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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 65: Sep-Oct 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Unusual Sounds Preceding Lightning May 13, 1989. Austin, Texas. About 8 PM, during an intense thunderstorm, P. Gunkel heard a whistling sound, like that made by a descending firework rocket. A general pinkish brightening of the surroundings accompanied the sound. Half a second after the sound ceased, there was a tremendous clap of thunder. Discussions with neighbors within 1 hour of the event, elicited additional data: one said that it sounded like rocks falling through the air; another heard a strange humming sound from a windowpane for 2 seconds prior to the lightning; yet another spoke of a sound like that of a whistling tea kettle, but with an ascending pitch; and a fourth actually saw the lightning strike the street about 500 feet away. (Gunkel, Patrick; personal communication, May 13, 1989.) Comment. The most common sound heard prior to nearby lightning strikes is a "vit" sound, or a sound like fabric tearing. Such sounds are thought to be caused by brush electrical discharge from nearby objects as the atmospheric electrical field intensifies. See GLL10 in Lightning, Auroras, Nocturnal Lights. For details on this book, visit: here . From Science Frontiers #65, SEP-OCT 1989 . 1989-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 65: Sep-Oct 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects How fares cold fusion?During the past two months, you could have read across a very wide spectrum of conclusions and opinions concerning cold fusion. Nature. This editorial begins with: "Although the evidence now accumulating does not prove that the original observations of cold fusion were mistaken, there seems no doubt that cold fusion will never be a commercial source of energy." Editor J. Maddox concludes by stating that Pons and Fleischmann should have placed their responsibility to the scientific community above publicity. (Maddox, John; "End of Cold Fusion in Sight," Nature, 340:15, 1989.) American Scientist. Here are reported the observations of neutrons at Los Alamos. (Hively, William; "Cold Fusion Confirmed," American Scientist, 77:327, 1989.) Science. Some laboratories have seen neutrons and heat production. (Pool, Robert; "Cold Fusion Still in a State of Confusion," Science, 245:256, 1989.) Baltimore Sun. The chemist quoted is Utah's B.S . Pons. "In the experiment, a 'boiler' the size of a thermos emitted 15 to 20 times the amount of energy that was being put into it - a reaction that 'cannot be explained by normal chemical reactions we're aware of,' according to Dr. Pons. .. .. . He said he was convinced his device could ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 65: Sep-Oct 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Books About The Crop Circles You know a phenomenon has "made it" when a book is devoted to it. With the English crop circles, we now have two books (bibliographical information below.) We will try to stock at least one of these books, but it will be a few months before can can get them on this side of the Atlantic. Meanwhile, a review of the two books in New Scientist provides some information beyond that already presented in several past issues of SF. First, the crop circles, spanning 5 to 20 meters, are incredibly precise and sharp. Flattened stems on the periphery of a circle almost touch erect, undamaged stems. The so-called satellite circles that sometimes array themselves around the main circles may be connected by a narrow ring, thus: Even more curious, a short radial spur extends outward from some circles, so that from the air the circle resembles a fat tadpole. In his book, G.T . Meaden, the Editor of the Journal of Meteorology, U.K ., presents his theory of how the circles are incised in field crops: "He describes the clues that have enabled him to point to the circles being formed by the impact of a body of fast-spinning air that has been partially ionized. He explains how a columnar atmospheric vortex, with a vertical or inclined axis, provides the channel for the formation of a plasma ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 65: Sep-Oct 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Pi in the mind!" Srinivasan Mahadevan, a graduate student from India at Kansas State University in Manhattan, is trying to become the fourth person to remember the first 100,000 digits to pi, the theoretically infinite computation that measures the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. He has already memorized the first 35,000 digits of pi. "Only three cases of such ability to remember have been documented in 200 years. One of these people became insane when he became unable to forget anything and his reasoning processes drowned in a flood of facts." (Anonymous; "Student's Memory Wins Bets," San Mateo Times, June 2, 1989. Cr. J. Covey) From Science Frontiers #65, SEP-OCT 1989 . 1989-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 66: Nov-Dec 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Doubts About Two Ritually Recited Theories Do you think humans originated in Africa? We have heard for so long now that modern humans got their start in Africa. (This assertion is as hackneyed as: "Life began in a warm little pond"!) There is, of course, some evidence for the African claim. Studies of genetic material and the fossil record are suggestive, although the latter includes the Middle East as a possible birthplace. Other data, however, put the "founding group" of modern humans in Southeast Asia. The iconoclast here is C.G . Turner, II, an anthropologist at Arizona State University. He has analyzed secondary dental traits (number of roots, bumps, etc.) of 12,000 individuals from around the world - both ancient and modern. Turner believes that the "great web of humanity" originated in Southeast Asia. Since then, two large populations, each recognizable by their dental features, have evolved.: (1 ) northeast Asians and the ancient residents of the Americas; and (2 ) southeast Asians, Europeans, ancient Australians, and Africans. Also of note is the close resemblance between native Australians and Africans. (Bower, B.; "Asian Human Origin Theory Gets New Teeth," Science News, 136:100, 1989.) Did the eruption of Thera do in the Minoans? According to popular archeolo-gical doctrine, ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 66: Nov-Dec 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Down With The Big Bang We might have concocted the above title, but we didn't ! Rather, J. Maddox, the Editor of Nature, raised that red flag. To make things even worse, he subtitled his editorial: "Apart from being philosophically unacceptable, the Big Bang is an oversimple view of how the Universe began, and it is unlikely to survive the decade ahead." His philosophical objcections to the Big Bang are powerful: "For one thing, the implication is that there was an instant at which time literally began and, so, by extension, an instant before which there was no time. That in turn implies that even if the origin of the Universe may be successfully supposed to lie in the Big Bang, the origin of the Big Bang itself is not susceptible to discussion." The Big Bang, Maddox says, is no more scientific than Biblical creation! The scientific objections involve space, time, the curvature of space. The Big Bang further fails at explaining quasars and the hidden mass of the Universe. Maddox doubts that the Big Bang will survive the new data to be provided by the Hubble telescope. (Maddox, John; "Down with the Big Bang," Nature, 340: 425, 1989.) From Science Frontiers #66, NOV-DEC 1989 . 1989-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 66: Nov-Dec 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Globular Clusters Upset Theory Of Galaxy Formation A spherical cloud of globular clusters surrounds the Milky Way galaxy. Each cluster is itself a spherical groups of stars. Through the telescope, globular clusters are beautiful spherical aggregations of bright stars that seem to get ever denser toward the cluster's center. Globular clusters harbor many anomalies (AOB4 and AOB17 in Stars, Galaxies, Cosmos); here, we mention two involving spatial distribution and age. Many spiral galaxies, like our own Milky Way, spin ponderously in the center of a spherical cloud of scores, even hundreds, of globular clusters (see sketch). Not only do the globular clusters surrounding us display a different spatial distribution (spherical rather than flat-spiral), but their individual ages undercut galaxy theory. All of the Milky Way's globular clusters were supposed to have been formed when our galaxy was created. Yet, the ages of these clusters vary by as much as 5 billion years. (Dayton, Leigh; "Globular Clusters Upset Theory of Galaxy," New Scientist, p. 34, May 13, 1989.) Comment. We cannot resist mentioning still another cluster anomaly: The globular clusters do not participate in the galaxy's general rotation. Where did these oddballs come from? Reference. The catalog volume: Stars, Galaxies, Cosmos, mentioned above, is described here . From Science Frontiers #66, NOV-DEC 1989 ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 66: Nov-Dec 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Bird That Smells Like Cow Manure Pity the poor hoatzin. This "extremely primitive" bird is usually described as being just a step beyond the reptiles. The hoatzin clambers around the jungle foliage using functional claws on its wings. This certainly sounds "primitive." Then, we have that awful smell! A hoatzin feeds its chick a regurgitated mush of partially digested leaves. But perhaps we have been wrong about the hoatzin. It's all just bad press. A. Grajal et al have just discovered that this South American bird utilizes foregut fermentation in digesting its diet of leaves. In fact, the hoatzin is the only bird that has evolved this useful capability. Cows, sloths, and a few other mammals and marsupials evolved foregut fermentation. It is hardly a primitive development! Aside from the smell of fermenting vegetable matter, the hoatzin is a rather remarkable animal - more advanced and well-adapted to its environment than previously thought. Grajal et al remark on all the advantages that foregut fermentation confer on the hoatzin and how remarkable it is that this digestive process can be accomplished in such a small volume (cows have huge stomachs). How did the hoatzin hit upon this mechanism before the mammals did? Why didn't other birds "adopt" it? Grajal et al speculate about this hoatzin advance: "Their highly specialized digestive strategy may have arisen from an ancestral nonobligate folivore because of an evolutionary ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 66: Nov-Dec 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The babirusa: a quasi-ruminant pig The babirusa, an inhabitant of Indonesia, looks like a thin pig, but its stomach is like that of a sheep, which is a "simple" ruminant. The babirusa's stomach possesses an extra sac; and the animal often browses on leaves and shoots. It does not, however, chew a cud. The Indonesian babirusa, a pig-like animal with curious tusks and an unusual digestive system (for a pig). Taxonomists are a bit puzzled over the babirusa. They aren't sure whether its closest relatives are modern pigs, peccaries, or hippos. The babirusa's "tusks" pose more questions about its evolution: "The creature's oddest characteristic is the two impressive pairs of curving tusks grown by the males. One pair are simply extended lower canines, but the second are actually upper canines, the sockets of which have rotated, resulting in tusks that grow through the top of the muzzle and emerge from the middle of the animals's face. The effect is bizarre and startling. The males fight with their dagger-like lower canines and probably deflect opponents' blows with the upper set, thus protecting their eyes. Indonesians say the tusks are similar to deer antlers, giving the babirusa its name, which means 'pig deer.'" (Rice, Ellen K.; "The Babirusa: A Most Unusual ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 66: Nov-Dec 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A Bat Fall Fort Worth, Texas. September 6, 1989. "Pedestrians dodged hundreds of bats that fell onto downtown sidewalks yesterday afternoon. The winged mammals were sick and dying, and no one knows why. "' I have never seen bats on the sidewalk at 4 o'clock in the afternoon before,' said restauranteur Chris Farkas after encountering the bats in the 600 block of Main Street. 'About half of them were crawling on the ground. There were about 50 in the air flying around.'" Many of the bats subsequently died. Two possible causes advanced were heat-stroke and building fumigation. Neither could be shown correct. (Gilberto, Julie; "Scores of Bats Rain on Downtown," Fort Worth Telegram, September 7, 1989. Cr. R.L Anderson.) Comment. Bat falls and bird falls are rare in the Fortean literature. Storms, intensely cold weather, and sheer exhaustion are the most common causes. From Science Frontiers #66, NOV-DEC 1989 . 1989-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 66: Nov-Dec 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Biogenic Minerals We generally think of minerals as having been formed by purely inorganic processes. Only once, on p.000. where biogenic stalactites were described, have we persued the idea that minerals, including crystal forms, might be biogenic. We now have at hand a survey of biogenic minerals. It turns out that biogenic minerals are quite common - so common, in fact, that the Gaia concept is recalled, in which biological processes preside over much that happens upon this planet. Here follows a sampler of some biogenic minerals: Much, if not all, travertine (calcite and/or aragonite) and silicious sinter (opal) are deposited through algal action. Much pyrite and marcasite in sedimentary rocks comes from bacterial sulfate reduction. Bacterial breakdown of oil produces organic complexes that dissolve, transport, and precipitate quartz. The reknowned Herkimer "diamonds" may be of biological origin. Living cells synthesize isometric crystals of magnetite. Mitochondria manufacture crystals of hydroxylapatite. Better known are the apatite in bones and teeth and the aragonite, calcite, or fluorite in the vestibular systems of vertebrates. (Dietrich, R.V ., and Chamberlain, Steven C.; "Are Cultured Pearls Mineral?" Rocks and Minerals , 64:386, September/October 1989. Cr. R. Calais) From Science Frontiers #66, NOV-DEC 1989 . 1989-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 66: Nov-Dec 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Rogue Waves "Shortly before dawn on Sunday, June 3, 1984, the 117-foot, threemasted Marques sailed into a fierce squall about 75 miles north of Bermuda. Heavy rain began to pelt the ship, and a furious wind sprang up out of nowhere. Squalls were nothing new to the Marques , one of 39 tall ships participating in a transatlantic race. But as a precaution, Stuart Finlay, the seasoned 42-year-old American captain of the ship, shortened the sails. The Marques was carrying a crew of 28 - half of whom were under 25. At the helm, Philip Sefton, 22, fought the angry waves that now confronted them. "Suddenly a heavy gust of wind pushed the Marques down on its starboard side. At the same instant 'a freakish wave of incredible force and size,' as Sefton later described it, slammed the ship broadside, pushing its masts farther beneath the surging water. A second wave pounded the ship as it went down. The Marques filled with water and sank in less than one minute. Most of the crew were trapped as they slept below deck. Only Sefton and eight shipmates survive." Accounts such as that above are part of sea lore. Waves 50-100 feet high have been frequently reported over the years. Most often, they are encountered in rough seas, but some walls of water have smashed ships in relatively calm waters ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 66: Nov-Dec 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Cold Fusion Died Only In The Media When so many scientists ridiculed cold fusion, the media backed off. One reads virtually nothing on the subject today, despite some encourageing developments. In a panel discussion at the University of Utah, J. Bockris stated that Japan has organized a fusion institute where more than 80 scientists are "rapidly moving forward to develop cold fusion." Bockris himself has achieved positive cold-fusion results in his lab at Texas A&M . Another panel member, R. Huggins from Stanford, who has also replicated Utah's cold fusion results, remarked that several other U.S . labs have achieved excess power levels of 10-30 watts/cc. (Anonymous; Access to Energy , p. 4, October, 1989. Cr. P.F . Young) Despite positive results like those mentioned above, a recent report in Nature, by scientists at Cal Tech and the University of California, states emphatically that they can find no excess heat, neutrons, gamma rays, tritium, or helium in their cold-fusion experiments. (Lewis, N.S .; "Searches for Low-Temperature Nuclear Fusion of Deuterium in Palladium," Nature, 340:525, 1989.) From Science Frontiers #66, NOV-DEC 1989 . 1989-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 66: Nov-Dec 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Was burt stitched up?Sir Cyril Burt was, until a few years ago, the Grand Old Man of British Psychology. But then a scandal erupted. Burt was charged with manufacturing data and even faking the existence of research assistants. A devastating biography by L. Hearnshaw seemed to ruin Burt's reputation for good. With all the attendant publicity, the label "scientific fraud" stuck in everyone's mind. But, hold on, another book, one with a completely different conclusion, has hit the bookstores. This book, The Burt Affair , is by R.B . Joynson. Joynson demonstrates in great detail that Hernshaw's biography is seriously deficient in places. If Joynson is correct, Hearnshaw and Burt's other enemies are guilty of selective reporting. The case for fraud was fraud itself! (Blinkhorn, Steve; "Was Burt Stitched Up?" Nature, 340:439, 1989.) From Science Frontiers #66, NOV-DEC 1989 . 1989-2000 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 New World Culture Old "Archeologists working in Peru have unearthed stunning evidence that monumental architecture, complex societies and planned developments first appeared and flowered in the New World between 5,000 and 3,500 years ago-- -roughly the same period when the great pyramids were built in Egypt and the Sumerian citystates reached their zenith in Mesopotania." Among these edifices are great stepped pyramids, U-shaped temples over ten stories high, and broad plazas with adjacent residential areas. Scores of such sites built by an ancient Peruvian civilization are nestled deep in narrow valleys leading from the Andes down to the Pacific. Archeologists date this civilization as thousands of years older than those that arose in Central America. The age and size of the Peruvian remains impelled Yale archeologist R. Burger to remark: "This idea of the Old World being ahead of the New World has to be put on hold." Of course, this Andean culture is not as old as that which developed in the Old World's Fertile Crescent; and those ancient Peruvians did not use the wheel and lacked writing. (Stevens, William K.; "Andean Culture Found to Be as Old as the Great Pyramids," New York Times, October 3, 1989. Cr. J. Covey.) Comment. But did they really lack writing? See next item. One has to wonder how these great constructions have es caped the attention of ...
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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 The ancient-humans-in-europe controversy Many times in the published pages of SF appears the question: "When did humans first arrive in the Americas? It is amu sing to find that European archeologists have an analogous problem, only there the accepted date is about 1,000,000 years ago, compared to 12,000 years for the Americas. Most European archeologists believe that primitive humans migrated northward from Africa into Europe, but the timing has always been a little fuzzy. The Europeans are willing to consider minor adjustments in the million-year figure. However, there are now several sites seeming to boast human artifacts that are about 2.5 million years old. This is just too old, and a debate has commenced. The most controversial site is Saint Eble, just below Mont Coupet, in southcentral France. Here one finds quartz fragments that look manmade to some archeologists, but seem products of natural fracturing to others. These crude objects are what some American archeologists call "Carterfacts," after G. Carter, who has found similar rock fragments in the Americas and dates them much, much earlier than 12,000 B.P . In Europe, there is little argument about the 2.5 -million-year-date for the stratum in which the controversial rocks are found. The debate is over whether they are natural or products of human manu facture. The French champion of ...
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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 A NEW QUASAR DISTANCE RECORD: A NEW EMBARRASSMENT A quasar has been detected with a redshift of 4.73. If this redshift is interpreted as a measure of the quasar's distance (Who would risk his reputation by suggesting otherwise?), it is 14 or billion light years away. If the Big Bang is assumed (Who would risk..etc?), this quasar is only about a billion light years from the edge of the universe. Its age, then, is only a billion years. But this stripling of a quasar appears perfectly "normal" with no signs of youth! Its spectrum indicates that even at this young age, the elements were present in the same abundances found in older quasars. And, of course, at this quasar's core there must be a billion-solar-mass black hole (Who would risk..etc.?). Current theory is hardpressed to explain this very rapid evolution of a "normal" quasar with its immense black hole. (Peterson, I.; "Quasar Illuminates the Most Distant Past," Science News, 136: 340, 1989.) Comment. Could it be that our fanatically held ideas about redshifts, black holes, and Big Bangs are wrong? You bet it could! Reference. The redshift controversy the the anomalies that create it are cataloged in: Stars, Galaxies, Cosmos. Ordering information here ...
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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 Direct observations of hyperion's chaotic motion Hyperion is a 150-kilometer-diameter satellite of Saturn. Hyperion's irregular shape and the gravitational pull of Titan, a larger satellite of Saturn, make it a prime candidate for chaotic motion. After accumulating 53 Hyperion-days of observation, J. Klavetter has confirmed this theoretical suspicion. Hyperion's brightness varies wildly from day to day, as it spins unpredictably. The laws of motion and the largest computers are helpless here; although computer simulation can identify situations where chaos might develop. More alarmingly, some "subtle" chaos also appears in computer simulations of Pluto's motion and "perhaps other planets." (Kerr, Richard A.; "First Direct View of Solar System Chaos," Science, 246: 998, 1989.) Comment. Contemplate what might happen -- or might have happened already -- if any of the other planets moved chaotically. From Science Frontiers #67, JAN-FEB 1990 . 1990-2000 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 Astronomers up against the "great wall"" For more than a decade now, astronomers have been haunted by a sense that the universe is controlled by forces they don't understand. And now comes a striking confirmation: 'The Great Wall.'" The Great Wall is the largest known structure in the universe at present, having superceded sundry superclusters and clusters of superclusters. The Wall is a "thin" (15 million-light-year) sheet of galaxies 500 million light years long by 200 wide; and it may extend even farther. It is emplaced some 200-300 million light years from earth. It helps outline contiguaous parts of vast "bubbles" of nearly empty space. Both the Wall and the adjacent voids are just too large for current theories to deal with. All popular theories have great difficulties in accounting for such large inhomogeneities. To illustrate an important observable -- the 2.7 K cosmic background radiation -- which is usually described as the afterglow of the Big Bang, ar gues for a very smooth, uniform distribution of galaxies. Great Walls are definitely anomalous. M.J . Geller, codiscoverer of the Great Wall with J.P . Huchra, remarked: "My view is that there is something fundamentally wrong in our approach to understanding such large-scale structure -- some key piece of the puzzle that we're missing." (Waldrop, ...
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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's total DNA -- 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 ...
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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 Australasian tektites coughed up by a moon of jupiter?The Australasian tektites are glassy blobs found on or near the surface of the ground from the Philippines, through southeast Asia, all the way to Tasmania. Similar but much smaller "microtektites" appear in deapsea de posits in the adjacent oceans. Radiometric and fission-track dating indicate that the tektites solidified about 700,000 years ago. Yet, their geological age, as measured by the age of the terrestrial sediments in which they are found, is only a few thousand years. This great disparity in age engendered a confrontation between geologists and geophysicists. The latter insisted on their 700,000-year figure; the former said "maybe so" but the tektites are still found only in very young, superficial sediments. The point here is that time-of-solidification may not be the same as time-of-fall. At stake is the prevailing theory, now dogmatically proclaimed, that tektites are created when a large asteroid impacts the earth, ejecting molten droplets of rock which shower back to earth as solidified tektites. No one has ever found a suitably large crater ( 200 miles in diameter) assignable to the Australasian tektite strewn field. Nevertheless, the impact model prevails; and the young geological age of the tektites is dismissed as erroneous. A Soviet scientist, E.P . Izokh, has recently proposed a radically different scenario that would produce both ...
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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. 68: Mar-Apr 1990 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The english hums: radar or buried pipelines?In our catalog volume Earthquakes, Tides, Unidentified Sounds, we recorded many curious natural sounds, including the "desert hum," the "Yellowstone Whispers," and, pertinent to the present discussion, a throbbing, humming sound afflicting some, but not all, residents of the British Isles. Percipients describe the hum as like a "diesel truck with its engine idling." The electronic environment of Britain has been blamed for the hum: transformers, high-voltage transmission lines, and pulsed radars are all candidate hum-makers. For, it has been discovered, some people somehow convert pulses of electromagnetic energy into a perception of sound. This facet of the British "hum problem" was covered on p.000, where the infamous Soviet "Woodpecker Radar" is mentioned specifically. But are electromagnetic pulses really to blame? The British hum has become a nuisance - to those who can hear it - during the past 20 years. This is just the period during which British Gas has been installing a nationwide gas-distribution system, which employs powerful turbines to pump natural gas through underground pipelines. H. Witherington, an unhappy hum-hearer, has for years driven around Britain at night when things are quieter, plotting places where the hum can be heard. He has found that the sound follows the gas pipelines and extends for several kilometers on each side ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 68: Mar-Apr 1990 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Wanted: a bona fide black hole Don't you get tired of all those science books, newspaper articles, TV documentaries, and commentators gushing at length about black holes as if they were well-verified denizens of the universe? Black holes are popularly presented as "fact"; no doubts permitted; here the Book of Science is closed! It was like a breath of fresh air to read this sentence in Sky and Telescope: "Scientists are still unable to confirm the existence of even a single black hole, despite a widespread belief that such things should, and indeed must, exist." This single sentence won't change anything, because everyone is comfortable with black holes. They are part of the (often false) reality that the media smothers us with. Actually, there are two places where black holes "might" dwell, based upon the anomalous behavior of matter around these regions: (1 ) at the centers of some galaxies, including our own Milky Way; and (2 ) as unseen components of some close double stars, where the mass of the unseen companion is too great for it to be an ordinary neutron star. W. Kundt and D. Fischer, at Bonn University, have recently concluded that the second possibility is better explained without resorting to black holes. For example, a neutron star with a massive accretion disk might suffice. As for black holes at the ...
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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 A Hungarian Ufo Somehow an interesting UFO report snuck into the Baltimore Sun -- a newspaper normally very conservative about such things. The report was embedded in a syndicated review of the week's "natural" phenomena from around the world. "Meteorologists and military pilots in the western Hungarian town of Papa reported seeing four large, and bright orange unidentified flying objects after midnight on November 25. Government meteorologist Gyula Bazso said the objects were spherical and about 50-100 yards wide. He said one flew at the speed of 2,626 miles per hour. Bazso contacted authorities at the local military airbase who sent up an experienced pilot to investigate. He located the four objects at a height of around four miles. All the UFOs were said to have disappeared suddenly after 2 a.m ." (Anonymous; no title, Baltimore Sun, December 3, 1989.) From Science Frontiers #67, JAN-FEB 1990 . 1990-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 66: Nov-Dec 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Memory Structure Of Autistic Idiot Savants The first two paragraphs of this study by N. O'Connor and B. Hermelin provide some interesting background concerning the idiot savant phenomenon. "There are two basic questions which arise from the phenomenon of the idiotsavant. One is whether the specific memory of the idiot-savant is categorically organized or not and the second is whether this memory is IQ independent or IQ related. The first problem needing consideration is therefore concerned with the nature of the memory system which is involved. In the idiot-savant this has, until recently, been deemed to be a relatively unorganized rote memory. It is supposed to be mechanical, inflexible and extremely concrete. However, in a number of studies we have demonstrated that the outstanding memories of idiotsavant calculators and musicians are founded on strategies which are rule based, and which draw on a knowledge of the structure of the calendar or of music. "In addition to evidence concerning the organized nature of the specific memories of idiot-savants for dates and music, we have also accumulated evidence that the eliciting of rules and the development of rule-based strategies tended to be specific in the particular areas of ability of these subjects. For example, although able to calculate past and future dates rapidly, calendrical calculators were often quite poor in the addition and subtraction of numbers unrelated to the calendar. Similarly, in one experiment, musical memory in an idiot- ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 66: Nov-Dec 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Drumlins May Record Catastrophic Floods Cross section of a typical drumlin, as figured in CAROLINA BAYS, etc. Drumlins are small, teardrop-shaped hills that occur in large numbers, often aligned in large "fields," in areas thought to have been covered by ice during the Ice Ages. Geologists custom-arily explain drumlins as debris piled up and sculpted by the ice sheets them-selves, despite the fact they look like they might have been shaped by flowing water. As we all know, the word "flood" is an anathema in geology, probably because a provable episode of extensive flooding would lend credence to the Biblical Flood! (Actually, many cultures around the world have similar flood legends.) Canadian geologist J. Shaw is now trying to break out of this philosophical prison. "According to Shaw, heat from the Earth formed huge lakes of meltwater that remained trapped beneath the North American ice sheet. As the sheet began to retreat near the end of the glacial age, the water broke through and flowed in torrents down to the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean. While flowing under the ice cap, water would have surged in vast, turbulent sheets that sculpted and scoured drumlins. Each flood lasted until the weight of the ice cap once again shut off the outlet of the covered lake, Shaw says." Shaw goes on to estimate that one large drumlin field in Saskatchewan was created when ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 66: Nov-Dec 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Care for a cup of viruses?" The concentration of bacteriophages in natural unpolluted waters is in general believed to be low, and they have therefore been considered ecologically unimportant. Using a new method for quantitative enumeration, we have found up to 2.5 x 108 virus particles per millilitre in natural waters. These concentrations indicate that virus infection may be an important factor in the ecological control of planktonic microorganisms, and that viruses might mediate genetic exchange among bacteria in natural aquatic environments." (Bergh, Oivind, et al; "High Abundance of Viruses Found in Aquatic Environments," Nature, 340:467, 1989.) A sip of water could therefore introduce a billion virus particles into your stomach! This level of virus density in natural water is about 10 million times that formerly estimated. Besides reducing your thirst, what are the implications of this discovery? First, it suggests that bacteria in natural waters are probably kept in check by viruses as well as protozoans. So far, this sounds good. Second, since viruses can ferry genetic material between organisms via transduction (i .e ., host DNA is carried to the next host). This means that genes for antibody resistance and increased bacterial virulence (as present in sewage) may be spread quickly and widely. Also, "engineered bacteria" proposed for use in agriculture, viz., the ice-minus bacterium created to protect strawberries, ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 66: Nov-Dec 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Army ants: a collective intelligence?Put a hundred army ants on a flat surface and they will walk around in never decreasing circles until they die from exhaustion. But a colony of a million army ants is a sophisticated "super-organism." The colony carries out its legendary raids and can even keep nest temperatures constant to within a degree. An army ant colony seems en dowed with an intelligence far beyond that of any individual ant. N.R .Franks speculates thus: "It seems that intelligence, natural or artificial, is an emergent property of collective communication. Human con-sciousness itself may be an epiphenomenon of extraordinary processing power. Although experts prefer to avoid simplistic definitions of intelligence, it seems clear that all intelligence involves the rational manipulation of symbolic information. This is exactly what happens when army ants pass information from individual to individual through the 'writing' and 'reading' of symbols, often in the form of chemical messengers or trail pheromones, which act as stimuli for changing behavior patterns." During its 20-day stationary phase, an army ant colony scatters about 14 foraging raids directed 123 apart. The heavy line indicates the colony's path during the nomadic phase. In the body of his article, Franks describes two remarkable capabilities of an army ant colony: time-keeping and navigation. The outward manisfestation of time-keeping is in the precise timing of the colony' ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 65: Sep-Oct 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Calendar calculating by "idiot savants"M.J .A . Howe and J. Smith have reported on an extensive study of calendar-calculating by individuals with otherwise subnormal intelligence. It is very clear that these so-called "idiot savants" use a variety of mental techniques, all rather different from rote memory, such as employed by memorizers of pi. First, we present Howe-and-Smith's abstract; then, a particularly interesting specific case. "A number of mentally handicapped individuals are able to solve difficult calendar date problems such as specifying the day of the week for a particular date, sometimes over spans of more than 100 years. These individuals are self-taught and do not follow procedures at all similar to the usual, published, algorithms. An investigation of one individual revealed that he retained considerable information about the structure of days in particular months, probably as visual images. His skill closely depended on the extent and form of his knowledge of calendars, and his errors were often a consequence of lack of knowledge about a particular time period. Mentally retarded individuals who perform calendar date feats are often socially withdrawn and devote considerable periods of time to calendar dates. The most capable calendar-date calculators are usually individuals who have a strong interest in calendars as such." Although some calendar calculators may use visual imagery - perhaps something like eidetic imagery - at least one calendar calculator was ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 65: Sep-Oct 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Chemical surprises at the k-t boundary The presence of high iridium concentrations at the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K -T ) boundary, some 65 million years ago, has led to the widely accepted notion that an extraterrestrial projectile slammed into the earth at that time, wreaking geological and biological havoc. But the K-T boundary is anything but simple chemically and paleontologically. To illustrate, J.L . Bada and M. Zhao have found unusual amino acids in sediments laid down before and after this geological time marker. "They find that Danish sediments spanning the narrow boundary layer contain two amino acids, alpha-aminoisobutyric acid and isovaline, that are relatively uncommon in biological materials but abundant in the organicrich meteorites. They suggest that the body which collided with Earth 65 million years ago and left the telltale iridium residue may have been organic-rich, perhaps like a C-type asteroid or a comet. Such a possibility has interesting implications for the extinction and related atmospheric effects, and supports the idea that impact events could have supplied the Earth during a much earlier period with the raw materials for organic chemical evolution." Actually, the above quotation is pretty much in line with present mainstream thinking. Perhaps so, but Bada and Zhao identified two troubling anomalies. First, the amounts of amino acids found were surprisingly high. How could these complex molecules survive the searing temperatures engendered by high-velocity impact? Second ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 65: Sep-Oct 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Initial bipedalism!Our anomaly-collecting net has pulled in an interesting catch; namely, CERBI (Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches sur la Bipedie Intiale). This Center, operated by F. de Sarre, publishes a little journal called Bipedia . In the first issue of Bipedia , de Sarre sets out, in English, his basic thesis: Abstract. "The explanation of Man's special nature is to be sought in the original combination formed by a primordial brain, the globular form of the skull and initial bipedalism. The ape, when compared with Man, appears to be rather a vestige of Man's ancestral line than his predecessor, according to the views of Max Westenhofer, Serge Frechkop, Klaas de Snoo and Bernard Heuvelmans. The study of the human morphology allows logically to carry the problem of Man's origin back to a very early stage of the evolution, and not to which has been reached by apes. From chromosomal and DNA comparison in the cells of living apes and people, several researches argue to-day that humans are genetically more like the common ancestor than is either Chimpanzees or other apes. The array of facts and considerations should be sufficient for an unbiased mind to discount away any idea of simian antecedents in Man's ascent." The body of the article supports de Sarre's thesis with observations from embryogenesis, comparative anatomy (skull, hand, foot ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 65: Sep-Oct 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Fossil from mars?Who would have thought that the dreary Antarctic wastes would harbor a piece of Mars, much less a fossil of Martian life? Yet, British scientists, I.P . Wright et al, in Nature, come close to such a conclusion. "The meteorite EETA 79001, which many believe to have originated on Mars, contains carbonate minerals thought to be Martian weathering or alteration products. Accompanying the carbonates are unexpectedly high concentrations of organic materials (defined here as carbonaceous matter that has a low stability towards oxidation, and so combusts at less than 600 C; the term 'organic' does not necessarily imply an origin by biogenic processes.) Although the carbon isotope composition of these materials is indistinguishable from terrestrial biogenic components, and so cannot be used to assess the source, we argue here that their occurrence in an interior sample of a clean Antarctic meteority militates against a wholly terrestrial origin. A sample of Martian organic materials may thus be available for further study in the laboratory." (Wright, I.P ., et al; "Organic Materials in a Martian Meteorite," Nature, 340: 220, 1989.) But there are many "buts": Meteorite EETA 79001 may not have come from Mars after all, even though many scientists think it did. The organic material in EETA 79001 may have come instead from the comet that supposedly blasted the meteorite into space from the ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 65: Sep-Oct 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Sweeping Anomalies Under The Rug A series of articles in the science magazine Mercury so slavishly followed the scientific party line on the meaning of the redshift that G. Burbidge was prompted to pen a rejoinder. Burbidge reviewed the considerable observational evidence supporting a non-cosmological interpretation of some redshifts. (Such data has been included in past issues of Science Frontiers and in our Catalog Stars Galaxies, Cosmos.) A typical observation is the apparent physical connection (streams of connecting matter) between quasars and galaxies with radically different redshifts. Burbidge remarks: "Evidence of this kind exists. If it is accepted it means: That at least some quasars do lie at so-called cosmological distances. That at least some parts of the redshifts of quasars are due to some effect other than the expansion of the universe. That quasars are physically related to bright, comparatively nearby galaxies." Burbidge is not concerned by the fact that some astronomers find the data unconvincing, rather he objects to the so-obvious attempts to brush such anomalous data under the rug. His concluding remarks are pertinent to all of science: "I cannot end this part of the discussion without making two points which are rarely made, but which are important: Evidence of the kind just mentioned which is favorable to the cosmological interpretations of the redshifts does not negate the other evidence. It simply means that the world is a complicated place. Only in articles of this ...
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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 Saturn's latest burp In late September, 1990, a large white spot appeared on Saturn. Soon, this blemish spread into an oval 21,000 kilometers in length. By early November, it had developed into a planet-encircling band. Apparently, Saturn had "burped," expelling hot gases from its interior. [Saturn emits 50% more heat than it absorbs from the sun.] So far, this is not too beguiling to the anomalist. But now it seems that other white spots, not as large, have been recorded in 1876, 1903, 1933, and 1960. Could the white-spot phenomenon be periodic--like a percolator? More food for thought is found in Saturn's orbital period around the sun: 29.4 years -- not too different from the potential "burp" cycle! (Anonymous; "New White Spot on Saturn Grows, Changes," Science News, 138:325, 1990. Also: Brown, William; "Giant Bubble of Gas Rises through Saturn's Atmosphere," New Scientist, p. 22, October 20, 1990.) Reference. Historical observations of white spots on Saturn are covered in our handbook: Mysterious Universe. To order, visit: here . From Science Frontiers #73, JAN-FEB 1991 . 1991-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 76: Jul-Aug 1991 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Catastrophic flooding on mars?Could that parched red planet seen in the Viking pictures have been the site of a colossal flood -- a wall of water greater than anything ever seen on earth? Terrestrial geologists point to the Channeled Scablands in eastern Washington State as evidence of what the sudden release of a huge lake's water can do to the landscape. Everywhere in this part of Washington are deeply incised grooves and dry cataracts separated by water-streamlined bars. Exactly this sort of harsh, scoured topography can be found at Kasei Valles, Mars. "The upper part of the channel system is typically less than 1 km deep and descends from Echus Chasma about 1 km over a distance of 1000 km; it then splits into north and south channels. On the basis of a stereomodel of Viking images, we have measured the geometry of a steep, constricted reach of the north channel that drops 900 m in only 100 km. A late-stage flood is hypothesized to have scoured the channel. If we assume that channel striations indicate water levels, then the flood had a minimum cross-sectional area of 3.12 x 107 m2 (the putative flood had a width of 83 km, an average depth of 373 m, and a maximum depth of 1280 m). These channel measurements suggest that flood vel ocities ranged from 32 to 75 m. s-1 and that discharge was greater than 1 km3 ...
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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 Venus Too Pristine In the November 16 issue of Science, R.A . Kerr remarks: "The planetary geologists who are studying the radar images streaming back from Magellan [the space probe] find that they have an enigma on their hands. When they read the geological clock that tells them how old the Venusian surface is, they find a planet on the brink of adolescence. But when they look at the surface itself, they see a newborn babe." (Kerr, Richard A.; "Venus Is Looking Too Pristine," Science, 250:913, 1990.) Comment. Of the 75 craters mapped so far by Magellan , only one shows any signs of aging; i.e ., tectonic movements, lava-filling, etc. The surface of Venus should be hundreds of millions of years old, yet it looks freshly minted. The anticipated spectrum of degradation has not yet been seen. One theory is that recent lava flooding erased the old craters, and we now see only recent impact scars. But why would a planet's volcanism turn off so completely and so abruptly? Our earth, Venus' sister planet in many ways, still perks away, leaving craters of various ages. Why is Venus so different? One idea not advanced by Kerr in Science is that Venus might be a recently acquired member of the solar system! From Science Frontiers #73, JAN- ...
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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 Killer Trees That Talk Among Themselves "Acacia trees pass on an 'alarm signal' to other trees when antelope browse on their leaves, according to a zoologist from Pretoria University. Wouter Van Hoven says that acacias nibbled by antelope produce leaf tannin in quantities lethal to the brows ers, and emit ethylene into the air which can travel up to 50 yards. The ethylene warns other trees of impending danger, which then step up their own production of leaf tannin within just five to ten minutes." (Hughes, Sylvia; "Antelope Activate the Acacia's Alarm System," New Scientist, p. 19, September 29, 1990.) Free-ranging antelope can always find unwarned acacias with low levels of tannin to browse on, but on some South African game ranges, they are forced to consume high tannin leaves. Too much tannin inactivates the antelopes' liver enzymes, and they die in about two weeks. Hundreds may perish in a very dry season. (Vincent, Catherine; "Les Arbres Communiquent entre Eux," Le Monde , p. 11, September 14, 1990. Cr. C. Mauge) From Science Frontiers #73, JAN-FEB 1991 . 1991-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 70: Jul-Aug 1990 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Two Anomalous Types Of Stars Blue straggler stars. The stars comprising a star cluster are usually assigned the same age, since it is thought that they were all created at the same time that the cluster was formed. Lurking in many star clusters, however, are brighter, bluer nonconformists called "blue straggler stars." These stars seem to have about twice the mass of the "normal" cluster members, and they appear to be only about one-fifth as old as their compatriots. The motions of the blue stragglers are consistent with those of bona fide cluster members, implying that they are not interlopers or foreground objects. Several explanations have been suggested to explain the presence of blue stragglers. One thought is that they harbor asteroid-size black holes at their cores. So far, all of the profferred explanations have serious flaws. (Fogg, Martyn J.; "Blue Straggler Stars: A Cosmic Anomaly," The Explorer, 6:4 , Spring 1990.) Socket stars. "A picture book hardly seems a likely source of an astronomical discovery, especially in a world where mysteries of the universe usually tumble from sophisticated electronic instruments attached to huge telescopes. Nevertheless, while recently paging through Exploring the Southern Sky , by G. Madsen and R. West, Walter A. Feibelman (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center) recognized something that had caught his attention decades before. High-resolution photographs of ...
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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 Things that ain't so Back in 1953. Irving Langmuir, the famous American physicist, gave a talk at General Electric on the subject of "pathological science." He discussed several things that could not be so . Of course, UFOs were on the list, but so was mitogenetic radiation -- radiation supposedly emitted by cells when they divide. In the context of Langmuir's talk, despite his emphatic interment of the subject, mitogenetic radiation was resurrected recently in the pages of Physics Today. A letter from V.B . Shirley included several recent scientific references that suggest that Langmuir was premature. "The gist of these articles is that many cell systems emit ultraviolet light during or immediately before cell division and that the total effect of this emission on neighboring cells is unknown." (Shirley, Vestel B.; "Mitogenetic Radiation: Pathology or Biology?" Physics Today, 43:130, October 1990.) From Science Frontiers #73, JAN-FEB 1991 . 1991-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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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 Science And Bubblegum Cards " Summary . -- 139 professional baseball players who appeared on Topps bubble gum cards (copyright 1987) were subjects. The players, whose printed eye colors could be identified from their photographs, were sorted into three categories of 45 dark-eyed white players, 27 light-eyed players, and 67 black players. The statistics on the backs of the cards were dependent measures and included: Games, At Bat, Runs, Hits, Second Base, Third Base, Home Runs, Runs Batted In, Stolen Bases, SLG, Bunts, Strike Outs, and Batting Average." The researchers then performed analyses of variance with these data. The most important findings were that black players scored more triples, stole more bases, and boasted better batting averages. Eye color did seem to be an impor tant factor!!" (Beer, John, Beer, Joe; "Relationship of Eye Color to Professional Baseball Players' Batting Statistics Given on Bubblegum Cards,: Perceptual and Motor Skills , 69:632, 1989.) Facetious Comment. Why must we spend billions on the Supercollider and Space Station when the equipment for important scientific research can be had for pennies at the corner store? From Science Frontiers #73, JAN-FEB 1991 . 1991-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 71: Sep-Oct 1990 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Wyoming: is old faithful a strange attractor?" Eruptions of Old Faithful Geyser are generally perceived as extremely regular events, with variation of eruptive interval being attributed to random noise. The governing equations for such a hydrothermal system are highly non-linear, therefore it is reasonable to assume that such systems are capable of operating in regines that display chaotic behavior. Three-dimensional state-space reconstruction of eruption time data provides strong evidence of a strange attractor quite similar to the Rossler attractor. Establishing the system as chaotic indicates that while one can predict eruptive intervals in the short term, long term predictions regarding Old Faithful's eruptive behavior are impossible, no matter how carefully and accurately the system is modeled. The mean eruptive interval of Old Faithful has changed over time. This is consistent with the behavior of a chaotic system, which by definition must be nonstationary in the mean. Seismic activity is believed to be a perturbation shifting Old Faithful into a new chaotic state with a different shape to the strange attractor. A simple non-linear dynamic model of geyser behavior is proposed that leads to chaotic behavior and is consistent with the observations of eruption interval data for Old Faithful." (Nicholl, Michael, et al; "Is Old Faithful a Strange Attractor?" Eos, 71:466, 1990.) Comment. "Strange attractor" is a specialized term employed in chaos analysis. So, Old Faithful is ...
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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 Piney Pitstop Of The Paranormal Evidently trying to inject some joy into our country's financial capital, the Wall Street Journal recently printed a story on Spook Hill, Lake Wales, Florida. Spook Hill is one of several spots in the U.S . where gravity seems to be defied. "Sue Robertson motors her maroon Ford Tempo to the white line painted across Fifth Street, shifted into neutral and slowly rolls backward up Spook Hill. "' Eerie, weird, and definitely strange," she says, finally easing to a stop near the top of the rise. "Hers is the same amazed reaction expressed by most tourists who discover this piney pitstop of the paranormal, 50 miles south of Orlando. On a typical Saturday, up to 30 cars an hour line up at the top of the hill for their turn to drive down to the white line and drift back up." Not only cars roll up the hill. Farmers had to stop planting oranges in the area because visitors pulled them off the trees so they could watch them roll uphill. Skateboarders and cyclists also feel the pull of gravity in the wrong direction. Scientists who deign to investigate sites like Spook Hill usually end up by claiming them to be merely optical illusions. "If it's an optical illusion at work here, it's an odd one; a reporter applying a carpenter's level at about the hill's ...
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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 Booms Along The Beach Just because we don't report them don't think that unexplained detonations are no longer heard along the world's seacoasts. These "waterguns" are still booming away, as they have for centuries. Take the Carolina beaches for example. " Sunset Beach -- Just what is that noise that residents along the coast have been hearing? "Reverberations powerful enough to shake beach cottages are heard several times every autumn along the coast in New Hanover and Brunswick counties. "' It moves the earth, I tell you,' Minnie Hunt of Sunset Beach said. 'Sometimes you get two or three in a row.' .. .. . "Residents who are now grandparents say their own grandparents remembered the rumbles, so they predate the sonic booms of jets breaking the sound barrier. .. .. . "The noises clearly emanate from the sea, she said...'It's not a land phenomenon.' .. .. . "The sounds occur most often in the fall and spring, though they occasionally shiver across the beaches in other seasons. Sometimes they shake the coast more than once a day. Sometimes they happen a few days in a row. Sometimes they are weeks apart. They have been reported as far north as Carteret County, but are most frequent near Wilmington and southward." (Mysteries, Marvels and Things That Go ...
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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 An Amusing Assemblage Of Anomalies We don't read much about "waterguns" in the modern scientific literature, but a century ago Nature published many ear-witness accounts of them. These muffled detonations heard near the coasts of almost all the continents are believed by some to be caused by eruptions of methane from the seafloor. The same eruptions probably also account for the myriads of "pockmarks" found in the sediments of shallow seas. Whether this outgassing of methane comes from shallow accumulations of organic matter or from deep within the crust is still debated. Here, geophysics merges with biology. Recently, a group of researchers discovered a large (540 square meters) patch of chemosynthetic mussels in a brine-filled pockmark, at a depth of 650 meters, off the Louisiana coast. The mussels grew in a ring around the concentrated brine. The mussels harbor symbionts which consume the methane still seeping up through the brine from a salt diapir (a massive fingerlike intrusion 500 meters below the brine pool. The origin of some diapirs is not well-understood.) The mussels get the oxygen they require from the ordinary seawater covering the dense brine. Like the biological communities surrounding the "black smokers" and other ocean-floor seeps, the brine-filled pockmark community includes several species of shrimp, crabs, and tube worms. We have here another example of the astounding ability of lifeforms to take advantage of unusual, even ...
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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 Malodorous Mystery "A scent squad has been unleashed in Bartlesville, Okla., to trace and identify an elusive odor that has plagued residents for months. The 19-member Bartlesville Odor Mitigation Task Force will distribute about a half dozen devices to trap the scent, which will then be snif fed and characterized by trained noses at a Chicago Research Company. The city has received 60 calls this year about the odor, described as smelling like rotten eggs or butane, but they have been unable to determine the source." (Newman, Steve; "Malodorous Mystery," Baltimore Sun, July 22, 1990.) Comment. We rarely come across olfactory anomalies, although they occasionally crop up in the Fortean literature. From Science Frontiers #73, JAN-FEB 1991 . 1991-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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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 Win $2000: challenge einstein H. Hayden and P. Beckmann are offering $2000 to anyone who can cite, not necessarily perform, an experiment proving that light travels westward at the same velocity that it travels eastward on the earth's surface (to an accuracy of 50 meters/second). If the speeds are indeed the same, then Einstein's assumption that the speed of light is the same in all directions regardless of the motion of the observer will be proven. Then skeptical scientists like Hayden and Beckmann, will rest easier. But suppose the east and west velocities of light are different? Then Special Relativity would collapse. Hayden and Beckmann do not dread this at all. In fact, they (and others) point out that some of the vaunted experimental "proofs" of Special Relativity can be explained in other ways. For example: (1 ) The bending of starlight passing close to the sun can easily be accounted for using Fermat's Law; and (2 ) The advance of Mercury's perihelion was explained by P. Gerber, 17 years before Einstein's 1915 paper on the subject, using classical physics and the now accepted assumption that gravity propagates at the speed of light. As for the famous Michelson-Morley experiment, Michelson (an unbeliever in Relativity) believed that he and Morley failed to detect ether drift because the ether was entrained with the earth as ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 74: Mar-Apr 1991 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Eel Oddities Garter snakes are reknowned for their habit of congregating in large, writhing masses, but we never heard of "eel balls" until A. Gardiner mentioned them in a recent issue of the Fortean Times. "These [eel balls] are recorded in Christopher Moriarty's excellent Eels: a Natural and Unnatural History (David and Charles, 1978). Moriarity cites Pliny as the earliest historical reference. According to him, Eel Balls occur in Lake Garda, Italy, when it has been storm-tossed by the effects of the October 'Autumn star'. Smitt in his Scandanavian Fishes (1895) says that eels knot themselves together in bunches 'up to a fathom in circumference' and are seen rolling along the stream beds, or, strangely, resting in this position. On 17 August 1935, fishery scientist J.C . Medcof observed, in the outflow of Lake Ainslie in Nova Scotia, 'three splendid clumps of Eels, half a metre in diameter, 30 to a clump, knotted tightly and remaining motionless in the rushes.' Medcof mentions that Eel Balls are sometimes free floating on the surface, which suggests formation with an air pocket or some communal control of air bladders. He says that this behavior occurs before eels 'silver' prior to the spawning migration. The record of Eel Balls in Nova Scotia proves that this behaviour is not confined to the European Eel." ( ...
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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 Nature, hypothesis, and the big bang As noted above, J. Maddox, Editor of the preeminent journal Nature, seems intent on muffling the Big Bang. Now we see a newly added section in Nature bearing the heading Hypothesis . Hypothesis "is intended as an occasional vehicle for scientific papers that fail to win the full-throated approval of the referees to whom they have been sent, but which are nevertheless judged to be of sufficient importance to command the attention of readers..." Certainly, this is a commendable development. But not surprisingly, the first paper is an at-tack on the Big Bang. Most of the authors of this first article are familiar to readers of Science Frontiers: H. Arp (Not all redshifts are measures of receding velocity.); G. Burbidge (Quasars are not as far away as they seem.); and F. Hoyle (The multidisciplinary iconoclast who helped de velop the Steady State theory of the universe.) None of these scientists has recanted, even in face of not-so-subtle pressures to conform. The first paper in Hypothesis. Arp et al summarize in two sentences: "We discuss evidence to show that the generally accepted view of the Big Bang model for the origin of the Universe is unsatisfactory. We suggest an alternative model that satisfies the constraints better." Most of the paper sets out observational evidence for the authors' ...
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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 1989 SIGHTINGS OF OGOPOGO Okanagan Lake, in south central British Columbia, is the home of Ogopogo. At least this is where a large, elusive lake monster has been reported for many years. During the summer of 1989, the British Columbia Cryptozoology Club (BCCC) made two expeditions to Okana gan to search out Ogopogo. Several sightings of the animal were made, as well as a video tape. The first sighting, on July 30, was quite detailed, and we quote here from the BCCC report. July 30, 1989. Four sketches of Ogopogo from different vantage points. "The focus of the investigation turned to Summerland, and a particularly good vantage point was located at Peach Orchard Beach, Lower Summerland, on July 30. All four members of the investigating team were stationed at various points on the beachfront when, at 3:55 p.m ., a most extraordinary occurrence took place. A large patch of white water materialized close to a headland at the southern end of the beach, drawing the attention of the BCCC observers. It was about 1,000 feet distant at this point, and it was clear that a large animal was swimming in a northerly direction against the prevailing wind and slight swell. At a distance of about 600 feet, Kirk Sr. was able to see clearly through a Bushnell 40X telescope that this was the classic Ogopogo, with its humps well above the water ...
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