... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 132: NOV-DEC 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Puzzling Partitions The Indian mathematician S. Ramanujan's has been called a "magical genius" because his remarkable insights seemed to come out of the blue -- like magic. We have not neglected Ramanujan in this newsletter ( SF#53 and here ), and now we spotlight him again. First, a quick primer on a fascinating mathematical byway called "partitions." A partition is a way in which a whole number can be expressed as the sum of positive integers. For example, 5 can be partitioned in seven ways: 5 4+ 1 3+ 2 3+ 1+ 1 2+ 2+ 1 2+ 1+ 1+ 1 1+ 1+ 1+ 1+ 1 The number 4 has only five partitions. Check it out. Historically, ordinary mortals saw no patterns in the number of partitions possessed by the parade of numbers until Ramanujan came along. He had in front of him a list of the number of partitions for each of the first 200 integers. They ranged from one (for 1) to 3,972,999,029,388 (for 200). [That of a computer is itself worthy of mention!] Here is the order that Ramanujan perceived: Starting with 5, the number of partitions for every seventh integer is a multiple of 7, and starting with 6, the number of partitions for every 11th integer is a multiple of 11 ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 133: JAN-FEB 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Superorganisms: From Simplicity To Complexity Superorganisms are biological entities made up of large numbers of simpler entities that have banded together to perform functions they cannot do as individuals. Termite mounds are often mentioned as superoganisms. But here we examine colonies of organisms that are much simpler and much smaller than termites. What entices the anomalist to attend to superorganisms? Here are two of the several questions superorganisms raise. How do superorganisms evolve properties that its constituent individuals do not possess, such as mobility, unique sensors, and even a modicum of intelligence. Since superorganisms do not reproduce as superorganisms, how can natural selection operate on these superorganisms? Salps. Books dealing with the unexplained sometimes include a photograph of a huge marine creature identified as a sea monster. This famous photo is real and so is the monster in it. But this creature is not reptilian; it is really a salp, a colonial tunicate. Tunicates are tiny, primitive marine organisms usually classified as invertebrates. Some species of tunicates have somehow acquired the habit of aggregating in immense numbers to create long, hollow, snake-like tubes called "salpa." Salps may reach lengths of 45 feet, with diameters of 3 feet. No wonder they are falsely identified as sea monsters. Structurally, the tunicates comprising the salp are embedded in a gelatinous wall facing inward. Each possesses a siphon that pumps nutrient-carrying sea water. Working in unison, the tunicates create ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 106: Jul-Aug 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Stonehenge in the 1990s: a mainstream view In a recent number of Nature, C. Ruggles reviewed the present status of Stonehenge as mainstream archeologists now see this world-famous monument. oThe construction of Stonehenge began a bit earlier than previously thought: 2950 50 BC. But beneath the present parking area are post holes dated 4,000 years earlier! They are apparently not related to the Stonehenge we know. oThe idea that Stonehenge's bluestones, which originated in the Preseli Mountains of southwest Wales, 200 kilometers distant, were carried to Salisbury Plain by glaciers has been emphatically disproved by geologists. These 4-ton stones were transported by people! This great effort required precocious social organization, communication, and some kind of psychological impetus. oThe sarsens -- those even bigger stones that define Stonehenge in our mind's view -- evoke the same sorts of questions as this issue's eccentric flints: Why? and How? Ruggles writes: "Why it was important to bring stones from so far away is an open question, as is the issue of how people achieved the almost unimaginable feat of hauling the sarsens, weighing 25 tonnes or more, over 30 km from the Marlborough Downs in the north." oNew studies of the other ancient monuments in the vicinity of Stonehenge have revealed that they were not placed at random. Many are visible from Stonehenge. Stonehenge is at the center of a number of ...

... Sourcebook Subjects How to Win by Loosing (twice)It's all exceedingly counterintuitive. If you switch randomly between two games of chance, each of which is guaranteed to empty your pockets if played separately, you can actually win. This phenomenon can be proved mathematically, but we will not inflict this upon our readers, even if we understood it. Two games played with coins illustrate the effect. One game employs a weighted coin such that the probability of winning is much less than 50%. If played alone, your capital decreases steadily in a rather smooth curve, with a small win now and then but many small losses. The second game requires two weighted coins and is also a losing proposition by itself. Here, though, the graph of your assets vs. the number of games played is a sawtooth. There are sharp increases and downturns, but with an average downward trend. Switching between the two games in a random manner has the effect of locking in a win before the next loss comes along. It's a ratchet effect. Your overall capital will rise, at least it does according to the equations, though your intuition cannot help but doubt it. No wonder this Is called Parrondo's paradox! (Harmer, Gregory P., and Abbott, Derek; "Losing Strategies Can Win by Farrondo's Paradox," Nature, 402:864, 1999. Anonymous; "Losing to Win," Science News, 157:47, 2000.) From Science Frontiers #128, MAR-APR 2000 . 1997 William ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 136: JUL-AUG 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Stealth Catastrophe Recently, as geologists reckon time -- only 800,000 years ago -- Australia, Southeast Asia, and the eastern Indian Ocean were bombarded by untold numbers of small, oddly shaped stones called "tektites." New finds of tektites have expanded the strewn field of these Australasian tektites to include part of China. It now appears that about 30% of the earth's area was subjected to this stony bombardment. It is inescapable that the Australasian-tektite fall was a major event in the earth's history. But where are other signs of this great catastrophe? The present consensus holds that the Australasian tektites originated when a large celestial body slammed into our planet somewhere in Southeast Asia. The energy of the impact splashed droplets of molten rock into the atmosphere, where they were shaped aerodynamically and then fell as tektites. The extent of the immense Australasian-tektite strewn field implies a hard-to-miss crater about 100 kilometers in diameter. Yet, despite the geological recency of the event and despite much geological surveying, no convincing crater has been discovered. (SF#115) So, we have abundant evidence of a terrestrial event encompassing much of the planet but no "smoking crater"! The mystery deepens when one realizes that whatever cataclysm sent the Australian tektites aloft may have been comparable in magnitude to the impact that extinguished the dinosaurs (and other fauna) some 65 million years ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 130: JUL-AUG 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Has Human Evolution Been Directed by Bacteria?With considerable fanfare, a multinational team of scientists has announced that the mtDNA (mitochondrial DNA) "squeezed" from a 29,000-year-old Neanderthal skeleton found in the northern Caucasus differs by 3.48% from the mtDNA of a 40,000-year-old Neanderthal skeleton from (fittingly) Germany's Neander Valley. Furthermore, both mtDNA samples differ from that of modern humans by a substantial 7%. These two innocent-appearing, widely publicized numbers have far-reaching implications: Modern humans and Neanderthals are only very distantly related, and they certainly never interbred, as suggested in many recent, popular articles; and Since neither Neanderthal mtDNA sample is closer to that of modern Europeans than it is any other modern human population, the so-called "multiregional" theory of human evolution and dispersion is unlikely to be correct. Thus, the out-of-Africa theory is favored;. These data and their implications stimulate several observations and comments; only one of which is mentioned in the references given below. F.H . Smith, an anthropologist from Northern Illinois University and a supporter of the multiregional theory, opines that 30,000-40,000 years ago the mtDNA of the early humans, who were mixing it up with the Neanderthals, was certainly very different from what it is today. Since mtDNA mutates rapidly, ...

... ONLINE No. 129: MAY-JUN 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects From Nature's Atelier One of geology's more fascinating mysteries concerns the formation of concretions. Concretions are structures within rock that differ in form and/or composition from the matrix. Often, they form around an impurity of some sort, say, a tiny fossil. If concretions were all nicely spherical or crystalline in shape, we might be able to explain them as we do with the oyster's pearl and winter's snow-flake. Unfortunately for the theorists, concretions usually come in bizarre shapes -- shapes an avant garde sculptor might appreciate. Not only do concretions come in weird geometries but they may be replicated in prodigious numbers, like the famous Kimmeridge "coal money." Additionally, some flint concretions are arrayed in thick chalk beds in amazingly regular three-dimensional arrays that tax the ingenuity of any theorist. To illustrate the extremes of nature's inorganic-chemical imagination, we now provide some illustrations from a recent two-part article in Rocks & Minerals and one of our catalog volumes. (Dietrich, R.V .; "Carbonate Concretions,' Rocks & Minerals, 74:266 and 74:335, 1999. ESA3 in Neglected Geological Anomalies.) Carbonate concretions (" imatra stones") from Finland. Virtually identical concretions occur in the Connecticut River Valley. Vertical lines of flint concretions in chalk cliffs near Norfolk, England. Presumably the 3-dimensional array continues in the ...

... themselves to build salt crystals that they are simply obeying the well-known laws of physics. In other words, salt crystals are "natural." "Intelligent design" need not be invoked in explaining their existence. This is OK for salt crystals but can we say the same for biological forms such as proteins and, ultimately, human beings? Are these more complex biological forms also natural; that is, reducible to and explainable by the laws of physics? Human beings certainly seem irreducible; and some proteins are so large and complex that one is unsure that physics is up to the task of explaining these tangled structures consisting many hundreds of atoms. Some of these doubts have been relieved by recent advances in protein chemistry. It appears that the different types of protein folds, which number in the thousands, can be classified and sorted into distinct structural families -- just like the much simpler crystals of salt, quartz, galena, etc fall into orderly classes. The clear implication is that protein folds and, by extension via further research, the protein molecules themselves, are also natural and reducible just like the salt crystals. If proteins are natural, perhaps even more complex biological forms are also, and so on up the complexity ladder to viruses (which often look like crystals through the microscope), bacteria, and even (gasp!) mammals. This is, of course, reductionism in the extreme. But the successes with protein folding have led two New Zealand biochemists to speculate as follows: If it does turn out that a substantial amount of higher biological ...

... complex and delicate design. The first of the accompanying illustrations shows some of the ornate flints dug up in Delaware County, Oklahoma, in 1921 by M. Tussinger. The second picture is of a genuine Mayan "eccentric" flint from Quirigua, Guatemala. These exquisite examples of flint knapping evoke two questions: (1 ) Why bother turning out these highly labor-intensive objects by the thousands? (2 ) What are typically Mayan artifacts doing so far north in Oklahoma? Many of the flints, whether from Mayan sites or Oklahoma, are incredibly complex. Some are up to 20 inches in length. Countless hours must have been invested in delicately chipping away at flint blanks. Apparently, ornate flints were an art form of great importance to the Maya. They are found in large numbers in the burials of important personages. Archeologists too often explain puzzling artifacts by saying they had "ritual value." But, this answer may be correct here. Mayan eccentric flints are probably the equivalents of Christian stained-glass windows and elaborately illuminated manuscripts. The less "practical" they are, the higher their ritual value! Purpose aside, did Mayan influence and trade really reach far north into Oklahoma? Many archeologists doubted this at first. They claimed that Tussinger knapped the Oklahoma flints himself and sold them during the Depression for a dollar or so apiece. But how would a simple, uneducated, Oklahoma farmer know about ancient Mayan flint making? Furthermore, Tussinger claims he found some 3,500 of these remarkable objects in a single cache while exploring a mound. That' ...

... thereby blasting the earth and its sensitive biological cargo. This supposed Mirror-Matter planet happens to be the conceptual double of a Normal-Matter, hypothetical planet named Nemesis, which was proposed in the 1980s to account for the same periodical extinctions in the fossil record. However, diligent searches did not locate Nemesis. Of course, if Nemesis were made of Mirror Matter, as now proposed, it would have escaped telescopic detection then and would still elude our telescopes today! (Schilling, Govert; "Through the Looking Glass," New Scientist, p. 16, April 28, 2001.) Comment. Not only is a crater missing at the Tunguska site, but no one has been able to positively identify the immense impact crater that we suppose must have been excavated when untold numbers of tektites rained down upon Australia, Southeast Asia, and the Indian Ocean about 800,000 years ago. See item under GEOLOGY. From Science Frontiers #136, JUL-AUG 2001 . 2001 William R. Corliss Other Sites of Interest SIS . Catastrophism, archaeoastronomy, ancient history, mythology and astronomy. Lobster . The journal of intelligence and political conspiracy (CIA, FBI, JFK, MI5, NSA, etc) Homeworking.com . Free resource for people thinking about working at home. ABC dating and personals . For people looking for relationships. Place your ad free. ...

... seem to come out of nowhere. These monster walls of water appear in seas that are rough but not fearfully so. Suddenly. a ship will find itself in a deep trough. Then conies a wall of water. 50-100 feet high. (34 meters is the biggest reliable measurement.) The vessel is flooded, perhaps its back is broken. It sinks like a rock without even sending a distress signal. Another ship has been devoured by a rogue wave. Giant solitary waves are usually preceded by deep troughs. as seen in this sketch of a vessel in the notorious A gulhas Current off the coast of South Africa. (From: Earthquakes. Tides....) Just between 1969 and 1994. 60 supercarriers were lost due to sudden flooding. Of this number, 22 were apparently swallowed by rogue waves. The rogue waves appear unexpectedly. They dwarf all surrounding waves. For a long time, the rogues were said to be just chance additions of two smaller waves. But they are too big and occur too frequently to be statistical flukes. In addition, statiticians have trouble in accounting for the fabled and feared "three sisters" -- three massive waves in succession. Consequently, scientists have retreated to a now-familiar refuge: nonlinear effects. They show mathematically how small perturbations in a physical system can lead to huge consequences -- on paper at least.. (Lawton, Graham; "Monsters of the Deep," New Scientist, p. 28, June 30, 2001.) Comments. Somehow, as insinuated above ...

... Consciousness Gene We humans assume that our consciousness is something more than just the sum total of all our senses, as integrated by our brains. In other words, consciousness is something "special" that makes us more than automatons. Other animals may be automatons, but not us! D. Jones speculates in Nature that if consciousness is a definite, inheritable characteristic, it must have had survival value for it to have evolved. It then follows that consciousness must be en-coded somewhere in our genes. Only a single gene may be enough, for consciousness seems to be an uncomplicated phenomenon. Why? Because just a few simple molecules, such as those found in anesthetics, can disable it completely without affecting other bodily functions. Eventually, Jones continues, the gene (or small number of genes) responsible for consciousness will be identified. Then, we can determine for certain if any of the lower animals are also conscious. We think chimps and dolphins might be, but we're not really sure until we see if they have the necessary genes. In fact, the old-time behaviorists could be right, and all the other animals really are merely automatons. That would definitely make us "special"! Once we have the consciousness genes in our labs, we can introduce them into those other species, such as Rover and Kitty, upon whom we would like to confer the boon of consciousness. Many interesting experiments could be per-formed, including, of course, the elimination of consciousness genes in certain selected human subjects! (Jones, David ...

... 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 All roads lead to 123 "Start with any number that is a string of digits -- , say, 9 288 759 -- and count the number of even digits, the number of odd digits, and the total number of digits it contains. These are 3 (three evens), 4 (four odds), and 7 (seven is the total number of digits), respectively. Use these digits to form the next string or number, 347. If you repeat the process with 347, you get 1, 2, 3. If you repeat with 123, you get 123 again. The number 123, with respect to this process and universe of numbers, is a mathematical black hole." We have a black hole because we cannot escape, just as spaceships are doomed when captured by a physical black hole! You end up with 123 regardless of the number you start with. Other sorts of mathematical black holes exist, such as the Collatz Conjecture, but we must not fall into them because our printer awaits. (Ecker, Michael; "Caution: Black Holes at Work," New Scientist, p. 38, December 19/26, 1992.) From Science Frontiers #86, MAR-APR 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 89: Sep-Oct 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Solar activity, your mother's birth year, and your longevity "According to two scientists who stumbled on a startling statistical association -- though not necessarily a causeeffect relationship -- your life span may depend on the number of sunspots that appeared in the year your mother was born. "They found that if the sun was at a maximum in its 11-year cycle (during which the number of sunspots rises and falls), children of mothers born at that time would die an average of two to three years sooner than if their mothers had been born during the sunspot minimum." Before dismissing this fascinating correlation as "nut science," consider that the study was conducted by two established scientists at Michigan State University, B. Rosenberg and D.A . Juckett. Their report was published in the March 1993 issue of the mainstream journal Radiation Research . Furthermore, in two English studies of longevity. the same periodicity was remarked. Although the population sample in the Michigan State work was small (7552), the phenomenon appears sufficiently robust to admit to the columns of Science Frontiers! (In truth we covet bizarreness as much as robustness!) But what possible causal link might connect one's longevity with one's mother's date of birth? Rosenberg and Juckett point to the fact that when a woman is born all of her eggs are already formed. Later, they will mature and ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 85: Jan-Feb 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Geomagnetic Storms And Human Health Psychiatric admissions. Since the work of T. Dull and B. Dull in 1935, other studies have reinforced the suspicion that solar activity and the resultant geomagnetic activity are associated with human health problems. Here is the abstract of the latest study found: "Numbers of first admissions per month for a single psychiatric unit, from 1977 to 1987, were examined for 1829 psychiatric inpatients to assess whether this measure was correlated with 10 parameters of geophysical activity. Four statistically significant values were 0.197 with level of solar radio flux at 2800 MHz in the corresponding month, -0 .274 with sudden magnetic disturbances of the ionosphere, -0 .216 with the index of geomagnetic activity, and -0 .262 with the number of hours of positive ionization of the ionosphere in the corresponding month." (Raps, Avi, et al; "Geophysical Variables and Behavior: LXIX. Solar Activity and Admission of Psychiatric Inpatients," Perceptual and Motor Skills , 74:449, 1992.) Comment. The above correlations are significant, but who knows how these parameters operate on the human body? Cancer recurrence. Another possible health correlation was explored by H. Wendt in a paper presented atthe 1992 European meeting of the Society for Scientific Exploration, in Munich. In this paper, Wendt claimed a correlation between the incidence of cancer recurrence and geomagnetic storm activity. Hopefully, further details will soon ...

... 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 Solar Radiation And Mental Illness Following in the footsteps of the Dulls (1933) and Friedman et al (1963), three Israeli scientists have also found surprisingly high correlations between solar activity and psychiatric illnesses. "Numbers of first admissions per month for a single psychiatric unit, from 1977 to 1987, were examined for 1829 psychiatric inpatients to assess whether this measure was correlated with 10 parameters of geophysical activity. Four statistically significant values were 0.197 with level of solar radioflux at 2800 MHz in the corresponding month, -0 .274 with sudden magnetic disturbances of the ionosphere, -0 .216 with the index of geomagnetic activity, and -0 .262 with the number of hours of positive ionization of the ionosphere in the corresponding month. Percentages of variance accounted for were very small." Quite understandably, these investigators concluded: "How to interpret properly associations of solar activity with human behaviors is yet impossible. The relative indifference of behavioral scientists to this question may reflect lack of an adequate theoretical framework relating to the question and the phenomenon." (Raps, Avi, et al; "Geophysical Variables and Behavior: LXIX. Solar Activity and Admission of Psychiatric Inpatients," Perceptual and Motor Skills , 74:449, 1992.) From Science Frontiers #86, MAR-APR 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 87: May-Jun 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Whence the earth's pulse?Geological history records a restless planet subject to a succession of chemical and physical upheavals. Have these great paroxysms been random in time? M.R . Rampino and K. Caldeira do not think so: Number of geological events during geologic time "Published data sets of major geologic events of the past 250 Myr (extinction events, sea-level lows, continental flood-basalt eruptions, mountain-building events, abrupt changes in sea-floor spreading, ocean-anoxic and blackshale events and the largest evaporite deposits) have been synthesized (with estimated errors). These events show evidence for a statistically significant periodic component with an underlying periodicity, formally equal to 26.6 Myr, and a recent maximum, close to the present time. The cycle may not be strictly periodic, but a periodicity of 30 Myr is robust to probable errors in dating of the geologic events." The obvious question is: What could cause a 30-million-year periodicity? Internally, the earth's innards might be periodic, possibly in terms of plume eruption, mineral phase changes, core convection, etc. Externally, comets and asteroids are cyclic. Rampino and Caldeira point out that the solar system crosses the heavily populated plane of the Galaxy every 30 million years. (Rampino, Michael R., and Caldeira, Ken; "Major Episodes of Geologic Change: Correlations, Time ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 82: Jul-Aug 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Warm, wet, fertile mars Mars may not be orbited by huge artificial satellites of alien provenance, but its geological history is looking more and more as if could have supported or perhaps still does support life. "A large number of anomalous landforms on Mars can be attributed to glaciation, including the action of ice and meltwater. Glacial landscapes are concentrated south of lat -33 and in the Northern Plains suggesting vast Austral and Boreal ice sheets. Crater densities on the glaciated terrains indicate that the final glacial epoch occurred late in Martian history. Thus, Mars may have had a relatively warm, moist climate and dense atmosphere much later than previously believed." (Kargel, Jeffrey S., and Strom, Robert G.; "Ancient Glaciation on Mars," Geology, 20:3 , 1992.) If Mars was warm and wet not too long ago, as implied above, perhaps life did gain a foothold there through either independent invention or, perhaps, through seeding by template-carrying comets or meteorites. P.J . Boston et al have investigated one possible Martian ecosystem: "We have reexamined the question of extant microbial life on Mars in light of the most recent information about the planet and recently discovered nonphotosynthetic ecosystems on Earth -- deep sea hydrothermal vent communities and deep subsurface aquifer communities. On Mars, protected subsurface niches associated with hydrothermal activity could have continued to support life even after surface conditions ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 82: Jul-Aug 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Does nature compute?Back in the 1960s, kids used to watch the TV series Lost in Space . Starring on this show was a robot which, when asked a stupid or answerless question replied, "It does not compute!" More seriously, we now ask, "Does Nature compute?" Science believes very deeply that mathematics reflects the real world, that we live in an ordered universe where everything can be reduced to mathematical expressions. The progress of science, particularly physics, seems to bear out this symbiotic relationship between mathematics and the physical world. However, P. Davies points out that that there are uncomputable numbers and operations. In fact, there are infinitudes of them. All the world's computers could chug away forever and not come up with answers in these cases. So far , Nature has been kind, or we have been lucky, because we have been able to nicely mirror Nature with "doable" math. Davies wonders if it has been entirely a matter of luck: "Einstein said that God is subtle but not malicious, and we must hope that the laws of physics will turn out to be computable after all. If so, that fact alone would provoke all sorts of interesting scientific and philosophical questions. Just why is the world structured in such a way that we can describe its basic principles using 'do-able' mathematics? How was this mathematical ability evolved in ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 105: May-Jun 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Eight Little Craters All In A Row The recent impact upon Jupiter of a procession of chunks from Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 has encouraged geologists to look for crater chains here on earth. Such have been spotted on the moon, and it is unlikely the earth escaped such bar rages. Of course, older terrestrial craters are harder to identify due to the ceaseless geological activity here on earth. In the first 1996 number of Geophysical Research Letters, M.R . Rampino and T. Volk describe a possible swath of meteoric devastation across the North American Midwest. "Eight circular geologic structures ranging from about 3 to 17 km in diameter, showing evidence of outwarddirected deformation and intensive brecciation, lie within a linear swath stretching about 700 km across the United States from southern Illinois through Missouri to eastern Kansas. Based on their similar geological characteristics and the presence of diagnostic and/or probable evidence of shock, these structures, once classified as 'crypto volcanic' or 'cryptoexplosion' structures, are more confidently ascribed to hypervelocity impact. No other similar occurrence of aligned features is known, and we calculate the probability of a chance alignment to be less than 10- 9 ." The craters are all roughly the same age: 310-330 million years. Rampino and Volk suspect they were formed all at once by a string of asteroids or comets. (Rampino, Michael R., and Volk, Tyler; "Multiple Impact ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 88: Jul-Aug 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The star of the star-nosed mole (Left) Tenticle-like rays surrounding one nostril of the star-like mole. (Right) The number of rays around the other nostril give the density of sensory receptors. The star-nosed mole is one of North America's more bizarre mammals. Its nostrils are surrounded by mobile, Medusa-like appendages that are richly suppled with nerves and blood vessels. These tentacle-like structures form the "star," which has long been considered a tactile organ used for feeling for prey. However, behavioral experiments by E. Gould et al indicate that the star may be more than a tactile organ. It seems to sport electrical sensors that detect the minute electrical fields surrounding worms, leeches, insect larvae, and other favorite mole tidbits. This conclusion derives from experiments in which starnosed moles preferentially attacked the parts of worms that are most strongly electrical. Actually, scientists have been puzzled as to how this mole found its prey, for this mammal is semiaquatic and somehow locates its dinner in muddy water even though it has poor eyesight. Although some fish possess electrical sensors, they are uncommon in mammals. Half way around the planet, another strange creature, also classified with the mammals, frequents muddy waters looking for the same sort of prey favored by the star-nosed mole. The Australian platypus also has weak vision and employs search techniques similar to those of ...

... has two qualitative final states: clockwise and counterclockwise. Regardless of which hemisphere you are in, you can change the direction of swirl with negligible effort. Each of the two final states of motion is still quanti tatively unpredictable. Systems that are more complex will possess many different final states, all chaotic. Can nature really be fundamentally chaotic as well as qualitatively uncertain? J.C . Sommerer and E. Ott have mathematically examined a relatively simple system consisting of a single particle moving in a force field, experiencing friction, and being periodically jolted. Besides settling into chaotic motion, this particle may also be forced away to infinity -- two radically different final states. The analysis revealed that for any set of initial conditions leading to the first type of behavior, there was an infinite number of slightly different initial conditions that would lead to the second type of behavior. In other words, systems that we have long thought to be deterministic, like the motions of the planets, may be not only chaotic but indeterminate. Since Sommerer and Ott found their indeterminate system easily, we must face the possibility that the future behavior of just about everything is beyond our capability to predict, even with our best instruments and computers. Apparently the universe is built in such a way that exact science is impossible. (Sommerer, John C., and Ott, Edward; "A Physical System with Qualitatively Uncertain Dynamics," Nature, 365:138, 1993. Also: Peterson, I.; "Finding Riddles of Physical Uncertainty," Science News, 144:180, ...

... stones are found on many unvegetated alpine and polar hillslopes; known as 'sorted stripes' because of the characteristic textural sorting between surface stones and fine-grained soil, they contrast markedly with the lack of order typical of natural landscapes. The spacing of the stripes can range from centimeters to meters (about 10-20 times the average stone diameter), with individual stripes extending downslope for many tens of meters. A variety of formative mechanisms have been proposed, but it is still unclear how such orderly stripes can arise spontaneously, and what dictates the spacing." B.T . Werner and B. Hallet, authors of the foregoing partial abstract, have mathematically simulated the displacement of surface stones under the forces generated by the growth of needle ice in the underlying soil. As the number of freeze-thaw cycles increases into the thousands, computer simulations show the surface stones gradually arraying themselves into linear patterns. (Werner, B.T ., and Hallet, B.; "Numerical Simulation of Self-Organized Stone Stripes," Nature, 361:142, 1993.) Reference. These stone stripes represent just one type of "patterned ground." Other examples may be found in ETP1 in our catalog: Carolina Bays, Mima Mounds, described here . From Science Frontiers #88, JUL-AUG 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... technology long before the rise of the Roman Empire. The Basques, she believes, are the last remnants of the megalith builders, who left behind dolmens, standing stones, and other rock structures all across Europe and perhaps even in eastern North America. Two facts set the Basque peoples apart from the other Europeans who have dominated the continent the past 3,000 years: (1 ) The Basque language is distinctly different; and (2 ) The Basques have the highest recorded level of Rh-negative blood (roughly twice that of most Europeans), as well as substantially lower levels of Type B blood and a higher incidence of Type O blood. Some probable technological feats of the Basques or their ancestors are: Stonehenge and similar megalithic structures oA unique system of measurement based on the number 7 instead of 10, 12, or 60 Regular visits to North America long before Columbus to fish and to trade for beaver skins. Recently unearthed British customs records show large Basque imports of beaver pelts from 1380-1433. The invention of a sophisticated navigational device called an "abacus." (No relation to the common abacus.) (Haddingham, Evan; "Europe's Mystery People," World Monitor , p. 34, September 1992. Cr. A. Rothovius.) From Science Frontiers #85, JAN-FEB 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... reached oklahoma!The drawing reproduced below was made by C. Keeler when he visited the famous inscription-filled Anubis Cave. Some of the figures have Egyptian overtones, as remarked by D. and A. Buchanan: "This 'cave' (really a cave-like rock shelter located in Northwestern Oklahoma close to the Colorado line), as well as others like it in the vicinity, was first recorded by Gloria Farley after her visit to the site in June 1978. She especially remarked upon the Anubis figure you see here as well as the figure with the rayed head surmounting the "cube-in-perspective" or '3 -D Cube' (as some have called it). Besides the Egyptian motifs, she also noted the ogam-like strokes and a number of other apparent Celtic connections." Translation of the ogam by B. Fell indicated that the site was used for Celtic rites. (Buchanan, Donal, and Buchanan, Ann; "The Anubis Cave in Old World Iconography," ESRS Bulletin, 18:27, October 1991.) ESRS = Early Sites Research Society. Comment. Anubis was the Egyptian jackal god. It is the stylized figure in the top center of the drawing. Such interpretations are ignored by the archeological establishment, and almost all research on such sites is carried out by amateurs. From Science Frontiers #82, JUL-AUG 1992 . 1992-2000 William R. Corliss ...