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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 A METEORITIC EVENT LAYER IN ANTARCTIC ICE "Where the East Antarctic icesheet meets the Transantarctic Mountains, old, deep glacial ice is tilted upward and exposed. Within this visible cross section of the icesheet, layers of dark volcanic tephra serve as stratigraphic markers and datable age horizons. Systematic sampling of these layers at a well-known meteorite collection site (the Allan Hills Main Icefield) has revealed a band consisting of unusually dark and rounded particles, many of which are spheroidal. This debris layer (BIT-58) extends parallel to the stratigraphy of the ice established from the tephra bands, and thus apparently marks a single depositional event. Several kilograms of ice from two sites along this band were subsequently collected and melted, yielding a few grams of sediment for further study." Microscopic examination and microprobe analysis led to the following conclusions: "Although direct evidence of an extraterrestrial origin for this debris layer (such as the presence of cosmogenic 10 Be and 26Al) has not yet been obtained, the available data strongly suggest that this sediment originated as meteoritic spallation debris. This debris is distinct from other Antarctic 'cosmic dust' collections by virtue of its uniform, recognizable, ordinary chondrite composition and the consistent relation shown between grain size and texture. The BIT-58 layer probably originated from a single transient event, the passage and/or impact of a single large meteorite over the East Antarctic icesheet." (Harvey, ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 33: May-Jun 1984 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Prisoners Of The Boundary Layer Wings were an inspired evolutionary development. They permit the geographical dispersal of many species, especially insects. But nature, ever-innovative, has other aeronautical techniques up her sleeve. Consider the tiniest insects that do not possess wings. It is difficult for large animals like ourselves to realize that these tiny creatures are actually prisoners of the so-called "boundary layer" of air hugging all surfaces. The thin boundary layer is stagnant very close to the surface. Any tiny in-sect wishing to take advantage of wind-dispersal to propagate the species farther afield must somehow breach this layer. Some of the scale insects have in their instar phases developed the trick of rearing up on their hind legs, penetrating the boundary layer, and presenting a high-drag surface to the wind. (Many climb along plant surfaces inside the boundary layer to exposed areas before exhibiting this behavior.) The wind plucks them off the plant and carries them off to new territories. The authors think this may be convergent evolutionary strategy for many minute insects. (Washburn, Jan O., and Washburn, Libe; "Active Aerial Dispersal of Minute Wingless Arthropods.....," Science, 223:1088, 1984.) Comment. The fact that these insects are shaped like airfoils (i .e ., aircraft wings) is also interesting. Scale insects (first instar phase). ...
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... , as illustrated by the following back-to-back articles in Nature. We quote from the abstracts. "Closely spaced samples from an uninterupted calcareous pelagic sequence across the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary reveal that the extinction of planktonic Foraminifera and nannofossils was abrupt without any previous warning in the sedimentary record, and that the moment of extinction was coupled with anomalous trace element enrichments, especially of iridium and osmium. The rarity of these two elements in the crust of the Earth indicates that an extraterrestrial source, such as the impact of a large meteorite may have provided the required amounts of iridium and osmium." (Smit, J., and Hertogen, J.; "An Extraterrestrial Event at the Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary," Nature, 285:198, 1980.) "Evidence ... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 12: Fall 1980 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Rehabilitation Of Cuvier Cuvier (1769-1832) was a catastrophist. To him, the record of death in the layers of fossiliferous rocks was obviously the consequence of terrestrial convulsions. But Cuvier's ideas were swept aside by the uniformitarians who saw the earth and its cargo of life unfolding with almost agonizing slowness. But Cuvier is making a comeback, as illustrated by the following back-to-back articles in Nature. We quote from the abstracts. "Closely spaced samples from an uninterupted calcareous pelagic sequence across the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary reveal that the extinction of planktonic Foraminifera and nannofossils was abrupt without any previous warning in the sedimentary record ...
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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 Osmium Isotopes Support Meteoric Impact Comparison of terrestrial and meteoric osmium-isotope abundances tends to confirm the hypothesis of a meteorite strike at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary. (Luck, J.M ., and Turekian, K.K .; "Osmium-187/Osmium-186 in Manganese Nodules and the Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary," Science 222:613, 1983.) From Science Frontiers #32, MAR-APR 1984 . 1984-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 58: Jul-Aug 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Earlier pages in earth's history revealed Geologists are wont to liken the earth's sedimentary strata to pages in a history book. Well, it seems that seismologists may have discovered a previously unread chapter or two deep beneath the continental United States, in the guise of extensive stratified rocks in the Precambrian basement: "The extent of the layered rocks became evident last summer as the Consortium for Continental Reflection Profiling (COCORP) completed a major deep seismic reflection traverse across Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and part of Missouri. The survey was conducted partly because industrial seismic data and studies by the Illinois Geological Survey showed basement layering in southern Illinois, partly because earlier COCORP surveys also showed such layering in Oklahoma and Texas, and partly because COCORP's broad program calls for comprehensive exploration of the entire continental basement of the United States. "Although the composition and precise age of the Precambrian rocks are yet to be determined, their seismic reflection character suggests a sedimentary assemblage, at least in part. These layers occur within the Proterozoic Granite-Rhyolite province, where drilling typically recovers undeformed granite or rhyolite with ages of 1.3 to 1.5 b.y . Such prominent and orderly layering is surprising, given the widespread occurrence of granitic rocks. If the layered rocks are indeed igneous, the volume of silicic volcanic material is spectacular." (COCORP Research Group; "COCORP Finds Thick Proterozoic (? ) Strata ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 18: Nov-Dec 1981 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Iridium-rich layers and catastrophism Kyte et al have discovered a 2.3 -millionyear-old sedimentary layer under the Antarctic Ocean that contains iridium and gold concentrations comparable to those in the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary. The noble metals are mostly contained in millimeter-sized grains that resemble ablation debris from a large extraterrestrial object. Unlike the Cre taceous-Tertiary episode, however, the newly found layer is not accompanied by evidence of mass biological extinctions. (Kyte, Frank T., et al; "High Noble Metal Concentrations in a Late Pliocene Sediment," Nature, 292:417, 1981.) Comment. Perhaps those paleontologists who deny the existence of sudden biological extinctions at the CretaceousTertiary boundary are correct and something else besides catastrophism impacted terrestrial life at that juncture. Reference. The implications of iridium "spikes" are found in Category ESB1 in our Catalog: Anomalies in Geology. To order, go to: here . From Science Frontiers #18, NOV-DEC 1981 . 1981-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Oct 1984 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Infrared Atmospheric Waves When the night sky is photographed in the infrared portion of the spectrum, luminous wave-like structures appear in the upper atmosphere. The wave crests are about 50 kilometers apart; lengthwise, they stretch up to 1.000 kilometers; altitude, about 85 kilometers. As many as ten waves may be seen at the same time. Morphologically, these waves resemble noctilucent clouds, which are sun-illumined, high-altitude clouds. The infrared waves, however, appear when the sun is well below the horizon. Since these waves are seen only at low angles over the horizon, some geophysicists propose they are the result of a geometric effect produced by viewing a rippled layer of weakly emitting gases in the upper atmosphere. When one looks at this rippled layer just above the horizon, one sees alternating thick and thin sections due to the perspective. The thick portions will appear brighter than the thin sections. As for the origin of this postulated rippled layer; no one is sure. Gravity waves may be involved. (Herse, M.; "Waves in the OH Emissive Layer," Science, 225:172, 1984.) Comment. As described in our Catalog Lightning, Auroras, Nocturnal Lights. luminous atmospheric waves are, on rare occasions, visible to the naked eye. It is possible that the bandedsky phenomenon is related to the infrared waves. For more information on the book just mentioned, visit: here . Rippled emissive layer around ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 78: Nov-Dec 1991 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Heavy bombardment of southeast asia 700,000 years ago Tektites are found all over much of Australasia -- an immense area. The tiny, often-illustrated teardrop- and button-shaped tektites clearly seem to have been formed when an extraterrestrial object smashed into the earth, melted terrestrial rock and soil, and splashed the fluid droplets over thousands of kilometers of Australia and Southeast Asia. Solidifying in flight, these par-ticles fell by the millions. Aerodynamically sculpted Australasian tektite But another type of tektite is also found in Southeast Asia. These are the layered or Muong-Nong tektites, which are not aerodynamically sculptured. They come instead in large, irregular masses, 3-20 centimeters thick, weighing up to 24 kilograms. Their layered appearance is thought to result from flow and stirrings as they solidified in small pools of melted rock and soil splashed from nearby impact craters. These irregular chunks of solidified melt could not have traveled great distances like their streamlined brothers. They lie at most only a few crater diameters from their parent craters. Since layered tektites are found over an area 800 x 1140 kilometers in extent, and they are not far-travelers, Southeast Asia must have been peppered with many small cosmic projectiles 700,000 years ago (the disputed age of the event). Whereas geologists have been searching diligently for a single huge crater (perhaps 100 kilometers in diameter) to explain the Australasia strewn field, ...
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... of the cross-bedding seen in sandstones elsewhere in the region. Furthermore, fossils were extremely rare in the cross-bedded sandstones, which were built up over long periods of time. It looked as if the structureless, fossiliferous sandstones were sandslides differing from those in Nebraska in their much greater magnitude. But why were the Gobi sandslides so much larger and, apparently, faster? The next clue came from the recent devastating mudflows in California and Central America caused by heavy rains. These debris flows were made deadly when the infiltrating rainwater was blocked by bedrock. The accumulating water turned the soil into a muddy slurries that raced down hills at high velocities, overtaking animals (including many people) trying to escape. There is no bedrock in the Gobi, but a little digging encountered impervious layers of caliche. The Gobi caliche consists of layers of sandgrains cemented together by calcium carbonate. Typically located 2-3 feet below the dune surfaces, the caliche layers were evidence that the Gobi had experienced benign periods in the past with low winds, stable dunes and more moisture. But when heavy rains doused the Gobi dunes, the water was blocked by these caliche layers. Result: fluidized sand and catastrophic sand slides. These Cretaceous events were deadly for wildlife but blessings for future paleontologists. (Dingus, Lowell, and Loope, David; "Death in the Dunes," Natural History, 109:50, July-August 2000.) Comment. The anomalous fossils have been explained by a little digging and good reasoning. Gobi sandslides occurred when impervious caliche layers helped fluidize the ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 54: Nov-Dec 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Fractals, fractals everywhere Anyone who follows the popular scientific literature knows that fractals are now "in." Commonly employed to "explain" patterns in nature, fractals are, from a simplistic viewpoint, mathematical ways to predict the development of a growing structure, be it a crystalline mass, a plant, or the universe-as-a -whole. Yes, the universe-as-a -whole, the clouds of stars and clusters of galaxies, may be mimicked by cellular automata (i .e ., fractals). Imagine the universe as a cubical lattice, and start in one corner, adding one layer of cubes after another. Galaxy distribution could be simulated by using a rule telling us which of the added cubical cells had galaxies in them and which did not. "The rule actually used supposes that the question whether each point in a newly added layer will (or will not) be occupied by a galaxy is mostly determined by the occupancy of the five nearest neighbors in the previous layer, but for good measure, there is a random variable to introduce an element of white noise to the system. To make the process a little more interesting, the determination whether a new site is occupied depends on whether a number characteristic of that site, and calculated by simple arithmetic from the corresponding number for the five nearest neighbors in the preceeding layer, exceeds an arbitrarily chosen number." Comparing this ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 37: Jan-Feb 1985 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects When Mars Had Lakes Rhythmic layered deposits can be seen in the Valles Marineris, a large Martian valley. The strata are erosional remnants up to 5 kilometers high, with individual layers 170-220 meters thick. They can be traced on spacecraft photographs for some 50 kilometers. The material making up the strata is clearly different from that of the valley walls. After the layers were deposited, they were deeply eroded by some event in Martian history that seems related to the formation of the great outflow channels associated with Valles Marineris. The author of this American Geophysical Union paper concludes: "The morphology and history of the sediments are consistent with deposition in standing bodies of water early in Martian history." (Nedell, Susan S., and Squyers, Steven W.; "Geology of the Layered Deposits in the Valles Marineris, Mars," Eos, 65:979, 1984.) Comment. The "event" that deeply eroded the Martian deposits may have been similar to the catastrophic emptying of Lake Missoula, which carved out the Channelled Scablands of eastern Washington state as the Ice Ages waned. From Science Frontiers #37, JAN-FEB 1985 . 1985-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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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 Six Immense Armadas Of Icebergs Invaded The North Atlantic "Observations of large and abrupt climate changes recorded in Greenland ice cores have spurred a search for clues to their cause. The search has revealed that at six times during the last glaciation, huge armadas of icebergs launched from Canada spread across the northern Atlantic Ocean, each triggering a climate response of global extent." The foregoing abstract does not mention the interesting Heinrich layers that fostered the above scenario. In 1988, H. Heinrich published a paper describing a curious set of sedimentary layers found in cores drilled in the tops of the Dreizack seamounts in the eastern North Atlantic. Heinrich concluded that each of the six layers he found represented the melting of "six great armadas of icebergs." These icebergs carried debris picked up in Canada and, as they melted, deposited it on the seamounts and ocean floor. Each layer could be correlated with the major climate boundaries revealed by the Greenland ice cores. Very fittingly, these iceberg incursions are now termed "Heinrich Events." (Broecker, Wallace S.; "Massive Iceberg Discharges as Triggers for Global Climate Changes," Nature, 372:421, 1994.) From Science Frontiers #98, MAR-APR 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Crop circles not hoaxes: a correction In SF#89, when presenting T. Meaden's "middle-ground" position on the now-infamous crop circles, we stated that an earlier letter to Weather by J.W . Deardorff represented the "all-hoax" position. This was incorrect and, to be fair, we now reproduce Deardorff's letter: "Recent letters to Weather indicate little agreement concerning the crop circles mystery, except that the phenomenon is in general no hoax. Lest it be thought that Dave and Doug made them all, including over 1000 in the season of 1990 and as many as 15 in one night, consider the following crop circle streamline configurations: an upper layer, with an inward directed swirl of stems as viewed from above, and underneath a lower layer swirled outwards and orthogonal to the upper layer. This was the situation for the 17 m circle discovered by Busty Taylor at Headbourne Worthy, which appeared overnight on 1 August 1986 (Delgado and Andrews 1989). Its stem "streamlines" were sketched by Meaden and Andrews (Noyes 1990). Somehow the source-mechanism of this circle apparently first swirled every other stem outwards while leaving the remaining stems standing, then swirled the remaining stems inwards and at right angles to the layer below, again without any appreciable breakage of crop stems. "Not only does this rule out any hoax, since it defies all imagination, but it rules out any natural vortex as the cause. We have ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 15: Spring 1981 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Iceland And The Iridium Layer The high concentration of iridium between the Cretaceous and Tertiary eras (about 65 million years ago) is widely interpreted as indicating a worldwide catastrophe caused by the impact of a comet or meteor. The increase of iridium concentration over normal levels is much higher in northern latitudes, suggesting that the impact point is in this region. But no impact scar of the proper size and age exists. However, if one looks for scabs rather than scars, one finds that Iceland is formed entirely of volcanic rocks younger than the Cretaceous. To Fred Whipple of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, these facts dovetail nicely. Iceland was form ed by magma welling up from a 100-km hole in the sea floor blasted out by a 10-km meteor. (Anonymous; "The Blow That Gave Birth to Iceland?" New Scientist, 89:740, 1981.) From Science Frontiers #15, Spring 1981 . 1981-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... . First, a bit of background. Natural glasses can be created in several ways. Impact-heating by meteorites or asteroids probably fused the famous slabs of Libyan Desert Glass and also the Darwin glass found in Australia. More curious are the peculiar glassy clinkers of fused wood ash found in hollow snags in trees after intense forest fires. This is called "combustion metamorphism." Combustion metamorphism is also common where undergound coal seams have caught fire and burn for decades. Humans get into the act, too. The ancient Scots piled up trees around their rock forts and fused the stones together with fire. (Why they bothered is unknown.) However, a different sort of natural glass has been found in east-central Botswana. There, archeologists have found 5-inch-thick layers of glassy slag interleaved with ashy soil in ancient middens (garbage dumps). These middens are not associated with pottery kilns or iron smelting. It is hard to imagine what could have melted layers of garbage, including pottery, plant material, and other biomass. Analysis of the slag indicates that temperatures of 1155-1290 C were required to fuse the garbage. Open fires could not have attained the necessary temperature. The slag layers encompass several hundred square meters, so the phenomenon is not a trivial one. Combustion metamorphism may be the answer to this puzzle. Lightning or grass fires might have ignited buried biomass layers. Being confined like burning coal seams, the fires could have generated the required very high temperatures. (Thy, P., et al; "Implications of Prehistoric ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 108: Nov-Dec 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Earthquakes And Mima Mounds In a recent paper in Nature, P.B . Umbanhower et al described how they created regular geometric patterns in a layer of fine particles (only 0.15 mm in diameter) spread on a vibrating surface. At various forcing frequencies, they saw the layer of tiny brass spheres heap up into hexagonal honeycombs, circular piles, and even stranger shapes. (Umbanhower, Paul B., et al; "Localized Excitations in a Vertically Vibrated Granular Layer," Nature, 382: 793, 1996) Comment. Nothing anomalous here, you say? Quite right, but perhaps there is in this experiment an explanation of a long-recognized geological anomaly: The origin of the famed Mima Mounds found scattered by the thousands in various regions of the planet, such as Mima Prairie near Puget Sound, in Washington State. Actually, the demonstration of Umbanhower et al was preceded by a similar experiment back in 1990. In that year, A.W . Berg reported in Geology how he had covered a piece of plywood with a thin layer of fine sand (loess) and subjected the plywood sheet to impacts simulating earthquakes. Lo and behold, the sand rose up in an array of Mima Mound-like heaps. (See: SF#69 and p. 201 in the book Science Frontiers. This book is described here . Umbanhower, a physicist, probably doesn't read Geology ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 14: Winter 1981 Supplement Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Eyes of deep-sea fish have spare parts The sunlight that filters down into the depths of the sea is exceedingly weak. It is so dark down there that one would expect deep-sea fish to be blind like many cave-dwelling animals. They are not blind; rather many have eyes of fantastic size and novel construction. An unusual feature of some deep-sea eyes is a layered retina. In the conger eel, five layers of photoreceptors are plastered on top of one another. Yet, experiments with conger eel eyes reveal that only one layer of photoreceptors is active at any one time. R. Shapley and J. Gordon, who carried out these experiments at the Plymouth Lab., surmise that the extra retinal layers are being held in reserve, much like the rows of spare teeth found in sharks' mouths. If so, deep-sea fish are the only animals that have evolved spare stores of visual pigments. (Anonymous; "The Mystery of the Non-Functioning Receptors," New Scientist, 88:366, 1980.) Comment. Why haven't cave-dwelling fish taken the same evolutionary route? From Science Frontiers #14, Winter 1981 . 1981-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 119: Sep-Oct 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Curious Effects Department The spinning-egg water-sprinkler. It is generally known that you can separate fresh eggs from hard-boiled eggs by spinning them like a top. If they are hard-boiled they will spin on one of the ends. The fluid contents of fresh eggs, however, will slosh around and prevent top action. O.K .! this is not very curious, so we'll place a hard-boiled egg in a flat pan containing a thin layer of water and give it a spin. Not only does the egg spin on end but a layer of water creeps up the side of the egg. When the water is about half way up the side of the egg it breaks up into droplets and sprays out horizontally like a rotating lawn sprinkler. No mysterious forces are involved, nor are there spooky quantum mechanics effects. The major forces operating are gravity, centrifugal force, and adhesion between the egg surface and the water. As the film of water creeps up the egg, the centrifugal force increases and overcomes the force of adhesion. Then, water droplets spray outward. (Gutierrez, Gustavo, et al; "Fluid Flow up the Wall of a Spinning Egg," American Journal of Physics, 66:442, 1998.) Creating fluid corners in kitchen sinks. When a smooth column of water from your kitchen faucet hits the sink, it flows out radially. ...
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... 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 Two Tsumani Tales Only a few years ago astronomical catastrophism was denied as a major factor in geological change. Now one reads everywhere of huge terrestrial impact craters, iridium layers, and tektite deposits. Even so, one necessary consequence of 70% of the large impacts has been neglected until recently: the giant tsunamis and marine incursions that must have swept over the coasts of the continents following impacts at sea. This oversight is now being rectified. 100,000 BP. The South Pacific. A longstanding geological enigma of the New South Wales coastline is the curious distribution of sand dunes. Those headlands less than 40 meters high have lost most of their dunes, leaving only raw, unweathered rock. On the other hand, the higher headlands have retained these dunes. Australians B. Young and T. Bryant hypothesize that a tsunamis 40 meters high swept the lower headlands clean about 100,000 years ago. They can even plot the incoming wave's direction, because a few remnants of the coastal dunes still cling to the southwest corners of the headlands along the NSW coast south of Newcastle. In their scenario, the tsunamis came from the northeast, smashed into the Solomons, southeastern Australia, and northeastern New Zealand. The Great Barrier Reef protected northeastern Australia from the full force of the wave. Young and Bryant favor a Hawaiian landslip as the initiator of the tsunamis, but acknowledge that an asteroid impact could also have done ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 60: Nov-Dec 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Global fire at the k-t boundary The worldwide deposit of iridium at the K-T (Cretaceous-Tertiary) boundary has been considered very strong evidence that a large astronomical object (asteroid or comet) devastated our planet some 65 million years ago. Some scientists, however, propose that the iridium layer was instead deposited through widespread volcanic activity. The proponents of an astronomical mechanism should be heartened by a recent paper in Nature, by W.S . Wolbach et al. Here is their Abstract: "Cretaceous-Tertiary (K -T ) boundary clays from five sites in Europe and New Zealand are 102 -104 -fold enriched in elemental C (mainly soot), which is isotopically uniform and apparently comes from a single global fire. The soot layer coincides with the Ir layer, suggesting that the fire was triggered by meteorite impact and began before the ejecta had settled." The composition of the hydrocarbons in the sediments points to the earth's biomass (mainly surface vegetation) as the source of the soot. The total quantity of K-T soot is equivalent to that which would be produced by burning 10% of all present terrestrial plant material. (Wolbach, Wendy S., et al; "Global Fire at the Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary," Nature, 334:665, 1988.) Comment. Unmentioned in the above article is the possibility that extensive wildfires might have been ...
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... were not going to pass along any more "weird" icicle observations -- and there are many of them--but this one is the weirdest of the weird. The scene is a Norwich, England, garden, wherein one night a plastic saucer full of tap water was placed. The night was clear, cold, and windless. In the morning, T. Bushnell found protruding from the saucer a "strange tubelike structure" about 3 inches long. His color photograph cannot be conveniently reproduced here, but it clearly shows his icicle growing upward at about a 45 angle. Bushnell wrote further: "What may not be apparent from the picture is that the tube is triangular in cross section and it is completely hollow down as far as the unfrozen water lying underneath the thick layer of ice. The fairly robust tube was an integral part of the underlying ice pool. We noticed that the outside of the tube was segmented in appearance, as though the ice had built up layer by layer." (Bushnell, T.; "Ice Surprise," New Scientist, inside back cover, October 7, 1995) Comment. The other "weird" icicles we have reported were all solid and roughly hexagonal prisms. (SF#79, SF#100, SF#102) From Science Frontiers #104, MAR-APR 1996 . 1996-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... along with the fabulous stonework and extensive ruins have precipitated theories involving extraterrestrial visitors and an age for the site in the hundreds of thousands of years. At least the food-supply puzzle now seems to be in hand. Stereoscopic aerial photographs show in startling detail: ". .. immense, curvilinear platforms of earth...these fields form elevated planting surfaces ranging from five to 15 meters wide and up to 200 meters long...Extensive and nearly continuous tracts of these fields -- all of which have been abandoned for centuries -- run from the edge of Lake Titicaca to about 15 kilometers inland, and form virtually the only topographic relief in the broad, gradually sloping plain." Some of the raised fields are remarkably sophisticated in design. At the base is a layer of cobblestones for stability. These are covered by a 10-centimeter layer of clay. On top of the clay are three distinct layers of sorted gravel; all capped by rich organic topsoil. These fields were simultaneously an aquifer for the fresh water percolating down from the surrounding hills and a barrier to the brackish water from Lake Titicaca. Even at Tiahuanaco's altitude, these fields could have grown potatoes, oca, or ulluco and the chenopod grains, as well as quinowa and caniwa. Tiahuanaco and its satellite cities could have been fed with enough left over for export. Not bad for farmers 2,000 years ago! (Kolata, Alan L.; "Tiwanaku and Its Hinterland," Archaeology, 40:36, January/February 1987.) From Science Frontiers ...
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... huge sheets of crystalline rock have been pushed over sedimentary strata. The crystalline sheets, perhaps kilometers in thickness, were forcibly shoved hundreds of kilometers over sedimentary deposits during continental collisions -- so the theory goes. One such crystalline sheet is under the Southern Appalachians. Seismic data say it is about 10 kilometers thick and was pushed westward some 225 kilometers. If it seems intuitively impossible for such a thin sheet to remain intact during 225kilometers of shoving over other rocks, consider a similar sheet in the Basin and Range province of Utah. This sheet was pulled down an inclined fault without coming apart! These sliding sheets with remarkable structural integrities are required to explain what geophysicists see in the seismic reflections; namely, transparent zones of crystalline rock sitting on top of rocks that return strong reflections typical of layered sedimentary strata. However, one such situation in Arizona was explored with a drill bit. When the upper crystalline layer was penetrated, the drill found only more crystalline rocks, nothing sedimentary. In fact, the crystalline rock was not layered and was homogeneous. Thus, the source of the misleading seismic reflections is unknown. (Kerr, Richard A.; "Continental Drilling Heading Deeper," Science, 224:1418, 1984. Also: Anonymous; "Probing the Deep Con-tinental Crust," Science, 225:492, 1984) Comment. So-called "low-angle thrust faulting is often invoked to explain situations where large areas of older sedi-mentary rocks overlie younger rocks. More on these thrust faults may be found under ESR3 in Inner Earth. ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 43: Jan-Feb 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Cretaceous Incineration The worldwide deposit of iridium at the end of the Cretaceous implies, to many at least, that the great biological extinctions of this period were the consequence of a meteorite impact. It has now been discovered that clay samples from the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary also contain 0.36-0 .58% graphitic carbon. It is fluffy stuff and suggests that the planet was once covered by a thick layer of soot. Quantitatively, the soot layer is equivalent to the carbon in 10% of the earth's present biomass. The authors speculate that this soot was created by huge wildfires that consumed much of the earth's vegetation and perhaps fossil fuel as well. Terrestrial life was, of course, devastated -- just as it is in the currently popular "nuclear winter" scenarios. The end-of-the-Cretaceous soot is in fact, thicker and more widely spread than nuclear winter theories predict. (Wolbach, Wendy S., et al; "Cretaceous Extinctions: Evidence for Wildfires and Search for Meteoric Material," Science, 230:167, 1985.) Comment. Questions arise, though: How could a single meteorite impact ignite worldwide wildfires? Why haven't other meteorite impacts, recorded abundantly by large craters and astroblemes, also set fire to the planet and left iridium layers? From Science Frontiers #43, JAN-FEB 1986 . 1986-2000 William ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 16: Summer 1981 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Grooves Of Phobos Still Unexplained The Martian satellite Phobos is etched by curious grooves. Initially, the grooves were thought to be fracture lines formed by the impact that blasted out Stickney, the huge crater seen on Phobos. However, studies of the grooves revealed at least three families of grooves of different ages, with members of each family located on parallel planes cutting right through the body of the satellite. Two recent papers have proposed radically different explanations. A. Horvath and E. Illes wonder whether Phobos might not be a layered structure, having once been part of a larger stratified body. J.B . Murray thinks the families of grooves might have been scraped out by disciplined formations of meteorites that were launched into space by Martian volcanos. (Horvath, A., and Illes, E.; "On the Possibility of the Layered Structure of Phobos," Eos, 62:203, 1981. Also: Murray, J.B .; "Grooved Terrains on Planetary Satellites," Eos, 62:202, 1981.) Comment. It is not easy to conceive of such well-drilled formations of meteorites. Neither is it easy to imagine a large, stratified body that might have given rise to Phobos. From Science Frontiers #16, Summer 1981 . 1981-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 23: Sep-Oct 1982 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The cretaceous-tertiary extinction bolide The recently discovered worldwide iridium-rich layer is taken by many scientists as evidence of the collision of an asteroid or comet with the earth about 65 million years ago. This cataclysmic event is also blamed (by some, at least) for the apparent sudden biological extinctions recorded on these pages of the fossil record. In this setting, the authors of this paper calculate the effects on the earth of a 10-kilometer-diameter object impacting at about 20/km/sec. Do the theoretical results jibe with the geological and paleontological data? Very definitely. Crater ejecta rich in extraterrestrial material would be blasted to an altitude of 10 km, where winds would insure global distribution. In terms of biological stress, the 10-km projectile would transfer 40-50% of its kinetic energy to the atmosphere, creating a heat pulse that could raise global temperatures 30 C (50 F) for several days. Many large animals might well succumb to such a temperature transient. In addition, the protective ozone layer might be blown away by shock waves and not reform for a decade. (O 'Keefe, John D., and Ahrens, Thomas J.; "Impact Mechanics of the Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinction Bolide," Nature, 298,123, 1982.) Reference. We catalog biological extinctions at ESB1 in Anomalies in Geology. To order this book, visit: here ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 24: Nov-Dec 1982 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A Hint Of Extraterrestrial Oceans The Allende carbonaceous chondrite (a well-known meteorite) contains a layered mineral related to serpentine, which seems to have been formed under aqueous conditions before it was incorporated into the meteoric mass. In the sometimes obscure language of science, the authors say that the unusual characteristics of this mineral may ". .. reflect undetermined extraterrestrial conditions experienced by some chondrules and aggregates." (Tomeoka, Kazushige, and Buseck, Peter R.; "An Unusual Layered Mineral in Chondrules and Aggregates of the Allende Carbonaceous Chondrite," Nature, 299:327, 1982.) Comment. Usually "hydrous" and "sedimentary" meteorites are quickly forgotten! They don't conform to expectations. From Science Frontiers #24, NOV-DEC 1982 . 1982-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 26: Mar-Apr 1983 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Punching A Hole In The Asteroid Hypothesis Scientists have long searched for a cause for the profound geological and biological changes that apparently occurred between the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods. When an iridium-rich layer was found in several areas at this important boundary, many claimed it as proof of an asteroid impact or some other catastrophism that would nicely explain the massive worldwide changes that occurred. With this preamble in mind, consider the following abstract from an article in Science: "Analyses of the clay mineralogy of samples from the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary layer at four localities show that the boundary clay is neither mineralogically exotic nor distinct from locally derived clays above and below the boundary. The significant ejecta component in the clay that is predicted by the asteroid impact scenario was not detected." (Rampino, Michael R., and Reynolds, Robert C.; "Clay Mineralogy of the Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary Clay," Science, 219:1983.) From Science Frontiers #26, MAR-APR 1983 . 1983-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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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 An Antarctic Bone Bed W. Zinsmeister was accustomed to scoff at the idea that the Age of Dinosaurs ended violently with the impact of a giant asteroid some 65 million years ago. He always asked: "Where's the layer of burnt and twisted dinosaur bones?" His certainty was shaken, however, when he began mapping fossil deposits on Seymour Island, Antarctica. He didn't find the dinosaur bones but rather a giant bed of fish bones at least 50 square kilometers in area. Some sort of catastrophe must have annihilated untold millions of fish. And guess what? This great bone bed was deposited directly on top of that layer of extraterrestrial iridium that marks the 65-million-year-old Cretaceous Tertiary boundary at many sites around the world. (Hecht, Jeff; "The Island Where the Fish Had Their Chips," New Scientist, p. 16, November 11, 1995) Cross reference. Bone beds of fish and other creatures are filed under ESB13X2 in Anomalies in Geology. To order this catalog, see here . From Science Frontiers #104, MAR-APR 1996 . 1996-2000 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 Microorganisms complicate the k-t boundary Ancient bacteria, it appears, have tampered with the K-T (Cretaceous-Tertiary) boundary of some 65 million years ago. A key marker of this boundary is a thin "spike" of iridium that is found worldwide, and which was supposedly deposited by the asteroid impact that helped finish off the dinosaurs. For many scientists, the asteroid-impact scenario has become a "non-negotiable" brick in the Temple of Science. The problem they have faced is that the iridium layer is variable in thickness and concentration from site to site. Sometimes iridium can be detected well above and below the K-T boundary. This variability has tended to undermine the asteroid-impact theory. Recent experiments at Wheaton College by B.D . Dyer et al have demonstrated that bacteria in ground water can both concentrate and disperse iridium deposits. In other words, bacteria could smear out an iridium spike, perhaps partially erase it, or even move it to a deeper or shallower layer of sediment. (Monastersky, R.; "Microbes Complicate the K-T Mystery," Science News, 136: 341, 1989.) Comment. An obvious question now is how bacteria might have affected other chemicals, such as oxygen and carbon isotopes, widely used in stratigraphy. From Science Frontiers #67, JAN-FEB 1990 . 1990-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 51: May-Jun 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Antarctic Ozone Hole Has Complex Structure "One more mystery has been added to the seasonal loss of ozone in the stratosphere over Antarctica. It now appears that the 'hole' is an uneven one, with 2- to 3-kilometer-thick slices of ozone-poor air sandwiched within layers of only minimal depletion." These new data came from McMurdo Sound, where a series of balloons carrying ozone sensors were released. Ozone depletion seems to be confined to the region 12-20 kilometers altitude and the top of the stratosphere. The overall depletion in this region was 35% at the time the balloons were lofted. However, some zones from 1 to 5 kilometers thick showed depletions as great as 90%. The reason for this stratificaiton is not yet known. (Silberner, J.; "Layers of Complexity in Ozone Hole," Science News, 131:164, 1987.) From Science Frontiers #51, MAY-JUN 1987 . 1987-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 43: Jan-Feb 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects "AND SO ON INFINITUM"Connoisseurs of facetious scientific poetry will recognize the above title as coming from a poem about vortices which have littler vortices preying upon them, etc. Well, it seems that matter may not have a basement of truly fundamental, indivisible particles either. If one does not count the rather primitive notion of Air, Fire, Earth, and Water, there are five basic levels of compositeness: (1 ) molecules; (2 ) atoms; (3 ) nuclei; (4 ) nucleons; and (5 ) quarks and leptons. But now physicists are beginning to see regularities in the lowest accepted layer, quarks and leptons, that betoken a sixth layer of compositeness or subdivisibility. In other words, quarks and leptons are not really fundamental and instead are composed of something else, which will undoubtedly eventually receive fanciful names. In this article, O.W . Greenberg delves into this sixth stratum and the "regularities" it engenders. The article is really too technical for Science Frontiers, but we thought our readers might like to be warned that our concepts of matter are based on infinite quicksand. (Greenberg, O.W .; "A New Level of Structure," Physics Today, 38:22, September 1985.) Comment. With ever-more-gigantic galactic superclusters being charted and the possibility of Big Bangs occurring "somewhere else," matter may also be infinitely ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 31: Jan-Feb 1984 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Thin-skinned tectonics In many regions of the world, older rocks are superimposed on top of younger rocks, just the opposite from what is expected. The usual explanation is that the layers of older rocks were thrust parallel to the bedding planes over the top of the layers of younger rock, sometimes for hundreds of miles. So numerous are these instances of inverted strata that a new branch of geology called Thin-Skinned Tectonics is arising to handle them. The present article deals with the complex stratigraphy in the Western Arbuckle Mountains in southern Oklahoma. Here are located many examples of old-on-young rock as well as completely inverted stratigraphic members. Much at-tention is paid to the evidence of sliding between beds (breccia, small overfolds, etc.). Some excellent photos of these contact planes are presented. (Phillips, Eric H.; "Gravity Slide Thrusting and Folded Faults in Western Arbuckle Mountains and Vicinity, Southern Oklahoma," American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Bulletin, 67:1363, 1983.) Comment. Some extensive thrust faults do not show as much evidence of horizontal sliding as those in the Western Arbuckles. Scientific creationists use such examples as evidence that the geological time scale, as determined by the fossil contents of the rocks, is all mixed up. From Science Frontiers #31, JAN-FEB 1984 . 1984-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 29: Sep-Oct 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Sedimentary rocks on venus?The Soviet spacecraft Veneras-13 and 14 took photos of the hot surface of Venus from their landing spots beneath the planet's thick cloud cover. The rocky debris surrounding the spacecraft shows, to nearly everyone's surprise, strong evidence of sedimentary, layered structure. The rock formations display ripple marks, thin layering, differential erosion, and even hints of cross-bedding. The vision of ancient seas on Venus leaps to the mind, but according to the Russian scientists, it is far more likely that the sediments were created by winds, episodic volcanism, or repeated meteor strikes. (Florensky, C.P ., et al; "Venera 13 and Venera 14: Sedimentary Rocks on Venus?" Science, 221:57, 1983.) Reference, Venus harbors many anomalies. See our Catalog: The Moon and the Planets. This book is described here . Two pictures of the surface of Venus taken by the Russian space probe Venera 14. From Science Frontiers #29, SEP-OCT 1983 . 1983-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 12: Fall 1980 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Little big bangs!The photographic enhancement of plates taken by the UK Schmidt and Anglo-Australian telescopes has revealed that several normal elliptical galaxies are surrounded by shell-like structures. D.F . Malin and D. Carter report that these envelopes are vast -- up to 180 kiloparsecs in diameter. Furthermore, some galaxies are wrapped in a series of thin shells. Malin and Carter believe that the colossal shells are really thin layers of stars either created by a powerful shock wave during galaxy formation or comprised of a debris layer of old stars blown out of the galaxy during some cataclysmic event. (Malin, David F., and Carter, David; "Giant Shells around Normal Elliptical Galaxies," Nature, 285:643, 1980.) Comment. This article typifies the emergence of "catastrophic astronomy" which contrasts sharply with the older vision of a leisurely evolution of stars and galaxies. From Science Frontiers #12, Fall 1980 . 1980-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 25: Jan-Feb 1983 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Andes Ice Islands High in the Bolivian Andes are some shallow, saltwater lakes. From some of these white-shored lakes rise bizarre "islands" of fresh-water ice, neatly layered horizontally, and up to 20 feet higher than the saltwater surface. The ice crystals comprising these islands are vertical, proving that they grew in water and are not pieces of glaciers. Clearly, they did not form from the present saltwater lakes, but they might be relics of the Ice Ages, when the lakes were deeper and fresher. But whence the nicely layered structure? Some scientists have thought that volcanic springs might be the sources of fresh water, but some ice islands occur in lakes where there are no volcanic springs nearby. At the moment, every-one seems stumped by these strange creations of Nature. (Anonymous; "Who Made the Andes Islands of Ice?" New Scientist, 96:272, 1982.) Comment. Could the ice islands be related to the Arctic pingoes -- those debris-covered ice hills? From Science Frontiers #25, JAN-FEB 1983 . 1983-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 8: Fall 1979 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Iridium And Mass Extinctions Alvarez and his colleagues at the University of California, while chemically analyzing a series of sedimentary strata from Italy, discovered that one layer had 25 times the concentration of iridium residing in adjacent strata. The iridium-rich layer forms the boundary between the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods, 65 million years ago. During that death-filled interval, 50% of the earth's genera were wiped out. Such are the two correlated facts: iridium increase and mass extinction. But do they have the same cause? Alvarez et al point out that iridium is rare on earth but much more common out in space. The anomalous concentration of iridium could have been injected by a massive solar flare, a big meteor impact, or come other extraterrestrial catastrophe. Thus is catastrophism being resurrected. (Anonymous; "An Iridium Clue to the Dinosaur's Demise," New Scientist, 82: 798, 1979.) From Science Frontiers #8 , Fall 1979 . 1979-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 35: Sep-Oct 1984 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Mind Before Life For some years S.W . Fox, at the Institute for Molecular and Cellular Evolution, University of Miami, has been experimenting with possible precursors of life. So-called "microspheres" are hot items in Coral Gables these days. Fox and his colleagues make microspheres by preparing a heated stew of various amino acids. These amino acids form long polymer chains spontaneously. Then, when water is added and the mixture reheated (or processed in some other way), the polymers organize themselves, again spontaneously, into spheres a few microns in diameter. Each sphere consists of a two-layer membrane with residual material trapped inside. Although thicker, the microsphere membrane is very similar to the lipid bi-layer enclosing normal living cells. The relatively stable microspheres could, in theory, have formed sheltered environments for the evolution of the more complicated parts of living cells. The microspheres absorb sunlight and, with the addition of this energy, display some of the electrical characteristics of biological neurons, like those in the brain. The implication is that some components of "mind" may have existed in the very earliest life forms. (Peterson, Ivars; "Microsphere Excitement," Science News, 125:408, 1984.) Comment. Two comments here: First, the word "spontaneous" is customarily employed when describing how atoms unite to form molecules and molecules combine into polymers, which then gather ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 83: Sep-Oct 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Winning By A Hair Archeologists have been very skeptical about the purported human artifacts and handprint found in the Orogrande Cave, New Mexico. The chief archeologist working at the site, R. MacNeish, has now found several hairs embedded in the cement-hard layers of the cave's floor. One of these hairs, less than an inch long, has definitely been labeled as human by Canadian forensic experts. Carbon-14 dating of a nearby piece of charcoal from the same layer has yielded a date of 19,180 BP -- considerably more ancient than the passionately defended 12,000-BP date for first arrivals in the New World. MacNeish is confident that his claims will now be accepted, joking, "It looks like I'm going to win this one by a hair." Other archeologists, however, are not laughing. Handprints and hairs are insufficient; they want human bones. (Chandler, David L.; "Strand of Hair May Be Proof of Much Earlier Americans," Boston Globe, June 28, 1992. (Cr. R. Coltman) From Science Frontiers #83, SEP-OCT 1992 . 1992-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... and Muav Limestone is reached, a 200million-year gap appears. The sign posted here by the National Park Service reads: An unconformity "Rocks of the Ordovician and Silurian Periods are missing in Grand Canyon. Temple Butte Limestone of Devonian age occurs in scattered pockets. Redwall Limestone rests on these Devonian rocks or on Muav Limestone of much earlier Cambrian Age." This supposed unconformity is puzling for several reasons: The two limestone strata "seem" conformable in most places. Both are nicely horizontal, and there is basically no evidence that 200 million years of erosion and tectonic disturbances separate them. In some places, the two limestone strata intertongue or interfinger, such that by moving vertically one flashed back and forth in 200-million-year jumps. In both limestone strata, one finds layers of the same micaceous shale containing the same fossil tubeworms, suggesting near-simultaneous deposition. In one place, the two limestones clearly grade into one another, with no separation at all. Anyone who walks down the Canyon trails can see that the evidence for a 200-million-year hiatus between the Mississippian and Cambrian limestones is shaky at best. With the accuracy of geological dating through the use of contained fossils at risk, one would expect many professional papers dealing with this situation. Instead, the geological literature says little. One of the few papers mentioning the "unconformity" states that the contact between the two limestones displays ripples 2 feet from crest to trough, as one might expect with a true unconformity. Such ripples do not seem to exist. (Waisgerber, William ...
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... Richard; "Novel Mountains and Chimneys in the Sea," Science News, 134:333, 1988.) Comment. This all sounds pretty speculative, but those mountains had to come from somewhere. Perhaps the serpentinite mountains are just one manifestation of a larger phenomenon: the chaotic slithering and popping up and down of crustal material. The following is from New Scientist: "Geophysicists in California and Illinois say that they have found the Earth's "missing" crust by analyzing shock waves from earthquakes to determine the chemical composition of the Earth's interior. If the researchers are correct, then the view of the interior of the Earth that scientists have previously accepted is wrong. "The geophysicists say that they have found minerals like those in the Earth's crust in a layer of crustal material, 250 kilometres thick, which starts about 400 kilometres below the surface and extends to a depth of 650 kilometres. There is enough crustal material at this level, according to geophysicists to form a crust 200 kilometres thick - the average thickness of the Earth's crust is only 20 kilometres. .. .. . "The material is not trapped at this depth: the layer acts like a conveyor belt which returns the crustal material to the surface by a process of convection. At the surface, the material cools and sinks along the subduction zones. Below the surface, it reheats and rises to join the crust again, along one of the Earth's midocean ridges." (Anderson, Ian; "Seismic Waves Reveal Earth's Other Crust, ...
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... Project Sourcebook Subjects Copper Pseudomorphs There are two places in the world where large masses of native (almost pure) copper are common: the Lake Superior region, particularly Isle Royale, and Corocoro, Bolivia. The largest "nugget" of nearly pure copper comes from Lake Superior and weighs almost 46 tons! But the Corocoro mines are rich in another way; copper "pseudomorphs." In copper pseudomorphs, copper ions insidiously invade crystals of other minerals and assume their shapes. Copper pseudomorphs of aragonite, a form of CaCO3 , are common. Aragonite sometimes occurs as short, tabular, hexagonal prisms, as shown in the sketch. Under the water table, in a copper-rich area, copper ions in solution "attack" aragonite crystals. First, they oust and replace the outer layers of CaCO3 , gilding the aragonite crystal with a thin layer of pure copper. Then, they work inwardly and eventually usurp the whole crystal and take on its shape. Even stranger are those hexagonal crystals that are pure aragonite in the top half and pure copper in the bottom half. Mineralogists speculate that these formed along the edge of the water table. (Hyrsl, Jaroslav, and Petrov, Alfred; "Pseudomorphs from Bolivia," Rocks and Minerals , 73:110, November/December 1998.) From Science Frontiers #123, MAY-JUN 1999 . 1999-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Glauconite is common in marine rocks, so suspicion points toward the Gulf of Mexico. Geologist G. Patterson, University of Memphis, thinks that the huge chunks of sandstone came from coastal Louisiana and were carried some 650 kilometers (400 miles) inland by the giant tsunami raised by the asteroid or comet that smashed into the Yucatan to close out the Cretaceous. That, of course, was when the dinosaurs were forced into oblivion. But could the tsunami really have transported such huge rocks 650 kilometers? (Falk, Dan; "Washed Up," New Scientist, p. 26, November 7, 1998.) Comments. Tsunami debris from the end-Cretaceous impact has been found along the Gulf Coast and on some Caribbean islands. In northeastern Mexico, geologists have found a debris layer 3-meters thick that is also of the right age. This layer contains tektites, glass spheres, plant material, and an iridium anomaly. (SF#85) However, these debris deposits can hardly compare to the far-inland Arkansas sandstone chunks. From Science Frontiers #121, JAN-FEB 1999 . 1999-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 45: May-Jun 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Martian Great Lakes P. Lowell hasn't been vindicated by the discovery of sedimentary formations on Mars, but his spirit must be pleased. Lowell's geometrical network of artificial canals have been superceded by great arroyos, flood-created deposits, and now evidence that Mars was once host to ice-covered lakes up to 3 miles deep and as large as Lake Superior. Photos from the Viking spacecraft reveal sedimentary layers up to 250 feet thick that seem to have been laid down by liquid water. The source of the sediments and mode of deposition are unknown. (Anonymous; "Great Lakes on Mars," Science 86, 7:13, April 1986.) Comment. The scientists reporting these findings, S. Squyres and S. Nedell, called attention to this type of Martian stratigraphy in Valles Marineris back in 1984. See SF#37. Reference. Martain layered deposits are cataloged at AME19 in the catalog The Moon and the Planets. To order, visit: here . Viking photo of probable sedimentary strata along the side of a Martian ridge. From Science Frontiers #45, MAY-JUN 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... . 120: Nov-Dec 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Where Did They Come From?It appears more and more likely that South America was colonized earlier and separately from North America. Reason #1 is that the oldest recognized sites in North America are only 11,200 years old, while the Monte Verde site in southern Chile is now generally admitted to be 12,500 years old. Reason #2 is the distance gap of about 5,000 miles between the two sites. So far, there is no evidence of cultural continuity. The time gap is likely to enlarge in a huge quantum jump because of excavations at an intriguing green knoll at Monte Verde. Some 6 feet below its surface is a sedimentary layer containing charcoal in clay-lined pits and humanfractured pebbles. This sedimentary layer is carbon-dated at 33,000 years ago -- some 20,000 years before the ancestors of North America's Clovis people are said to have trekked across the Bering land bridge. (Wilford, John Noble; "Chilean Field Yields New Clues to Peopling of Americas," New York Times, August 25, 1998. Cr. M. Colpitts) New Clues. Just to the north of Monte Verde, on the coast of southern Peru, traces of a hitherto unknown, 11,000-year-old maritime culture have emerged. For short, the new site is called QJ-280 (for Quebrada Jaguay 280). QJ-280 is now about 2 kilometers inland from ...
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... can dazzle us with bright haloes, sundogs, and similar optical phenomena -- as long as the sun or moon are shining. Sometimes, though, human light sources will create remarkable displays using the same ice crystals. The first of the two examples below is notable for its extreme height; the second provides the accepted explanation. August 24, 1998. South China Sea. Aboard 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 ...
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... the scientific literature. For example, Van Valen's list of objections to the hypothesis of asteroid impact at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary was reproduced in the last issue of Science Frontiers. Now, in a recent issue of New Scientist, T. Hallam raises still more objections: Tropical plants, mammals, crocodiles, birds, and benthic invertebrates were little affected by whatever happened at the Cretaceous-Tertiary interface. Furthermore, many groups that were extinguished were already well into a decline. Some geologists insist that some of the supposedly synchronous extinctions were probably separated by several hundred thousand years; viz., plankton and dinosaurs. The vaunted iridium anomaly in deep-sea cores is spread through a considerable thickness of sediment. Even after allowing for the mixing of sediments, the iridium-rich layer is thousands of years thick. According to the asteroid scenario, the clay layer separating the Cretaceous from the Tertiary should represent the fallout from impact-raised dust, which would include asteroidal material and a mixed sample of earth rocks. However, in Denmark, the boundary is marked by the so-called Fish Clay, which is almost pure smectite -- a single mineral and not a mixture of terrestrial rock flour. If it wasn't an asteroid impact, why the iridium concentration? At least three hypotheses have been proposed to circumvent the asteroid debacle: (1 ) volcanic activity; (2 ) a concentration of micrometeorites, thousands of tons of which fall each day, through extreme reduction of sedimentation; and (3 ) selective enrichment of iridium by an anoxic environment acting ...
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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 Looking For The Smoking Gun We already know the victims (the dinosaurs and other fauna and flora), and there is considerable evidence that the bullet was a cosmic projectile of some sort. The absence of a smoking gun (a sufficiently large terrestrial crater with an age of 65 million years) has allowed volcanists to deny the cosmic catastrophists a complete victory. However, the recent identification of tektite-like glasses at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary (KTB) on Haiti is leading geological detectives closer and closer to the missing crater. Elsewhere in the world, the KTB is characterized by an iridium anomaly and a thin layer of "impact clay" consisting of tiny bits of shocked minerals. At Beloc, on Haiti, though, geologists find a 55-centimeter-thick layer of glassy debris. Approximately 25% of this stra tum consists of 1-6 -millimeter particles of tektite-like glass. Most of the glass particles are spherical, but a few have the splash-forms and dumbbell shapes of bona fide tektites. The thickness of the Haitian deposit and the large sizes of the particles suggest that the smoking gun must be nearby. Ironically, the Haiti stratum was originally classified as of volcanic origin; and we must add that we are presenting here only the conclusions of the asteroid school. But where oh where is this crater? The Manson crater in Iowa (now buried) is of the right age ...
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... . Its density (5 .44) is unusually high for such a small planet, and its orbit's inclination (7 ) and eccentricity (0 .206) are also anomalously high. In one blow. W. Benz, A.G .W . Cameron, and W. Slattery may have solved all three problems. Four frames from a computer simulation of proto-Mercury being stripped of its lighter, outer crust by a collision. Frame times are -1 , + 2.3 , + 7.7 , and + 41.7 minutes after impact. The dark molten sheet of iron in Frame #4 will collapse into a sphere, while the silicates will escape Mercury's gravitational pull. They think Mercury's original, lighter, silicate outer layers were stripped off during the impact of one of the small protoplanets that are thought to have swirled around the inner solar system shortly after its formation. Computations on a supercomputer revealed to these three researchers that, if the protoplanet had hit Mercury at between 20 and 30 kilometers/second, then its dense iron core would have survived pretty much intact. A lower velocity would not have stripped off the lighter outer layers; anything higher would have blasted the whole planet into smithereens. Calculations of this type also suggest that if a protoplanet the size of Mars had hit protoearth, it likewise would have stripped off its light silicate mantle. After this material that had been torn off gravitationally sphericized itself in orbit around the earth, it became--you guessed it - our moon. (Stewart ...
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... Features AJX TRANSIT AND OCCULTATION PHENOMENA AJX1 Distorted Shapes of Galilean Satellites in Transit AJX2 Hot Satellite Shadows AJX3 Dark Transits of Galilean Satellites AJX4 Double Shadows of Io AJX5 Limb Phenomena during Occultations and Transits AJX6 Post-Eclipse Brightening of Io AJX7 Discrepancies in Predictions of of Eclipses and Transits AJX JUPITER'S MAGNETIC FIELD AJX1 Offset Magnetic Field AL THE MOON ALB THE MOON'S ORBITAL ANOMALIES ALB1 Earth-Moon Instability ALB2 Discrepancies in the Moon's Ephemeris ALB3 Nongravitational Forces and Earth-Moon Acceleration Discrepancies ALB4 Earth-Moon Acceleration Incompatible with Moon's Origin in Earth Orbit ALE LUNAR GEOLOGY PROBLEMS ALE1 Asymmetrical Distribution of Maria and Large Basins ALE2 Sinuous Rilles and Formations Resembling Terrestrial Water-Formed Features ALE3 The Lunar Rays ALE4 Lunar Features Seemingly Shaped by Ice ALE5 Swirl Markings ALE6 Anomalous Red Formations ALE7 Layered Structures ALE8 Lunar Glasses ALE9 Nonrandom Distribution of Lunar Craters ALE10 Unexplained Minor Surface Features ALE11 Large-Scale Asymmetries in in Composition ALE12 Dark-Haloed Lunar Craters ALE13 Local Concentrations of Radioactivity ALE14 Scarcity of Dust and Meteoric Material ALE15 Young Lunar-Surface Ages ALE16 Local Concentration of Volatiles ALE17 Lunar Soils Older Than Associated Rocks ALE18 Problems in Dating Lunar Rocks and Soils ALE19 Compositional Differences between Earth and Moon ALE20 Apparently Anomalous Long Term Persistence of Craters ALE21 Alignment of Mascons and Lunar Moments of Inertia ALE22 Geological Changes within Historical Times ALF LUNAR LUMINOUS PHENOMENA ALF1 Infrared Anomalies ALF2 Lunar Catastrophism within Historical Times ALF3 Transient Points of Light ALF4 Localized Color Phenomena ALF5 Transient, Large-Area Luminescence ALF6 Lightning-Like Phenomena on the Moon ALL THE MOTION OF LUNAR SATELLITES ALL1 Perturbation of Artificial Lunar Satellites ALO ANOMALOUS TELESCOPIC ...
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