5 results found.
... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 73: Jan-Feb 1991 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects New Kinds Of Matter Turns Up In Cosmic Rays "Japanese physicists claim to have found evidence of 'strange matter' in cosmic rays. Their detectors have recorded two separate events, each of which can be explained by the arrival of a particle with a charge 14 times as great as the charge on a proton, and a mass 170 times the proton's mass. No atomic nucleus -- made of protons and neutrons -- exists that matches this description, but these properties are precisely in the range predicted for so-called quark nuggets, which physicists believe may be made of a type of material dubbed strange matter." (Gribbin, John; "New Kind of Matter Turns Up in Cosmic Rays," New Scientist, p. 22, November 10, 1990.) The original report appeared in Physical Review Letters , 65:2094, 1990. In it, the Japanese scientists describe their balloon-borne equipment, proving that one does not need fancy spacecraft to make important discoveries. The key feature of the quark nugget is its very high mass-to-charge ratio. Where do quark nuggets come from? The theoreticians surmise that they may be created when neutron stars collide or, perhaps, they are left over from the hypothetical Big Bang. From Science Frontiers #73, JAN-FEB 1991 . 1991-2000 William R. Corliss ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 36 - 15 May 2017 - URL: /sf073/sf073a02.htm
... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 123: May-Jun 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Copper Pseudomorphs There are two places in the world where large masses of native (almost pure) copper are common: the Lake Superior region, particularly Isle Royale, and Corocoro, Bolivia. The largest "nugget" of nearly pure copper comes from Lake Superior and weighs almost 46 tons! But the Corocoro mines are rich in another way; copper "pseudomorphs." In copper pseudomorphs, copper ions insidiously invade crystals of other minerals and assume their shapes. Copper pseudomorphs of aragonite, a form of CaCO3 , are common. Aragonite sometimes occurs as short, tabular, hexagonal prisms, as shown in the sketch. Under the water table, in a copper-rich area, copper ions in solution "attack" aragonite crystals. First, they oust and replace the outer layers of CaCO3 , gilding the aragonite crystal with a thin layer of pure copper. Then, they work inwardly and eventually usurp the whole crystal and take on its shape. Even stranger are those hexagonal crystals that are pure aragonite in the top half and pure copper in the bottom half. Mineralogists speculate that these formed along the edge of the water table. (Hyrsl, Jaroslav, and Petrov, Alfred; "Pseudomorphs from Bolivia," Rocks and Minerals , 73:110, November/December 1998.) From Science Frontiers #123, MAY-JUN 1999 . 1999-2000 William R. Corliss ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 15 - 15 May 2017 - URL: /sf123/sf123p11.htm
... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 146: Mar-Apr 2003 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Equator Correction Did the Ainu Reach Mexico? An Iron-Age Spread Coon Cats Continued Astronomy The Alien Planets The Bottom Two-Thirds of a Cosmological Iceberg Biology The Outer Ocean of Life The Shape-Shifting Icon Biology's "Dark Matter" Did ID (Intelligent Design) have Dimensional Limits? Geology The KTB Bombardment D'Émeraudes en Forme de Coquillages Geophysics The Possible Detection of two Quark Nuggets Piercing the Earth The Naga Fireballs Nach Sturm Regnete es Fische auf die Felder Unclassified The best UFO Cases ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 15 - 15 May 2017 - URL: /sf146/index.htm
... Project Sourcebook Subjects The moon: still partly molten?Our long-time impression has been that our moon is a cold body, solidified eons ago, when its primordial ration of heat radiated away. But the lunar satellite Clementine -- tracked with great precision by lasers on earth -- undulates suspiciously as it orbits the moon. "The overall shape of the orbit traces the broad tidal bulges raised on the moon by Earth and the sun; the size and timing of the bulges depend on the moon's rigidity. The Clementine data show that somewhere, probably deep in its interior, the moon is not quite as rigid as solid rock would be. Most likely, part of the rock is still molten." (Kerr, Richard A.; "Clementine Mines Its First Nuggets on the Moon," Science, 264:1666, 1994.) From Science Frontiers #96, NOV-DEC 1994 . 1994-2000 William R. Corliss ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 14 - 15 May 2017 - URL: /sf096/sf096a04.htm
... 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 Science. We now extract one nugget from each of these two sources. From Nature's review. Humans are more primitive than microorganisms in the sense that we still retain cumbersome introns (nonsense DNA) in our genes, while lowly microorganisms have been able to eliminate them. From Science. No one seems to have a clue about where RNA came from. C. de Duve ventured that: ". .. the emergence of RNA depended on robust chemical reactions -- it is wrong to imagine that some fantastic single accidental event supported the development of the RNA World." In connection with the generally accepted idea that the evolution of RNA must have taken hundreds of millions of years: ". .. de Duve suggested that, on the contrary, for such a complex chemical process to succeed it must have ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 13 - 15 May 2017 - URL: /sf092/sf092b07.htm
