MYSTERIOUS DISCOVERY California's maze stones Astronomy An age paradox In the dark about dark matter Biology Why do electric fish swim backwards? Electric fish not backward in data processing Homo erectus never existed! Solar activity, your mother's birth year, and your longevity Smoldering corpse Geology RHYTHMIC SUBMARINE VOLCANOS Blasting rocks off planets Geophysics Looping lightning Crop circles: a middle ground Psychology The birthday: lifeline or deadline? Ganzfeld experiments: do they prove telepathy exists? General Transcendental messages in transcendental numbers ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 98: Mar-Apr 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Earthquake Ripples In The Ionosphere During the January 1994 Northridge earthquake in California, the ground surface acted like a drumhead. By suddenly shoving the surface upwards by about 40 centimeters, the quake generated atmospheric disturbances that spread skyward at velocities of 1,000-2 ,200 kilometers/hour. Upon reaching the ionosphere, the waves created ripples that were detected by the array of navigational satellites that make up the Global Positioning System (GPS). (Monastersky, Richard; "Bouncing an Earthquake off the Sky," Science News, 146:415, 1994) Comment. The great 1964 Alaskan quake not only blasted the ionosphere, it generated air waves that were detected by a microbarograph at Berkeley, California, 3,130 kilometers away. See GSW2 in Earthquakes, Tides, Unidentified Sounds. For a description of this volume, visit here . From Science Frontiers #98, MAR-APR 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... is assignable to the Paracas Culture. Separated by 130 miles from the Nazca Plain, with its famed giant figures, the Candelabra apparently is not the work of the Nazca people. It is puzzling why that such a figure would be placed where it could be seen best by sailors. As with Costa Rica's stone spheres, the Candelabra's makers, purpose, and symbology are in doubt. The Pisco geoglyph really doesn't match the motifs in our books on South American archeology. Some archeologists say it is only a trident, but who ever saw a trident like this? F. Joseph, the author of the present article, thinks it looks like a Jimson weed! Furthermore, he states that there is a miniature version of the Candelabra drawn on a rock in California's Cleveland National Forest. Joseph associates the two candelabras in this way: The ancient inhabitants of Peru voyaged to California to collect Jimson weed and other hallucinatory drugs. When they sailed back to Peru with their cargo, they used the Pisco geoglyph as a navigational aid! (Joseph, Frank; "The Candelabra of the Andes," The Ancient American , 2:10, no. 10, 1995.) From Science Frontiers #102 Nov-Dec 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... appear extremely old when carbon-dated. For example, M. Grachev et al carbon-dated flatworms and a sponge collected from a bacterial mat near a thermal vent 420-meters deep in Lake Baikal. The apparent ages of these living organisms ranged from 6860 to 10,200 years. (Grachev, M., et al; "Extant Fauna of Ancient Carbon," Nature, 374:123, 1995) Even animals eating these apparently ancient life forms may take up their carbon-13 and, in effect, be drained of carbon-14. They would appear to age rapidly. Such false aging has actually been induced in the laboratory with mice fed on brewer's yeast grown in natural gas. These mice, living in cages at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California, were carbon-dated as being 13,000 years old, and were expected to attain a ripe old age of 35,000 in a few months. (All this was part of a cancer-research project.) Of course, most carbon-dating in archeology is not endangered by the primordial-carbon problem. But, as K. Turteltaub, "father" of the Lazarus mice, commented: "We've joked about sprinkling them [the mice] around archeological sites just to confuse everyone." (Weisman, Jonathan; "Of Lazarus Mice and Carbon-14," Tri-Valley Herald , July 12, 1993. Cr. R. Berg) From Science Frontiers #99, MAY-JUN 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. ...

... a lot about the endless steppes of Asia and the immensity of the Sahara, but who writes about the earth's dominant geomorphological feature? The abyssal hills are left out of the textbooks because so little is known about them. They are hidden under 3 kilometers of water. Individual abyssal hills rise 100-2 ,000 meters from the ocean floor; they are about 7-15 kilometers across; their lengths are not well known. We know them mainly from fathometer readings. If we could see them visually, they would probably look like the Appalachians from an airplane; that is, wash-board-like. Although heavily draped with pelagic sediments, the abyssal hills are believed to have been shaped by faulting and volcanic activity. K. MacDonald and coworkers at the University of California, Santa Barbara, now believe that both processes are involved: "On the basis of data obtained last January on a series of dives along the East Pacific Rise (EPR), a ridge that runs off the coast of Central and South America, researchers theorize that the linear ridges of abyssal hills, which decorate the ocean floor somewhat like ribs on a washboard, are formed by an interplay between both volcanic eruptions and faulting action." (Anonymous; "Geologists Offer New Theory on Origin of Abyssal Hills," Eos, 75:234, 1994. Background source: Fairbridge, Rhodes W., ed.,; The Encyclopedia of Oceanography , New York, 1966.) Comment. But why would 60-70% of the earth's surface be wrinkled like ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 107: Sep-Oct 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects More Sparks On The Beach Sharp eyes often pick out unusual phenomena in very usual places. From California, A. Hastings writes: "I also had an experience with 'Sparks on the Beach' as in SF#104/4 . This was on the Pacific Ocean Beach at San Gregorio, south of San Francisco, several years ago. I was walking on fairly wet sand, just above the tide line. As I stepped, the sand around my feet lit up with small bright dots of phosphorescence. I would not have said that the color was blue, but it could have been like blue-white, like the star Rigel. I found that if I stepped hard or stamped my foot, the lights flashed brighter and the lit area went out farther from my foot. I could see the movement expanding out. After a stamp or two, they did not light up as much. I assumed that this was caused by some organism that lit up when it felt pressure, and 'wore out' after it had done this a few times -- a refractory period probably occurred." (Hastings, Arthur; personal communication, March 21, 1996) Comment. This is probably a pressureinduced biological phenomenon, but we have no idea what kind of organism produces the lights. Footsteps do produce a rapidly expanding pressure wave on damp sand, which whitens the sand as it moves outward. But we ...

... year-old caucasian skeleton in north america?The town of Kennewick, Washington, has lent its name to this ferociously controversial skeleton. It all began when the local sheriff asked anthropologist J. Chatters to take a look at a partially buried skeleton found on the shore of the Columbia River. (Ref. 1) "From head to toe, the bones were largely intact. The skeleton was that of a man, middle-aged at death, with Caucasian features, judging by skull measurements. Imbedded in the pelvis was a spearhead made of rock." Chatters initially thought he had merely a "pioneer" who had met an untimely death in the Wild West! "The real stunner came last month [June 1996], after bone samples were sent to the University of California at Riverside for radiocarbon dating. The conclusion: the skeleton of the 'pioneer' is 9,300 years old." (Ref. 2) Actually, the skeleton may well be that of a "pioneer" but one who came from the direction of the setting sun instead of the rising sun. Of course, it is perfectly all right for Asians to have crossed the Bering Strait into North America over 9,000 years ago, but a Caucasian raises scientific and emotional problems. "If Kennewick Man were actually Caucasian, it would be a startling discovery. So far, all of the oldest North American skeletons have been of Asian descent, although features on a few skulls have been controversially interpreted as Caucasoid. Another possibility is that the first Americans -- and their ...

... 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 Is perfect pitch favored by natural selection?People with perfect pitch can identify, play, and/or sing a particular musical note without first hearing a reference note. (SF#99 and SF#102) Even if a string of notes is played randomly, they can instantaneously name them. Although musical training while young fosters perfect pitch, the talent also runs in families. A study of 500 musicians, with and without perfect pitch, by N. Freimer at the University of California, revealed that half of those claiming perfect pitch knew family members of like talent. Only 5% of those without perfect pitch made this claim. (Ref. 1) At the North Shore University Hospital, Manhasset, NY, P.K . Gregersen and M. de Andrade were able to locate 126 perfect-pitchers. In this select group, 5.5 % had parents with perfect pitch, and 26% had siblings thus gifted. Among musicians lacking perfect pitch, the figures were 1.1 % and 1.3 %, respectively. (Ref. 2) An unexpected (to us, anyway) correlation of perfect pitch and synethesia (SF#68) was made by Freimer's group. Some perfect-pitchers swear they can "see" musical notes, and even "smell" and "taste" them! (Ref. 1) References Ref. 1. Day, Michael; ...

... suggested by his or her surname. A classic example is seen in a paper on incontinence published in the British Journal of Urology by J.W . Splatt and D. Weedon! Does a person's name exert a psychological force of the choice of a career? We have seen no formal studies of nominative determinism, but we have just discovered a closely allied phenomenon that has been scientifically investigated. We call it "monogrammic determinism.' An individual's monogram does not seem to be associated with his or her occupation but rather with longevity. People with monograms such as ACE, WOW, or GOD tend to live longer than those with monograms like PIG, RAT, DUD, or ILL. The study was conducted at the University of San Diego, where 27 years of California death certificates were examined. Only men were chosen because their initials did not change with marriage. They were divided into three groups: (1 ) those with "good" monograms; (2 ) those with "bad" monograms; and (3 ) a control group with "neutral" monograms. Those men bearing "good" monograms lived 4.48 years longer than those in the control group; those with "bad" monograms, 2.8 years less. Manifestly, being called DUD or PIG all your life can shorten it. Being addressed as ACE or GOD can give one a psychological boost that prolongs life. (Anonymous; "Do Initials Help Some Live Longer?" San Mateo Times, March 28, 1998. Cr. J. Covey.) ...

... pronouncements, many Californians, who have ample experience with seismic events, insist that quakes and weather are somehow connected. They may be right -- at least some of the time. In the five years following the 7.3 Landers earthquake of June 28, 1992, the frequency of smaller quakes has peaked reliably every September. However, before the Landers event, no such pattern is evident. One thought is that the average atmospheric pressure, which is lower in the summer months, reduces the downward pressure on the earth's crust enough to allow easier slippage along fault lines. This sounds reasonable, but why did this effect not occur before the Landers quake? The answer given is that perhaps the Landers event "sensitized" nearby faults! (Monastersky, R.; "California Shakes Most Often in September," Science News, 152:373, 1997.) Since the Landers event, Earthquakes in the weestern U.S . have been following an annual cycle. From Science Frontiers #116, MAR-APR 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... Frontiers ONLINE No. 115: Jan-Feb 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Evolvable Hardware First, you must envision a computer chip as an evolvable entity -- an array of logic gates that can be connected in an almost infinite number of ways. A soft-ware instruction becomes the equivalent of a biological gene. Software instructions can be changed to achieve certain hardware goals just as genes can be rearranged to modify an organism. Furthermore, human operators can specify a hardware goal to the chip and let it evolve on its own, something it can do in microseconds rather than millions of years. This is not a frivilous subject. D. Fogel, chief scientist at Natural Selection, Inc., in La Jolla, California, asserts: "Eventually, we will need to know how to design hardware when we have no idea how to do it." A few demonstration devices have already been built, and in them we see something worthy of note for Science Frontiers. One such device, built by A. Thompson, University of Sussex, was tasked to identify specific audio notes by certain voltage signals. Given 100 logic gates, the device needed only 32 to achieve the result. The surprise was that some of these working gates were not even connected to others by normal wiring. Thompson admitted that he had no idea how the device worked. Something completely unexpected had evolved. Perhaps, thought Thompson, some of the circuits are coupled electromagnetically rather than by wires. Human engineers would never have tried ...

... year. This is the Hilina Slump, and it is said to be "the most rapidly moving tract of ground on Earth for its size." The Hilina Slump can move much faster. At 4:48 AM, November 29, 1975, a 37-mile-wide section suddenly dropped 11 feet and slid seaward 26 feet. The result was a magnitude-7 .2 quake and a 48-foot-high tsunami. This was a minor of the slump. If the entire 4,760-cubic-mile block decided to break off, it would probably create a magnitude-9 quake and a tsunami 1,000-feet high. All the coast-hugging cities of the Hawaiian Islands would be swept away. And LOOK OUT Australia, Japan, and California. (Napier, A. Kam; "Landslide," Honolulu , p. 28, February 1997. Cr. H. DeKalb.) Comment. Tsunamis travel at jet speeds on the deep, open ocean and have such small amplitudes that ships rarely notice them. Only when they reach shallow water do they slow down and reach monstrous sizes. From Science Frontiers #115, JAN-FEB 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 121: Jan-Feb 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Imprison Willy!Killer whales get good press and complimentary movies, too. They are usually portrayed as gentle, intelligent, human-friendly marine mammals that dine only on fish. Lately, though, we have been reading that Alaskan killer whales have been snacking on those cute little sea otters. Much more devastating to the killerwhale image is an article in Natural History describing the vicious attack of a pack of killer whales on a pod of much larger sperm whales 70 miles off the California coast. To ward off the attack, nine sperm whales had formed a rosette, heads together, with their powerful tails splayed outwards towards the enemy. The killer whales circled the sperm whales ominously. Every so often, one would dash in and tear off a huge chunk of blubber. Eventually, all nine sperm whales floated dead or dying in an ocean of blood. The "gentle-giant" portrait of the killer whale is tarnished further in the Antarctic where they habitually dine on the lips and tongues of minke whales, then leave them to die. (Pitman, Robert L., and Chivers, Susan J.; "Terror in Black and White," Natural History, 107:26, December 1998/January 1999.) Comment. How will the media spin-doctor stories like these? Killer whales didn't get their name because they ate fish alone. From Science Frontiers #121, JAN-FEB ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 155: Sep - Oct 2004 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Plant diffusion in the pre-Columbian world Did Chinese Ships Anchor off California 1000 years before Columbus found San Salvador? An Olmec-Chinese Connection Astronomy Our Twin Planet? Evidence that Mars is a former Moon! Biology The Itjaritjari Tick-Tock: Telomeres count off the generations of a species' time on Earth Stealth fish Geology The Dwarfing of island megafauna and the remarkable survival of some A double-whammy for the Yucatan, but that's only part of the story Geophysics A sign? Star-of-David ice crystals fall upon West Sussex Hessdalen: Valley of enigmatic lights When coming events really cast their shadows before them! Physics Entangled moments Mathematics Patterns of very loosely knit prime numbers ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 7: June 1979 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Ancient Rock Cairns In The California Desert The anomaly here resides in the caliche (CaCO3 ) adhering to the bones and rock undersides in a California burial cairn. The caliche has been dated at more than 21,000 B.P . by radiocarbon methods and 19,000 B.P . by thorium methods -- ages much too large for conventional archeological histories of the Southwest. P.J . Wilke objects that only the age of the soil caliche has been measured and that the bones and their burial may be much younger. This cairn site, called the Yuha burial site, possesses no other datable characteristics. On the other hand, many other California burial cairns (the California desert is amply provided with them) have been dated only from 5,000 B.P . to historic times. In this context, Wilke maintains that it is easier to believe that the Yuha bones are merely 5,000 years old, and that the problem is actually in the dating. (Wilke, Philip J.; "Cairn Burials of the California Deserts," American Antiquity, 43:444, 1978.) Comment. Such reasoning is the typical reaction when data contradict prevailing hypotheses -- and sometimes it is correct. From Science Frontiers #7 , June 1979 . 1979-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 24: Nov-Dec 1982 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Calico Site Revisited The following abstract deals with the purported crude stone tools found at the controversial Calico site in California. "Continuation of the Calico investigation, both in the field and laboratory, has conclusively established the presence of Early Man, through the demonstration of numerous tools in several categories, as proven by a number of significant traits or attributes familiar to archaeologists. Microscopic examination reveals use-wear patterns. Uranium-thorium tests yield a date of 200,000 20,000 years for the artifacts." (Simpson, Ruth D.; "Updating the Early Man Calico Site, California," Anthropological Journal of Canada, 20:8 , no. 2, 1982.) Comment. Evidence or no evidence, the archeological community is not yet ready to believe 200,000 years! Reference. For more on Calico and other purported sites of ancient humans, see our Handbook: Ancient Man, which is described here . From Science Frontiers #24, NOV-DEC 1982 . 1982-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 14: Winter 1981 Supplement Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The China Syndrome In Archeology Bit by bit, evidence accumulates showing that Chinese and Japanese ships visited the American Pacific coast long before Europeans. Indian traditions tell of many "houses" seen on Pacific waters. Chinese history, too, tells a charming account of voyages to the land of Fusang. Even old Spanish documents describe oriental ships off the Mexican coast in 1576. Japanese explorers and traders evidently left steel blades in Alaska and their distinctive pottery in Ecuador. Recent underwater explorations off the California coast have yielded stone artifacts that seem to be anchors and line weights (messenger stones?). One line weight found at 2,000 fathoms is covered with enough manganese to suggest great antiquity. The style and type of stone point to Chinese origins for all these artifacts. Apparently, vessels from the Orient were riding the Japanese Current to North American shores long before the Vikings and Columbus reached the continent. (Pierson, Larry J., and Moriarty, James R,; "Stone Anchors: Asiatic Shipwrecks off the California Coast," Anthropological Journal of Canada, 18:17, 1980.) Reference. Such putative Asian contacts are covered in our Handbook: Ancient Man. A description of this book is located here . From Science Frontiers #14, Winter 1981 . 1981-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 9: Winter 1979 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects An Ancient Planet Beneath A Youthful Veneer Gerald Wesserburg and Donald de Paolo, two California geologists, have studied the isotopic ratios of neodymium 143 and 144 in both continental and deep-sea lavas. If the underground lava sources were the same, the isotope ratios should be the same. But they are not. Midocean lavas are enriched in neodymium143 compared to continental lavas. Since neodymium-143 is a decay product of samarium, scientists have been able to establish the neodymium isotope ratio from the time of the Big Bang to the present. The isotope ratio for the mid-ocean lavas is just what would be expected on a planet where lighter surface materials had come to the surface during a molten state. The continental lavas, though, must tap very ancient reservoirs, possibly those of a true primitive earth. This ancient core is now swathed with younger materials from who knows where! This young envelope wraps around the whole planet, with the present continents being caused by slight protuberances on the ancient core. Whence the young veneer? A rain of material from some recent close encounter? (Anonymous; "Underground Sites of Ancient Earth," New Scientist, 83:886, 1979.) From Science Frontiers #9 , Winter 1979 . 1979-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 20: Mar-Apr 1982 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Puzzling Group Behavior Of Sharks For some unknown reason, sharks often congregate in immense groups. Approximately 2,000 sharks took over 24 kilometers of the surf zone near Corpus Christi during June 1977. Some courageous divers decided to study large groups of the scalloped hammerhead that regularly gather in the Gulf of California. Happily, the hammerheads were not aggressive when so occupied and could be approached closely. They swam pointed in roughly the same direction, maintaining about the same spacing through the groups, which sometimes numbered 100 or more. They did not feed, mate, or do anything collectively; but once in a while an individual would suddenly engage briefly in acrobatic behavior -- one common type was dubbed the "shimmy dance." The researchers concluded that these shark groups had no obvious purpose and that, for reasons beyond the ken of man, this behavior somehow contributed to their evolutionary success. (Klimley, A. Peter; "Grouping Behavior in the Scalloped Hammerhead," Oceanus, 24:65, Winter 1981/1982.) Comment. The sharks might be much "farther along" without complex, time-wasting group behavior. What do sharks know about evolution anyway? From Science Frontiers #20, MAR-APR 1982 . 1982-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 24: Nov-Dec 1982 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Seismic Ghost Slithers Under California From 1973 into 1978, instruments monitoring the San Andreas Fault told geophysicists that north-south distances between observing stations along the fault line were contracting. The Pacific Coast was moving north while the rest of North America was heading south! Then, in 1978, the strain eased in the far south of California only to reassert itself in a few weeks. This strange relaxation of strain seemed to propagate slowly across southern California, as seen by other instruments farther north. As the wave of relaxation moved ponderously along, like a slow flexure of the earth's strata, microearthquakes almost disappeared while the flow of radon from the ground increased, as one might expect. When the strain reappeared, radon flow diminished and a rash of microearthquakes were detected. It took about a year for the strain wave, called a "seismic ghost" by the geophysicists, to flow north from the Imperial Valley into the Los Angeles area. (Alexander, George; "Quakewatch," Science 82, 3:38, September 1982.) Comment. Something had to cause this curious disturbance; and where is it located now? From Science Frontiers #24, NOV-DEC 1982 . 1982-2000 William R. Corliss ...