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... Stagg Field, in Chicago, the first human-built nuclear reactor went critical. This feat has long been hailed as a triumph of the human intellect. Nature, though, had already beat E. Fermi and his colleagues by 2 billion years. For at Oklo and Bangombe, in the African Republic of Gabon, one finds the "ashes" where some 17 natural nuclear reactors cooked away for hundreds of thousands of years. Operating at temperatures as high as 360 C, they generated about 17,800 megawatt-years ... " Geotimes , 38: 18, May 1993. Also: Nagy, Bartholomew, et al; "Role of Organic Matter in the Proterozoic Oklo Natural Fission Reactors, Gabon, Africa," Geology , 21:655, 1993.) Reference. The Oklo Phenomenon is covered in greater detail in ESP13 in the catalog: Anomalies in Geology. To order visit here . From Science Frontiers #94, JUL-AUG 1994 . 1994-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 121: Jan-Feb 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Oklo: An Unappreciated Cosmic Phenomenon In 1972, French scientists discovered that several natural concentrations of uranium ore had become critical and flared up some 2 billion years ago at Oklo, Gabon. The concentration and configuration of the natural uranium and surrounding materials at that time had been just right to sustain fission. In fact, the analysis of the nuclear waste in the burned rocks demonstrated that plutonium had also been created. This implies that natural breeder reactors are also possible, raising the possibility of hitherto unappreciated, long-lived heat sources deep in the earth, in the other planets, and inside some of the stars. Don't worry ... the Oklo phenomenon might occur today on the earth's surface. The concentration of fissionable U-235 has fallen considerably in the last 2 billion years due to its radioactive decay. But, deep inside the earth and other astronomical bodies, nuclear criticality might still be possible due to different pressures, densities, etc. In a stimulating and generally overlooked paper in Eos, J.M . Herndon proffers four important natural phenomena that may involve natural fission reactors. Geomagnetic reversals . In the deep earth, where pressures and densities are high, natural nuclear reactors may generate intermittent bursts of heat -- just as they did at Oklo -- and thereby cause the earth's dynamo to falter and reverse. Planetary heating . Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune emit much more energy than they ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 32: Mar-Apr 1984 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Oklo Phenomenon And Evolution A decade ago, French scientists discovered the remains of a natural nuclear reactor at Oklo, Gabon, in Africa. Somehow nature had concentrated enough uranium-235 in one place to start a chain reaction, with the attendant production of heat and radiation. Now U-235 is radioactive, and there is now much less around than in past geological eras. This has led some scientists to speculate that many more Okla phenomena may have flamed momentarily in earlier times, especially Precambrian days. The mutagenic radiation from such natural reactors could have been a major driving force in evolution. (Anonymous; "Natural Reactors Helped ... ," New Scientist, 100:737, 1983.) Reference. For details on the Oklo Phenomenon, see category ESP13 in our Anomalies in Geology. For a description of this Catalog, visit: here . From Science Frontiers #32, MAR-APR 1984 . 1984-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... These do not have the alphanumerical labels. PB DISSOCIATIVE BEHAVIOR PBA AUTOMATIC COMMUNICATION Automatic Writing Automatic Drawing Glossalalia or "Speaking in Tongues" Planchette and Ouija-Board Phenomena Channeling Table-Tilting Xenoglossy [PHR] PBD COMMUNICATED HYSTERIA AND DELUSIONS Mass Hysteria and Psychogenic Illnesses Folie a Deux: Communication of Abnormal Mental States Self-Induced Delusions "Jumping" and Other Triggered Explosive Activities Abnormal Mass Delusions The Latah Phenomenon PBH HYPNOTIC BEHAVIOR (GENERAL FEATURES) General Features of So-Called "Hypnotic Behavior" Supposed Hypnosis by Telepathy Fascination by Inert Objects (" Spontaneous Hypnosis") Posthypnotic Behavior Effects of Magnetism on Hypnotically Induced Images Self-Hypnosis Drum Phenomena [BHB7, BHH8] Collective Hypnosis PBJ DEJA VU Deja Vu PBM MULTIPLE PERSONALITY Multiple-Personality Phenomena Hypnotic Probing of Secondary Personalities Possible Duality of Consciousness under ... Precognition Affected by Geomagnetism Premonitions of Death Prediction of Random Processes Retrocognition Hypnotic Regression Scrying [PLS] PHR REINCARNATION PHENOMENA Memories of Previous Lives Hypnotic Regression Xenoglossy Birthmarks As Proofs of Reincarnation Life after Death PHT ANOMALOUS INFORMATION TRANSFER Ordinary Telepathy Twin Telepathy Long-Distance Mass Telepathy Experiments Transfer of Physical Sensations Transfer of Emotions (Not Folie a Deux or Mass Hysteria) Dream Telepathy Remote Viewing Telepathy Affected by Magnetic Fields Role of Quantum Mechanics in Telepathy Ganzfield Experiments Animal Telepathy Telepathy under Hypnosis Atavistic Nature of Telepathy Geomagnetic Enhancement of Telepathy Psychic Odor/Taste PI INFORMATION PROCESSING PIB INPUT/OUTPUT ANOMALIES Word Blindness Dyslexia Autism Typing Skills Tip-of-the-Tongue Phenomenon Mirror Script Braille and the Brain Optical Illusions Generation of Random Numbers Cocktail-party effect Stuttering Difficulty of Learning English Brain Modularity Attentional Blink Revelation Intuition PIC ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 121: Jan-Feb 1999 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Problems of aboriginal art in australia A CONTINENT LOST IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN Astronomy Oklo: an unappreciated cosmic phenomenon Is life a transitor phenomenon? Biology Acupuncture 5,200 ears ago? Imprison willy! Is intelligence a deadly pathogen? How homeopath might work October 5, 1998: dark day for homing pigeons Starlings fall out of the sky Geology An arkansas tsunami deposit? Fused ancient garbage dumps Geophysics Tunguska afterglow Lake champlain's two seiches B-24 SIGHTS "CIRCLES OF LIGHT" Psychology Are pets psychic? ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 133: JAN-FEB 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Couvade Chemistry Medical history records numerous instances where the husband of a pregnant woman exhibits some of the symptoms of pregnancy, such as morning sickness. This sympathetic reaction is called the "couvade." This phenomenon can be partially explained biochemically, but psychosomatic factors are obviously involved. Researchers find that a father-to-be's estrogen (female hormone) levels rise markedly -- even exceeding that of his wife -- as the time-of-delivery approaches. Interestingly, the father's testosterone levels are also elevated prior to birth but fall immediately afterward. As the wife's day-of-delivery approaches, ... levels of prolactin, which plays a key role in breast-feeding, increase in both husband and wife. (Rubin, Rita; "Dads Get 'Nurturing' Hormones after Birth," Chicago Sun-Times, June 20, 2000. Cr. J. Cieciel) Comment. Male lactation, which is rare in humans, is probably associated with this increased production of prolactin. Male lactation is also known in other mammals, such as fruit bats. (See SF#93) The mind is driving all of these chemical changes in the father-to-be. The question is HOW? And, maybe WHY? From Science Frontiers #133, JAN-FEB 2001 . 2001 William R. Corliss Other Sites of Interest SIS . Catastrophism, archaeoastronomy, ancient history, ...
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... under ASTRONOMY.), it may have arisen a couple miles below the ocean's surface at hydrothermal vents. The curious glows recently remarked at these vents (SF#87) have stimulated much speculation as to the potential role of these glows in the origin of life: "The history of hydrothermal activity predates the origin of life, and light in the deep sea has been a continuous phenomenon on a geological time scale and may have served either as a seed or refugium for the evolution of biological photochemical reactions or adaptations." We formally classify this item under GEOPHYSICS because scientists are still pondering how these glows are created. Some of the light is obviously black-body radiation from the very hot (350 C) water but: ". .. other potential, narrow- ... Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A DEEP-SEA HYDROTHERMAL VENT INSTEAD OF A WARM LITTLE POND?If earth life didn't arrive from outer space (See under ASTRONOMY.), it may have arisen a couple miles below the ocean's surface at hydrothermal vents. The curious glows recently remarked at these vents (SF#87) have stimulated much speculation as to the potential role of these glows in the origin of life: "The history of hydrothermal activity predates the origin of life, and light in the deep sea has been a continuous phenomenon on a geological time scale and may have served either as a seed or refugium for the evolution of biological photochemical reactions or adaptations." We formally classify this item under GEOPHYSICS because scientists are still pondering how these glows are ...
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... Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Two Remarkable Inscribed Stones Astronomy Thou Canst Not Stir A Flower, Without Troubling of A Star Natural Laser Beacons A Mysterious Object Biology Subtle is the Virus An Ocean Full of Viruses An Even Larger Ocean of Life Spores Still Viable After 7,000 Years Animals As Nutrient Carriers Geology Terranes Continue to Pile Up Grand Canyon Shamed Again When the Earth Shifted Gears The Oklo Phenomenon and Evolution Earth's Magnetic Field Jerks Osmium Isotopes Support Meteoric Impact Geophysics Incredible Phosphorescent Display on the China Sea Ball Lightning Splits and Recombines Inside Soviet Airliner Booms Startle Arkansas Psychology Mental Deflection of Cascading Spheres What Makes A Calculating Prodigy? False Pregnancies in Males Unclassified The 'Great Silence'; Or Why Aren't Aliens Landing on the White House Lawn? ...
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... of gravity played a role in circumnutation until some sunflower seedlings were flown on Spacelab 1. Zero-g did not affect circumnutation at all. (Brown, Allan H. and Chapman, David K.; "Circumnutation Observed without Significant Gravitational Force in Spaceflight," Science, 225:230, 1984.) Comment. Nature seldom indulges in frivolous actions, but we just may have a phenomenon here that has absolutely no deeper significance. From Science Frontiers #35, SEP-OCT 1984 . 1984-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 67: Jan-Feb 1990 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Dna On Cell Surfaces DNA attached to a cell's surface? Such a notion was shocking to scientific orthodoxy in the 1970s. At that time, observations of the phenomenon were rejected. Even worse, funding to continue the work was not forthcoming. Happily, other researchers have later stumbled onto cell-surface DNA; and this startling phenomenon has been rescued from conformity's wastebasket. Now that cell-surface DNA can be talked about, we can wonder aloud where it comes from and what its significance is. First, this out-of-place DNA -- thought to amount to about 1% of a cell' ... - could come from either inside the cell itself or from blood-borne cellular debris. There is considerable argument on this point. Second, this cell-surface DNA does not appear to undergo replication nor does it perform any gentic coding function. Speculation is that it may somehow be involved in the immunological response of the body; for its position on the cell surface is ideal for such a role. Some researchers think that cell-surface DNA may aid in the drug treatment of T-cell lymphoma, a type of cancer. On the other side of the coin, it may mask those molecules on tumor cells that provoke immune responses. Such divergence of opinion indicates how much there is to learn here. (Wickelgren, Ingrid; "DNA's Extended Domain," Science ...
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... Remarkable Feats of Flight BBT13 The Origin of Avian Flight BBT14 Unanswered Questions Concerning Flightlessness BBT15 Some Curiosities of Avian Flight BBT16 Deep-Diving Capabilities BBT17 Vocal Mimicry in Birds BBT18 Birds That Vocally Mimic Only in Captivity BBT19 Vocal Mimicry of Hosts by Parasitic Species BBT20 Duetting BBT21 Chorusing BBT22 Large Vocal-Repertoire Sizes and High Speeds of Delivery BBT23 Female Singers BBT24 Whisper Songs and Subsongs BBT25 The Two-Voice Phenomenon BBT26 Some Curiosities of Avian Vocalizations BBT27 Incubator Nests BBT28 Woven and Sewn Nests BBT29 Nests Containing Protective Materials BBT30 Bowers BBT31 Nest Curiosities BBT32 Tool Use BBT33 Communication between Chick Embryos BBX AVIAN INTERFACE PHENOMENA BBX1 Unusual Attacks on Humans BBX2 Unusual Predators of Birds BBX3 Unusual Bird-Animal Psychological Interfaces BBX4 Curious Associations of Birds with Other Animals and Plants BC BIOCHEMISTRY Titles not yet posted BF FISH Titles not yet ... of the "Moon Illusion" "Simultanagnosia": The Inability to Deal with Two Objects Simultaneously Handedness and the Size of the Corpus Callosum Gender Differences in Brain Information Processing Mirror-Image Organs Cooked Tubers and Brain Evolution! Multiplication and Physical Motion of Dendrites in Brain Information Processing in the Eye Itself Sign Language Is Processed in the Auditory Cortex Motion Processed by Special Brain Cells The "Seeing" Ear Role of Olfactory Receptors in Physical Development Information Transfer in the Cerebrospinal Fluid Utility of the Appendix Nostril Cycling [BHF3] BHT UNUSUAL SENSES AND FACULTIES BHT1 Telescopic Vision BHT2 Moonblindness BHT3 Blindsight BHT4 A TV-Snow Visual Phenomenon BHT5 Color-Vision Deficiency of Ancient Peoples BHT6 Color Sensitivity Correlated with Lunar Phase BHT7 Anomalies in the Evolution of Color Vision BHT8 Dermo-Optical Perception [PHD] BHT9 Visual Phenomena ...
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... gene's boundaries are fuzzier than had been thought and that genes are not restricted to chromosomes. Recently, biologists have found genes within genes, overlapping genes, and DNA sequences that specify one protein when read "forward" and another when read "in reverse." Muddling things further, the instructions encoded in the DNA do not always reach the ribosome as a literal translation. In a phenomenon known as RNA editing, an enzymatic highwayman intercepts the RNA message en route and alters it, so the resulting protein is not identical to that specified by the DNA. (Ref. 3) We can sum up by saying that a lot can happen to that information encoded in the genome before it is put to use. References Ref. 1. Anonymous; "The Flexible Genome, ... very sensitive to non-genetic influences," writes [R .] Greenspan, "but also the highly interconnected network of the nervous system sets up an additional layer of complexity between the gene and the realization of the phenotype." (Ref. 1) Many genes code for multiple variants of the same protein. And many proteins are modified by adding sugar molecules, which play a big role in determining where proteins go and what they do. What's more, different proteins can join together to carry out completely new functions. (Ref. 2) A group of French biologists, led by Francois Jacob and Jacques Monod showed that the gene's boundaries are fuzzier than had been thought and that genes are not restricted to chromosomes. Recently, biologists have found genes within ...
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... Changes in the activity of the brain during sleep and wakefulness, relative levels of alertness, mood and sensitivity to pain may be highly dependent on volume transmission. Thus, although information regarding to location of pain is carried by the circuitry of the nervous system, the intensity and duration of the pain may be somewhat modulated by the ambient homoral signals. In this respect, acupuncture may also be a phenomenon that is dependent on volume transmission." (Agnati, Luigi F., et al; "Volume Transmission in the Brain," American Scientist, 80:362, 1992.) Questions. (1 ) Is there a connection between volume transmission and the analog transmission of brain signals hypothesized by R.O . Becker (SF#81)? (2 ) Can a computer ... et al explain: ". .. our experiments have shown that neurons also release chemical signals into the extracellular space that are not necessarily detected by neighboring cells but by cells far away, in the same way hormones released by a gland into the bloodstream can have effects on cells far away. These processes occur on much longer time scales than does synaptic transmission, and they probably play a distinct role, perhaps regulating the brain's responses to synaptic signals. .. .. . "We might speculate that volume transmission is involved in the neuroendocrine system and the central autonomic system. Changes in the activity of the brain during sleep and wakefulness, relative levels of alertness, mood and sensitivity to pain may be highly dependent on volume transmission. Thus, although information regarding to location of ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 79: Jan-Feb 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A LUMINOUS-TUBE PHENOMENON Night of July 11-12, 1991, near Alton Barnes, Wiltshire, England. Three individuals were monitoring nearby fields for crop-circle phenomena. Instead, they observed a strange, but possibly related, luminous mass. R.L Goold described it in the following words: "Suddenly, at 2.55 a.m ., birds began singing which heightened our alertness and made us check wrist watches. It was soon quiet again, but at 3.00 a.m ., almost exactly, I spotted a tube of light to the northeast descending vertically beneath a cloud in that part of the sky. Most of the remainder of the sky was clear and starry. The tube extended steadily in length as we watched, and its milky-white colour seemed to be due to a self-luminoscity like one might expect from the electrical effect known as plasma. As it came down against the black sky and neared the ground, the tube began to broaden, and branched out to give two opposed arms, as indicated in the drawing, forming a design in the air with rounded ends. Then the tube dissipated from the top downwards, and disappeared into the horizontal arms which themselves proceeded towards the ground out of sight beyond the hill peaks. No noise was heard. The whole phenomenon lasted about six seconds." The trio of observers used their fingers held at arm ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 104: Mar-Apr 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Petrozavodsk Phenomenon We classify this remarkable phenomenon under ASTRONOMY because in several respects it parallels some meteoric phenomena, such as the famous February 9, 1913, bolide procession that amazed inhabitants of eastern North America. Unhappily, we only have room to quote one paragraph from a 10-page report. "General outline of the phenomenon. At night, early on the 20th of September of 1977, over a vast area in the northwest of the European part of the USSR, unusual light phenomena in the atmosphere were observed, namely formation and motion of bright, luminous bodies surrounded by extended shells and emitting light rays or jets of quaint shapes. The shells transformed and diffused within 10 to 15 minutes. Besides, a more longlived, stable glow was observed, mostly in the northeastern part of the sky. These phenomena took place during disturbances of the geomagnetic field and the upper atmosphere. Somewhere, aurora borealis was seen." (Gindilis, L.M ., and Kolpakov, Yu.K .; "The Petrozavodsk Phenomenon," RIAP Bulletin, 2:3 , April-September 1995. RIAP = Research Institute of Anomalous Phenomena, P.O . Box 4684, 310022 Kharkov-22, UKRAINE) References. The 1913 meteor procession is described in AYO7 in our catalog: The Sun and Solar System Debris. Also see: SF#79. Details on our catalog here . The Petrozavod phenomenon as seen ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 61: Jan-Feb 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Expanding ball of light (ebl) phenomenon X8. June 22, 1976. North Atlantic. "At 2113 GMT a pale orange glow was seen to be coming from behind a bank of towering cumulus to the west. At 2115 a ghostly white disc (see sketches) was observed at an approximate altitude of 10-degrees and bearing 290-degrees. The glow from behind the cloud persisted." The glowing region developed as indicated in the figure. Stars could be seen throught the disc at all times. By 2140 the disc had disappeared. In the latest number of the Journal of Scientific Exploration, R.F . Haines presents a summary table of 15 cases of a luminous phenomenon he has dubbed the Expanding Ball of Light or EBL. EBLs are very large, sometimes occupying much of the sky. They seem to occur everywhere, though rarely. Haines elaborates: "According to several pilot witnesses, the center of the EBL is at relatively high altitude while it is forming. Its color is evenly whitish or yellowish and becomes increasingly transparent to background stars as it expands. As it enlarges it appears to maintain a sharply defined edge. At some point it fades completely from sight. The rate of boundary interface expansion is impossible to determine without knowing its distance from the observer. It is also of interest to note that most EBL events have taken place after dark. If EBL phenomena are associated with an advanced ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 48: Nov-Dec 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Life As A Cosmic Phenomenon "The arguments in support of life as a cosmic phenomenon are not readily accepted by a culture in which a geocentric theory of biology is seen as the norm." The quotation above heads a revealing discussion by F. Hoyle and N.C . Wickramasinghe as to why their conclusions about cosmic life have not been accepted by the scientific community. Stimulating this article was a statement by J. Maddox, Editor of Nature, to the effect that the labors of Hoyle and Wickramasinghe were not convincing very many scientists because they ". .. had become caught up in the eccentric doctrine of panspermiology, a doctrine for which there was said to be little or no evidence." Hoyle and Wickramasinghe deny their eccentricity and affirm that their ideas have been acquired through observation and the generally accepted methods of deductive science. Basically, Hoyle and Wickramasinghe maintain that evidence supports the concept of life originating, evolving, and being transported from place to place in outer space. We have published many of their results in past issues of SF and see no need to cover the same ground again. Rather, we wish to dwell on the scientific reception of their work. We do this with two quotations from their Nature article. These quotations are embedded in their review of the infrared evidence for biological material in outer space: "Still persuing the infrared problem, we eventually found that among organic materials polysaccharides gave the best ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 75: May-Jun 1991 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Sli: a somewhat amusing psi phenomenon Before you snort in derision at SLI, recall that, just as some gardeners have "green thumbs," so do some people appear to induce electronic panic in hightech equipment just by walking into a laboratory. If the thoughts of a human experimenter can affect marine algae (p . 000), why not electrical equipment? Of course, we know why not! But we have heard some pretty weird stories! For that matter, can you account for everything your computer does? "A strange new phenomenon has recently been studied in detail for probably the first time. It is street lamp interference, or SLI. Author Hilary Evans, a founder member of ASSAP, has established SLIDE, the Street Lamp Interference Data Exchange, to study the reports. "SLI is the apparent ability that certain people have to switch street lamps on or off merely by being in their vicinity. While it may seem to be a form of psychokinesis, Hilary insists that no conclusion should yet be drawn from the small body of data so far accumulated. The effect is surprisingly common, though most reports so far have come from the USA. ASSAP, in cooperation with SLIDE, now wants to obtain information on the phenomenon in Britain." (Anonymous; "Standing by the Lamplight..." ASSAP News, no. 39, p. 2, January 1991.) From Science Frontiers ...
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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. 98: Mar-Apr 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects An Unknown Atmospheric Light Phenomenon Between 1981 and 1985, hundreds of strange lights have appeared in a small valley in central Norway. Named after the valley, the lights have been named: The Hessdalen Phenomenon. A research station was set up in the valley in 1983. During January-February 1984, eight different kinds of instruments were in use, with the following results: Camera with grating : Three pictures showed a continuous spectrum. No spectral lines were seen on any picture. IR-viewer: This instrument was used too little to drawn any conclu sion. Spectrum-analyzer: Sometimes there were electromagnetic signals with harmonics of about 80 MHz. Seismograph : No local seismographic activity was measured. Magnetograph : The magnetic field did sometimes change when the lights showed up. There also seemed to be a correlation with the mag netic pulsation. Radar : The lights could be seen on radar. The speed varied all the way from 0 to 30,000 km/hour. Sometimes the radar saw something moving at a low speed, but no lights were seen by eye. Clearly, there was something there, but only the radar showed it. Laser : A laser-beam was directed toward the light, and the behavior of the light changed. Geiger-counter : No radioactive radi ation was detected. But the source was 1 km away when this instrument was used. (Strand, Erling; "Project Hessdalen - ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 103: Jan-Feb 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Anomalous Radar Echoes And Visual Phenomenon Band-shaped "ghosts" seen on radar off the east coast of Africa. November 16, 1994. Eastern North Atlantic. Aboard the m.v . City of Durban . Enroute from Le Havre to Capetown. As seen by three of the ship's officers: "At 2230 UTC the observers noted on both the 3-cm and 10-cm radars, as well as visually, a wave or band-like phenomenon shown as a succession of 'bands' approximately 4 n.mile long with a uniform separation of about 0.8 n.mile. "The bands appeared as if they were precipitation but on passing through one of them nothing was observed nor were there any other particles [i .e ., no wind-blown dust], seeing as the vessel was off the West African coast at the time. The bands themselves caused a rippling effect on the sea surface of roughly 150 m wide, giving an otherwise calm sea a black appearance beneath them on what was a well moonlit night. Although the phenomenon looked like rain bands, the observers could not give an otherwise definite solution for it." (Herring, R.M .; "Radar Echoes," Marine Observer, 65:170, 1995) From Science Frontiers #103, JAN-FEB 1996 . 1996-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 120: Nov-Dec 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The First Digit Phenomenon Back in 1881, Simon Newcomb, the renowned Canadian-American scientist, published a provocative conjecture that was promptly forgotten by everyone. Newcomb had noticed that books of logarithms in the libraries were always much dirtier at the beginning. Hmmm! Were his fellow scientists looking up the logarithms of numbers beginning with 1 more frequently than 2, 3, etc.? It certainly seemed like it. He formalized his suspicions in a conjecture: p = log10 (1+ 1/d ) Where p = the probability that the first significant digit is d. This (unproven) equation states that about 30% of the numbers in a table or group will begin with 1. Only about 4.6 % will begin with 9. This result certainly clashes with our expectation that the nine digits should occur with equal probability. Fifty-seven years later, F. Benford, a GE physicist, unaware of Newcomb's paper, observed the same dirty early pages in the logarithm tables. He came up with exactly the same conjecture. Benford didn't stop there. He spent several years collecting diverse data sets -- 20,229 sets, to be exact. He included baseball statistics, atomic weights, river areas, the numbers appearing in Reader's Digest articles, etc. He concluded that his (and Newcomb's ) conjecture fit his data very well. There were notable exceptions ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 112: Jul-Aug 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Psychedelic Phenomenon October 3, 1995. Strait of Hormuz. Aboard the m.v . Chilham Castle enroute Karachi to Kuwait. "At about 2240 UTC, the observers saw a strange effect in the sea stretching for approximately 100 m from the parallel body. It was a soft white light, almost strobe-like in character that pulsed irregularly. The light was bright enough to illuminate the wheelhouse deckhead and seemed to emanate from below the water, almost as if something was shining a spotlight upwards, shimmering and twirling: psychedelic projections of the 1960s were brought to mind. Curiously, the wash from the bow was not illuminated and appeared normal, likewise the wake." The phenomenon lasted for 6 or 7 minutes, faded, and then reappeared briefly. The night was clear and the visibility excellent. (Griffiths, P.J .; "Bioluminescence," Marine Observer, 66:183, 1996.) Comment. The comparison to an underwater spotlight shining upward from the depths appears frequently in accounts of abnormal marine luminescence. Note particularly the unlit bow wash and wake. In normal bioluminescent displays, so common in tropical waters, these features are bright -- as Kipling expressed so vividly: "The wake's a welt of light that holds the hot sky tame." (From: L'Envoi ) From Science Frontiers #112, JUL-AUG 1997 . 1997-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 101: Sep-Oct 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Strange phenomenon detected by radars and satellites January 12, 1994. Near Monte Vista, Colorado. At 2:55 PM local time, radars of the North American Aerospace Defense Command and satelliteborne instruments detected an unexplained "heat-radiating" phenomenon. Some sort of fire or explosion was suspected, but air and ground searches by local authorities turned up nothing. Possibly relevant: On the night of January 15, a Rio Grande County sheriff's deputy on patrol saw three helicopters, two with large strobe lights, apparently searching the suspect area. Military officials denied having any craft in the area. (Anonymous; "Officials Baffled by Spectacle on Radar," New Mexican , January 27, 1994. Associated Press item. Cr. P. Viemeister) Comment. Infrared sensors on satellites could detect "heatradiating" phenomena, but it is unclear what groundbased radars "saw." If some kind of military operation were involved, it is doubtful that radar and satellite observations would be made public. Caution advised here! From Science Frontiers #101 Sep-Oct 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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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. 121: Jan-Feb 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Is life a transitory phenomenon?We don't mean just life on earth, where it has hung on for a couple billion years, but life anywhere in the universe. Many cosmologists advance the socalled Anthropic Principle, which states that the physical constants of nature are honed to just the right values to make life possible. If the charge on the electron were a little less or the properties of carbon a bit different, life could not exist. The Anthropic Principle seems to imply that the universe was designed for earth life. But "design" is a bad word these days. It is redolent of purpose and a supernatural being. Suppose, though, that the Anthropic Principle is correct but only in our part of the cosmos and only for a little while. If the constants of nature are not really constant, life could be just a transitory phenomenon, flaring up here and there wherever conditions are ripe and the Anthropic Principle reigns. The cosmos as-a -whole might be lurching toward other goals or, perhaps, toward nowhere in particular. Enough philosophy! A team of Australian astronomers, led by J.K . Webb, has been trying to determine if the famous fine-structure constant of physics has really remained constant throughout the 12-billion years or so of the universe's history. The fine-structure constant is dimensionless and almost exactly equal to 1/137. (Why 137 ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 72: Nov-Dec 1990 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Crop circle update: what are "they" trying to tell us?Several hundred crop circles have afflicted English farmers' fields already this year. The English newspapers haven't neglected them, but where are Nature and Science? Here is a genuine mystery, and most scientists don't dare touch it for fear of being labelled "kooks." Well, we do have one item from New Scientist, but we'll have to rely upon the newspapers for this evermore-bizarre phenomenon. Australia now a target. "Dozens of flattened rings of wheat have been reported recently in Australia over a wide area of arable country in northwestern Victoria. The rings resemble the corn circles found in southern Britain. "Max and Nancee Jolly, farmers at Turiff West, found 12 rings in their wheat crop. Each ring was 12 metres across and rock-hard in the middle. 'The wheat in the rings was bent over at the base but not damaged in any other way.' said Nancee Jolly." The Australian Sceptics suspect pranksters. (Anonymous; "More Circles," New Scientist, p. 23, August 11, 1990.) An article in a Perth newspaper puts the number of wheat circles in Victoria at 400, as of July 9. That's a lot of work for hoaxers! It is also said that the soil in the rings is "magnetically altered," whatever ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 93: May-Jun 1994 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Healing Of Rents In The Natural Order J. Beloff, a prominent researcher in parapsychology has penned a thought-provoking essay in the current Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research. The phenomenon that stimulated Beloff's articles was what he called the "decline effect." Parapsychology has ever been plagued by the appearances of seemingly robust psychic phenomena, such as Rhine's initial ESP experiments with Zener cards. These phenomena would excite parapsychologists for several years, even decades, and then fade away. Writing in a historical vein, Beloff put it this way: ". .. it soon transpired that a decline effect, for ESP no less than for PK, could persist across sessions and, ultimately, across an entire career. Nearly all the high-scorers eventually lost their ability. Even Pavel Stepanck, whose 10-year career as an ESP subject earned him a mention in the Guinness Book of Records , eventually ran out of steam. When, after a long break, he was retested recently by Dr Kappers in Amsterdam, he could produce only chance scores. I do not think it was loss of motivation or boredom in his case, as has sometimes been put forward as an explanation for the long-term decline effect, for it was Stepanek's great strength that he was constitutionally incapable of ever being bored! Nor can we take seriously Martin Gardner's attempt to explain how he ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 132: NOV-DEC 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Luminous Toroid Dangled Sparkling "Candies"Ball lightning (BL) may assume many weird forms, which is one reason some scientists claim it is more likely an illusion than physical reality. Those physicists who admit that BL exists think that some electromagnetic mechanism might account for any nicely spherical, luminous globes with lifetimes of just a few seconds, but their equations cannot handle the phenomenon that took place at Gmuend, Austria, in 1996. A.G . Keul and O. Stummer personally investigated this case. The salient facts are as follows. A. Reisinger was working in her garden about 10 meters from an apple tree when she observed a phenomenon that seems to have been an elaborate and hard-to-explain form of ball lightning. When the BL appeared suddenly from behind the tree, it caught the attention of the witness who said that it looked like it "sat down on to the tree." It had the dimensions of "a small truck tyre, not as large as a tractor one," and it had a definite torus shape. What made the dark object an even stranger sight was a considerable number of "Xmas candies", all hanging down from its underside 15 to 20 centimetres long and "sparkling", which means changing brightness with an emission of sparks at the same time. A humming and sizzling sound was associated with the optical effect, but there was no static electricity. The ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 73: Jan-Feb 1991 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Five Reasons Why Ufos Are Not Extraterrestrial Machines Regardless of what mainstream science thinks of them, UFO observations continue to pile up -- by the tens of thousands! In fact, like the crop-circle events, UFO reports are increasing in number and strangeness. It doesn't matter that the UFOs and their alleged occupants may be physically real. There are tens of thousands of people who think that they have observed something strange -- even after all hoaxes and misinterpretations of natural phenomena have been culled out. Most of those who are willing to accept UFOs as valid phenomenon think they are real hardware piloted by extraterrestrials. J. Vallee, a computer scientist and prolific writer on the subject, demurs, and he gives five reasons why: "( 1 ) Unexplained close encounters are far more numerous than required for any physical survey of the earth; (2 ) The humanoid body structure of the alleged 'aliens' is not likely to have originated on another planet and is not biologically adapted to space travel; (3 ) The reported behavior in thousands of abduction reports contradicts the hypothesis of genetic or scientific experimentation on humans by an advanced race; (4 ) The extension of the phenomenon throughout recorded history demonstrates that UFOs are not a contemporary phenomenon; and (5 ) The apparent ability of UFOs to manipulate space and time suggests radically different and richer alternatives." If not extraterrestrial hardware, what are the UFOs ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 95: Sep-Oct 1994 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Sylvanshine: a newly recognized optical phenomenon Driving along a forested British Columbia road on a warm August night, A.B . Fraser noticed that some trees in the dark woods glowed spectacularly in the car's headlights -- almost as if they were covered with snow. Obviously snow was out of the question. Instead, the glow was some form of reflection from dew-covered leaves, and only from certain species of trees at that. "Later nocturnal expeditions with a powerful flashlight (a proceeding that aroused dark suspicions in at least one local gamekeeper) showed that it favoured only certain types of conifer and a few shrubs such as the yew and rhododendron. The explanation lies in the contact angle of the droplets on the leaves: as this rises above 90 degrees or so, the proportion of light from the car's headlamps that is reflected back towards the occupant increases, and for angles above 140 degrees, the retroreflection becomes spectacular. Blue spruces show the glow particularly well." (Matthews, Lindsay; "Reflections on a Summer's Night," Nature, 369:441, 1994.) From Science Frontiers #95, SEP-OCT 1994 . 1994-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 137: SEP-OCT 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Phantom Bodies The phantom-limb phenomenon is well-known but poorly understood. A person who has lost a limb, or born without one, experiences pain, touch, heat, and many of the other normal sensations in the absent appendage. How can this be? Neuroscientist P. Brugger, at the University of Zurich, asserts the following: The brain contains a representation of the body, and disturbances in relevant neural networks by brain tumors or epilepsy can create the apparitions. Brugger means that the brain seems to have a neurological map of the entire body, even if a person is born without a leg or loses same in an accident. The phantom-limb phenomenon is thereby expanded to a "phantom-body" phenomenon. Continuing in this vein, tumors or those "neurological disturbances" could also produce the sensation of an entire phantom body. Could such whole-body apparitions be the source of the doppelgangers (images of one's self) that have been reported in the parapsychological literature and in folklore? (Holden, Constance, ed.; "Doppelgangers," Science, 291:429, 2001.) From Science Frontiers #137, SEP-OCT 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 ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 132: NOV-DEC 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Curious Phenomena in Venezuala The description of a truly remarkable phenomenon recently appeared on Scientific American's web page. It also surfaced in an article by G.D . Kaswell in the journal Infinite Energy. These re-appearances in the current literature of this well-known anecdote allow us to revisit it here. It is well worth repeating, even though many anomalists have had it in their collections for decades. (In fact we recorded it in 1974 in vol. G1 of Strange Phenomena .) As you read the following quotation from an 1886 issue of Scientific American, remember that the event described occurred almost a decade before the discoveries of X-rays and radioactivity. Although ball lightning was recognized in 1886, the first UFO flap was still 70 years in the future! The following brief account of a recent strange meteorological occurrence may be of interest to your readers as an addition to the list of electrical eccentricities: During the night of the 24th of October last [1886], which was rainy and tempestuous, a family of nine persons, sleeping in a hut a few leagues from Maracaibo [Venezuela], were awakened by a loud humming noise and a vivid, dazzling light, which brilliantly illuminated the interior of the house. The occupants, completely terror stricken, and believing, as they relate, that the end of the world had come, threw themselves on their knees and commenced to pray, but ...
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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 HAIR-RAISING PHENOMENON The Creation Research Society Quarterly often touches on subjects avoided by the establishment scientific journals. In the latest issue, a medical doctor reviews the hoary ontogeny-recapitulates-phylogeny hypothesis. As classically stated by evolutionists, the human embryo passes through stages in which it looks like creatures that preceded it in evolution. The doctor, G.R . Culp, remarks that although evolutionists maintain that reputable scientists no longer employ this argument as evidence for evolution, the "recapitulation" claim is still being made in some classrooms and even during some of the recent creationist-evolutionist debates. In some humans such as the "hairy child" sketched above, the lanugo or natal hair persists beyond the womb. Drawing from Incredible Life. Culp then shows why the recapitulation claim failed in five stages in the development of the human embryo. A rich lode of anomalies exists here: cells migrate purposefully, mysterious struc-tures grow and then disappear; it is a kaleidoscope of changing structures and processes. Take, for example, the "hair stage": "The embryo is covered with very fine hair at about the seventh month of development of the embryo. The evolutionist claims that this is evidence that men came from hairy mammals like the apes. However, these hairs are unlike the hair found on apes, as they are very small in diam eter and always soft and unpigmented. This hair disappears from the ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 113: Sep-Oct 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Ball of Light Clocked At 1,800 Miles/second!August 21, 1996. Sarpy County, NE. 1,800 miles/second! That's 6,480,000 miles/hour! This speedy phenomenon was captured on video tape by D. Morss and P. McCrone. These researchers were monitoring the top of a thunderstorm with low-light, high-speed video equipment, when the ball of light "popped out" of the top of a thundercloud and flashed across their instrument's field of view in 1/10 of a second. Nevertheless, it was caught on six video frames. Morss commented as follows: "It's something that you're going to have to scratch your head and think, 'What kind of phenomenon could form this kind of light?' .. .. . "It's got to be some kind of trapped charge that popped out of the top of a thunderstorm." (Anderson, Julie; "Ball of Light Leaves Scientists in the Dark," Omaha Morning Herald , December 18, 1996. Cr. L. Farish.) Comment. Perhaps 1,800 miles per second should really be 1,800 miles per hour. This velocity would be comparable with that of another very speedy "ball of light." May 25, 1997. Near Loco, Oklahoma. In what might be called a " ...
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... the m.v . Oriental Bay , Hong Kong to Singapore. "Four shafts of narrow vertical light were observed reflected in the sky. Upon consulting the chart it was revealed that they were 'reflections' of the four flares of the Kakap Natuna oil terminal, which at this point was 75 n mile away. "As indicated in the sketch, the shafts of light were visible above a lower layer of stratocumulus cloud, and, when measured by sextant, their upper tips were calculated to be nearly 13 km high. The shafts appeared to be reflected in a thin layer of cirrostratus and, as the vessel approached to 60 n mile from the terminal, the glow from the flares was also visible on the horizon." (Peterson, J.L .; "Optical Phenomenon," Marine Observer, 69:110, 1999.) Tall light pillars rise over the South China Sea February 4, 1999. Toyama Bay, Japan. The caption quoted below is located beneath an impressive color photograph of five tall pillars of light reaching up into the night sky. "Rare beams of light rise to the upper atmosphere over Toyama Bay on Thursday. The lights appeared about 2,000 meters above fishing boats with fires aboard to attract squid, for about 20 minutes from 8 p.m . The night illuminations are a rare natural phenomenon in which lights on the ground are reflected in the hexagonal crystals that form in the cirrostratus. According to experts, the phenomenon can only be observed in ideal weather conditions when the height of the cloud matches the distance from ...
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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. 137: SEP-OCT 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Ashen Light Of Venus Closing The Book Scientists are understandably delighted when they believe they have definitively and indisputably explained one of Nature's many mysteries. They can then finally "close the book" on the phenomenon. Sometimes, though, the book is slammed shut prematurely or unjustifiably. Also, as it often happens, closing one book opens another and the new one is even harder to close. Below, we present three examples where finality (closed books) seems to be proclaimed too quickly. On occasion, the night side of Venus (which goes through phases like the moon) seems to glow softly and subtly. For some 350 years, keen-eyed observers have seen this phenomenon through their telescopes. Nevertheless, the effect is so elusive that many astronomers doubt its physical reality. Additionally, it is easy to doubt the existence of the ashen light because good explanations are as elusive as the light itself. During the past decade, two scientific nails have also been driven into the ashen-light coffin: Spectrographic studies of the upper atmosphere of Venus do detect some nighttime air glow, but it is much too weak to account for the abundant telescopic observations from earth. The Cassini spacecraft did not detect any high-frequency radio noise typical of lightning when it passed close to Venus in 1998 and 1999. This put an end to the surmise that the ashen light was due to rapid, widespread lightning occurring ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 80: Mar-Apr 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects More evidence for galactic "shells" or "something else"Measurements of periodic red-shift bunching appeared in the literature at least as far back as 1977 in the work of W.G . Tifft. The implications of this phenomenon are apparently too terrible to contemplate, for astrophysicists have not taken up the challenge. They may be forced to take the phenomenon more seriously, because two new reports of redshift bunching have surfaced. First, B. Guthrie and W, Napier, at Edinburgh's Royal Observatory, have checked Tifft's "bunching" claim using accurately known red shifts of some nearby galaxies. They found a periodicity of 37.5 kilometers/second -- no matter in which direction the galaxies lay. (Gribbin, John; "' Bunched' Red Shifts Question Cosmology," New Scientist, p. 10, December 21/28, 1991.) The work of Guthrie and Napier is elaborated upon in the next item. Sec ond, B. Koo and R. Krone, at the University of Chicago, using optical red-shift measurements, discovered that, in one direction at least , "the clusters of galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars, seemed to be concentrated in evenly spaced layers." (Browne, Malcolm W.; "In Chile, GalaxyWatching Robot Seeks Measure of Universe," New York Times, December 17, 1991. Cr. ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 110: Mar-Apr 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Unusual Circulating Cloud Object July 24, 1996. Malborough, South Devon. About midnight on this date, E. Netley and his wife observed a most peculiar cloud formation. It was so well-formed and precisely organized that Netley felt that the term "cloud object" was appropriate. Even so, he was confident that the apparition represented a natural phenomenon. "Natural" probably, but certainly the strangest cloud we have encountered in 30 years of literature research. The evening of July 23 was warm and a bit humid, with a modest breeze blowing in from the ocean. Netley and wife first saw the "cloud object" from a distance of about a kilometer; they eventually walked to within 400 meters of the phenomenon. The "object" consisted of a slowly rotating ring of thin, vertically oriented clouds. (See figure.) The cloud ring was 80-100 meters across and seemed to rotate in a horizontal plane at the rate of about one revolution per minute. As though this were not strange enough, the rotating "cloud object" itself moved in a larger circle 8-10 times the diameter of the "cloud object." The "cloud object" took 4-5 minutes to complete a trip around the larger circle. The phenomenon lasted for about an hour before dissipating. (Netley, Edward; "Unusual Circulating Cloud Object," Journal of Meteorology, U.K . ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 103: Jan-Feb 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects "BLUE JETS" EMITTED UPWARD FROM TOPS OF THUNDERCLOUDS Geophysicists have recently recognized that something very strange transpires above thunderclouds. First, there is the phenomenon we have called "rocket lightning" in our books and newsletters. Scientists now call these upwardly directed discharges "sprites." (SF#84) The sprites are short-duration red flashes in the ionosphere, sometimes with bluish tendrils extending down into the thunderclouds. Second, there are the newly recognized "blue jets," a new class of upward discharges. This phenomenon is detailed in a paper by E.M . Wescott et al. Here is their abstract: "Initial observations of as newly documented type of optical emission above thunderstorms are reported. "Blue jets," or narrowly collimated beams of blue light that appear to propagate upwards from the tops of thunderstorms, were recorded on B/W and color video cameras for the first time during the Sprites94 aircraft campaign, June-July 1994. The jets appear to propagate upward at speeds of about 100 km/s and reach terminal altitudes of 40-50 km. Fifty-six examples were recorded during a 22-minute interval during a storm over Arkansas. We examine some possible mechanisms. but have no satisfactory theory of this phenomenon." (Wescott, E.M ., et al; "Preliminary Results from the Sprites94 Aircraft Campaign: 2. Blue Jets," Geophysical Research Letters, ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 5: November 1978 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Cometary Appearance Of Venus The famed astronomer Johann Maedler first recorded strange brushes of light emanating from the bright limb of Venus. Two luminous fans opening sunward gave the planet the appearance of a multitailed comet. Maedler made this curious observation on April 7, 1833; and it has come to be known as the Maedler Phenomenon. If it were not for Maedler's fame as an honest, meticulous observer, the event would have been fogotten long ago. A similar observation was made by Gadbury in 1686. The only explanation for the phenomenon offered so far involves some sort of obscure type of halo or sun-pillar effect. (Baum, Richard; "The Maedler Phenomenon," Strolling Astronomer, 27:118, 1978.) From Science Frontiers #5 , November 1978 . 1978-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 79: Jan-Feb 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Milky Sea A report from the Captain of the m.v . Benalder , enroute from Singapore to Jeddah. "18 August 1990. At 1640 UTC the sea surface was noticed to have a white appearance which at first was thought to be low-lying fog. This theory was disproved when shining a light in the water gave to noticeable increase in luminance. "The phenomenon extended to the horizon in all directions and was bright enough to make the ship's foredeck and the sky appear much darker than the sea. Its appearance and disappearance was gradual apart from an area of normal sea which was passed about five minutes before the phenomenon faded away ay 1725." (Anderson, F.G .J .; "Bioluminescence," Marine Observer, 61:117, 1991.) Comment. Luminous bacteria are usually blamed for milky seas, but biologists have paid little attention to the phenomenon. Reference. Milky seas and "white water" are cataloged in GLW9 in Lightning, Auroras. To order, visit: here . From Science Frontiers #79, JAN-FEB 1992 . 1992-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 127: Jan-Feb 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Shadow Dance Of The Gnats An curious phenomenon was reported recently to the New Scientist. "I travelled to Hungary to observe the recent total solar eclipse. About five minutes before totality, my wife and I noticed many curved shadows about 3 centimetres long dancing on a white paper lying on the ground, formed by a swarm of gnats. The shadows were exactly the same shape as the remaining bright portion of the Sun, by then only a thin arc of light. Why?" This phenomenon is not anomalous but it is entertaining. It is the reverse of the pin-hole-camera effect often seen during total eclipses. People standing in the shadow of a tree will see many bright arcs on the ground -- images of the sun being eclipsed. The interstices between the tree's leaves act as pinholes. The phenomenon happens in reverse when pin-holes are replaced by "pins"; that is, small opaque obstructions, such as gnats. (Scott, Andrew, and Diebold, Mike; "Shadow Dance," New Scientist, p. 93, October 30, 1999.) From Science Frontiers #127, JAN-FEB 2000 . 1997 William R. Corliss ...
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... 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 January. The phenomenon is independent of water depth and distance from land. ...
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... 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 Puzzling Shadows August 3, 1997. Dooey, West Donegal, Ireland. The observer, A. Evans, was on a north-south beach. "It was a glorious day with some broken cloud over the land but none out to sea. Over the period between 3.00 and 6.00pm, a total of five jets passed overhead, all leaving vapour trails. Two showed a very interesting phenomenon, because while the vapour trails extended eastwards, the trails were continued westwards in front of the planes as dark lines which stretched all the way to the horizon. It was as if the plane was running on an aerial railway. I think it significant that only two of the planes showed this phenomenon as I suspect it was heightdependent. At this time the sun was high and shining from the south-southwest." J.O . Mattsson, Lund University, surmised that the black streaks in front of aircraft were shadows of the condensation trails behind the two planes. The shadows were cast forward ahead of the planes upon the hazy, though cloudless, atmosphere above the ocean. (Evans, Alun; "Condensation Trail Shadows," Weather, 53:371, 1998.) Comment. Since the sun was high in the sky, it is difficult to visualize how a the vapor-trail shadow could be cast directly ahead of the aircraft. Hummm! We suppose that the vapor trails acted like ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 112: Jul-Aug 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Cold-Fusion Pro-Fusion It has been three years since we last reported on cold fusion. (SF#95) Cold fusion is an anomaly if there even was one, because mainstream science vigorously excludes the phenomenon from its journals, such as Science. It is even characterized as "pseudoscience." Nevertheless, in a 1996 issue of the Journal of Scientific Exploration, E. Storms required 59 pages to review properly recent work on cold fusion. Based on more than 190 studies (his bibliography runs for 12 pages), Storms reveals just how seriously some "rogue" scientists view cold fusion as a real phenomenon and future energy source. Reflecting the antagonism of the "hotfusion" community, the U.S . expenditures on cold fusion probably do not exceed $1 million/year; Japan, in contrast, spends about $100 million/year. Cold fusion was not interred elsewhere around the planet and is quite healthy. In Storms' own words: "Evidence for large and reproducible energy generation as well as various nuclear reactions, in addition to fusion, from a variety of environments and methods is accumulating. The field can no longer be dismissed by invoking obvious error or prosaic explanations." (Storms, Edmund; "Review of the 'Cold Fusion' Effect," Journal of Scientific Exploration, 10:185, 1996.) More recently, the Wall Street Journal commented derogatorily about cold ...
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... All!The headlines say that the human genome has been charted and further imply that we now can read life's total blueprint. Closer study of the announcement reveals that there still remain unreadable snippets of the genome here and there. In fact, the total number of human genes is still in doubt: maybe 30,000, some say 120,000. This wide range of uncertainty does not inspire belief in the accurate readability of this biological blueprint at the present time. Usually left unsaid is the fact that the present blueprint covers only 2-3 % of the territory. That's right, 97-98% of the human genome isn't mapped at all. This uncharted territory is assumed to be "junk" or "nonsense" DNA that plays no role in heredity. Want to bet that this assumption is correct? And don't forget that genes jump around. The genome is really a moving target. Genes also work in concert. It is not one gene coding for one protein, which then has a singular role in creating an operational human being. For example, some 5,692 genes are active in breast-cancer cells. Genes may also have multiple roles. Our present blueprint of the human genome does not display all the mobility and complex interrelationships of the genes. We do know that genes are the blue-prints for the manufacture of proteins. Of these, there may be over 1,000,000 different -- more than ten times the number of genes! These multitudinous proteins are continually being created ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 100: Jul-Aug 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Giant sea-bed pockmarks [The following long, initially dull (? ) discussion leads unerringly to the Bermuda Triangle via a Fortean phenomenon!] Unrecognized until just a few years ago (SF#100*), sea-bed pockmarks are remarkable geological features. They occur worldwide on the floors of all of the oceans and even some lakes. They are found in shallow waters and at depths of thousands of meters. In diameter, these roughly conical depressions may span 350 meters or more and be up to 35 meters deep. No trivial phenomenon, some pockmark fields exceed 1,000 km2. Like the curious abyssal ridges (SF#97), sea-bed pockmarks are rarely discussed despite their great geological and economic importance. Recent issues of Geology contain three fascinating papers relating to giant sea-bed pockmarks. In Ref. 1, J.T . Kelley et al describe a pockmark field in Belfast Bay, Maine. Here, the density of the pockmarks reaches 160 per km2, and they are apparently the largest pockmarks yet discovered. The Belfast Bay field is "fresh" and "active" in the sense that the pockmarks are sharply defined and methane bubbles still stream up from buried organic matter. Natural-gas plume rising from the sea-floor off the Carolina coast. Another pockmark field is the subject of P.R . Vogt et al (Ref. 2). It occupies 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 Unidentified Light Strange optical phenomenon seen off the coast of Trinidad in 1991. January 13, 1991. Caribbean Sea. Aboard the m.v . Trinidad and Tobago . "At 0210 UTC whilst the ship was proceeding eastwards along the north coast of Trinidad, a relatively bright patch was noticed in the almost cloudless sky and was thought to be a cluster of stars. Its bearing was approximately 300 at an elevation of about 50 , and closer inspection through binoculars revealed a rather strange phenomenon, as shown in the sketch. "The bright patch was a perfect circle of a bright, light-blue colour and was transparent as stars could be seen through it. There was also a trail from the circle which looked like the track a disc would describe if it moved through an arc. This trail was also of light-blue colouration but was not nearly so bright as the circle. The entire phenomenon dissipated after about five minutes." (Knight, M.; "Unidentified Light," Marine Observer, 62:22, 1992.) From Science Frontiers #80, MAR-APR 1992 . 1992-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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