482 results found.
... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 98: Mar-Apr 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Emf fertilizer?In 1986, the U.S . Navy began operating a 90-kilometer-long radio antenna stretching pole-to-pole through a Michigan forest. Broadcasting at only 76 hertz, this long antenna can communicate effectively with submerged submarines. Although the antenna produces electromagnetic fields about the same as those from a large household appliance, some of the trees adjacent to the antenna have enjoyed an unexpected spurt in growth, according to D. Reed and G. Mroz of the Michigan Technological University. "The researchers have been gathering data on the growth of trees since 1985, making measurements at two sites, one near the antenna and the other 50 kilometers away. The results seem to suggest that the electromagnetic field has a subtle influence on the forest. They found that two species of trees, northern red oak and paper birch, do not seem to be influenced by the antenna at all. But red pines near the antenna grew taller than red pines at the distant site, while aspen and red maple grew thicker than their counterparts further off." (Kiernan, Vincent; "Forest Grows Tall on Radio Waves," New Scientist, p. 5, January 14, 1995) Trees are not the only plants affected. Algae in the upper Ford River, where the field is only 10% as strong as that near the antenna, increased chlorophyll production sharply after the antenna started operation. The cause ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 50: Mar-Apr 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Hardball For Keeps "Archeologists call them "balls" for want of a better word; but, after several centuries of intensive collection, scrutiny and study, nobody really knows what they are. "Imagine, if you will, a spherical piece of carved rock a little smaller than a baseball. The shape bespeaks artifice. Something -- somebody -- made it. "More than 500 of these objects have been found in Great Britain and Ireland, most of them in Scotland, near prehistoric dwelling places, passage graves and the mysterious rings of standing stones whose specific purpose also eludes the experts." Archeologists believe the balls are more than 4,000 years old. All are different; all are symmetrical with projecting knobs, six in most cases. So much for the basic data. Now let us progress (? ) to theory. D.B . Wilson suggests that the balls were really hand-thrown missiles used in bloody games played at standing-stone sites during astronomically decreed rites. (Remember the Maya had their grisly ballgames, too!) The stone balls are indeed perfectly weighted, shaped and textured for throwing at the heads of opposing players. Perhaps, says Wilson, the games had rules such that you were safe when touching a standing stone, but to score you had to run to another standing stone while fair game for the first IPMs (Interpersonal Missiles). And so on and ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 50: Mar-Apr 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects "HIGH"-TECH FARMING AT TIAHUANACO One of Tiahuanaco's (or Tiwanaku's ) many puzzles has been how food for such a large city was grown at an altitude of circa 3,850 meters (12,600 feet) in the frosty, windswept Bolivian Andes. This problem along with the fabulous stonework and extensive ruins have precipitated theories involving extraterrestrial visitors and an age for the site in the hundreds of thousands of years. At least the food-supply puzzle now seems to be in hand. Stereoscopic aerial photographs show in startling detail: ". .. immense, curvilinear platforms of earth...these fields form elevated planting surfaces ranging from five to 15 meters wide and up to 200 meters long...Extensive and nearly continuous tracts of these fields -- all of which have been abandoned for centuries -- run from the edge of Lake Titicaca to about 15 kilometers inland, and form virtually the only topographic relief in the broad, gradually sloping plain." Some of the raised fields are remarkably sophisticated in design. At the base is a layer of cobblestones for stability. These are covered by a 10-centimeter layer of clay. On top of the clay are three distinct layers of sorted gravel; all capped by rich organic topsoil. These fields were simultaneously an aquifer for the fresh water percolating down from the surrounding hills and a barrier to the brackish water from Lake Titicaca ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 50: Mar-Apr 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Mysterious Bright Arcs May Be The Largest Objects In The Universe Several brilliant bluish arcs, some 300,000 light years long, were unexpectedly discovered during a survey of galactic clusters. R. Lynds, of Kitt Peak National Observatory, estimates that the arcs are as luminous as 100 billion suns. The nice circularity of the arcs is perplexing; and it is stated that nothing like them has been reported before. The arcs might be incandescent gas, but many astronomers opt instead for swaths of bright young stars. Spectroscopic tests will decide this point. It has been difficult to conceive of an origin for the arcs. Are they blast waves or the results of tidal action between galaxies? No one knows, for all suggestions seem flawed. Something out there not only manipulates stupendous amounts of mass and energy but also does it with a draftsman's compass. (Anderson, Ian; "Astronomers Spot the Biggest Objects in the Universe," New Scientist, p. 23, January 15, 1987.) Comment. In the interest of accuracy, it should be noted that some superclusters of galaxies are larger than the arcs. Also, some similar phenomena are described in our Catalog volume Stars, Galaxies, Cosmos, viz., the stacked, interleaved arcs of stars around elliptical galaxies (AWO5) and ring galaxies without significant nuclei (AWO6). To order the catalog volume just mentioned, visit: here . A ...
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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 Anomalous Optical Events In The Upper Atmosphere A photodiode was recently lofted to high altitudes (over 400 kilometers) in an experiment to measure the optical power of lightning. During the 10-minute flight, more than 500 lightning-related events were recorded over that part of the globe visible from the rocket's altitude. "Among these is a class of about 23 events all having an anomalous signature, with obvious clustering of optical impulses or continuous emissions, and resulting durations of several hundred milliseconds. Such durations are much longer than typical for lightning-related events recorded at the rocket, which are more frequent overall. Every anomalous optical event (AOE) was accompanied by broadband VLF signals of a distinctive character...In considering possible sources above 30 km we find that the AOEs do not seem to resemble other natural optical phenomena, such as meteors which burn up well above 30 km in the mid-latitude atmosphere." (Li, Ya Qi, et al; "Anomalous Optical Events Detected by Rocket-Borne Sensor in the WIPP Campaign," Journal of Geo physical Research, 96:1315, 1991. Cr. C. Rush.) Comment. Apparently these anomalous "flashes" have not yet been detected from the ground. The implication is that there are many more high-altitude electrical discharges than scientists expect or can account for. From Science Frontiers #80, MAR-APR 1992 . ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 50: Mar-Apr 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Quantized Galaxy Redshifts "The history of science relates many examples where the conventional view ultimately was proved wrong." Tifft and Cocke begin their article with this sentence. Wisely, they followed with the tale of how vehemently the quantization of the atom was resisted earlier in this century. They were wise because without such a reminder to be open-minded, many astronomers would automatically toss their article in the wastebasket! In fact, when Tifft's first paper on redshift quantization appeared in the Astrophysical Journal, the Editor felt constrained to add a note to the effect that the referees: "Neither could find obvious errors with the analysis nor felt that they could enthusiastically endorse publication." Even today, after much more evidence for redshift quantization has accumulated, scientific resistance to the idea is extreme. We shall now see what all this fuss is about. Tifft first became suspicious that the redshifts of galaxies might be quantized; that is, take on discrete values; when he found that galaxies in the same clusters possessed redshifts that were related to the shapes of the galaxies. The obvious inference was that the redshifts were at least partly dependent upon the galaxy itself rather than entirely upon the galaxy's speed of recession (or distance) from the earth. Then, he found more suggestions of quantization. The redshifts of pairs of galaxies differed by quantized amounts (see figure). More evidence exists for galactic quantization, but ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 50: Mar-Apr 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Whales And Seafloor Pits Typical sizes, shapes, and disposition of whale-excavated pits in the Bering Sea. The focus of a 1987 paper in Scientific American, by C.H . Nelson and K.R . Johnson, is the northeastern Bering Sea, where sensitive side-scanning sonar has sketched large numbers of pits and furrows in the shallow sands. The pits range from 1-10 meters in length, 0.5 -7 meters in width, and 0.1 -0 .4 meters in depth. No known geological processes seem responsible. Farther east, in Nor-ton Sound, methane eruptions from buried organic matter do blow out circular craters; but the elongated pits investigated by Nelson and Johnson are gouged in sand considered too permeable for gas-crater formation. Rather surprisingly, the gray whale has become suspect as a pit excavator. They feed in the area of the pits; and the pits, before enlargement by currents, are just the size of the whales' mouths. The whales apparently dredge up sediment and, with their baleen, strain out amphipods (shrimp-like crustaceans) from the sand. The coexisting narrow furrows turn out to be the work of walruses digging for clams. (Nelson, C. Hans, and Johnson, Kirk R.; "Whales and Walruses as Tillers of the Sea Floor," Scientific American, 256:112, February 1987.) ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 98: Mar-Apr 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A Yagi Watches A Solar Eclipse During the partial solar eclipse of July 11, 1991, D. Emerson had his Yagi antenna pointed in the direction of the phenomenon. His receiver was tuned to 145.8 MHz. The sun is always emitting radio noise, and one would expect that the moon passing in front of the sun would gradually cut off most, but not all, of the radio noise picked up by the antenna and, after the eclipse's midpoint, the noise would increase back to normal levels. Instead of the expected: Radio noise power measured during a partial solar eclipse. The arrows indicate the stages of the eclipse "There was no radio evidence of any effect of the solar eclipse until 1822 UTC, 58 minutes after the start of the eclipse. At that point, all detectable solar emission disappeared within the space of about nine minutes. The emission did not start to reappear until 72 minutes later, at 1943 UTC, and was fully restored by 1951 UTC, 13 minutes before the end of the eclipse, which occurred at 2004 UTC. "The fact that radio emission disappeared and reappeared fairly abruptly part way through the eclipse indicates that most of the radio emission was occurring from one discrete point on the sun's surface rather than from the entire solar disc." (Emerson, Darrel; "Radio Observations of Two Solar Eclipses," QST , p. 21, February 1995 ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 98: Mar-Apr 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects How To Test For Lucid Dreaming In a lucid dream, everything seems so real, and you can usually exert some control over the content and direction of the dream. If you wish, you can fly! Or, you can trigger specific types of lucid dreams by providing external stimuli, such as a specific piece of recorded music. Some lucid dreams do get out of control, however, and become nightmarish. But pleasant, controllable lucid dreams are the general rule. If you can't seem to get into lucid dreaming, apply to the Lucidity Institute, where you can purchase a Nova-Dreamer machine for $275. Thus armed, you can enter that Never-Never Land anytime you want. But how does one know he or she is dreaming lucidly? There is a simple test that is not only strange but probably anomalous. During your dream find a shop or traffic sign, even a dollar bill or newspaper. Then, find a word of four or more letters. Look away, and then look back. If the word has changed when you look back, you are in a lucid dream. For reasons unknown, the brain centers controlling lucid dreaming cannot consistently process words of more than three letters! (Foremski, Tom; "Designer Dreams," New Scientist, p. 50, December 24/31, 1994.) From Science Frontiers #98, MAR-APR 1995 . ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 50: Mar-Apr 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Feathered Flights Of Fancy Some more salvos have been fired in an endlessly fascinating controversy (at least it is that to us). First, F. Hoyle and C. Wickramasinghe, hardly strangers to these columns, have published Archaeopteryx, The Primordial Bird: A Case of Fossil Forgery. The book elaborates their theory that the Archaeopteryx fossils, much ballyhooed as "proofs" of evolution, are outright forgeries. Second, T. Kemp, a zoologist on the staff of the University Museum, has returned the fire with a mean-minded review. He states that Hoyle and Wickramasinghe "exhibit a staggering ignorance about the nature of fossils and fossilization processes." Kemp concludes his review with an admission that the possibility of forgery should indeed be investigated. "But it should be done by those who actually understand fossils, fossilization and fossil preparation, not by a couple of people who exhibit nothing more than a gargantuan conceit that they are clever enough to solve other people's problems for them when they do not even begin to recognize the nature and complexity of the problems." (Kemp, Tom; "Feather Flights of Fancy," Nature, 324:185, 1986.) Finally, Hoyle and Wickramasinghe reply in a letter to Nature that L.M . Spetner and his colleagues in Israel have analyzed samples of the Archaeopteryx fossil with a scanning electron microscope and X-ray spectroscopy. Results: the rock ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 98: Mar-Apr 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Translating The Grand Traverse Stone The Grand Traverse Stone was plowed up about 1877 on a farm in Grand Traverse County, Michigan. A small boy following his father and plow picked it up. The stone is slate, ½ -inch thick, and 2 ½ inches on each side. The symbols on the Stone are similar to those in the Pan-Mediterranean alphabet in use about the time of Christ D.B . Buchanan, an American epigrapher, recently undertook the task of translating the Stone. Buchanan has built up an inscription data base containing the variants of symbols used in the Pan-Mediterranean alphabet. He found that most of the characters on the Stone could be found in his data base. Buchanan then converted the Stone's symbols to Roman equivalents and tested sound values in Greek and other Mediterranean languages. He concluded that the Stone used a late form of Vulgar Latin. His translation: "( I am) carrying (in accounts), 10 talents. To 10 (add) 1 voided (or useless). I am collecting (or sending) 11 only, 10 (of which) I can confirm. Transaction (is) 11 in all (or total)." The Grand Traverse Stone therefore seems to be a financial document of some kind. Buchanan dates it between 100 BC and 100 AD. (Buchanan, Donal B.; "Some Remarks on an Inscribed Stone from Grand ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 98: Mar-Apr 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Ancient egyptians in the new world?In issue #8 of The Ancient American , G. Thompson translated a few paragraphs from Mariano Cuevas' 1940 book: Historia de la Nacion Mexicana . We now summarize that translation. In August 1914, Professor M.A . Gonzales was excavating Mayan ruins in the city of Acajutla, in Mexico. The two illustrated statuettes were uncovered. On the male, the headdress, the beard, and the cartouche are all typically Egyptian in style. The male is thought to represent Osiris, the female Isis. (Thompson, Gunnar; "Egyptian Statuettes in Mexico," Ancient American, 2:12, no. 8, 1995.) In the same issue of The Ancient American , the issue of whether the ancient Egyptians reached the New World is joined with pro and con articles. The first is entitled: "The Egyptians Were Here!" It is written by R.A . Jairazbhoy, like G. Thompson an ardent diffusionist and author of the recent book Rameses III: Father of Ancient America . No need to ask what Jairazbhoy's position is on the issue! The second article is a rebuttal to the whole Egypt-in-America business by E. Lurio. His title: "Point: No Egyptians in Ancient America." Lurio is also the author of the 1990 book: A Fractured History of the Discovery of America . Lurio concludes: " ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 50: Mar-Apr 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Magnetic Precursors Of Large Storms On January 22, 1986, a magnetometer at the Fredricksburg Magnetic Observatory, in Virginia, recorded a sudden jump (of 45 gammas) in the earth's horizontal magnetic field component. Alerted to this, G. Wollin, at the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory, immediately predicted that a major snowstorm or flooding rains would hit northeastern states within six days. Wollin contacted the weather people in the region, but they discounted the prediction because satellite pictures and conventional weather indicators implied nothing of the sort. A three-day storm began on January 25, depositing 3 feet of snow in northern New England and 4 inches of rain along the coast from Washington to Boston. Wollin has had similar successes, without even looking at a weather map! Obviously, Wollin's forecasting techniques are not yet part of the Weather Bureau's arsenal. This is not too surprising because even Wollin does not understand why major storms should be preceded by several days by nervous magnetometers. He talks in a tentative way about solar storms, which do affect terrestrial magnetism, dumping energy into the oceans and thence into the atmosphere. But this is mainly speculation. Historically, we do know that long-term changes in the earth's magnetic field are linked to global temperature levels (see graphs); but here, too, cause and effect are not obvious. (Gribbin, John; "Magnetic Pointers ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 74: Mar-Apr 1991 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects When Identical Twins Are Not Identical Past studies of identical twins separated at birth have documented remarkable similarities between them, despite the fact that they were reared under radically different circumstances. Their physical appearances, habits, vocations, health histories, and other factors are often eerily the same. For example, two female identical twins, who had never seen each other, each wore eight rings! The upshot of such investigations is that most of a person's characteristics are genetic in origin; that is, Nature dominates nurture. But what about identical twins who are remarkably different? They can, for instance, differ appreciably in size, intellect, and behavior. In such cases, does nurture dominate nature? No! Identical twins may diverge even in the womb, where one may receive more oxygen and nutrients than the other. One also may be assailed in by viruses, bacteria, or drugs, while the other escapes. Even more drastic is the possi bility that one twin may pick up an extra chromosome soon after the original egg has split. Also, mutations may doom one twin to Down's syndrome or some other genetic affliction, while the other is unscathed. Identical twins may even be of different sex! Of course, such twins are genetically different, but they are still monozygotic (from the same egg). Blood tests will show them to be identical. It used to be thought that the small ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 50: Mar-Apr 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Mind-bending the velocity vectors of marine algae From the referenced paper's abstract: "A consciousness experiment in which the Doppler shift of He/Ne laser light was used to describe changes in the velocity and vector of a marine alga, Dunaliella, was reported by Pleass and Dey in 1985. Because the subject of the consciousness experiment is living, we expect strings of baseline velocity and vector data which are, at some level, inextricably time-variant. This complicates the statistical procedures which must be used to analyze the data. "This paper examines the variation in baseline data strings, and describes two alternative statistical procedures which have been used to determine the probability of consciousness effects. Two levels of control are applied, allowing global comparison of frequency distributions of experimental scores with similar distributions derived artificially from baseline data. In both cases the null hypothesis is that there is no psi effect. The data quite strongly suggest the rejection of the null hypothesis, although the distributions of run scores contain several values beyond 3 sigma and are nonnormal. This limits the definition of probabilities." (Pleass, C.M ., and Dey, N. Dean; "Finding the Rabbit in the Bush: Statistical Analysis of Consciousness Research Data from the Motile Alga Dunaliella," The Explorer, 3:6 , no. 2, 1986. The Explorer is a publication of the Society for Scientific Exploration.) Comment. ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 74: Mar-Apr 1991 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Echidna Eccentricities Monotremes: platypus (below); one of two species of echidnas (above) The echidna is one of the monotremes-- an egg-laying mammal. Like its relative, the platypus, it is a strange mixture of mammalian, marsupial, and reptilian characteristics. For example, echidna eggs are soft and leathery, like those of reptiles, but they are brooded in a marsupial-like pouch. The emerging baby echidna has an egg tooth like the birds and reptiles, while the adult has no teeth at all. Rather, it has a narrow snout through which it ingests ants and termites caught on its sticky tongue. In this it resembles the mammalian ant-eaters, which are also toothless but an ocean away from Australia. In fact, the echidna is often called a "spiny anteater" for it has the sharp spines of a hedgehog or porcupine. There are more anatomical peculiarities, but let us focus on the echidna's strange behavior during the mating season. At this time, 2 to 8 echidnas can be seen roaming the Australian bush in "trains" headed by a female with the smallest male acting as a caboose. When mating time arrives, the female anchors herself to a tree with her forelegs. To-gether the males dig a circular "mating rut" up to 10 inches deep around the tree. (Australians have puzzled over these circular trenches for years. ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 74: Mar-Apr 1991 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Earthquake Lights Observed In Canada Numerous earthquake lights (EQLs) were reported between November 1, 1988, and January 2l, 1989, in the Saguenay region of Quebec. These luminosities were associated with 54 seismic shocks recorded in this area. Most were small, but a strong foreshock (magnitude 4.8 ) occurred on November 23; the main quake (magnitude 6.5 ) hit 60 hours later. Through appeals by radio and newspapers, 52 observers of EQLs were located. They reported a wide spectrum of luminosities, some of which were very strange. In the sky, some observed silent sparkings, diffuse glows, and aurora-like stripes. For an account of the more enigmatic EQLs, we quote M. Ouellet: "Fireballs a few metres in diameter often popped out of the ground in a repetitive manner at distances of up to only a few metres away from the observers. Others were seen several hundred metres up in the sky, stationary or moving. Some observers described dripping luminescent droplets, rapidly disappearing a few metres under the stationary fireballs. Only two fire-tongues on the ground were reported, one on snow and the other on a paved parking space without any apparent surface fissure. The colours most often identified were orange, yellow, white and green. Some luminosities lasted up to 12 min." (Ouellet, Marcel; "Earthquake Lights and Seismicity," Nature, 348:492 ...
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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 Ubiquity Of American Archeological Anomalies An inscribed stone from Connecticut. Interpreting the marks as ogam writing; Face 1 (left) reads up, Face 2 (right) reads down. Adapted from the Bulletin of the Early Sites Research Society and the Occasional Publications of the Epigraphic Society. One would think that all North American archeological anomalies worth mentioning would already be firmly ensconced in the professional literature. This does not seem to be the case, unless one is very conservative about defining "worth mentioning." Ancient coins, anomalous inscriptions, and other intriguing tidbits are being found all the time, but few hear about them. The conventional journals, such as American Antiquity and the American Anthropologist disdain such discoveries. One place to find them is in the Occasional Publications of the Epigraphic Society. The 1987 compilation of these papers is at hand, and it is chock full of fascinating things. The following data are from Volume 16 for 1987. Ancient coins. A bronze coin of the ancient Greek city of Amisos was found about six years ago by Doyle Ellis, who was searching for gold with a metal detector in the channel of the Snake River in Idaho. It was deeply embedded in the gravel. In a small Indian mound at Deer Creek, near Chilicothe, Ohio, a Numidian bronze coin was recently uncovered. It has a BC date. "Oddly, those same coins, regarded in the Old World as artifacts of ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 74: Mar-Apr 1991 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Mechanical Paradox In Thrust Faulting In many parts of the world, older rocks are found on top of younger rocks. Ob-viously the Principle of Superposition is contradicted in such situations. Two possible explanations exist for these inverted strata: (1 ) The dating of the rocks is incorrect; or (2 ) Geological forces somehow slid the older rocks over the top of the younger rocks. Few mainstream scientists give any thought to the first possibility because it implies that evolution did not proceed as presently envisioned. (Rocks are often dated by their fossil contents.) So, geologists are left with the problems of sliding great masses of rock over rough surfaces for great distances. Sketch of the forces acting upon a thrust block being pushed by a wedge-shaped driver Low-angle thrust faulting is not a trivial geological process. To illustrate, the Lewis Overthrust in Montana and adjacent Canada involves the shoving of a block of old strata hundreds of feet thick, hundreds of miles long, over younger rock for a distance of possibly 50 miles. In contemplating such overthrusts, one immediately comes face to face with the Mechanical Paradox. Brief-ly, given the coefficient of friction between the layers of rock, the weight of the thrust block, and the mechanical strength of the rock being pushed, it can be shown that pushing the thrust block at the rear edge will crush it long before it begins to slide. For ...
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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 Dead Water Two recent issues of Weather discuss some of the unusual geophysical phenomena encountered by F. Nansen in his epic attempt to reach the North Pole at the end of the last century. Nansen first endeavored to go as far north as he could in his specially constructed vessel, the Fram . It was on the Fram that he struggled with "dead water." J.M . Walker, drawing from Nansen's marvelous written account Farthest North , describes the phenomenon: "Towards the end of August 1893, when Fram was off the Taymyr Peninsula, near the Nordenskiold Archipelago, 'dead water' was encountered. In the words of Nansen, this is 'a peculiar phenomenon', which 'occurs where a surface layer of fresh water rests upon the salt water of the sea, and this fresh water is carried along with the ship, gliding on the heavier sea beneath as if on a fixed foundation'. It 'manifests itself', he observed, 'in the form of larger or smaller ripples or waves stretching across the wake, the one behind the other, arising sometimes as far foward as almost midships'. When caught in dead water, Nansen reported, Fram appeared to be held back, as if by some mysterious force, and she did not always answer the helm. In calm weather, with a light cargo, Fram was capable of 6 to 7 knots. When in dead ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 68: Mar-Apr 1990 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Periodical Invasions Of Aliens Forget those contemporary tales of UFO landings and human contacts with their alien navigators. Aliens have been land-ing here and mixing with the human populace for centuries. In fact, their traffic peaks about every 11 years, just when the solar cycle reaches its maximum. By now, you've probably guessed that F. Hoyle and N.C . Wickramasinghe are again talking about flu pandemics and sunspots. You must admit, however, that their correlation is becoming more and more convincing. Yearly means of daily sunspot numbers correlated with dates of flu pandemics First, we have their graph covering the past 70 years which speaks for itself. You can add the 1990 flu outbreak to the curve yourself! To strengthen the correlation Hoyle and Wickramasinghe tabulate flu and sunspot data back to 1761. They find that flu pandemics and sunspot maxima have kept in step for the last 17 cycles. Key to the Hoyle-Wickramasinghe argument is their contention that simple life forms (viruses, bacteria, etc.) not only exist in outer space but likely evolved there. If so, how do they ride in to afflict us on the peaks of the solar cycle? Here's how, in their words: "In conclusion, we note that electrical fields associated with intense solar winds can rapidly drive charged particles of the size of viruses down through the exposed upper atmosphere into the shelter of the lower atmosphere, ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 122: Mar-Apr 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Another Skin Shedder In Biological Anomalies: Humans II, we define skin-shedding as follows: "The rapid, complete shedding of the skin in large sheets, after the fashion of reptiles. This curious exfoliation often occurs on a rather precise annual schedule." Bizarre though this phenomenon is, we have cataloged several cases in BHO15. A 1908 issue of the New York Times has yielded still another instance. "For the twenty-eighth time in the last fifty-three years, William U. Cake, a linoleum printer, of 25 Cleveland Avenue [Trenton], is shedding his skin as a snake does. Instead of periodical casting aside of the cuticle, Cake is likely to shed his skin at any time. "Cake has been afflicted with this skin-shedding malady since childhood. First, he is taken with a chill, then the skin dries up, cracks, and peels off entirely within two weeks. During this period he suffers agony because of itching. But as soon as the skin has been shed, Cake is all right again. He has several children, but none of them has manifested any symptoms of skin shedding. .. .. . "The longest interval that Cake remembers in which the malady did not manifest itself was nine years, but his skin generally comes off once in two years." (Anonymous; "Sheds His Skin Like a Snake," New York ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 122: Mar-Apr 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A Genetic Disconnect Bandings on chromosome 9 from humans (H ), chimpanzees (C ), gorillas (G ), orang-utans (O ) If human and chimpanzee nuclear DNAs differ by only 1.5 %, why are the two species so profoundly different in anatomy and behavior? The obvious external differences are body hair, the use of language, the method of locomotion, and of course culture. Less well known is the fact that humans are more susceptible to diseases like as cancer and AIDS. Apparently, superficial comparisons of DNAs slough over genetic details that result in major differences in the living animals. Some of the genetic differences between humans and chimps seem to belie that miniscule 1.5 % difference everyone bandies about. To illustrate, humans have only 46 chromosomes, while the great apes all have 48. The 1.5 % figure doesn't hint at this significant difference. Next, take a look at chromosome #9 in humans and the great apes. Chromosome bandings are different enough to raise further suspicions about the 1.5 % figure. (Gibbons, Ann; "Which of Our Genes Make Us Human?" Science, 281:1432, 1998.) Comments. It is easy to see how gross comparisons of DNA might miss important details. The popular "DNA-hybridization" method simply mixes together strands of DNA from the two species being compared. These are allowed ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 122: Mar-Apr 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Bizarre Physiological Effects Of Lightning July 1969. Lawson, Missouri. Lightning is unpredictable and produces many weird effects, but the following case pushes the weirdness envelope. An electrician was driving home through an intense rainstorm that was accompanied by severe lightning. He parked his truck outside his house. Then it happened: "As I started up the drive, I took about three or four steps, and then it was as though I had stepped into a very soft cotton ball. My whole body felt as if my head was behind my shoulders and being pulled down between my shoulder blades." When he awoke, he was about 50 feet away on the other side of a fence and on his neighbor's property. His boots had been knocked off. The coins in his pocket and his belt buckle had melted. A visit to a doctor proved that he had been struck by lightning, and that his spine had been severely damaged. Much stranger was his reaction to the ambient temperature. He was now impervious to cold. He was most comfortable between -10 and 0 F. His normal body temperature was low, just 95.2 , not terribly far from normal. He just didn't feel the cold. He never wore a coat and was comfortable working that way even at -23 F! The electrician is far from being disabled. He even poses for photographs in the snow wearing just shorts and ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 122: Mar-Apr 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Exceptional Human Experiences Surely everyone reading this has had at least one experience that seemed to transcend the orderly ebb and flow of daily life. It's just as easy to be skeptical about these experiences -- to shrug them off -- as it is to overvalue them. There exists a unique organization dedicated to exploring this neglected body of phenomena lurking at the edges of normal human perception and experience. It is called the Exceptional Human Experience Network (EHEN). S.V . Brown, Director of R&D for the EHEN, has written a paper describing the mission of the Network. With her permission, we reproduce the paper's abstract. "The Exceptional Human Experience Network has a different approach to anomalous, out-of-the-ordinary Exceptional Experiences (EEs). By taking the emphasis off proof, or artificially trying to "cause" or stage events in the laboratory, or passively collecting case reports, we are actively trying to understand what these types of experiences and the experiencers are telling us as a whole. Inspection of the data indicates that there is a distinctive, recognizable patterning or clustering of inner and outer events: triggers, concommitants, and aftereffects which are similar across experiencer reports from over 100 different types of EEs. Preliminary study shows that those individuals who begin to explore their EEs and question conventional answers may undergo a series of similar developmental, predictable, humanizing, and ...
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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 A Curious Sighting September 29, 1991. Winchester, Eng land. A wet day, but the rain had stopped and the wind velocity dropped. The 'subject' is a B. Brumpton. His actual words are in single quotes, as told to B. Hayes: "A high easterly breeze was blowing along New Road which runs eastwest and is about 400 yards long. The subject was 30 yards from the western end facing east. He first noticed the 'object' at approximately 150 yards, at which his reaction was that he was 'seeing things'. The object 'filled the highway', so this suggests a width of eight metres or so. It was 'on the ground' and 'round-topped', suggesting to me a hemisphere. The 'object' was a 'mass of mist' and 'looked very wet'. It seemed to 'roll' toward the subject at a speed that he estimated at 30 m.p .h . However, his estimate of halfa-minute for travelling 150 yards gives a speed of 20 m.p .h . Let us not forget that time is difficult to estimate after an event. "The object emitted a noise 'like very heavy rain pounding on the road', except that it was not raining at the time, and the subject became concerned about 'getting soaked'. Also, the 'mist' ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 122: Mar-Apr 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Mosier Mounds In past issues (SF#38 and SF#115) we introduced the still-mysterious East Bay walls that stretch for some 50 miles along the foothills bordering San Francisco Bay. The strange, meandering stone lines of the Panamint Valley near Death Valley appeared in AR#3 . In fact, the western states are festooned with curious stone structures. Now we add the Mosier Mounds to this file. On the south bank of the Columbia, near Mosier, Oregon, archeologists have mapped a 30-acre complex of rock walls, cairns, pits, and troughs -- a vertiable maze of lithic structures. (See map.) The most impressive features are alignments of stacked rocks that hug the contours of the slopes. Although their configuration suggests a battlement, the stone formations weave so sinuously that they cannot be defensive in nature. Some anthropologists suggest that these various lithic structures were used for burials, vision quests, and even the physical conditioning of the young men who were given the job of piling up all the stones! No precise dates are available, but the Mosier Mounds probably predate European contact. (Connolly, Thomas J., et al; "Mapping the Mosier Mounds: The Significance of Rock Feature Complexes on the Southern Columbia Plateau," Journal of Archaeo logical Science, 24:289, 1997.) Maps of the main concentrations of Mosier Mounds. The heavier lines represent the ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 68: Mar-Apr 1990 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Magnetic bacteria in the soil and who knows where else?It is already well-established that saltand fresh-water sediments harbor bacteria that synthesize grains of magnetite - presumably for the purpose of sensing the ambient magnetic field and orienting themselves. Similar bacteria have recently been discovered living in ordinary soil in Bavaria. It is near-certain that they will now be found just about everywhere. J.W .E . Fassbinder et al, who reported the Bavarian bacteria, conclude their Abstract with: "We suggest that the magnetic bacteria and their magnetofossils can contribute to the magnetic properties of soils." (Fassbinder, Jorg W.E ., et al; "Occurrence of Magnetic Bacteria in Soil." Nature, 343:161, 1990.) Comment. It is easy to reach great heights of speculation given the facts that: (1 ) magnetic bacteria exist; (2 ) bacteria in general are exceedingly abundant; and (3 ) bacteria are found deep inside the earth's crust and, seemingly, just about anywhere one cares to look. Now, let's see how ridiculous one can get: Magnetic bacteria and/or their fossils contribute heavily to the magnetic properties of sedimentary rocks and unlithified sediments, such as deep-sea sediments. In fact, magnetostratigraphy and paleomagnetism in general may be based upon bioartifacts and be suspect. Magnetic bacteria and/or their fossils are present in such immense ...
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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 The milky sea a.k .a . "white water"June 1854. South of Java. Aboard the American clipper Shooting Star . Captain Kingman reporting: "The whole appearance of the ocean was like a plain covered with snow. There was scarce a cloud in the heavens, yet the sky...appeared as black as if a storm was raging. The scene was one of awful grandeur; the sea having turned to phosphorus, and the heavens being hung in blackness, and the stars going out, seemed to indicate that all nature was preparing for that last grand conflagration which we are taught to believe is to annihilate this material world." We selected this account of the milky sea phenomenon because of its vivid verbiage -- something absent from the modern reports: "August 13, 1986. Northwest Indian Ocean. The entire sea surface took on an intense white glow which was not unlike viewing the negative of a photograph." The milky sea is a rather common phenomenon. In fact, the British Meteorological Office has established a Bioluminescence Database, which presently contains 235 reports of milky seas seen since 1915. P.J . Herring and M. Watson have employed this Database in a review paper on these impressive displays. Geographical plotting of the reports shows a strong concentration in the northwest Indian Ocean (see figure). Seasonally, there is a strong peaking in August and a secondary blip in ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 68: Mar-Apr 1990 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Game of life favors right-handers With condolences to our southpaw readers, things do not look too good for them. Accidents. "Left-handed people are almost twice as likely to suffer a serious accident as right-handers, according to a recent study. Stanley Coren, an experimental psychologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, claims that his finding helps to explain why less than 1 per cent of all 80year-olds are 'southpaws,' whereas they comprise nearly 13 per cent of all people aged 20." Coren surveyed students at his University for four years and found that the probability of a left-hander having a car accident was 85% higher; accidents with tools were 54% higher; home accidents were 49% higher; etc. Coren blames these lopsided statistics upon the fact that the world is ordered for right-handers, not that left-handers are innately more clumsy. (Dayton, Leigh; "The Perils of Living in a Right-Handed World," New Scientist, p. 32, October 28, 1989.) But Coren's study, above, omits the "health" factor, which we now supply from a different source. "Halpern and Coren recently described an association between lefthandedness and a lower life expectancy. This finding is not unexpected because left-handedness has been linked to three leading causes of death in our society - ...
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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 Possible Chain Of Meteorite Scars In Argentina A string of linear depressions characterizes the Rio Cuarto crater field In the January 16, 1992, issue of Nature, P.H . Schultz and R.E . Lianza describe a curious chain of grooves incised in the Argentine pampas near Rio Cuarto. "During routine flights two years ago .. ., one of us (R .E .L .) noticed an anomalous alignment of oblong rimmed depressions (4 km x 1 km) on the otherwise featureless farmland of the Pampas of Argentina. We argue here, from sample analysis and by analogy with laboratory experiments, that these structures resulted from lowangle impact and ricochet of a chondritic body originally 150-300 m in diameter." There are ten gouges in all, strung out along 50 kilometers. The scars are young, perhaps only a few thousand years old, well within the time of human habitation. Schultz and Lianza also found pieces of meteoritic rock and glassy fragments of impact melt. (Schultz, Peter H., and Lianza, Ruben E.; "Recent Grazing Impacts on the Earth Recorded in the Rio Cuarto Crater Field, Argentina," Nature, 355:234, 1992. Also: Monastersky, R.; "Meteorite Hopscotched across Argentina," Science News, 141:55, 1992.) Comments. Note the similarities to the much more numerous Carolina Bays. See ETB1 in our catalog ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 128: MAR-APR 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects "Uprooting the Tree of Life"Yes, that is the title of a long article in the February 2000 issue of Scientific American. In the Table of Contents, we see words concerning this article that we never thought would be permitted in a mainstream science magazine. After first noting that 10 years ago it was generally agreed that all organisms evolved from a single ancestral cell that existed about 3.5 billion years ago, there comes the assertion that the Tree of Life: "is far more complicated than was believed and may not have had a single root at all." The article proper relates how the Tree of Life has its own evolutionary history. Twenty years ago, scientists had that single ancestral cell splitting into two main trunks: the prokaryotes (bacteria) and the eukaryotes (every-thing else). More recently, a third trunk has been grafted onto the Tree; namely, the archaea (microorganisms that look like bacteria but possess markedly different genes). The archaea favor extreme environments and, curiously, are more closely related to you and me than are the bacteria. But according to this article (by W.F . Doolittle), the triple-trunked Tree of Life is simplistic. One reason for this is that genes, once thought to flow only from parent to progeny, are now known to travel laterally. Species barriers are broken. Genes jump from trunk to trunk, from ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 128: MAR-APR 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Burps of Death Not only did the poor dinosaurs have to contend with an asteroid impact and a lurch of the poles, but also with the possible ignition of voluminous methane burps. 65-million years ago. This was the time of the well-publicized, but still hypothetical, asteroid impact. It is said to have wreaked havoc on our wounded planet and, especially, the dinosaurs. Volcanos spewed out vast lava fields and filled the air with greenhouse gases and dust. It was a bad time for many life forms. Actually, It may have been far worse than generally advertised. In addition to the volcanic activity and climate change, the shock of the asteroid impact could have been sufficient to destabilize the immense amounts of methane hydrate that have long been locked up, frozen and dormant, in oceanic sediments all over the world. According to this scenario, once the shock of the asteroid impact released the methane from its icy prison, it rose to the surface of the oceans in a world-wide burp. Methane, unfortunately for the dinosaurs and many other life forms, is highly flammable. Lightning could have ignited it almost immediately if it was concentrated enough. A colossal firestorm might have then enveloped the entire planet. The whole atmosphere could have been afire. This, according to B. Hurdle and colleagues at the Naval Research Laboratory, who speculate that the dinosaur hegemony may ended suddenly in flames rather than ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 128: MAR-APR 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A Different Sort of Crop Circle Ball lightning reports are very common, but here is one worth recording because of its unusual physical effects. It was investigated and reported by O. Stummer. In May or June of 1988 or 1989 around 2 P.M . CEST, Mr. Alois Fuehrer, a farmer of 38 years from Jungschlag, a small village south of Ottenschlag, northern Lower Austria, 850 meters above sea level, returned early from fieldwork because a heavy thunderstorm moved in from the north-west. Fuehrer stood in the open on a wooden plank at the rear of the diesel tractor driven by his father. The vehicle had passed the last Ottenschlag houses southbound, when he noticed a falling object. It was round, 20 centimeters across, and "seemed to come down like a toy balloon", vertical, soundless, without rotation. It was brilliant white, a steady light, and had "something like a smoke trail". Only 20 to 30 meters to the right of the tractor and of the road, after 4 to 6 seconds, the object hit the surface of a green summer barley field, flashed up and "exploded with a loud, very high pitched bang". Mr. Fuehrer said "this was no thunder", and noticed no heat or pressure wave. However, what he felt caused panic--a tingling, and his hairs stood on end on his head ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 128: MAR-APR 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Fake Needles but Real Knives The effect of a patient's mind in medical procedures can be as powerful as drugs and real surgery. This is the well known placebo effect. But how can doctors differentiate between the healing power of the mind and that of chemicals and scalpels? The logical thing to do is to fake the procedure with one group of patients and compare results with a second group that got the "real thing." Of course, ethical problems come to the fore because doctors are supposed to cure people and not to pretend to. The ethical dimension is accentuated when real knives are employed and real blood flows. Our first item is not invasive but interesting nonetheless. Placebo acupuncture. Many physicians scoff at acupuncture. Placebo experiments could prove its efficacy. To this end, special placebo needles have been invented. Like the fake daggers used on the stage, the points are blunt and retractable. The acupuncture patient feels a pinprick and thinks he or she sees the needle penetrating the skin, but it's all fakery. At the University of Heidelberg, 52 people with rotator cuff tendinitis were split into two groups; 25 were punctured with real needles, the rest just thought they were. In this experiment, the first group showed much greater improvement than those treated with the fake needles. Real acupuncture was more powerful than the placebo effect. Now if we can only figure out how real acupuncture works! ...
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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 The Steens Mountain Conundrum The layered lava flows of Steens Mountain, in southeastern Oregon, have preserved video-like records of the earth's magnetic field as it switched from one polarity to another about 15.5 million years ago. The scientific "instruments" here are the cooling lava flows. As they solidify from the outside in, a process taking about 2 weeks for a 2meter-thick flow, the lava is magnetized in the direction of the field prevailing at the moment of solidification. We would thus have a 2-week continuous record of the behavior of the earth's field. Ordinarily, we would not expect to see very much change in 2 weeks; even a reversing field is thought to take thousands of years to complete its flip-flop. However, at Steens Mountain, when the field reversed 15.5 million years ago, the lava flows suggest that the field's axis was rotating 3-8 per day -- incredibly fast according to current thinking, in fact a thousand times faster than expected. The conundrum (one might call it a scientific impasse) arises because the flowing electrically conducting fluids that supposedly constitute the earth's dynamo would have to flow at speeds of several kilometers/hour. No one has ever contemplated molten rock moving at such speeds in the core! (Appenzeller, Tim; "A Conundrum at Steens Mountain," Science, 255:31 ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 68: Mar-Apr 1990 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Quiet sun: violent earth When R.B . Stothers, at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, decided to look into the possible correlation of solar activity and terrestrial volcanism, he fully expected to find no connection at all. After all, what force generated by small changes in the sun's output could stir up the earth's magma from a distance of 93 million miles? Stothers was surprised. "Stothers analyzed two immense catalogs, published in the early 1980s, that list more than 55,000 known eruptions since the year 1500. Concentrating on several hundred of the moderate-to-large eruptions, he found statistically significant patterns in eruption frequency that match the solar cycle. Eruptions seemed most numerous during the weakest portions of the solar cycle." Further, there was a 97% confidence that the correlation was not a statistical accident. The only cause-and-effect explanation offered by Stothers was negative and indirect. During periods of abundant sunspots, increased solar emissions jar the earth's atmosphere slightly. Communicated to the crust, these slight taps trigger tiny earthquakes that relieve stresses beneath volcanos, thus delaying their eruptions until solar acitivity dies down. Not especially convincing! (Anonymous; "Volcanos on Earth May Follow the Sun," Science News, 137:47, 1990.) Comment. Down the years, many scientists and laymen have tried to correlate sunspots and earthquake frequency ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 68: Mar-Apr 1990 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Michigan's prehistoric garden beds Type 5. Parallel beds. Width of beds, 6 feet; paths, 4 feet; length, 12-40 feet; height, 18 inches. The prehistoric ridged fields, canals, aqueducts, and other agricultural engineering feats found in South and Central America, and even our own Southwest, continue to amaze us. Almost totally forgotten, however, are the equally impressive "garden beds" of southern Michigan. Happily, the INFO Journal has just reprinted B. Hubbard's 1878 paper describing these works that stretched for miles along the Grand and St. Joseph Rivers. Of course, modern activities have obliterated them completely; and even in Hubbard's day they were mostly gone. First, Hubbard's general description of the "garden beds": "The so-called 'Garden Beds' were found in the valleys of the St. Joseph and Grand Rivers, where they occupied the most fertile of the prairie land and burr-oak plains, principally in the counties of St. Joseph, Cass and Kalamazoo. "They consisted of raised patches of ground, separated by sunken paths, and were generally arranged in plats or blocks of parallel beds. These varied in dimensions, being from five to sixteen feet in width, in length from twelve to more than one hundred feet, and in height from six to eighteen inches. "The tough sod of the ...
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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 Water Signposts, Ritual Paths The high, desloate, and sere plains of western South America are an ideal medium upon which to inscribe immense pictographs. Die-straight lines several miles long and a few yards wide were made centuries ago on Peru's Nazca Plain by simply removing off to the side the rocky veneer of the plain's surface. Less than an inch of rain falls each year there -- not enough to wash out of word of what was written 2,000 years ago. Actually, no words as such are inscribed, rather there are huge biomorphs (for example, a pelican 1,000 feet long) and geoglyphs (a trapezoid enclosing 160,000 square yards). Overlaying and mingling with these pictographs is an apparent hodgepodge of hundreds of straight lines, one of which is 9 miles long. It is a confusing canvas to say the least. This gigantic terrestrial easel covers 400 square miles. Upon it are drawn more than 1,000 biomorphs and geoglyphs, plus some 800 straight lines. It is one of the world's great archeological legacies from the deep past. Actually, at least two canvasses seem to be superimposed. The earliest canvas consists of the geoglyphs, which were incised beginning about 200 B.C . Peel away these, and we are left with the geometrical figures and straight lines. These seem to have been inscribed starting about 600 A.D . ...
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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 Bigfoot Mile-high, But Light-years From Acceptance Colorado is not prime Bigfoot country. Most Bigfoot reports come from the Pacific Northwest. Nevertheless, enough Bigfoot sightings, hearings, and footprints have accumulated in the Rockies for the Denver Post to print a lengthy review of the Bigfoot phenomenon. The article identifies three Colorado hotspots: (1 ) Leadville, where the Little Creek Monster was reported as early as the 1880s; (2 ) the southern San Juan Mountains; and (3 ) Pike National Forest. A few reports even come from the plains east of the Front Range. Coloradans have reported seeing the animals walking along a stream below Loveland Pass, drinking from a pond in the Lost Creek Wilderness, running after deer in the Roosevelt National Forest, chasing cars near Gypsum and roaring at hikers, campers and fishermen in various locations. The reports have come from scientists, wildlife biologists and elk hunters. Surely, this enough to convince everyone of Bigfoot's reality. Not so! To recognize Bigfoot officially scientists must have a living specimen, a corpse, or at least an good skeleton. They do not. Even though there are thousands of Bigfoot sightings recorded continent-wide plus hundreds of casts of huge footprints, these are not enough. Just as with UFOs and sea monsters, fraud and misidentification abound in that field of endeavor called "cryptozoology." However, bigfoot researchers do have one advantage over ...
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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 What Sang First?Not WHO, but WHAT! Sophisticated music predates the advent of modern humans by tens or hundreds of million years. Whales and birds filled the ocean and primeval forest with song long before our hominid branch sprouted on the Tree of Life. As a matter of fact, our closest relatives, the great apes, sing not at all. Somewhere in the hominid genome "music" genes reside, unexpressed in the apes, but somehow triggered into activity in the human line. We have learned recently that the Neanderthals manufactured bone flutes as far back at 53,000 years. They may not have been able to speak to one another in words, but they had the language of music. Their music, and ours, may have been entrained in genes inherited from nonhominid ancestors that lived 60 million years ago, but which have been suppressed in primates until Neanderthals and modern humans came along. You may wonder where this argument is taking you. It goes back at least 60 million years to when the cetacea (whales and dolphins) split off from the evolutionary track leading to humans. It may even go back farther to when birds split away from the reptilian line. The music of birds and whales incorporate some of the complexity and sophistication of Beethoven's Fifth. The genes that have led to such musical talents may be ancient indeed, as speculated in the Science article under review. The authors go ...
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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 Weird Waterspout?Spring 1934. North Pacific. Aboard the freighter Cape Horn enroute to Singapore with a cargo of sawn lumber. G. Craig was the helmsman on the Cape Horn during a powerful storm (winds of Force 9-10, seas running 8 meters high). Even at 4 A.M ., the phosphorescence of the breaking sea made it seem like daylight. At 4:30, Craig saw what he thought was a colossal wave forming. It was so large that the vessel seemed certain to capsize. He thought he was a goner. But, strangely, the "wave" closed with the vessel very slowly and seemed to move independently of the rest of the stormy sea. Craig recalled other strange features of the phenomenon: .. .what I had initially mistaken for wave crests were actually widely-spaced 'geysers', dancing on the upper surface and each rising to a height of about 20 feet. dropping to half of it, then rising again. [See Craig's sketch.] Then, suddenly, when all seemed lost, the wind dropped from a full gale to an eerie calm. The "wave" passed -- gently -- and then the storm resumed. The Cape Horn was drenched, but there had been no shattering of glass nor rending of wood. There was some flooding but no more than usual in very heavy seas. Some of the ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 62: Mar-Apr 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects More challenges to newton's law of gravitation Two experiments reported at the 1988 meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco can be added to the others that question Newton's venerable Law of Gravitation. The abstracts of these papers are short and to-the-point, so we quote them: "We have performed an experimental test of Newton's inverse-square law of gravitation. The test compared accurately measured gravity values along the 600 m WTVD tower near Raleigh, North Carolina, with upward, continued gravity estimates calculated from ground measurements. We found a significant departure from the inverse-square law, asymptotically approaching -547 36 microGal at the top of the tower. If this departure is derived from a scalar Yukawa potential, the coupling parameter is alpha = 0.023, the range is lambda = 280 m, and the Newtonian Gravitational Constant is G = (6 .52 0.01) x 1011 m3 kg-1 s-2 . We do not yet have adequate resolution to discriminate this scalar model from a scalarvector model." (Eckhardt, D.H ., et al; "Experimental Evidence for a Violation of Newton's Inverse-Square Law of Gravitation," Eos, 69:1046, 1988.) "In the late summer of 1987, an ex periment was performed to determine the value of the Newtonian gravitational constant, G, by measuring the ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 62: Mar-Apr 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Visual Sightings Of Vortices In Britain Of late, the cereal fields of Britain have been visited by a phenomenon which flattens the crops in nicely geometric circles, rings, and even patterns of circles. The meteorologists attribute these circles to unseen vortices in the atmos phere; more radical speculators invoke UFOs and mysterious Russian weapons. Pertinent to the explanation of this phenomenon are recent sightings of vapor vortices in regions where crop circles are common. While no one has yet seen these vortices gouging out circles, these visual manifestations betoken strong circular winds in the proper locations. Here follows a recent account: "Looking across the field of winter wheat to the east..., he suddenly noticed at a distance of 80 metres... what he took to be a large puff of white 'bonfire smoke' rising to 15 feet (5m) maximum height. The outer part of this 'smoke' column was scarcely rotating but the middle part, which was too thick to see through, was spinning rapidly. In a couple of seconds the effect had ended; the spinning central column had gone and the residual 'smoke' or cloud of fog drifted gently in the prevailing light north-east wind towards the southwest and dissolved after going several yards. He used the word smoke out of convenience but said that the effect was more likely caused by water vapour, cloud droplets or fog. He further emphasized the swiftness of the appearance ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 62: Mar-Apr 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The cookie cutter strikes again -- four times - in norway The divot from an And va moor Yes, the cookie-cutter phenomenon has left its mark again: more mysterious divots and holes in the ground. T. Jo nassen has sent us a study of the phenomenon published in Ottar , a publication of the Tromse Museum, in Norway. Even better, he has provided a translation, from which we quote a few paragraphs: "About 1 km SE of Skogvollvatnet (a lake), at Skogvollmyra (a moor), a slab of turf 5.2 m long and 1.8 m wide, has, in an apparently inexplicable manner, torn itself loose from its 'mother turf' and placed itself 4-5 m away. The slab of turf is completely undamaged and is placed with the right side up. The piece of turf has rotated 20-30 degrees compared to the original hole. The hole in the moor is absolutely even at the bottom, and the angle between the bottom and its walls is 90 degrees. The hole is 30-35 cm deep, and its edges are nicely cut. "From the hole there is a crack running westwards for about 6 m. Close to the hole this crack is somewhat widened, and one side of the crack twists itself 25-30 cm above the other. This twisting decreases as one gets further from the hole. The ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 62: Mar-Apr 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A MAMMOTH TALE!In the discussion of the genuineness of the Holly Oak pendant in SF#61, the possibility was raised that mammoths might have survived in North America until just a few centuries ago. Such survival is contrary to all mainstream thinking. Thus, when a datum comes along, even though it appears rather far-fetched, that testifies for the recent survival of mammoths, we must at least examine it. The datum in question (and it really is questionable) comes from the The Na tional Tombstone Epitaph , hardly part of the scientific literature! The article develops the theme that Chinese explorers landed in North America several millennia ago. The basis for such speculation is an ancient Chinese work called the Shun-Hai Ching , which is reputed to be about 3500 years old. In it, the Chinese explorers mention encounters with several strange animals. One is easily recognized as the collared peccary, known only in the New World, thus establishing the reality of a transPacific contact. Now, here is the piece de resistance: "Here we met a creature as tall as three men and so great that the earth trembled as he walked. He had a voice as loud as thunder. He was red like fire. From his mouth he spat spears of pearl, and he had but one long arm. He was wont to take up men in his hand and dash their brains out against rocks." ...
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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. 92: Mar-Apr 1994 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Chilean Astronomer Reports Unidentified Atmospheric Phenomena F. Noel is an astronomer at the National Astronomical Observatory located on the outskirts of Santiago. He is a veteran of hundreds of nights worth of stellar observations over almost 30 years. In the latest number of the Journal of Sci entific Exploration, he reported some of his more perplexing sightings in the Chilean skies, two of which are related below: "At approximately 22:30 local time on January 17, 1980, I was in front of my home in the eastern suburbs of Santiago de Chile. The sky was cloudless, although there was some smog, especially in the west in the direction of downtown. Sunset had occurred at 20:55 local time. "At that time I observed a point-shaped luminous object at an elevation of about 20 degrees; it was moving at a rather slow angular velocity from southwest to west approximately. No noise was heard and it looked like an artificial satellite, except for the direction of its motion. Its brightness, color and angular velocity reminded me of the old Echo artificial satellite from the 1960s. The object disappeared from sight during the few seconds it took me to call two persons to participate in the observation. It was not apparent how the object had disappeared from view since there were no sources of obscuration evident. Having become puzzled by this observation I continued watching that same region of sky from time to time. "About ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 74: Mar-Apr 1991 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects 50-POUND 'ICE BOMB' FALLS IN WEST VIRGINIA June 26, 1990. Jerry's Run, West Virginia. "Heisel and Alice Amos, and their grandson, Aaron Hupp, had just turned on a movie on television when the house was jarred with what Mrs. Amos thought was an explosion. "Looking out the front door, they saw their son, Donald, 43, looking in the direction of their television satellite dish some 30 yards away where something had hit the ground with a terrific impact. "Inspecting that area, they found a hole some 24 inches long and 18 inches wide, and about four to six inches deep filled with large chunks of broken ice. Amos said pieces of baseball- and marble-size ice were scattered in a 30-foot radius around the hole." Further facts from this newspaper account: Several other chunks of ice were found in an area about 1 mile long. Some chunks made whistling sounds as they fell. The larger chunks were completely transparent except for a yellowishbrown streak. Many of the chunks had sand in them. Some contained holes. The weather was clear. The Federal Aviation Administration stated that if the ice originated in aircraft toilets it would have been blue from the chemicals used. (Hawk, Harold; "50-Pound 'Ice Bomb' Falls near Jerry's Run," Parkersburg News, June 27, 1990. Cr ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 98: Mar-Apr 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The earth has recently been swallowed by a cloud of inter-stellar gas Using cosmic-ray data and stellar spectra gathered by seven satellites, P.C . Frisch, at the University of Chicago, has constructed a cosmic scenario that reminds us of F. Hoyle's science fiction tale, The Black Cloud . According to Frisch, until just a few thousand years ago, the solar system was cruising through interstellar space that was almost devoid of matter. Then, perhaps within historical times, 2,000-8 ,000 years ago, the solar system plunged into an interstellar gas cloud. This cloud is believed to be the remnant of the bubble of matter shot into space perhaps 250,000 years ago by a supernova in the Scorpius-Centaurus region. This tenuous cloud of gas feeds matter into the solar system, some of which interacts with the solar wind and, therefore, affects the geomagnetic field, too. Climate changes may have been caused by entry into this cloud, and very likely the flux of cosmic rays impinging on the earth would have been modulated. (Frisch, Priscella C.; "Morphology and Ionization of the Interstellar Cloud Surrounding the Solar System," Science, 265:1423, 1994. Also: Peterson, I.; "Finding a Place for the Sun in a Cloud," Science News, 146:148, 1994.) Comment. Note that the 2 ...
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