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... 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 Granite-working In Ancient Egypt The ancient Egyptians cut and shaped limestone with ease and alacrity. The 2.5 million multiton limestone blocks in the Great Pyramid are more than ample proof of their ability to work this soft stone. But how about the polished black granite walls of the King's Chamber in the Great Pyramid and the hollowed-out sarcophagus of obdurate chocolate-colored granite in the same room? These granites are much harder than limestone and even harder than the copper saws and drills that the Egyptian stoneworkers had at their disposal. So, how did they work their granite? [No lasers allowed!] The King's Chamber in the Great Pyramid is encased with multiton blocks of hard-to-work granite. For some reason the five granite slabs in the ceiling were finished on only their bottom sides. (From: Ancient Structures) As a matter of fact, there is little mystery here despite what you read in the popular magazines. The Egyptian workers simply dribbled quartz sand beneath the copper saws and drills. This abrasive is harder than the mica and feldspar components of granite but not the quartz. Nevertheless, granite will yield slowly to the abrasive, as do the copper tools themselves. In 1999, D.A . Stocks tested the efficacy of copper saws and drills on the granite in the Aswan quarries 500 miles up the Nile. The copper saw in his test was 1. ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 134: MAR-APR 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Sleep-work And Dream-work To dream an animal must sleep, and sleep is a dangerous state in the natural world. The animal is motionless, its senses are diminished; it is very vulnerable. Neither is there any provable biochemical value to sleep. (See BHF31 in Humans II) Yet, a large fraction of an animal's life is spent in this apparently useless and hazardous condition. Why, then, did sleep ever evolve? But with sleep, come dreams, and maybe an answer is to be seen in them. Cats establish long-term memories during sleep. First, it is relevant that an animal's brain (a cat's brain here) seems to be active even when an animal is sleeping deeply but not dreaming. It seems that during an extremely quiet phase of sleep, when researchers thought that nothing much was happening in the [cat's ] brain, groups of cells involved in the formation of new memories signal one another. The signals, discovered only a few years ago, allow cells in many parts of the brain to form lasting links. Then, when a few cells are stimulated during waking hours, the links are activated and an entire memory is recalled. Deep, dreamless sleep has long been thought to be of little value to an animal. Apparently this is not the case. Deep sleep seems to be valuable in memory activation. Score ...
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... built and the sand piled back around it? And if so how had they known where to dig and find the springs? For if not there was only one other explanation. That we were standing there on the original ground surface. That once upon a time the whole hill slope had been naked rock at the level at which we stood, with springs in the hollows, and that the irrigation channels, probably indeed roofed from the start to prevent evaporation, had been dug at ground level or only a little below. In that case the sand came later, and the wall around the springs, together with the "chimneys" giving access to the qanats, had been built up gradually, to keep pace with the encroaching sand. This would suggest that the sand was comparatively recent ... " except, of course for inadmissible proper names. From Science Frontiers #129, MAY-JUNE 2000 . 2000 William R. Corliss Other Sites of Interest SIS . Catastrophism, archaeoastronomy, ancient history, mythology and astronomy. Lobster . The journal of intelligence and political conspiracy (CIA, FBI, JFK, MI5, NSA, etc) Homeworking.com . Free resource for people thinking about working at home. ABC dating and personals . For people looking for relationships. Place your ad free. ...
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... MSB6 Possible Neanderthal Structures MSB7 Puzzles of the Maltese Temples MSB8 Baalbek: The Tiahuanaco of the Old World MSB9 Miscellanous ancient structures: Asia MSB10 Miscellanous ancient structures: Oceania MSB11 Miscellanous ancient structures: Africa MSC WATER-CONTROL STRUCTURES MSC1 Remarkable Ancient Aqueducts and Water-Delivery Systems MSC2 La Cumbre: Peru's Intervalley Canal MSC3 Subterranean Tunnel-Well Systems MSC4 Water-Condensing Structures MSC5 Three Notable Ancient Irrigation Systems MSC6 Curious Old Dams MSC7 Unusual Water-Containment Structures MSC8 Notable Ancient Ship Canals MSC9 Artificial Harbors MSD MENHIRS, DOLMENS, ROCKING STONES MSD1 Some Minor Enigmas Concerning Menhirs MSD2 Menhirs in Unexpected Places MSD3 Er Grah as a Foresight in an Eclipse Predictor MSD4 Dolmen-Like Structures Located Outside of Western Europe MSD5 Rocking Stones MSE EXCAVATED STRUCTURES MSE1 Lines of Pits MSE2 Puzzling Pits: A Survey MSE3 ... MSW2 Notable Rude Stone Walls: A Survey MSW3 Transocean Distribution of Precision-Fit Stone Walls MSW4 Cyclopean Walls MSW5 Natural Walls That Seem Artificial Other Sites of Interest SIS . Catastrophism, archaeoastronomy, ancient history, mythology and astronomy. Lobster . The journal of intelligence and political conspiracy (CIA, FBI, JFK, MI5, NSA, etc) Homeworking.com . Free resource for people thinking about working at home. ABC dating and personals . For people looking for relationships. Place your ad free. ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 61: Jan-Feb 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Gaia At Work Under The Hudson "Oxygen-starved bacteria working in sediment beneath the Hudson River are transforming toxic PCB compounds into less dangerous forms, raising hopes of a significant easing of a major PCB cleanup problem nationwide," researchers said yesterday. "The resulting types of PCBs do not accumulate in living tissue, a government scientist said." Researchers at the University of Michigan stated that it appeared that these bacteria had evolved specifically to attack PCBs. (Anonymous; "Hudson Bacteria Transform PCBs into Safer Forms," Baltimore Sun, November 4, 1988.) Comment. Thus does Gaia act so as to protect humanity from its own mistakes! From Science Frontiers #61, JAN-FEB 1989 . 1989-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... 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 How Homeopathy Might Work Although some people swear to the efficacy of homeopathy's "remedies," skeptics have been fond of pointing out that these fluids are so dilute that no molecules of the active ingredients are likely to remain. Believers respond that the fluid remedies somehow retain the "essence" of the active ingredient. In effect, they maintain that water has a "memory." No wonder mainstream scientists scoff at homeopathy. But wait, perhaps water can have a memory! A Cal Tech chemist has put extremely dilute solutions under his electron microscope and found that some contain strange "ice" crystals, even though room temperature and pressure prevail. Called "IE crystals," they are produced through the action of ions. They are stable even at higher temperatures. Subsequently, an immunologist at the University of California at Los Angeles discovered that the IE crystals can stimulate parts of the immune system. Water containing these strange forms of ice show a hundred times more bioactivity than plain water. (Anonymous; "Homeopathy and IE Crystals," Spectrum , p. 18, November/ December 1998. Cr. E. Fegert) Comment. Of course, we want to see independent confirmations of the Cal Tech and UCLA work, but we hope they will be objective rather than the usual knee-jerk reactions to homeopathy. See SF#59 and SF#69 for past confrontations over homeopathy. From Science Frontiers # ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 44: Mar-Apr 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects How The Incas Worked Stone Inca stonework is famous for its large stones (some over 100 tons), which are fitted so precisely that "a knife cannot be inserted into the joints." An aura of mystery has always hung about the great "walls" at Saqsaywaman and Ollantaytambo (spellings vary). How could the Incas have quarried, dressed, transported, and lifted such huge stones? As usual with such remarkable ancient structures, the overzealous have proposed antigravity devices, stone-softening agents, and similar wild notions. In truth, as J. Protzen relates in the subject article, Inca stonemasonry was surprisingly unsophisticated and yet efficient, although some mysteries remain. Protzen has spent many months in Inca country experimenting with different methods of shaping and fitting the same kinds of stones used by the Incas. He found that quarrying and dressing the stones were not problems at all using the stone hammers found in abundance in the area. Even the precision-fitting of stones was a relatively simple matter. The concave depressions into which new stones were fit were pounded out by trial and error until a snug fit was achieved. Protzen's first-hand experience is impressive and convincing. Certainly he required no radical solutions. The problems that Protzen was not able to solve to his satisfaction involved the transportation and handling of the large stones. The fitting process necessitated the repeated lowering and raising of the stone being fitted, with ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 17: Fall 1981 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Were the british megaliths built as scientific instruments?Alexander Thom and his son have meticulously surveyed nearly 100 megalithic sites in Britain and nearby Europe. Archeologists generally applaud the Thoms' careful work but vehemently attack their conclusions. The Thoms see in their surveys evidence that the early Britons built megalithic astronomical instruments with scientific capabilities far beyond their needs for calendar-keeping. Actually, they suggest that these "primitive" people built a society so strong that it could devote time and labor to a program of astronomical research generations in extent. In short, they were precociously bright and socially strong; so much so that they could indulge their scientific desires. The Thoms' prehistoric scenario departs radically from that of the current archeological establishment, which has searched for flaws in the Thoms' work. Naturally, some defects have emerged. Clive Ruggles, the author of the present article, is one of the skeptics. He feels that the megalithic sites are impressive and intriguing but not the work of mental giants. After all, Ruggles says, 72 points of the compass have some lunar significance. Almost any circle of stones built for simple ritual purposes would have some significant lunar alignments! (Ruggles, Clive; "Prehistoric Astronomy: How Far Did It Go?" New Scientist, 90: 750, 1981.) Comment. The kind of statistical argument reminds one of those monkeys who will eventually type out the works of Shakespeare. Presumably, the ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 105: May-Jun 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects If it doesn't work, kick it!" Vicki Wilmore, 10, from Gorton, Manchester, was a happy child of normal ability until she complained of a headache one morning a year ago. From that moment, she started writing everything back to front and upside down. "Although Vicki could read what she wrote, nobody else could and this caused her to cry with frustration and led to classroom gibes. Several experts subjected her to psychological and physiological tests but failed to find a cure." Then, after a troubled year, excited by a football game, Vicki jumped out of her seat, fell back, and bumped her head on a coffee table. The next day she went to school and was once more able to read and write normally. (Jones, Tim; "Girl's Bump Cure's Mirror Writing," London Times, December 7, 1995. Cr. A.C .A . Silk) Comment. The sample of Vicki's "mirror writing" accompanying the Times article does not seem to be pure mirror writing, such as Leonardo da Vinci is said to have employed. It's more of a hodgepodge. Anyway a bump cured it - somehow mending a loose connection. From Science Frontiers #105, MAY-JUN 1996 . 1996-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers The Book Strange reports * Bizarre biology * Anomalous archaeology From New Scientist, Nature, Scientific American, etc Archaeology Astronomy Biology Geology Geophysics Mathematics Psychology Physics Science Frontiers The Book Contents Science Frontiers is an indexed compilation of the first 86 issues of our Science Frontiers newsletter . Chapter 1. Archeology: Ancient Engineering Works * Small Artifacts * Epigraphy and Art * Bones and Footprints * Diffusion and Culture. Chapter 2. Astronomy: Planets and Moons * Solar System Debris * Stars * Galaxies and Quasars * Cosmology. Chapter 3. Biology: Humans .* Other Mammals * Birds * Reptiles and Amphibians * Fish * Arthropods * Invertebrates * Plants and Fungi * Microorganisms * Genetics * Origin of Life * Evolution. Chapter 4. Geology: Topography * Geological Anomalies * Stratigraphy * Inner Earth. Chapter 5. Geophysics: Luminous Phenomena* Weather Phenomena * Hydrological Phenomena * Earthquakes * Anomalous Sounds * Atmospheric Optics. Chapter 6. Psychology: Dissociation Phenomena * Hallucinations * Mind - Body Phenomena * Hidden Knowledge * Reincarnation * Information Processing * Psychokinesis. Chapter 7. Chemistry, Physics, Math, Esoterica: Chemistry * Physics * Mathematics. Comments from reviews: "This fun-to-read book may lead some to new scientific solutions through questioning the phenomena presented", Science Books and Films Publishing details: 356 pages, paperback, $18.95, 417 illus., subject index, 1994. 1500+ references, LC 93-92800 ISBN 0-915554-28-3 , 8.5 x 11. Order From:The Sourcebook Project P.O . Box ...
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... -Darwinian way. Shapiro maintains that five decades of genetic and molecular-biology research have transformed our vision of life. Ile compares the conceptual changes to those accompanying the transition from classical physics to relativity and quantum mechanics. This new theory of evolution -- his "third" way -- will emerge from the convergence of biology and information science. Genomes, asserts Shapiro, are not really the static "beads on a string" envisioned by the Darwinians. Rather, they are fluid and complex. Genes are now seen as multipurpose elements that turn on and off as required for the survival and well-being of the organism they belong to. In this paradigm-eroding paper (referenced below), Shapiro describes four categories of molecular discoveries that have revised our thinking about how evolution works: (1 ) Genome Organization; (2 ) Cellular-Repair Capabilities; (3 ) Mobile Genetic Elements and Natural Genetic Engineering; and (4 ) Cellular Information Processing. He then writes: The point of this discussion is that our current knowledge of genetic change is fundamentally at variance with neo-Darwinist postulates. We have progressed from the Constant Genome, subject only to random, localized changes at a more or less constant mutation rate, to the Fluid Genome, subject to episodic, massive and non-random reorganizations capable of producing new functional architectures. Inevitably, such a profound advance in awareness of genetic capabilities will dramatically alter our understanding of the evolutionary process. Toward the end, Shapiro approaches, as he logically must, the really crucial point in the Darwinism-Creationism ...
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... Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Wimpatch We cannot honestly include this item with our usual digests of scientific articles, but there is a certain relevance. The modern workplace has become increasingly uncomfortable for macho males. Today's offices place a premium on submissive teamwork, bland reliability, submissive politeness-to ail, and, especially, the strict avoidance of speculative glances at female coworkers. In other words, wimpishness is valued highly in the modern office environment. For those males not naturally wimpish, biochemists at DREADCO [a fictitious research group] is developing a skin patch that leaks a testosterone antagonist into the bloodstream. This device will be called a "Wimpatch" when it reaches the marketplace. The macho male applies the patch in the morning and shrinks into a submissive, sexless team player at work. After 5:00, he removes the patch and restores his normal testosterone levels. (Jones, David; "Danger! Men at Work," Nature, 404:950, 2000.) Comment. The Wimpatch idea is scientifically sound and will be an excellent substitute for the some consumed in Brave New World. Next, the DREADCO chemists should develop a skin patch that insures that society will never again be afflicted by Paula, Swedenborgs, Mozarts, and similar misfits. This could be called a "Conformipatch." From Science Frontiers #130, JUL-AUG 2000 . 2000 William R. Corliss Other Sites of Interest SIS . Catastrophism, archaeoastronomy, ancient history, mythology and astronomy. Lobster . The journal of intelligence and political conspiracy (CIA, FBI, JFK ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 19: Jan-Feb 1982 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A PREHISTORIC TVA?The Hohokam Indians lived along the Salt River Valley, in Arizona, about 300 BC to 1450 AD. They constructed a network of irrigation canals that is certainly one of the wonders of the Ancient New World. Early investigators recorded more than 500 kilometers of major canals and 1,600 kilometers of smaller ones. (Less than 10 kilometers of these remain intact today.) One of the main canals was 3 meters deep, 11 meters wide at ground level, and 14 kilometers long. Old and recent aerial photos show traces of an incredibly complex irrigation network. W.B . Masse, the author of this article, is very impressed by the earth-moving task but even more so by the degree of social coordination and control that must have been exerted all along the Salt River Valley in building and regulating the use of this remarkable canal system. (Masse, W. Bruce; "Prehistoric Irrigation Systems in the Salt River Valley, Arizona," Science, 214:408, 1981.) Reference. Many other ancient canal projects are described in our Handbook: Ancient Man. Ordering information here . Composite map of canals near Tempe constructed from aerial photographs. From Science Frontiers #19, JAN-FEB 1982 . 1982-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 84: Nov-Dec 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Cat**cats Clever cat Tales about clever animals abound, but the following is too good to pass up. It seems that C.G . Martin, residing in Stoke-on-Trent, had to trap a feral cat. He wrote as follows: "Although I have made an adequate living as a mechanical design engineer, it took me a couple of minutes to work out how to position the various rods and links to set and bait the trap, which done, I observed from a concealed position. The cat duly arrived, studied the trap suspiciously from different angles, retired, sat and contemplated. Then, after less time than it had taken me to work it out, she entered the trap purposefully, placed her paws underneath the trip plate, took the food and backed out." (Martin, C.G .; "Clever Cat," New Scientist , p. 53, August 29, 1992.) An even cleverer cat Yes, it's true that cats can circumvent our specially designed traps, but we did not realize that they also knew their aerodynamics. "Why is it safer for a cat to fall from a 32-storey building than from a seven-storey building? .. .. . "Just ask scientific and medical reporter Karl Kruszelnicki, whose theory is based on a study of 150 cats that plummeted from windows at different heights. " ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 85: Jan-Feb 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Electronic Channeling Those ubiquitous solar-powered calculators may be the latest mechanism by which other "intelligences" are trying to communicate with us. Here is how this novel information channel works. You put your solar-powered calculator (a cheap one will do) in your desk drawer and close it. When you again open the drawer and light hits the calculator, a number, perhaps a letter, or even an unrecognized symbol may appear. What's going on here? What do these "messages" mean? C. Bentley, in a letter to the New Scientist, related how his calculator most frequently flashes the number 5, but many other numbers may also appear. His calculator works perfectly after he has disposed of the gratuitous information. Something must be generating these strange data. In his final paragraph, Bentley muses: "It has occurred to me that perhaps someone or something is trying to communicate but I fear that if this is the case the message has so far eluded me. The numbers don't work on pools either." (Bentley, Chris; "Dark Secret," New Scientist, p. 52, October 10, 1992.) From Science Frontiers #85, JAN-FEB 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects ARE YOU SATURATED WITH DISCUSSIONS ABOUT THE "INFINITE DILUTION" CAPER?Another pile of references has accumulated concerning J. Benveniste's experiments with (almost) infinitely diluted solutions. This time we shall be brief. After all, the journal Nature has now cut off debate on the subject; shouldn't everyone else? The Book of Science is closed on this one. Despite replications of Benveniste's experimental results at other laboratories and the existence of similar results from several meticulously conducted experiments over the past few decades, Nature's official investigative team (formerly called the "hit team" in these pages) has labelled Benveniste's results a "delusion." Now begins the dirty work of completely destroying the reputation of Benveniste and the believability of any work done in this field. First, in the New York Times, J. Maddox, editor of Nature, stated that Benveniste's positive results were "nonexistent." Then J. Randi, the magician member of the investigative team, called the positive results "fraudulent" in the Lisbon Expressor . This means that five independent laboratories all produced fraudulent results! (Benveniste, Jacques; "Benveniste on the Benveniste Affair," Nature, 335: 759, 1988. Also: Maddox, John; "Waves Caused by Extreme Dilution," Nature, 335:760, 1988.) Comment. Regardless of the merits of the scientific work done by Benveniste and his coworkers, it now appears, to some ...
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... 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, and most certainly not very bright. But given enough food, some species of ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 99: May-Jun 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Untapped Human Mind In 1994, J. Wilding and E. Valentine, both at the University of London, provided the British Journal of Psychology with two studies of people claiming to have exceptional memories. In their second paper (Ref. 2), they detailed the mental workings of TM, a 25-year-old male, and an accomplished user of mnemonics. TM astounds audiences with his seemingly impossible memory feats. These feats, however, are no mystery to TM, and he has carefully explained how it is all mnemonics and nothing paranormal. But there remains the clear implication is that the normal human mind is underestimated and underused. TM's "performances" involve six demonstrations, two of which we now elaborate upon. Demonstration 2. TM asks audiences for birthdates and very quickly gives the day of birth. He has explained this "gift" thusly: "The day of birth calculations were originally carried out through use of a system of numerical codes for years and months which were combined and subjected to certain calculations. However, with practice many shortcuts and mnemonics have been developed and now TM often knows instantly that certain dates imply certain days, like learning the multiplication table. Every year and month has a code from 0 to 6 and TM has learned the codes (by the method explained below) for all years from 1900 to 2000. For any given date the method is to add the ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 80: Mar-Apr 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects More evidence for galactic "shells" or "something else"Measurements of periodic red-shift bunching appeared in the literature at least as far back as 1977 in the work of W.G . Tifft. The implications of this phenomenon are apparently too terrible to contemplate, for astrophysicists have not taken up the challenge. They may be forced to take the phenomenon more seriously, because two new reports of redshift bunching have surfaced. First, B. Guthrie and W, Napier, at Edinburgh's Royal Observatory, have checked Tifft's "bunching" claim using accurately known red shifts of some nearby galaxies. They found a periodicity of 37.5 kilometers/second -- no matter in which direction the galaxies lay. (Gribbin, John; "' Bunched' Red Shifts Question Cosmology," New Scientist, p. 10, December 21/28, 1991.) The work of Guthrie and Napier is elaborated upon in the next item. Sec ond, B. Koo and R. Krone, at the University of Chicago, using optical red-shift measurements, discovered that, in one direction at least , "the clusters of galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars, seemed to be concentrated in evenly spaced layers." (Browne, Malcolm W.; "In Chile, GalaxyWatching Robot Seeks Measure of Universe," New York Times, December 17, 1991. Cr. ...
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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 Nudging Probability The premiere issue of the Journal of Scientific Exploration, published by the Society for Scientific Exploration, contains an excellent summary of the ESP research conducted at Princeton over the past several years. R.G . Jahn, the leader of the Princeton group, terms the research "Engineering Anomalies Research." This title is apparently more palatable to mainstream science than "Mental Influence on Electronic Devices" or "Affecting Cascading Spheres with Thought Waves." Nevertheless, most of the experimental work is in these two areas. As parapsychological research goes, the Princeton work is of the highest scientific quality. In the first category, subjects (called operators in the report) were asked to influence the pulses produced by a Random Event Generator (REG). The REG was actually an electronic noise source coupled with circuits that created random positive and negative pulses. The operator mentally tried to increase or decrease the number of counts, or generate baseline data for experiment control. After 33 different operators and over 250,000 trials, there appeared a small but statistically significant indication that the operators were actually able to influence the equipment. Also interesting is the fact that each operator had a private "signature"; that is, individual cumulative deviation graphs (like the one shown) had typical shapes for each operator. Related experiments were carried out with a Random Mechanical Cascade (RMC). In this device 9,000 3/4 ...
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... pyramid (or platform mound) four stories high (60 feet) and covering an area 500 by 450 feet. This was probably the first monumental architecture in the New World; and it was constructed some 800 years earlier than mainstream archeologists had expected. In fact, Caral boasts six large platform mounds, three sunken plazas, and many impressive buildings. Layout of the Coral site in Peru. For all its precocious architecture, Caral is a "preceramic" site; that is, it was built before the advent of pottery in South America. Caral was "officially" discovered in 1905, but it was neglected by both archeologists and grave robbers because there were no artifacts to collect and nothing worth stealing. No one recognized its great age until recently. Today Caral is recognized as the work of the first complex society in the New World. (Solis, Ruth Shady, et al; "Dating Cara a Preceramic Site in the Supe Valley on the Central Coast of Peru," Science, 292:723, 2001. Maugh, Thomas M., II; "Scientists Say Peruvian Ruins Are Old est City in Americas," Houston Chronicle, April 27, 2001. Cr. D. Phelps. Ritter, Jim; "Pyramids as Old as Egypt's ," Chicago Sun-Times, April 27, 2001. Cr. J. Cieciel.) Comment. Could Caral (built about 2600 BC) have been the progenitor of a wave of pyramid-building cultures that swept northward and manifested itself in the Mayan pyramids (Tikal, circa 700 AD ...
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... suddenly -- a vibrant booming so loud I had to shout to be heard by my companion. Soon other sources, set going by the disturbance, joined their music to the first, with so close a note that a slow beat was clearly recognized. This weird chorus went on for more than five minutes continuously before silence returned and the ground ceased to tremble." P.K . Haff opens his review of booming sands with the above quote from R.A . Bagnold. One would think that since booming sand is not uncommon and scientists can pick it up and take it back to their laboratories, we know all about why it booms so unexpectedly when set in motion down a dune face. Haff relates his own experiments and ties them into the rather large body of previous work on the subject. The factors of dampness, grain size, cleanliness, grain shape and smoothness, etc., have all been examined. But Haff concludes: "In spite of these experiments and the work of other researchers, it is still not known how booming dunes work." (Haff, P.K .; "Booming Dunes," American Scientist, 74:376, 1986.) Reference. Booming dunes are cataloged along with "muscial sands" in ESP14 in the catalog volume: Anomalies in Geology. For ordering information, visit: here . From Science Frontiers #47, SEP-OCT 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Deflationary Universe One of our major astronomical targets in Science Frontiers has been the cosmological redshift; that is, the assumption that an object's redshift is entirely a Doppler effect and, when coupled to the expanding universe concept, is proportional to distance. Well, we don't have any more contradicting data (of which there is plenty), but we do have: (1 ) A new theory which shows how noncosmological redshifts can occur; and (2 ) Laboratory demonstrations of "spectral noninvariance" that show how a non-Doppler component can be added to light's redshift. The physicist behind this new research is E. Wolf, at the University of Rochester. His theoretical work was re-ported in the March 3l, 1986, issue of Physical Review Letters. There he showed how quasars and so-called "superluminary" astronomical sources might emit light with a spectrum that evolves as it travels through space. Scientists have always assumed that once light left its source its spectrum remained unchanged. But Wolf shows how spectral changes are "sort of coded into the light due to correlations in the source." Meanwhile, two of Wolf's colleagues have backed up his theory in the lab. The consequences of Wolf's work would in effect shrink the universe, because objects would not be as far away as we now calculate from their redshifts. The size of the universe might contract "by a factor of 100 or more," says Wolf. ...
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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 How To Be Unfamous In Astronomy When Sky and Telescope devotes almost five full pages to a new book, you may be sure that something important has happened. The book is H. Arp's Quasars, Redshifts, and Controversies . We know that we have perhaps overplayed the shakiness of the redshiftdistance hypothesis and the fizzling of the Big Bang, but our whole cosmological outlook is at stake. Now, rather than review again the scientific pros and cons (you can read Arp's book for that), we will be content here with a few comments about how science has failed to work well in Arp's case. G. Burbidge, who reviews the book, recalls how the politics of science works in the following quotation: ". .. the important factors for a successful career are your sponsors (where and with whom did you get your Ph.D ); field of research (popular or unpopular); and diplomatic skills (always speak quietly with great conviction, and, when in doubt, agree with the wisest person present, who by definition must come from one of the the very few [recognized] institutions). Look upon new ideas with great disapproval and never discover a phenomenon for which no explanation exists, and certainly not one for which an explanation within the framework of known physics does not appear to be possible." Arp played this game for 29 years at the Mount ...
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... there still remain unreadable snippets of the genome here and there. In fact, the total number of human genes is still in doubt: maybe 30,000, some say 120,000. This wide range of uncertainty does not inspire belief in the accurate readability of this biological blueprint at the present time. Usually left unsaid is the fact that the present blueprint covers only 2-3 % of the territory. That's right, 97-98% of the human genome isn't mapped at all. This uncharted territory is assumed to be "junk" or "nonsense" DNA that plays no role in heredity. Want to bet that this assumption is correct? And don't forget that genes jump around. The genome is really a moving target. Genes also work in concert. It is not one gene coding for one protein, which then has a singular role in creating an operational human being. For example, some 5,692 genes are active in breast-cancer cells. Genes may also have multiple roles. Our present blueprint of the human genome does not display all the mobility and complex interrelationships of the genes. We do know that genes are the blue-prints for the manufacture of proteins. Of these, there may be over 1,000,000 different -- more than ten times the number of genes! These multitudinous proteins are continually being created and transported to where they perform their assigned tasks and are eventually deconstructed. It is this population of proteins (collectively the "proteome") that develops organisms and gives them ...
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... : 7,000 years ago both in Europe and America. That is 2,000 years earlier than the Great Pyramids of Egypt. It is at least 4,000 years earlier than the Mound Builders of the Ohio Valley. The evidence is cummulative, varied in nature, and most probably highly reliable." (Carter, George F.; "Before Columbus," Ellsworth American, November 23, 1990. Cr. R. Strong.) Sketch from Kadath showing how the setting sun, at the summer solstice, lines up with two ancient standing stones and a cairn in western Massachusetts. The New England Megaliths. The Public TV documentary also provided a glimpse of some of the domens, menhirs, and passage graves sprinkled throughout New England. Long scoffed at as merely the work of Colonial farmers, some of these structures yield radiocarbon dates 3000-4000 B.P . This sort of proscribed data is to be found only in the journals of "shadow archeology." But now European archeologists are beginning to look at these structures. In 1990, the Belgian journal Kadath devoted an entire issue to the subject. This issue comprises 54 pages filled with many photos and drawings of walls, cairns, dolmens, and possible astronom ical sites. We reproduce one of these drawings here, but wish we could provide an English translation of the entire issue. (Anonymous; "Megalithes d'Amerique du Nord," Kadath, no. 72, Spring 1990.) North American Epigraphy. According to the editor of the Review of Archaeology, D.H . ...
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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 Unlocking Hidden Talents Dementia is a devastating illness. The brain deteriorates slowly. Sometimes, though, it seems like the illness strips away barriers and reveals hidden or suppressed talents, as seen in the two dementia patients described below. One 53-year-old man, a car stereo installer with a 10th-grade education and no prior interest in art, suddenly began painting. At first, he drew simple still lifes of vases and bridges. But his work became increasingly sophisticated. Eventually, he was painting Indians, churches and haciendas recalled from distant memories of his youth. Similarly, a 51-year-old housewife who had never had artistic training took up painting. She initially created unsophisticated images of rivers, ponds and rural settings; later, elaborate and sometimes eccentric versions of the works of great masters. Unfortunately, such new-found talents are short-lived. They, too, deteriorate. (Stein, Rob; "Patients' New Gift Paints Clearer Image of Disease," The Brain in the News, p. 7, October 30, 1998. Cr. J. Cieciel) Comment. This peeling away of mental barriers suggests that we all have hidden or suppressed capabilities. Perhaps, some day, we will know how to unlock these in normal people. It is pertinent here that in idiot savants these mental barriers are also somehow removed to expose remarkable mathematical talents, such as calendar calculating ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 64: Jul-Aug 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Directed Mutation Dear reader, things have a way of working out serially. For several months, we have had in our possession a paper from Nature, by J. Cairns, of Harvard, plus some passionate correspondence stimulated by the paper. Now that the circle-forming sheep have provided a good introduction, we will jump into the fray, too. Basically Cairns (in Nature) and B. H. Hall (in Genetics ) say that organisms can respond to environmental stresses by reorganizing their genes in a purposeful way. Such "directed mutation" shifts the course of evolution in a nonrandom way. Such a conclusion was like waving a red flag in front of the evolutionists. R. May, at the University of Oxford, complained, "The work is so flawed, I am reluctant to comment." On the other side, a University of Maryland geneticust, S. Benson, comments, "Many people have had such observations, but they have problems getting them published." Our template in this discussion is an article by A.S . Moffat in American Scientist. She says, "The stakes in this dispute are high, indeed. If directed mutations are real, the explanations of evolutionary biology that depend on random events must be thrown out. This would have broad implications. For example, directed mutation would shatter the belief that organisms are related to some ancestor if they share traits. ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 22: Jul-Aug 1982 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Herbert Ives And The Ether Herbert Ives was a top scientist at Bell Laboratories who performed some largely forgotten experiments on relativity and space-time a few decades ago. His experimental prowess and reputation were so good that his work on relativity was published in great detail in the Journal of the Optical Society of America. Ives would have had a more difficult time getting his results published today, for he showed quite clearly that Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity did not correspond to lab results. At the time, such results were not so shocking. Indeed, some philosophers had shown that Special Relativity led to undesirable paradoxes, and experiments by Sagnac and Michelson/Gale had cast additional doubt on this aspect of Relativity. Such experiments by Ives and other key scientists suggested that an ether actually did exist and that it could serve as an absolute reference frame. Another implication was that time was an independent entity unaffected by motion and that the infamous Twin Paradox was a fiction. Ives himself believed his work proved that so-called relativistic effects could be easily explained by phenomena appealing more to the common sense, such as the change of a light source's frequency with motion (over and above the Doppler Effect), rather than revamping space-time concepts. In short, Ives thought he had proved Special Relativity untenable experimentally and an un-necessary distortion of science's worldview. (Barnes, Thomas G., and ...
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... 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 Confusion That'S Hard To Cut Through D.A . Stocks in SF#137 described how his Egyptian workers were able to cut through granite with copper saws with the addition of a little abrasive sand. Sure, it was slow, hard work, but it could be done. Stocks' experiments squelched the various speculations about the ancient Egyptians possessing superhard tools or being able to soften stone. However, C. Ginenthal writes that H. Garland and C.O . Bannister attempted to saw through granite back in the 1920s using essentially the same method employed by Stocks -- but without success. Garland and Bannister wrote a book on their experiments, from which Ginenthal has provided the following quotation: A consideration of the [copper and abrasive cutting] process would seem to give support to the idea that a copper-emery [or other abrasive material] process might have been used by the first Egyptians, but the author [Garland] has proved by experiment the impossibility of cutting granite or diorite by any similar means to these. But the use of emery powder anointed with oil or turpentine, no measurable progress could be made in the stone whilst the edge of the copper blade wore away and was rendered useless, the bottom and sides of the groove being coated with particles of copper. (Garland, H., and Bannister, C.O .; Ancient Egyptian Metallurgy, London, 1927, p. ...
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... 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 this stratagem; it is not even in their computer-design repertoire. (Taubes, Gary; "Computer Design Meets Darwin," Science, 277:1931, 1997.) Comments. Evolvable hardware, like God and Nature, works in mysterious ways! As the above type of hardware evolves, it will probably leave a "fossil record" full of mysterious transitions! What shall we call the units a cyberheredity? "Cyberenes" is too cumbersome. How about: "bytenes"? From Science ...
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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 Luminous Toroid Dangled Sparkling "Candies"Ball lightning (BL) may assume many weird forms, which is one reason some scientists claim it is more likely an illusion than physical reality. Those physicists who admit that BL exists think that some electromagnetic mechanism might account for any nicely spherical, luminous globes with lifetimes of just a few seconds, but their equations cannot handle the phenomenon that took place at Gmuend, Austria, in 1996. A.G . Keul and O. Stummer personally investigated this case. The salient facts are as follows. A. Reisinger was working in her garden about 10 meters from an apple tree when she observed a phenomenon that seems to have been an elaborate and hard-to-explain form of ball lightning. When the BL appeared suddenly from behind the tree, it caught the attention of the witness who said that it looked like it "sat down on to the tree." It had the dimensions of "a small truck tyre, not as large as a tractor one," and it had a definite torus shape. What made the dark object an even stranger sight was a considerable number of "Xmas candies", all hanging down from its underside 15 to 20 centimetres long and "sparkling", which means changing brightness with an emission of sparks at the same time. A humming and sizzling sound was associated with the optical effect, but there was no static electricity. The ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 86: Mar-Apr 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Math's mystery In extolling J. Barrow's new book, Pi in the Sky , T. Siegfried first reiterates a point made in past issues of SF, namely, that mathematics is a logical system and that we have no right to expect it is correspond structurely with a physical system. In other words, math and nature are fundamentally different entities. Nevertheless, as Barrow stated in a recent interview: "If we were just inventing mathematics from our everyday experience, we would find that it would work really rather well in those areas from which that intuition was gained. But we find almost the opposite...It works most powerfully and persuasively in areas that are farthest removed from the everyday experience that has led to it." Mathematics, for example, leads to verities in quantum mechanics far outside the realm of daily experience. Why is this so? The puzzle deepens when one discovers that there are different kinds of math based upon different forms of logic (as in Euclidian and non-Euclidian geometries). Some brands of mathematics mirror reality better than others. Why? In trying to dispose of these "whys," both matematicians and scientists fall back on the anthropic principle with all its unsatisfying tautological overtones: ". .. the universe is the way it is because that's the way it has to be for anybody to be around to study it. And perhaps math works ...
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... ISBN 0-915554-29-1 , 7x10. Biology Handbook For a full list of biology subjects, see here . Biological Anomalies: Mammals I: A Catalog of Biological Anomalies Sorry, Out of print The first three biology catalogs deal with human anomalies. Here, we attend to the "other" mammals, and two volumes will be required This, the first, parallels Humans I in focusing on external attributes (1 ) physical appearance; (2 ) behavior; and (3 ) talents and faculties. Typical subjects covered: Mammal-marsupial parallelisms * Zebra stripe reversal * Marching teeth * Lunar effect on activity * Mammalian art and music * Rat and squirrel "kings" * Cetacean mass strandings * Mummified Antarctic seals * Navigation and homing * Soaring and parachuting * Mammalian engineering works * Deep-diving capabilities * Unusual vocalisations * Intelligence overshoot. [Picture caption: A yapok. A South American aquatic marsupial. The female possesses a watertight pouch. Strangely, the male also has a pouch !] View Cart Buy online via PayPal with MC/Visa/Amex 292 pages, hardcover, $21.95, 84 illus., 3 indexes, 1995. 546 references, LC 91-68541. ISBN 0-915554-30-5 , 7x10. Biological Anomalies: Mammals II: A Catalog of Biological Anomalies Sorry, Out of print Our fifth biology catalog completes out study of mammilian anomalies. This volume parallels Humans II and III with major sections on the fossil record and cryptozoology. In addition, there are shorter sections on genetics, organs, bodily ...
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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 thorny way of truth: part ii This item was discovered by accident among the paid ads in Nature -- a place we do not routinely examine for scientific anomalies. Stefan Marinov or some-one acting for him evidently inserted the ad. We have met Marinov before on SF#41, where the Editor of Nature admitted that some of Marinov's ideas might have some scientific support. We missed Part I of the Marinov advertising campaign, in which he presented his fight with the scientific establishment to restore absolute space-time concepts. In other works, Marinov wants to dump Relativity, and believes he has experimentally disproved it. Part II, the present ad, is entitled "The Perpetuum Mobile Is Discovered." It is replete with equations, diagrams, and reference, like a scientific paper, but still a paid ad! Apparently, no scientific or engineering journal will publish Marinov's work. (Marinov, Stefan; "The Thorny Way of Truth: Part II," Nature, 317:unpaged, September 26, 1985.) Marinov's perpetuum mobile. From Science Frontiers #43, JAN-FEB 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... is expanding and we don't know why Let us taunt the geologists now with an idea that many of them consider to be nonsense. The Expanding Earth Hypothesis goes back to at least 1933, a time when the Continental Drift Hypothesis was accorded the same sort of ridicule. Now, Continental Drift is enthroned; and ironically many of its strongest proponents are vehemently opposed to the Expanding Earth, ignoring the lessons of history. The data that suggest that the earth has expanded significantly over geological time come from the pleasant pastime of continent fitting. If one takes the pieces of continental and oceanic crust and tries to fit them together at various times over the past several hundred million years, taking into account the production of crust at the midocean ridges, the fit gets worse and worse as one works backward in time. Great gaps (or "gores") appear between the pieces of crust which geologists believed existed at these periods. (Of course, one can play this puzzle-piece game only at passive continent-ocean boundaries where the oceanic crust has not slid under the continental crust. The South Atlantic is a good place to work.) These embarrassing, grotesque gaps can be made to disappear almost as if by magic by assuming that the earth was smaller in the past. This seems, on the surface, to be a crazy idea. Why would an entire planet swell up like a balloon? Hugh Owen answers in this way: "The geological and geophysical implications of such Earth expansion are so profound that most geologists and geophysicists shy away from them. In ...
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... are masters of our own destinies. Nevertheless, astrol-ogy columns are still prominent in most newspapers. In the scientific press, however, we have to score a big plus for the anti-astrologers. First, Nature has just published a detailed analysis of the predictive power of astrology, and astrology has come up very short. The Nature study is by S. Carlson, a physicist at the University of California at Berkeley. At the end of seven data-packed pages Carlson concludes: "We are now in a position to argue a surprisingly strong case against natal astrology as practised by reputable astrologers. Great pains were taken to insure that the experiment was unbiased and to make sure that astrology was given every reasonable chance to succeed. It failed. Despite the fact that we worked with some of the best astrologers in the country, recommended by the advising astrologers for their expertise in astrology and their ability to use CPI (California Personality Inventory), despite the fact that every reasonable suggestion made by the advising astrologers was worked into the experiment, despite the fact that the astrologers approved the design and predicted 50 per cent as the 'minimum' effect they would expect to see, astrology failed to perform at a level better than chance. Tested using double-blind methods, the astrologers' predictions proved to be wrong. Their predicted connection between the positions of the planets and other astronomical objects at the time of birth and the personalities of test subjects did not exist. The experiment clearly refutes the astrological hypothesis." (Carlson, Shawn; "A Double- ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 97: Jan-Feb 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Did the universe have a beginning?" Abstract. The big bang theory postulates that the entire universe originated in a cosmic explosion about 15 billion years ago. Such an idea had no serious constituency until Edwin Hubble discovered the redshift of galaxy light in the 1920s, which seemed to imply an expanding universe. However, our ability to test cosmological theories has vastly improved with modern telescopes covering all wavelengths, some of them in orbit. Despite widespread acceptance of the big bang theory as a working model for interpreting new findings, not a single important prediction of the theory has yet been confirmed, and substantial evidence has accumulated against it. Here, we examine the evidence for the most fundamental postulate of the big bang, the expansion of the universe. We conclude that the evidence does not support the theory, and that it is time to stop patching up the theory to keep it viable, and to consider fundamentally new working models for the origin and nature of the universe in better agreement with the observations." This paper's author, T. Van Flandern, dismisses quickly two pillars of the Big Bang; i.e ., its supposed predictions of the cosmic microwave background and the abundances of light elements in the universe: "The big bang made no quantitative prediction that the "background" radiation would have a temperature of 3 degrees Kelvin (in fact its initial prediction was 30 degrees Kelvin); whereas Eddington ...
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... When we returned from a long vacation at the end of September, we found eleven new references on this novel development in the progress (? ) of science. Basically, there are only two big questions: (1 ) Is there, despite all the furor and the machinations of Nature's "hit squad," anything of scientific value in the experiments of Benveniste's group? and (2 ) Should scientific journals police scientific research? The latter question should be answered by Science itself: we shall focus here on the possibility that real scientific anomalies are being concealed by all the media smoke. What did Nature's hit squad really find? J. Maddox (Nature's editor) et al concluded that Benveniste and his colleagues did not take enough care in their work, that their data did not have errors of the right magnitude (a statistical quibble), that no serious attempt was made to eliminate systematic errors and observer bias, that the climate of the lab was "inimical to an objective evaluation of the exceptional data," and that the phenomenon was not always reproducible. (7 ) No evidence of fraud was found. The data originally published in Nature were not explained or shown to be invalid. (11) In fact, the Nature investigation actually confirmed some of the original findings. (5 ) All of the French work and that of the cooperating laboratories were attributed to "autosuggestion"! (4 ) Qualifications of the Nature investigators. J. Benveniste pointed out that none of the three members of the Nature team had any ...
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... Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A TALE OF TWO ECOSYSTEMS -- OR MAYBE MANY MORE Comment. It was quite fortuitous that the following two pieces, found on the same day, fit together so nicely. (Nature is fortuitous!) A group of scientists studying termites have isolated over 100 species of protozoa and bacteria living cooperatively inside the termites gut. Some of the bacteria even live inside the protozoa and other bacteria forming ecosystems of several symbiotic levels within each termite. Each termite itself is part of a complex social "superorganism," the termite colony. That termites had bugs in-side them has long been known; but the new-found complexity and interdependency of life systems within life systems is remarkable. The researchers believe that the life forms inside the termite work together to create the uniform internal environment needed by all inhabitants, just as the termites themselves cooperate to maintain a favorable environment inside their hill. (Anonymous; "And Littler Bugs Inside 'Em," Scientific American, 246:78, February 1982.) The termites, though, are only part of a much larger ecosystem, the earth itself. J.E . Lovelock, in his Gaia, A New Look at Life On Earth, has observed that our planet's environment has actually changed little down the eons despite solar variations. Lovelock's hypo thesis is that all terrestrial life -- animals, plants, termites, etc -- work sym biotically to maintain planetary temperatures, atmospheric constituents, etc., conducive to life, just like the termite' ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 89: Sep-Oct 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects An Age Paradox "Cosmologists say the universe may be 8 to 15 billion years old. Stellar astronomers disagree. They say the oldest stars are much older, perhaps 16 to 19 billion years old. Because the oldest stars can't be older than the universe in which they lie, this age paradox presents a thorny problem for astronomers." At least two solutions to the paradox are possible: (1 ) The cosmological distance scale used to determine the age of the universe is incorrect; and/or (2 ) Our theories about how stars work and evolve are in error. Something has to give. (Jayawardhana, Ray; "The Age Paradox," Astronomy, 21:39, June 1993.) Comment. Also pertinent here are H. Arp's collection of red-shift anomalies, which also call into question the cosmological distance scale; and those missing solar neutrinos, which cast doubt on our ideas about how stars work. H. Arp's redshift anomalies are cataloged in AQB and AWB in our catalog: Stars, Galaxies, Cosmos. To order, see: here . From Science Frontiers #89, SEP-OCT 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 105: May-Jun 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Hidden messages in genesis?Some can find cryptic meanings in the works of Nostradamus, others see messages in crop circles. Forget those sources! A better one has been around for millennia. Three researchers at the Jerusalem College of Technology and the Hebrew University have analyzed the text of Genesis using an analytical technique that can only be called "inspired". "By treating the text as an unbroken string of letters, and selecting sequences of equally spaced letters, three mathematicians discovered 300 hidden pairs of Hebrew words with related meanings in close proximity to one another. Some of the words involved people who lived and events that occurred long after the Torah was written. "The odds of the words occurring by chance? Less than one in 50 quadrillion, according to an article by Jeffrey Satinover in the October issue of Bible Review ." Satinover is a psychiatrist and lecturer on the relationship between science and religion. He commented: "I guess the bottom line is, if the research holds up and no flaw is found in the methodology, then I think the implication is clear that the authorship of Genesis is not human." Unsettling though the implications are to mainstream science, the research has made it past the usual critical hurdles into two scientific journals: Statistical Science and Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Scientists familiar with the work can only say that, "Something weird seems to be happening." We certainly agree! ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 22: Jul-Aug 1982 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Conditioned responses that short-circuit the conscious brain Don't let the title of this item deter you; this is serious stuff. We all know about the placebo effect. A sick patient improves because he believes he is getting a helpful medicine, even though it is an inert substance. The reverse works, too, at least in experiments with mice. It seems that mice can be conditioned into believing that an ordinarily delectable substance (saccharin and water) gives them stomach pain, by simultaneously injecting them with a pain-producing chemical. Unexpectedly, this chemical also suppressed the immune system of the mice. The mice, of course, knew nothing about the effect on their immune system. Nevertheless, whenever they received saccharin after being conditioned, their immune system was suppressed even though the pain-producing chemical was not administered. While one can imagine the mice consciously associating saccharin and stomach pain, and their brains somehow sending signals that simulated pain, it seems inconceivable that the mice knew anything about their immune system. We have always assumed that the placebo effect (and its reverse) worked because of the subjects' logical association of cause and effect, but evidently there is something else going on here! (Wingerson, Lois; "Training the Mind To Heal," Discover, 3:80, May 1982.) Comment. This all opens a rather large Pandora's Box, because it implies that ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 31: Jan-Feb 1984 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Reciprocal System Avoids Taint Of Reductionism "Some of the readers of my latest book, The Neglected Facts of Science, are apparently interpreting the conclusions of this work as indicating that the Reciprocal System of theory leads to a strict mechanistic view of the universe, in which there is no room for religious or other non-material elements. This is not correct. On the contrary, the clarifica-tion of the nature of space and time in this theoretical development removes the obstacles that have hitherto prevented science from conceding the existence of anything outside the boundaries of the physical realm. "In conventional science, space and time constitute a framework, or setting, within which the entire universe is contained. On the basis of this viewpoint, everything that exists, in a real sense, exists in space and in time. Scientists believe that the whole of this real universe is now within their field of observation, and they see no indication of anything non-physical. It follows that anyone who accepts the findings of conventional science at their face value cannot accept the claims of religion, or any other non-material system of thought. This is the origin of the long-standing antagonism between science and religion, a conflict which most scientists find it necessary to evade by keeping their religious beliefs separate from their scientific beliefs. "In the Reciprocal System, on the other hand, space and time are contents of the universe, ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 129: MAY-JUN 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects If Fingerprints Don't Lie, Neither to Toe Prints J. Chilcutt is a highly regarded finger-print expert for the Conroe, Texas, Police Department. In his spare time, he collects fingerprints and toe prints from other primates. Working with zoo officials, who were naturally skeptical at first, Chilcutt has amassed a collection of about 1,000 nonhuman primate prints. He has discovered that print characteristics differ markedly from one species to another. When Chilcutt learned that J. Meldren, a professor of anatomy at Idaho State University, had accumulated 100 or so casts of Bigfoot prints, he had to check out their dermal whorls and arches. Some of Meldren's casts turned out to be obvious fakes upon which human fingerprints had been impressed. But a few specimens surprised him. The print ridges on the bottoms of five castings -- which were taken at different times and locations -- flowed lengthwise along the foot, unlike human prints which flow from side to side. "The skeptic in me had to believe that (all of the prints were from) the same species of animal," Chilcutt said. "I believe that this is an animal in the Pacific Northwest that we have never documented." (Rice, Harvey; "Is Something Afoot with Bigfoot? Print Expert Thinks So," Houston Chronicle, February 20, 2000. Cr. D. Phelps.) From Science Frontiers # ...
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... This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects NOTHING REACTS WITH SOMETHING? An absolutely delightful event occurred at the end of June, 1988. The authoritative journal Nature published an article that says, in essence, that a solution of antibodies diluted by a factor of 10120 can still trigger a strong biological response from basophils (a kind of white blood cell). Now, 10120 is such an incredibly large number that it is extremely unlikely that even one antibody molecule could be present in the diluted activating solution. Nevertheless 40-60% of the basophil cells reacted. So unbelievable are the reported experimental results that the editors of Nature felt compelled to add an "Editorial Reservation" stating that, "There is no physical basis for such an activity." This is all great stuff. The original French work was duplicated by six other laboratories in France, Italy, Israel, and Canada. What makes it even more fun is the homeopathy connection. Homeopathic medicine is based on the theory that substances causing the symptoms of a disease in a healthy person can cure a sick person displaying these symptoms, providing the dose administered is vanishingly small. Science strongly and passionately debunks homeopathic medicine. The Editor of Nature thinks that there must be a systematic error somewhere. Other scientists suggest that, perhaps, somehow, the antibodies left an "imprint" on the diluting water molecules. So far, we have not read that Sheldrake's "morphic resonance" theory has been invoked. The first phase of this controversy is about complete, and we now list the references we have used so far. ...
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... Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Unconsciousness And Its "Zombie Agents"We all harbor so-called "zombie agents" that rapidly and automatically perform actions without our conscious mind being aware of the stimulus and physical response. Normal people experience this in dancing, fencing, etc. Extreme examples include sleepwalkers who can even drive cars and carry out other complex actions without remembering what they have done! Of course, sleepwalking is not a normal condition; nevertheless, rigorous experiments demonstrate that normal people will respond to scary pictures of snakes and spiders even though they are not consciously aware of them. The zombie agent is acting autonomously. Zombie agents are characterized as on-line systems that act at speeds that far outpace conscious reactions. Since the zombie agents incorporated in our unconsciousness work so well, why did consciousness ever evolve? Conscious actions take milliseconds longer to calculate and activate. Consciousness would, therefore, seem to be a bad evolutionary gambit. But, C. Koch and F. Crick may have an answer. They speculate that: It may be because consciousness allows the system to plan future actions, opening up a potentially infinite behavioural repertoire and making explicit memory possible. (Koch, Christof, and Crick, Francis; "The Zombie Within," Nature, 411:893, 2001.) Questions. Could our zombie agents, primitive though they may be, be the source of those flashes of genius that appear out of nowhere, or perhaps that "dreamwork" from which solutions to problems appear fully formed upon wakening? The quotation from the ...
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... going on around them so that they can make decisions concerning metabolism, division, and even whether to die not not. This is mainstream biochemistry, although there is much here yet to be learned. A signalling medium that still survives well off the mainstream is the old idea that information is carried from cell to cell via electromagnetic radiation. Yes, we mean mitogenetic radiation--the infamous M-rays of the 1920s and 1930s. During this period about a thousand technical papers were published on mitogenetic radiation -- mostly in Russian. The champion of mitogenetic radiation was A.G . Gurwitsch. He claimed that fundamental biological functions, such as cell division, were communicated via ultraviolet light. Although a few other researchers said they detected mitogenetic radiation, most could not replicate Gurwitsch's work. Mitogenetic radiation was thereafter subjected to the "cold-fusion" treatment; it was one of those things that "wasn't so"! In a recent article in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, R. Van Wijk tries to reignite interest in "bio-photons" that carry "bio-information." First, he assures us that mitogenetic radiation is real, that bio-photons truly exist. To thus swim against the scientific mainstream, he reviews recent experiments and provides us with a huge bibliography. Apparently, mitogenetic radiation is not "pathological science," as physicist I. Langmuir called it back in 1953. Second, Van Wijk advances some mechanisms by which cells can generate bio-photons via their metabolic and enzymatic processes. Finally, he comes to ...
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... 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 Solar Model Confirmed, But Standard Model Crippled A persistent astronomical anomaly (well-covered in SF#112 and earlier) has apparently been satisfactorily disposed of. Even staunch anomalists will have to close the book on the solar-neutrinodeficit problem. No deficit really exists because the neutrinos emitted by the sun change while in flight from a type that is easy to detect to a type that is difficult to register experimentally. The total number of neutrinos reaching the earth is what it should be according to theory but we have not been able to detect them all. This neutrino schizophrenia has now been confirmed, and our theory about how the sun works is safe. But the erasure of the solar-neutrinodeficit problem tells the particle physicists that neutrinos do indeed change type, which implies that they possess mass. But anomalies are sometimes contagious. The Standard Model of particle physics, so successful in many respects, is now ailing. It asserts that neutrinos cannot change types and do not possess mass. (Seife, Charles; "Polymorphous Particles Solve Solar Mystery," Science, 292:2227, 2001. Weiss, P.; " Physics Bedrock Cracks, Sun Shines In," Science News, 159:388, 2001.) Comment. Without question, we have here an experimental triumph, but the undermining of that pillar of physics, the Standard Model, is a high price to pay. We have closed one book ...
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... about pre-Clovis sites (those New World digs asserted to be older than 12,000 years), do not imagine that all archeologists embrace these claims. For example, a recent issue of Discovering Archeology debunked them at great length and rather testily to boot. This broadside was followed by a devastating review of T.D . Dillehay's The Settlement of the Americas: A New Prehistory in the magazine Natural History. The reviewer for Natural History, A.C . Roosevelt, a respected anthropologist at the University of Illinois, targets the Cactus Hill site, in Virginia (SF#130). This dig, she says, is characterized by "inconsistent dates, vague stratigraphy, and inadequate artifact samples that disqualify them from scientific acceptance." Even Dillehay's monumental work at Monte Verde, Chile, does not survive the review unscathed. In fact, the claimed pre-Clovis sites, according to Roosevelt, do not yield sound, consistent radiocarbon dates earlier than 11,500 B.P . She will, however, entertain Bering Strait crossings as early as 12,000 B.P ., but not a microsecond earlier. (Roosevelt, Anna Curtenius; "Who's on First?" Natural History, 109:76, July-August 2000.) Continuing the assault on pre-Clovis thought is L.G . Strauss, an anthropologist from the University of New Mexico. His target is the theory that the Solutrean people of southern France and the Iberian Peninsula reached eastern North America before the Clovis culture took hold on the ...
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