363 results found.
... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 112: Jul-Aug 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Archea: Tough And Different Today's textbooks recognize only two main divisions of life: the prokaryotes (cells without nuclei) and eukaryotes (cells with nuclei). Humans and most of the life forms we are familiar with belong to the latter group. (Curiously, human red blood cells lack nuclei!) However, a third basic type of life has been found prospering in some extreme environments. These are the Archea, typified by the methane-producing microbes discovered clustered around hot deepsea vents, where temperatures may exceed 400 C. It is not their rugged constitutions that place these miniscule forms of life in a new category; it is their genomes. They are radically different from those found in prokaryotes and eukaryotes. The genome of one species of Archea collected from a hot vent 3 kilometers deep in the Pacific has been sequenced. Biologists were taken aback. Methanococcus jannaschii , as it has been dubbed, possesses 1738 genes, of which 56% are entirely new to science. Many of these genes do not look anything like those found in the prokaryotes and eukaryotes. In a word, they seem "alien." (Morell, Virginia; "Life's Last Domain," Science, 273:1043, 1996.) How alien? Well, they are so tough that they could have arrived from Mars on a meteorite. Millions of years of residence in a meteorite edging its way toward a rendezvous ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 110: Mar-Apr 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Nannobacteria: life on a different scale Who ever heard of nannobacteria until those tiny, worm-like objects were photographed inside that putative Martian meteorite ALH 84001? It turns out that these very tiny cells (only 0.1 - 0.4 micrometers in diameter) are everywhere on earth, but it seems that virtually no one knows about them. The furor over ALH 84001 has underscored professional and public ignorance of nannobacteria. Some scientists have asserted that bacteria could never be as small as those "objects" seen in the greatly magnified photos of ALH 84001. This claim led R.L . Folk to fire off a letter to Science that began with these two sentences: "Enough! As one of the discoverers of mineralized nannobacteria on Earth*, I must come to their defense. They are so abundant in samples I have studied that I believe they may make up most of the Earth's biomass." Folk reports that nannobacteria are found just about everywhere: hot-spring waters, decaying leaves, even blood. Nannobacteria are key players in the earth's surface chemistry, precipitating a host of minerals and acting symbiotically to precipitate organic hard parts. (Folk, Robert; "In Defense of Nannobacteria," Science, 274:1288, 1996.) Comment. Ignorance of nannobacteria is not surprising. One needs a scanning electron microscope to see them. * See: Folk, R.L ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 111: May-Jun 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Carnot Creatures Photosynthesis is the ultimate source of energy for most of the life forms we recognize here on earth. Sure, there are also a few creatures that derive their energy by oxidizing the sulfides dissolved in the 400 water gushing forth from deep-sea vents. We will call them "geochemical creatures" to separate them from the "photosynthetic creatures" we are more familiar with. But, in principle at least, there could also be "Carnot creatures", whose metabolisms depend upon temperature differences like almost all human-built engines. Some bizarre animal, such as a meter-long tube worm, could plant one end on a hot rock surface and dangle the other in cold seawater to reject waste heat from its Carnot engine. Since thermodynamic-cycle efficiencies can approach 60% compared with only 10% for photosynthesis, evolution would have been remiss if it had not tried to evolve "Carnot creatures." For, as D. Jones comments below, Carnot creatures would be adaptable to many more habitats in the universe than photosynthetic creatures, which must have a sun with a very specific electromagnetic spectrum. "Many worlds, from distant 'brown dwarf' stars to the satellites of giant planets, may have internal heating but no effective 'Sun'. If Carnot life is possible, it may well have evolved in such dark and distant places -- making life abundant throughout the Universe. Indeed, our distant ...
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... now North America moved from the South Pole to near the Equator. Evidence for this huge shift is seen in measurements of the earth's magnetic field frozen in the rocks. In other words, Kirschvink et al used the methods of paleomagnetism. The "new" crustal slippage is really only accelerated continental drift (a dominant and well-established paradigm) and not the more radical notion of the entire outer layer of crust slipping over the earth's mantle like a greased onion skin. Nor is the proposed process anything like poleflipping, where the entire planet flips 180 like a Tippy-Top -- a dynamically impossible event. (SF#6 /224) The proposed foundering of that chunk of seafloor occurred 534 million years ago, roughly coincident with the Cambrian Explosion of new life forms (new phyla). The resulting gross climate changes and environmental havoc could have been conducive to the rapid evolution of life. Although today's scientists favor this linkage of catastrophism to rapid speciation, Berkeley paleontologist J. Valentine admitted that, ". .. it doesn't provide a specific mechanism by which animals suddenly evolved new "body plans." Even so, scientists have long searched for an event -- any -- that might explain the puzzling Cambrian Explosion. (Kirschvink, Joseph L., et al; "Evidence for a Large-Scale Reorganization of Early Cambrian Continental Masses by Inertial Interchange True Polar Wander," Science, 277:541, 1997. Also: Sawyer, Kathy; "Global Shift May Have Sped Evolution," Washington Post ...
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... 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 "NOT WITH A BANG BUT A WHIMPER"Poet T.S . Eliot speculated that life on earth might not after all be terminated catastrophically, as in the impact of a large asteroid (today's popular doomsday machine). Rather, we might depart slowly, quietly, and mournfully. Of course, Eliot was not thinking of asteroids -- no one foresaw impact havoc in his day. But, his use of the word "whimper" can be attached to another, much slower astronomical agent of planetary death: cosmic dust and gas. Here's the current situation: "For the most part of the past five million years, the Solar System has been moving through a rather empty region of interstellar space between the spiral arms of the Milky Way. But a few thousand years ago, it entered a diffuse shell of material expanding outward from an active star-forming region called the Scorpius-Centaurus Association. Such 'super-bubble' shells of gas and dust result from the formation of massive stars, or the explosion of those stars as they become supernovas, and contain gas and dust clouds of varying densities." The density of matter in this solarsystem-engulfing shell could well shroud our planetary system with dust and gas a million times more dense than that we now encounter. If this happens, the sun's rays would slowly dim and life forms dependent on photosynthesis would expire. ...
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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 Is intelligence a deadly pathogen?A recent letter in Nature reinforces our comment in SF#120 concerning the threat humans pose to the workings of Gaia. (The Gaia Hypothesis asserts that the biosphere acts in ways that maintain environmental conditions favorable to the existence of life.) In his letter, A. Longhurst wonders whether the earth's biosphere acting as a whole -- Gaiafashion -- may have erred in creating an environment conducive to the evolution of intelligence. It is is not clear, he says, that the sentient part of the biosphere (meaning "us") can develop enough self-control to reverse global warming, pollution, etc. He concludes as follows: "In short, is intelligence a pathogen to which the biosphere can adjust, or is it terminal? Perhaps it is as well that we cannot yet observe other habitable planets, to discover what became of their sentient life." (Longhurst, Alan; "Too Intelligent for Our Own Good," Nature, 395:9 , 1998.) From Science Frontiers #121, JAN-FEB 1999 . 1999-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Antarctica's Lake Vostok Revisited Based upon a Japanese account, we reported the discovery of Lake Vostok in SF#102 almost a year ago. Some details are finally appearing in Western science publications. We can now offer a good cross section of the lake, plus some thoughts about potential ecosystems existing deep under the lake's ice. Although Lake Vostok lies under some 4 kilometers of ice, it remains liquid as geothermal heat seeps up through its floor. Surprisingly, the thick ice cover does not preclude all contact with the surface above. The covering ice sheet moves slowly across the lake and, as it does so, its bottom melts a bit, releasing frozen-in oxygen as well as life forms -- still-living microorganisms and dead creatures that fell onto the Antarctic ice thousands of years ago. Thus, there is a perpetual source of food and new life. Cores drilled from the ice sheet capping Lake Vostok have brought up a great diversity of live microbes that have survived despite the low temperatures and passage of time. A living unicellular alga was found 2,375 meters down in ice about 110,000 years old. Spore-forming bacteria brought up from 2,395 meters are about 200,000 years old and still alive! Although science has proclaimed that Lake Vostok biology must consist entirely of microorganisms, no one really knows what is down there. Another fascinating fact is that some 70 other subglacial bodies of fresh water have been found under the central Antarctic ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 116: Mar-Apr 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Evolution Of Cyberlife The evolvable hardware described in SF#115 is only one several efforts underway aimed at modeling life and evolution. Network Tierra. Here we have a network of 150 computers linked worldwide by the Internet. One objective is the exploration of structures and patterns of information that drive evolutionary processes. A key element is an artificial lifeform that begins as a "seed organism" (modeled as information, of course) that wanders at will among the different environments presented by the computers in the network. So far, these digital organisms are surviving and changing. (Blakeslee, Sandra; "Cyberlife Critters Evolving in Computer Network," Austin American-Statesman , November 30, 1997. Cr. D. Phelps. Minad Project. Begun in 1953, the Minad Project is pure futurism; that is, the prediction of where the computer revolution is taking us. The Minad Project envisioned three evolutionary stages: Wiring the world (already accomplished as today's Internet); The transformation of the network into a high-speed creative mechanism (the Technosphere); and The emergence of global hyperintelligence (the Autosphere). The Minad Project is now forecasting what this all means for non-silicon-based life in the 21st. Century. (Baker, Lance; "They're Taking Over," New Scientist, p.55, December 6, 1997.) From Science Frontiers #116, MAR- ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 110: Mar-Apr 1997 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Circles of contention A NAZCA ZODIAC? Cracks in the kaimanawa-wall story? Astronomy The crstalline universe Martian life: act ii Biology Nannobacteria: life on a different scale Is oliver a "humanzee"? Cichlids punctuate equilibrium Sparrows at play Geology Did a methane burp down twa800? A METEOR IMPACT OR EARTH SLUMP? Geophysics Unusual circulating cloud object Unidentified light Psychology "PLANETARY VISIONS" DURING NDEs Mathenatics http://www.aros.net/angio/pistuff/piquer Alphamagic squares ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 116: Mar-Apr 1998 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Mystery of the stoned pharaoh Those ancient greek pramids An anasazi reservoir Astronomy Microscopic life on mars? Plant life on mars? "A FANTASTIC RESULT!" Ten strikes against the big bang Biology Eyeless vision The ultimate in unisex Eco-darwinism: diffuse individuals Monarch compasses Geology Miles of mush Global cooling has begun! Geophysics Target: greenland Ball lightning collides with car Earthquake weather High-fling catfish More on the mekong mystery Dr fogs and bright nights Physics G: THE EMBARRASSING CONSTANT OF NATURE Unclassified Evolution of cyberlife ...
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... 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.) From Science Frontiers #118, JUL-AUG 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... . Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune emit much more energy than they receive from the sun. Natural nuclear reactors could be the reason. Stellar thermonuclear ignition . Astronomers assume that the high temperatures required to ignite the thermonuclear reactions powering stars come from gravitational collapse, but this source does not seem adequate to some scientists. Nuclear fission reactors could ignite stars just as they do H-bombs. Missing matter . Natural nuclear reactors are finicky. There may be many star-sized, non-luminous objects out there that were never ignited and that we cannot see through our telescopes. (Herndon, J. Marvin; "Examining the Overlooked Implications of Natural Nuclear Reactors," Eos, 79:451, 1998.) Comments. Two additions to Herndon's list. Evolution of terrestrial life . Nuclear reactors produce copious mutagenic radiation. They could have accelerated the evolution of life, especially during the Cambrian Explosion. (See SF#32) Thermal plumes . Deep-seated natural nuclear reactors may create the thermal plumes said to be responsible for such surface hot spots as Iceland and Hawaii. Disposition of six of the Oklo 2-billion-year-old natural nuclear reactors. (From: Anomalies in Geology). From Science Frontiers #121, JAN-FEB 1999 . 1999-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... cracks in the ocean floor that very hot, mineralladen water gushes forth, and where colonies of bizarre tube worms, blind shrimp, and hyperthermophilic (high temperature-loving) bacteria thrive. (For details, see SF#60 or p. 238 in Science Frontiers, the book) The first anomaly is the strength of the glow itself. It is not all thermal radiation emitted by the 350 C water spewing forth from the vents; in fact, it is 19 times more intense than expected from theory. Something else is contributing energy, but no one knows what it is so far. The unexpected intensity of the vent glows also asks some provocative questions of the biologists: Is the glow strong enough to sup port photosynthesis? Quite likely, seems to be the answer. Are life forms in the vicinity of the vents employing photosynthesis? We don't know yet, but some bacteria do photosynthesize. Might not life and perhaps photo synthesis, too, have originated at the vents rather than on the planet's surface? This is an attractive possi bility, because very early in the earth's history the surface was con tinually blasted by meteorites, comets, etc. -- a very inhospitable place. The above questions are so fascinating that we might easily neglect another vent anomaly; one involving those blind shrimp. Like many cave creatures, these shrimp dispensed with eyes long ago. This being so, how do they find the vents, those rich oases of energy and food on the otherwise bleak sea floor? Rather than re-evolve their eyes ...
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... of the as-yet-unexploded planet. Then -- a couple billion years ago -- the "face" would have been smack on the equator of Mars-to-be, gazing downward perpetually upon the doomed planet. The "face" thus had a cultural purpose, a sort of cosmic "Big Brother." Carrying these thoughts to their logical conclusion, the inhabitants of the planet had colonized their "moon" and built those controversial "structures." (Van Flandern, Tom; "New Evidence of Artificiality at Cydonia on Mars," Meta Research Bulletin, 6:1 , 1997. Journal address: P.O . Box 15186, Chevy Chase, MD 20815.) Comment. We cannot resist adding two more thoughts to all this speculation: If life on Mars really did (does) exist, it probably really originated on the supposed exploded planet! Could the explosion of this planet have seeded the earth with life, say, at the time of the unexplained Archean Explosion? (See under BIOLOGY.) Reference. The asymmetry of the surface of Mars and other unusual geological features are collected in Chapter AME in our Catalog The Moon and the Planets. For more on this volume, go to here . Eastern hemisphere of "two-face" Mars. Cratered highlands (white); lowland plains (shaded). From Science Frontiers #113, SEP-OCT 1997 . 1997-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 115: Jan-Feb 1998 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Woodhenges before pyramids The berkeley walls extended Addenda and emenda Astronomy Why did life take a left turn? Biology Genes vs. memes A STRANGELY SELECTIVE SPIDER Acoustical mirrors on plants Stroke changes accent Nuclear families Geology The hilina slump a.k .a . "the big crack" Tektite mysteries Geophysics A SUBMARINE ORGAN? Frog fall A SKY-SPANNING AURORAL ARCH Psychology More sheldrake heresy Physics Splitting the electron's charge Unclassified Evolvable hardware ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 111: May-Jun 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Chromosome Choreography Every biology student has seen sketches of the "dance of the chromosomes" that is performed when eukaryote (nucleuscontaining) cells divide. Because chromosomes are composed of genes and their DNA -- the information carriers of inheritance -- it reasonable to suppose that they are the "dance-masters." This expectation is enhanced if one holds that the genes are "selfish;" that is, they have their own evolutionary agendas, and all life forms exist only to execute their "will." But cell division would not occur at all without the action of the cell's bipolar spindle. This spindle is composed of microtubules -- rods of the protein "tubulin." Somehow , when cells are about to divide, they synthesize these microtubules, which then seem to organize themselves into orderly arrays (the bipolar spindles). Then, the microtubules sort out and separate the two sets of chromosomes required for the two new cells. So, far, our description conforms to what biologists have known and accepted for decades; but there is something more mysterious going on. In 1996, researchers discovered that they can actually substitute DNAcovered beads for the chromosomes, and the microtubules will still go through the motions of sorting and separating the chromosome-less strands. Actually, the microtubules will perform their act even without the DNA-covered beads. In a sense, the bipolar spindle is a puppetmaster, and the ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 108: Nov-Dec 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Those selfish genes may also be intelligent!R. Dawkins has proposed that we humans and other organisms are merely lumbering life-support systems for our genes. In this view, genomes are the masters, controlling our evolution and behavior to ensure their own survival and multiplication. In short, our genes are "selfish." J. Shapiro, at the University of Chicago, has gone a step further and ascribed still another human attribute to genomes. "Genomes function as true intelligent systems, which can be readjusted when conditions require. We still lack testable theories to explain how this can be done. ( Genetica , 84:4 , 1991)" Perhaps we see evidence of this "intelligence" of genes when bacteria and other microorganisms rapidly accommodate to environmental challenges, as in the application of new antibiotics. In this context, read below about the fast-evolving cichlid fishes of Lake Victoria. These fish must have macho genes! From Science Frontiers #108, NOV-DEC 1996 . 1996-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 121: Jan-Feb 1999 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Problems of aboriginal art in australia A CONTINENT LOST IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN Astronomy Oklo: an unappreciated cosmic phenomenon Is life a transitor phenomenon? Biology Acupuncture 5,200 ears ago? Imprison willy! Is intelligence a deadly pathogen? How homeopath might work October 5, 1998: dark day for homing pigeons Starlings fall out of the sky Geology An arkansas tsunami deposit? Fused ancient garbage dumps Geophysics Tunguska afterglow Lake champlain's two seiches B-24 SIGHTS "CIRCLES OF LIGHT" Psychology Are pets psychic? ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 111: May-Jun 1997 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Ancient entertainments Tobacco and cocaine in ancient egypt An anasazi ley line? Astronomy Extraterrestrial handedness Biology Circaseptennial rhythm in ear growth Life on different scales Chromosome choreograph Is perfect pitch favored by natural selection? Carnot creatures Geology Methane burps and gas-hydrate reservoirs Why some sands sing, squeak, and boom Geophysics White streak from a tv set Exotic seismic signals Psychology Malleable memories Math & Physics Levitation and levity! Something strange is going on! ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 109: Jan-Feb 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Biology Heavy Paleontology vs. DNA. The so-called Cambrian Explosion has been the subject of two SF items (SF#60/187 and SF#85/ 187). A paleontological fact of life is that all known body plans (phyla) seem to have evolved suddenly -- within a few million years -- after the onset of the Cambrian period some 545 million years ago. Evolutionists are understandably uncomfortable with such a high rate of evolutionary innovation. Nothing like the Cambrian Explosion appears in the hundreds of millions of years of geological strata that followed. So rapid was speciation during the Cambrian Explosion that doubt is cast upon the accepted mechanisms of evolution: slow, stepwise accumulation of mutations plus natural selection. (Refs. 1 and 2) But G.A . Wray and colleagues seem to have rescued Darwinism. They have analyzed the DNA sequences of seven genes found in living animals. Assuming that these genes mutate at constant rates and working backwards in time, they calculate that animal diversification (i .e ., when chordates diverged from invertebrates) actually began about 1 billion years ago, rather than about 545 million years ago. This expansion of the time frame gives accepted evolutionary processes much more time to innovate and create all those new body plans. The evolutionists are pleased. The paleontologists, however, are in a quandry. They see nothing -- or very little -- in the Precambrian fossil ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 108: Nov-Dec 1996 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology More evidence of precolumbian contacts from asia Deflating a paradigm: brazil's pedra furada Astronomy Life forms in meteorites? Sunspots and planetary alignments Biology Those selfish genes may also be intelligent! Lake victoria's cichlid fishes: can random mutations explain them? Hair rarity The glow below Geology Earthquakes and mima mounds The motor of the world* Geophysics Heard above cayuga's waters A BLUE FLASH Unclassified An innovative computer Are we reall robots? Nominative determinism ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 119: Sep-Oct 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Murder In The Nest In a recent issue of BioScience, R.B . Payne authored an excellent review of brood parasitism in birds. Brood parasites lay their eggs in the nests of other species, which then incubate the eggs and raise the alien chicks. The parent parasites are thus free to forage, hang out, and parasitize more nests. Brood parasitism is such a successful and easy way of life that 136 species of cuckoos, 5 species of cowbirds, 20 finches, and South America's Blackheaded Duck have adopted it. Brood parasitism fascinates ornithologists because it involves war between the parasites and their hosts. Since host species may eject parasite eggs or fail to nurture parasite chicks, brood parasites have evolved mimicry as a powerful weapon in these battles. Mimicked are host eggs, host nestlings, and host vocalizations. But the most insidious weapons of all involve the outright murder of host chicks. To this end, parasite chicks have evolved some special weapons and behaviors. Some cuckoo chicks evict host eggs or chicks by squirming under them and positioning them in a specially configured hollow on their backs. Then, pushing upward and outward to the rim of the nest, they dump their cargo over the edge. Other brood parasites are more direct and bloodthirsty. "Nestling African honeyguides have bill hooks to stab and kill their nestmates and the brood parasitic American striped cuckoos have independently evolved hooks and pincers to kill." (Payne ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 117: May-June 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Unread Biotic Message We have been selling ReMine's book The Biotic Message in which he asserts that life itself is a message of transcendental nature. Every bacterium and human is a cosmic statement. Shifting from the macroscopic to the microscopic (phenotype to genotype), we recall that all macroscopic "statements" are really expressions of DNA -- the genetic code. But when we examine DNA, we find that only about 3% of the DNA in human cells codes for protein manufacture. The remaining 97% is termed "nonsense" or "junk" DNA. But there may actually be sense in nonsense DNA. Statistical analysis of nonsense-DNA "words" (3 -8 bases long) reveals considerable redundancy. Long stretches of nonsense DNA are definitely not random. In fact, the structure of nonsense DNA resembles that of language. The coding or "sense" DNA, on the other hand, lacks this language structure. The implication is that coding and nonsense DNAs carry different kinds of messages. The former consists simply of blueprints; the latter is couched in a language that we have not yet learned to read. (Flan, Faye; "Hints of a Language in Junk DNA," Science, 266:1320, 1994.) Comment. On the microscopic level, we can read only 3% of the biotic message! From Science Frontiers #117, MAY-JUN 1998 . 1998 ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 107: Sep-Oct 1996 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Who built the kaimanawa wall? The irish in iceland Astronomy An old galaxy in a young part of the universe Precocious structure in the cosmos "NOT WITH A BANG BUT A WHIMPER" Biology Organ music High social order in a new order Subversive cancer cells Rock-based life Geology Antarctica's lake vostok revisited Geophysics More sparks on the beach Horizon-to-horizon bioluminescent bubbling band Tear of the gods? Psychology Did mozart use the golden section? The perils of dhmo Ten myths of science ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 118: Jul-Aug 1998 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Archeological revisionism Astounding undersea structure near okinawa More bones that don't belong The mysterious terras pretas Paradigm assaults from way down under Astronomy The "stealth" region of mars The day the laws of phsics changed Biology Lunacy in trees Two creations of life? Biological miscellany Geology The song of the earth Glitches in the terrestrial conveor belt Geophysics Unidentified light Phosphorescent rings and wheels Broadside against small icy comets Psychology Measuring beauty Monogrammic determinism Tactile ventriloquism ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 119: Sep-Oct 1998 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Anthropology unbound Basalt synthesis invented over 3,000 years ago! Astronomy The end of the old-model universe Einstein in free fall Biology Murder in the nest The black death and ccr5-delta 32 Mapping with a song Cassowary, 1; automobile, 0 Geology Really ancient oil -- and abundant life Mounds of mystery Geophysics Some green flashes are yellow Auroral maps! Waterfall phenomena Physics Curious effects department ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 113: Sep-Oct 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Can computers have ndes?When HAL, the treacherous computer in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, was being slowly throttled by the one surviving astronaut, it tried first to negotiate. Then, as board after board of electronic components were disconnected, it burst into the old song A Bicycle Built for Two . It had learned this tune early in its silicon-based life. Surprisingly, real computers can experience similar Near-Death Experiences (NDEs). S.L . Thaler, a physicist at McDonnell Douglas, was studying neural networks designed to mimic the structure and functions of the human brain. Such neural nets can actually learn as programmers train them. As a evening avocation, Thaler devised a program that randomly severed connections in the neural net, in effect destroying the artificial brain bit by bit. When between 10 and 60% of the connections were destroyed, the net spat out only gibberish. Near 90% destruction, though, strange "whimsical" information was produced that was definitely not gibberish. In contrast, untrained neural networks generated only random numbers as they were "put down"! Evidently, HAL's tuneful demise was not so fanciful after all. (Yam, Philip; "Daisy, Daisy," Scientific American, 268:32, May 1993.) Comment. A.C . Clarke, author of 2001, has stated firmly that HAL's name was not chosen ...
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... happened in the past, as is true for this case." On what does Steponaitis base such a powerful statement? Watson Break is dated at 5,0005,400 BP (Before Present), some three millennia before the well-known Moundbuilders started piling up earthen structures from the Mississippi Valley to New York State. In other words, the site is anomalously early. Indications are that Watson Break was built by hunter-gatherers, but no one really knows much about them; there's an aura of mystery here. Watson Break consists of 11 mounds -- some as high as a two-story house -- connected by a peculiar circular ridge 280 meters in diameter. The back-breaking labor required to collect and pile up all this dirt is incompatible with the life style of mobile bands of hunter-gatherers. The purpose of the Watson Break complex escapes us. Why the mounds? Why the circular ridge? Can we just shrug it off as a "ritual site"? (Saunders, Joe W., et al; "A Mound Complex in Louisiana at 5400-5000 Years before the Present," Science, 277:1796. Also: Pringle, Heather; "Oldest Mound Complex Found at Louisiana Site," Science, 277:1761, 1997. Also: Stanley, Dick; "Finds Alter View of American Indian Prehistory," Austin American Statesman, September 19, 1997. Cr. D. Phelps.) Comment. If you have been following the archeological news stories, you have seen at least three items destined ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 114: Nov-Dec 1997 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Standing stones in north carolina? About as anomalous as mounds can get Astronomy It can't be true because it violates our ideas! Biology Do woodcocks "grunt" for worms? Gene wars Complexity and mount improbable Geology Surface life (us!) only a "special case" The world's largest "playa-slider" furrow Geophysics Mekong mystery Lightning strikes jet and possibl spawns ball lightning Psychology Redefining science Physics A RECIPE FOR WEIGHTLESSNESS? Quantum mechanics is definitely spooky Cold fusion not so hot! Unclassified The bermuda triangle is still spooky ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 116: Mar-Apr 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Eco-Darwinism: Diffuse Individuals Epigenetic phenomena -- those phenomena beyond the pale of DNA -- are seen in "diffuse individuals" such as fungi, where it is difficult to separate individual units of life. To illustrate, some fungi may be 1,000 years old and extend for 35 acres (15 hectares) and yet possess a single, still unmodified genome. In his review of A. Rayner's new book Degrees of Freedom: Living in Dynamic Boundaries , T. Wakeford writes: "So, like the World Wide Web, a fungal network is decentralized. There is no central region capable of exerting control over the rest of the network. Rayner's own work suggests that the growth patterns of fungal filaments are forged as much by the environment that they encounter as by their genes. He believes that epigenetics, the process whereby opportunities in an organism's surroundings dictate which genes are expressed, is the norm in microorganisms. Genetic determinism is thus turned on its head." (Wakeford, Tom; "We Are the Fungus," New Scientist, p. 49, May 10, 1997.) Comment. Looking at the above situation from an information viewpoint, as one must these days, it seems that the environment can somehow "interpret" genes as the situation demands. In other words, genes are not "single-message" information carriers, but can be " ...
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... Why Are Dreams Always Retrospective?This question and others regarding dreams have been posed by two French researchers in a new book. One of our French readers has summarized some points made in this new book. "Michel Jouvet, a French specialist of dreams, asks the question: Why do cosmonauts never dream about space? Why do they dream only about the Earth? "According to psychologists, the 'day residue' in dreams is rather important. Half of all dreams allude to events of the preceding day; 89% allude to events of the last 120 days. The older the event, the lower the odds that it will reappear during the night. When people wear colored glasses, they begin very quickly to dream in the same color. People who make a complete change of life; for example, by travelling to a faraway place; do not begin to dream about this new place for weeks or months. A Bassari from Senegal, who was resident in Paris for two extended stays, was asked to write down his dreams. Surprisingly, 88% of his dreams occurred in Africa and only 6% in France. This experiment and others like it are discussed at length in the book, but explanations are lacking. Do we really understand anything about dreams? (Jouvet, Michel, and Gessain, Monique; Le Grenier des Reves , Paris, 1997. Cr. C. Marecaille) From Science Frontiers #113, SEP-OCT 1997 . 1997-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... laws of thermodynamics. This strange "force" exerted by entropy may explain some puzzling biological phenomena, such as the expulsion of nuclei from mammalian red blood cells before they enter the bloodstream as sacks of hemoglobin. The idea being that the increasing entropy of the proliferating hemoglobin molecules (analogous to the smaller spheres) is maximized when the nuclei (large spheres) are squeezed out of the cells altogether. (Kestenbaum, David; "Gentle Force of Entropy Bridges Disciplines," Science, 279:1849, 1998.) Comments. The red-blood-cell example presented in the article is on shaky ground, because while mammalian red blood cells do lack nuclei those of birds and reptiles retain theirs. (See BMC6 in Mammals II .) In the above context, the origin of life (more order) anywhere in the universe can be thought to be due to the "gentle force" of entropy; that is, the result of increasing disorder elsewhere. See? It's all very simple!! When many smaller spheres are added to a sytem of larger spheres, the "gentle force" of entropy "pushes" the latter into a corner and a state of higher order From Science Frontiers #117, MAY-JUN 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 118: Jul-Aug 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Broadside Against Small Icy Comets In a late-1997 issue, Geophysical Research Letters published a group of five papers that detailed five different lines of evidence that are inconsistent with the claim by L.A . Frank and J.B . Sigwarth that the earth is bombarded daily by 30,000 house-size icy comets. If such bombardment has really been occurring, scientists would have to rethink the origins of the earth's oceans, terrestrial life, and the formation of the solar system. No wonder the icy-comet hypothesis is strongly challenged! Three of the more interesting points made by this group of papers are as follows: Our moon could not escape the icy-comet bombardment. Roughly 1,000 craters 50 meters in diameter and splashes of debris 150 meters in diameter must occur each. There is no evidence that the moon is thus afflicted. Comets also carry the noble gases argon, krypton, and xenon. These gases should accumulate in the atmosphere as the comets disintegrate. The amounts of these gases actually measured are 10,000 times less than those the postulated bombardment would produce. The icy comets should break up near the earth and produce clouds of ice crystals. Sunlight reflected from such 30-ton clouds would be brighter than Venus and easily visible before they disperse. Such objects are rarely seen, implying that small icy comets do not exist in the numbers claimed. Preceding this series of five ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 117: May-June 1998 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Hard facts at cahokia Aliens, mystery races, or aborigines? Astronomy The flat face of mars The accelerating universe Biology The unread biotic message Terrestrial life is ambidextrous Kinky sex among the invertebrates Light makes bright Geology Two catastrophe scenarios Geophysics Flash auroras Foo fighters recalled Rare north atlantic light wheel Psychology Ability to detect covert observation Experimental induction of the "sensed presence" Chemistry & Physics More disorder here produces order there Logic & Math The evolution of computers ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 95: Sep-Oct 1994 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects It's according to hoyle and wickramasinghe The June 17, 1994 issue of Science did not ignore it. In fact, this conservative journal devoted almost an entire page to a paper presented by Yi-Jehng Kuan and Yanti Miao at the recent Minneapolis meeting of the American Astronomical Society. Students of L. Snyder, at the University of Illinois, Kuan and Miao reported that the amino acid glycine had been detected in a molecular cloud named Sagittarius B2. Glycine has only ten atoms and is the smallest of the 20 amino acids vital to life-as-we-know-it. The Science article supposed that this discovery of extraterrestrial glycine might reignite speculation that earth life might not be unique after all. (Travis, John; "Hints of First Amino Acid outside Solar System," Science, 264:1669, 1994.) Structure of the amino acid glycine What Science did not mention but New Scientist did is that F. Hoyle and C. Wickramasinghe have long predicted that the molecules of life, as well as life itself, would be found in outer space. Now, after much ridicule, they are being vindicated. "It's been a long hard struggle," said Hoyle. Wickramasinghe remarked that the discovery was "no surprise at all." "He believes it is only a matter of time before other amino acids, together with nucleotide bases, the components of nucleic acids that ...
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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 Ancient Modern Life And Carbon Dating Pursuant to the possible effect of the earth's recent envelopment by a molecular cloud on the accuracy of carbon dating (SF#98), we now look at the potential distortion caused by the ingestion of primordial carbon (carbon-13) by plants and animals. Primordial carbon may come from limestone or natural gas welling up from the earth's interior. Modern life forms that metabolize primordial rather than atmospheric carbon dioxide, with its cosmic-ray produced carbon-14, will 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 ...
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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 Ballistic Panspermia Scientists are already convinced that cratering events on the moon and Mars have propelled rocky debris in the direction of the earth, and that some of these fragments have landed here in the guise of meteorites. A logical question is: Can life forms and/or chemical precursors of life be transported thus across the far reaches of the solar system? Can one planet infect another ballistically? An analysis by M.K . Wallis and N.C . Wickramasinghe is rather warm towards this idea: "The mass of escaping ejecta from the presumed 10-km comet that caused the 180-km Chicxulub crater, with a radius of roughly 10 km and 1 m deep, amounted to ~300 Mm3 , of which one third may have been rock and 10% higher-speed ejecta that could have transited directly to Mars. It may have taken 10 Ma to impact Mars but...the probability is not exceedingly low but 0.1 -1 %. "The survival and replication of microorganisms once they are released at destination would depend on the local conditions that prevail. Although viability on the present-day Martian surface is problematical, Earth-to-Mars transfers of life were feasible during an earlier 'wet' phase of the planet, prior to 3.5 Ga ago. The Martian atmosphere was also denser at that epoch, with several bars of CO2 , thus serving to decelerate meteorites, as ...
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... Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects From dust unto abyssal mud We know the Creator made at least one species from dust, but ocean-floor mud has turned out to have more biodiversity. Twenty years ago, biologists put the number of species at about 1 million. Then, they started shaking and gassing rain-forest canopies. The rain of new insect species that fell to the ground made them revise the estimate to 30 million. The latest, long-unappreciated reservoir of undescribed species is mud -- oceanic mud. In particular, we know that the mud in the Rockall Trench off the western coast of Scotland teems with untold species of diminutive nematodes. Of course, nematodes are not as pretty as birds and fish, but they are nevertheless bona fide species of life. Examination of the Rockall mud and that from other seabed sites has convinced the nematode counters that there may be as many as 100 million nematode species on our planet. When other classes of life are added, the figure rises to at least 130 million. (Pearce, Fred; "Rockall Mud Richer than Rainforest," New Scientist, p. 8, September 16, 1995.) Comments. Lifeless molecules can apparently unite to form an almost infinite array of life forms! The next reservoir of unexplored biodiversity may be the crevicular realm -- all those fluid-filled crevices and channels that extend miles down into the earth's crust. They are full of bacteria and other unrecognized microscopic life forms. As for extraterrestrial habitats, who can even guess? From Science Frontiers ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 92: Mar-Apr 1994 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The World Before Our World Genetically speaking, modern terrestrial life is bilingual in the sense that it employs two chemical languages. Function is written in the 20 amino-acid "alphabet" of proteins, while information is conveyed in sequences of four nucleotide "letters" called codons. We need go no further with the genetics lesson because our purpose here is to speculate a bit about the monolingual world that is believed to have preceded ours. This older world is commonly termed the "RNA World." It was and is monolingual because both function and information are carried on a single molecule. It is customary to call the RNA World "prebiotic," meaning that it was all chemistry and no life. But, one does wonder whether that was all there was to it. Catalysis and replication of genetic information occurred in the RNA World. What besides a chemical soup might have existed before "life-as-we-know-it" arrived upon the scene? A science fiction writer like H.P . Lovecraft could certainly come up with an ominous entity based upon RNA alone. Be that as it may, a book is now on the market bearing the title The RNA World (R .F . Gesteland and J.F . Atkins, eds., Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 1993) Nature reviewed the book in its January 20 issue. In addition, the RNA World was discussed recently in ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 95: Sep-Oct 1994 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A DEEP-SEA HYDROTHERMAL VENT INSTEAD OF A WARM LITTLE POND?If earth life didn't arrive from outer space (See under ASTRONOMY.), it may have arisen a couple miles below the ocean's surface at hydrothermal vents. The curious glows recently remarked at these vents (SF#87) have stimulated much speculation as to the potential role of these glows in the origin of life: "The history of hydrothermal activity predates the origin of life, and light in the deep sea has been a continuous phenomenon on a geological time scale and may have served either as a seed or refugium for the evolution of biological photochemical reactions or adaptations." We formally classify this item under GEOPHYSICS because scientists are still pondering how these glows are created. Some of the light is obviously black-body radiation from the very hot (350 C) water but: ". .. other potential, narrow-band sources of light may be superimposed on the blackbody radiation spectrum, including crystaloluminescence, Cerenkov radiation, chemiluminescence, triboluminescence, sonoluminescence, and the burning of methane in supercritical water." (Van Dover, Cindy Lee, et al; "Light at Deep Sea Hydrothermal Vents," Eos, vol. 75, 1994.) Comment. If cold, diffuse molecular clouds in deep space can synthesize glycine, imagine what the hot, chemically-rich fluids around hydrothermal vents might be able to do. ...
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... , edging ever closer to earth. The composition of ALH 84001 tells us curious facts about its place of origin. First, it contains carbonate minerals deposited by water. Second, the carbonate grains are banded, implying the parent rock formation was washed by water more than once. Third, and most interesting, chemists have found traces of molecules called PAHs, based on interconnected benzene rings. Three sources have been proposed for these PAHs: Terrestrial contamination Prebiotic activity on the planet of origin PAH-bearing comets and/or asteroids impacting the parent planet. Terrestrial contamination has always been a problem in analyzing meteorites, but great care has been taken in recent years, especially with the Antarctic lode of meteorites. In view of these precautions, it seems rather likely that somewhere "out there" life is brewing. (Anonymous; "A Chip Off the Old Mars," Sky and Telescope , 90:12, July 1995.) Reference: See also: Incredible Life for the interesting history of past "discoveries of life in meteorites. This book is described here . From Science Frontiers #101 Sep-Oct 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... And right beneath, in large type, is: "The most thorough study yet of species formation in the fossil record confirms that new species appear with a most un-Darwinian abruptness after long periods of stability." In the article that follows, R.A . Kerr reviews several recent studies of fossil bryozoans and snails. Some of these painstaking dissections of the fossil record were carried out by scientists initially committed to Darwinian gradualism. Even these researchers have been forced to acknowledge that much biological evolution proceeds not in minute steps but by large jumps or saltations. Such abrupt speciation is tough enough to explain, but even more daunting are those species untouched by change over millions, even hundreds of millions of years. Indeed, the major characteristic of the fossil record and, therefore, earth life as a whole, has been stasis rather than speciation, despite all manner of asteroid impacts and climatic traumas. Nevertheless, many biologists think that species are somehow frozen in time by environmental forces that keep them from straying from their little niches. This being so, paleontologist D. Jablonski, University of Chicago, asks: If stability is the rule, how do you get large-scale shifts in morphology? How do you get from funny little Mesozoic mammals to horses and whales? From Archaeopteryx to hummingbirds? (Kerr, Richard A.; "Did Darwin Get It All Right?" Science, 267:1421, 1995) Comments. (1 ) The reality of sudden saltations in the fossil record or "punctuated equilibrium" implies that those unfound transitional fossils beloved by the ...
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... of the solar system. The complexity of the organic molecules found on these particles has fueled the imaginations of many who ponder the role extraterrestrial matter may have played in the prebiological evolution of organic material on the primordial Earth." Beyond these conjectures, several other things about interplanetary dust particles bother scientists: "' What is surprising,' Walker notes, 'and still not understood, is the fact that the organic molecules we see in the dust particles are different from those previously seen in meteorites.' Another enigma is the observation of striking isotopic anomalies -- large enrichments of deuterium relative to hydrogen, as much as ten times greater than one sees in terrestrial samples -- in the particles in which Zare's group observed the organic molecules." Yes, the original dust of life may have been extraterrestrial. (Zeman, Ellen J.; "Complex Organic Molecules Found in Interplanetary Dust Particles," Physics Today, 47:17, March 1991.) Comment. Nature it seems is a great recycler. It was Walt Whitman who wrote: "And as to you, Life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths." From Science Frontiers #93, MAY-JUN 1994 . 1994-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... 1994 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Is immortality only a mutation away?Here follows the lead sentence of the abstract of a recent letter to Nature : "We have found that mutations in the gene daf-2 can cause fertile, active adult Caenorhabditis elegans hermaphrodites to live more than twice as long as wild type." (Kenyon, Cynthia, et al; "A C. elegans Mutant That Lives Twice as Long as Wild Type," Nature, 366:461, 1993.) Comment. C. elegans is a roundworm only about a millimeter long. Roughly a thousand cells make up its tiny body, and scientists have charted the birth and death of each cell from egg to adult. This roundworm's life is a mosaic of changing cells, as some die to make way for new cells with different agendas. Somehow this programmed sequence of cell death and birth can be slowed down by mutations and thus increase longevity. Wouldn't any mortal speculate that perhaps human longevity might, like that of C. elegans , be extended by modern gene manipulators? Sure, it's quite an extrapolation from roundworm to human, but our cells are programmed just like those of C. elegans . Change a gene here and there, and we might all live as long as Noah! From Science Frontiers #92, MAR-APR 1994 . 1994-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 99: May-Jun 1995 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology The inscribed bricks of comalcalco Ancient modern life and carbon dating Traces of the southern flotilla Astronomy Where have all the black holes gone? Ltps and ets Biology Curious brain asymmetries Did darwin get it all right? When scents make no sense Biological precursors of the 1995 kobe earthquake Geology Ballistic panspermia Geophysics Warning cars rolling uphill ahead 90-DAY SEA-LEVEL OSCILLATION AT WAKE ISLAND Luminous precursors of the 1995 kobe earthquake Psychology The untapped human mind Physics Why does spaghetti break into three pieces instead of two? ...
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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 Does the past influence the future?R. Sheldrake's theory of morphic resonance answers this question affirmatively. For example, it predicts that once a chemical compound is synthesized it will be easier to synthesize it again in the future because the compound's "morphogenetic field" will "guide" the chemical processes along paths already established. Can you wonder why mainstream science advised that Sheldrake's book, A New Science of Life , be BURNT! Well, there was a lot of smoke but the theory survives. Nature, in fact, is full of observations, such as parallel evolution, that support the idea of morphic resonance. And in the laboratory, a few brave souls are conducting experiments that seem to confirm the theory more directly. "Using a novel laboratory approach, researchers at Yale University have been able to create a morphogenetic effect after stimulating only 100 subjects. They employed a series of trivial paper-and-pencil tasks (such as "Put an X in any one of the four boxes shown below"). Experimenters tallied how an initial group of 100 students responded to these tasks. Then they forced a second group of 100 students to respond to the tasks in a set manner (" Put an X in the third box below"). Finally, they presented the same tasks to a third group of 100 students, allowing them to complete them, as with the first group ...
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... the telephone number of any of the 15,000 hotels listed in a large directory. "The telephone have been learned through a mnemonic system for encoding numbers as a series of two-digit pairs. Each pair has a learned associate (e .g . 00 is a bicycle, 57 is tomato sauce, 39 is Hitler, 41 is mum, his mother's age when he started this system). For larger numbers these associates are combined into wholes which are usually highly imageable (a bottle of tomato sauce riding a bicycle) and attached to some other associate to the hotel name." (Ref. 2) TM's mnemonics seem weird, but they work; and they probably could work for anyone -- for we barely tax our mental powers in modern life. But would our latent mental capabilities been of use to ancient man, or is this still another case of "evolutionary overshoot", as we harped on so heavily under BIOLOGY in this issue? References 1. Wilding, John, and Valentine, Elizabeth; "Memory Champions," British Journal of Psychology, 85:231, 1994. 2. Wilding, John, and Valentine, Elizabeth; "Mnemonic Wizardry with the Telephone Directory -- But Stories Are Another Story," British Journal of Psychology, 85:501, 1994. From Science Frontiers #99, MAY-JUN 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... reactors were discovered in 1972 when the French found that uranium ore from Gabon contained anomalously low concentrations of the fissionable isotope 235U as well as fission products. A little excavation work uncovered small pockets, a few meters in length and less than a meter in width, where natural fission had occurred in the Precambrian period. A geological reconstruction of what probably happened involves: (1 ) uranium-bearing solutions migrating through the fractured rocks of the region; and (2 ) the precipitation of the uranium as pitchblende and uranite when the solutions came in contact with kerogen. A critical mass was formed and a chain reaction started. Such a scenario is unlikely today because the concentration of fissionable 235U in natural uranium has declined by a factor of about five in the last 2 billion years. The half life of 235U is only about 700 million years. (Nagy, Bartholomew; "Precambrian Nuclear Reactors at Oklo," Geotimes , 38: 18, May 1993. Also: Nagy, Bartholomew, et al; "Role of Organic Matter in the Proterozoic Oklo Natural Fission Reactors, Gabon, Africa," Geology , 21:655, 1993.) Reference. The Oklo Phenomenon is covered in greater detail in ESP13 in the catalog: Anomalies in Geology. To order visit here . From Science Frontiers #94, JUL-AUG 1994 . 1994-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 103: Jan-Feb 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects I Hiss Therefore I Am E.R . Moliner, a neurologist, has written a curious yet provocative article for New Scientist. It is really a not-too-subtle attack on the Anthropic Principle, Darwinism, and science's insistence that the universe must be purposeless. He notes first that most proponents of the Anthropic Principle postulate that, in the beginning (whatever that was!), many different universes may have been created. The only one we observe is the one offering just the right combination of properties for evolving life and, especially, humankind. If this or that physical constant had been a tad different, humans would not have evolved. Even though humans obviously did evolve, it was all purposeless -- just the way atoms and molecules happened to combine. This outlook fits right in with Darwinism, for almost all Darwinists also see evolution as purposeless. It was blind chance that gave us the capabilities to build aircraft and tunnel into opposite sides of a mountain and meet in the middle. Moliner is highly skeptical that such amazing, "cooperative, adaptive" talents could have come about in an unbiased, purposeless universe. Suppose, he asks, vipers were philosophically minded. They might look at their marvelously complex fangs with the canals inside, a nearby poison gland, a poison storage reservoir with special ducts leading to the fangs, a fang-erection mechanism, a set of muscles to squeeze ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 94: Jul-Aug 1994 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects LACRIMA MORTIS: THE TEAR OF DEATH It must be a heart-wrenching experience to see a single tear roll down the cheek of a person at the moment of his or her death. I. Lichter, medical director of the Te Omanga Hospice, in New Zealand, wondered how often this phenomenon occurred and why. Working with the Hospice nursing staff, Lichter followed 100 patients nearing death. "The results showed 14 patients shed a final tear at the time of death, and a further 13 within the last 10 hours of life. "In 21 of the 27 cases, the dying person was unconscious at the time of the last tear. And in all but one case the tear was shed by patients whose death was expected rather than sudden." Lichter and colleagues wondered if the death-bed tears were emotional in origin or perhaps caused by a reflex action. Notes made by the nursing staff were inconclusive on this matter. Lichter thought of chemically analyzing some of the last tears, because emotional tears have a different chemical composition from those produced by irritation. Unfortunately, a single tear was insufficent for the analysis. (Morrison, Alastair; "The Mystery of the Death-Bed Tear," Wellington Dominion , August 11, 1993. Cr. P. Hassall) From Science Frontiers #94, JUL-AUG 1994 . 1994-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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