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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 116: Mar-Apr 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects G: The Embarrassing Constant Of Nature Of the four fundamental forces of nature, gravity was the first to be discovered. Even the Neanderthals knew of it! That's hardly surprising; it's everywhere. Unfortunately, we don't know much more about it than the Neanderthals. Though it seems powerful when you trip and fall, gravity is the weakest of the fundamental four. In a helium nucleus, the force of repulsion between two protons is 1040 times the gravitational attraction between them. Weak though it may be, gravity controls the trajectory of a baseball, the motion of the planets, and the shape of our Galaxy. Physicists describe gravitation with Newton's Law of Gravitation, which incorporates the Gravitational Constant G. Here's where the embarrassment arises. Many other constants of nature, such as the charge on the electron, are known to eight significant figures. We only know G to three. What's worse, modern attempts to refine the measurement of G come up with wildly different answers. Torsion-pendulum experiments in the U.S ., Germany, and New Zealand are far apart in their G-measurements. And physicists are perplexed -- to put it mildly. Of course, G is hard to measure. Seismic waves from ocean surf hundreds of miles away can affect the experiments. If a colleague a few offices away brings in some boxes of books for his ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 115: Jan-Feb 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A Strangely Selective Spider Australia's funnel web spider is one of the world's deadliest. Before an antivenin became available, this species killed one human every four years. It is not this low death rate that impels us to mention this spider. It is because the bite of the funnel web is deadly only to insects and humans. All other mammals are said to be immune. Analysis of the venom yields the remarkable fact that it consists of 45 active compounds. One of these is specific to insect brain cells; another, to human nerve cells. (da Silva, Wilson; "Spider Gives Kiss of Death to Pests," New Scientist, p. 23, May 17, 1997.) Comment. Since humans are not on the funnel web's menu, it must be only a coincidence that its venom kills people so selectively. It would be nice to know if chimps, gorillas, and orangs really are immune. A related phenomenon is seen in the venoms of cone shells. These snails are much more dangerous to humans, particularly naive shell collectors. Their venoms are extraordinarily complex and contain hundreds, perhaps thousands, of toxins. Many of these are specific to potential prey. Once again, humans are not on the menu but are included anyway. (Concar, David; "Doctor Snail," New Scientist, p. 26, October 19, 1996.) Comment. ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 116: Mar-Apr 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects High-Flying Catfish Anomalies crop up in out-of-the-way places and unusual publications. A radio amateur (Dave, K1WHS) noticed that his 432-MHz beam was higher tha normal. Checking his tall antenna, he saw something dangling from the horizontal elements. It turned out to be a good-sized, desiccated catfish. Dave's antenna is 60 feet high and miles from any lake or stream. (Anonymous; QST , p. 21, February 1998. Cr. L.M . Nash) From Science Frontiers #116, MAR-APR 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 115: Jan-Feb 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Acoustical Mirrors On Plants In Costa Rica, the plant Macuna holtoni , a vine-like member of the pea family, is pollinated by bats. To help echolocating bats to find its flowers in the dark, it has evolved a single petal on each blossom that is shaped like a concave ultrasound mirror. A bat searching for nectar- and pollen-bearing flowers with its ultrasonic cries can zero in on the strong echoes reflected from the plant. Both plant and bat benefit. (Anonymous; "Bat Mirror," New Scientist, p. 29, November 8, 1997.) Comment. What a neat, technically sophisticated adaptation. How did this plant "know" that the bats echolocated ultrasonically and what a good reflector would look like? Don't worry about trivia like this, evolution can explain everything! From Science Frontiers #115, JAN-FEB 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 116: Mar-Apr 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Earthquake Weather Folklore reserves the term "earthquake weather" for the sultry, ominously uneasy period said to precede large earthquakes. Scientists have generally belittled suggestions that weather could have anything to do with the ponderous forces unleashed during a quake. Despite such authoritative pronouncements, many Californians, who have ample experience with seismic events, insist that quakes and weather are somehow connected. They may be right -- at least some of the time. In the five years following the 7.3 Landers earthquake of June 28, 1992, the frequency of smaller quakes has peaked reliably every September. However, before the Landers event, no such pattern is evident. One thought is that the average atmospheric pressure, which is lower in the summer months, reduces the downward pressure on the earth's crust enough to allow easier slippage along fault lines. This sounds reasonable, but why did this effect not occur before the Landers quake? The answer given is that perhaps the Landers event "sensitized" nearby faults! (Monastersky, R.; "California Shakes Most Often in September," Science News, 152:373, 1997.) Since the Landers event, Earthquakes in the weestern U.S . have been following an annual cycle. From Science Frontiers #116, MAR-APR 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 115: Jan-Feb 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Nuclear Families Men who work at England's Sellafield nuclear power plant father significantly more sons than daughters. Male plant workers produced 109 boys for every 100 girls. This compared with 105 boys for every 100 girls for men in the same area who did not work at the plant. The bias was even greater for men who had received higher than normal doses of radiation in the 3 months prior to conception: 140 boys per 100 girls. Actually, both sets of figures are significant because of the large sample employed: 260,000 children. (Anonymous; "Does Atomic Plant Generate Sons?" Baltimore Sun, December 12, 1996.) Comment. The average sex ratio worldwide falls between 104-107 boys per 100 girls. There are, however, some fascinating geographical extremes: Montserrat 94.34 Aden 120.31 Why do these large differences prevail? Is Aden radioactive? For more on this subject, see our Catalog: Biological Anomalies: Humans II. From Science Frontiers #115, JAN-FEB 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 116: Mar-Apr 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Target: Greenland Reports of recent large meteors and suspicious craters are plentiful in back issues of this newsletter. (SFs #93, #102, #103, #110, to name a few) Here is another. December 9, 1997, Greenland. At 5:11 A.M ., crews of three trawlers at widely separated sites off south Greenland reported "a blazing fireball that turned night into day." At a distance of 100 kilometers (62 miles), the flash was compared to that from an atmospheric nuclear explosion. Danish officials dismissed the possibility of a surreptitious nuclear test. The U.S . Air Force stated that the object was neither a reentering spacecraft nor artificial space debris. Some seismic tremors also emanated from Greenland, so the impact of a large meteorite is suspected. Based on the visual sightings and a moving object caught on a parkinglot surveillance camera in Nuuk, Greenland's capital, the probable impact point is at 61 25' N., 44 26' W. Efforts to locate the meteorite will have to wait for favorable weather. The supposed meteor was not a small object. The Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen compared it to the Kap York meteor that fell south of Thule, Greenland, in prehistoric times. Pieces of this iron meteorite aggregating 50 tons have been collected. (Sawyer, Kathy; "Fireball a Mystery till Thaw," Charlotte Observer, December ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 116: Mar-Apr 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Global cooling has begun!G. Bond of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and his colleagues have been tracking the movements of past ice sheets using the trails of rocky debris they leave behind on the ocean floor. A type of igneous rock called "gabbro" is indicative of the passage of past ice sheets. For example, 100,000 years ago, when the last ice age began, the amount of gabbro in ocean-floor sediments jumped from 2% to 8%. Despite all today's furor over global warming, Bond et al are finding in current ocean sediments the same gabbro precursors. Conclusion: a new ice age is in the making. (Anonymous; "Big Freeze," New Scientist, p. 21, December 20/27, 1997.) From Science Frontiers #116, MAR-APR 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 116: Mar-Apr 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Miles Of Mush The earth's tectonic plates are usually drawn as neatly fitting puzzle pieces. This idealistic picture is changing because several lines of evidence suggest that some plates are separated by miles of geological "mush." J-Y . Royer and R.G . Gordon came to this conclusion after careful inspection of the huge Indo-Australian plate. First, they noticed that many powerful earthquakes originated in the center of this plate. Usually, quakes are confined to the edges of plates where they crunch against neighboring plates. Second, a line of folds 3,000 feet high runs down the center of the plate, as if is being squeezed like an accordion. But they could not identify any geological accordionist. Finally, working backwards in time using paleomagnetic data, they reconstructed plate configurations 11 million years ago. The Indo-Australian plate did not match up with its neighbors of that time period. Royer and Gordon concluded that the Indo-Australian plate really consists of three smaller plates. Even more surprising was their discovery that in between the boundaries of the three new plates there is a tectonic morass perhaps a thousand miles wide in places -- the "miles of mush" of our title. Plate tectonics (nee "continental drift"), once a revolutionary idea in geology and geophysics, seems poised for another upheaval. (Anonymous; "Gaps in the Theory," Earth , 7:11 ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 115: Jan-Feb 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Tektite Mysteries Tektites are small glassy bodies found strewn on and near the surface in several regions of the world. They come in various shapes: droplets, buttons, even dumbbells. By general agreement, tekites are attributed to meteoric or cometary impacts that melt terrestrial rocks and splash liquid droplets into the atmosphere. There they are shaped by aerodynamic forces and solidify. This scenario is all very reasonable, but some nagging problems remain. Where-o -where is that crater? 770,000 years ago, a huge meteor hit somewhere on earth and strewed an immense batch of tektites and microtektites over fully 10% of our planet's surface (about 5 x 107 square kilometers). This is called the "Australasian strewn field." Such a recent cataclysm must have left a large and inescapable crater somewhere. The problem is that no one has yet found it. (Ref. 1) Many lines of evidence suggest that the missing crater is in Indochina. C.C . Schnetzler and J.F . McHone located four likely structures in Laos from Landsat images. However, visits to these areas found no evidence of an impact. (Ref. 2) So, this mystery persists. How were the Muong Nong tektites formed? Muong Nong tektites are unusually large (up to 24 kilograms), layered tektites. They are found in an area 1,000 kilometers in extent from Hainan Island to southern Indochina ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 116: Mar-Apr 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Ultimate In Unisex At the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh, doctors have been examining a "boy" with an ovary and a fallopian tube instead of a left testicle. Part of "his" body's cells are male (one X and one Y chromosome), part female (two X chromosomes). This hermaphrodite-like condition apparently developed because "he" was conceived via in vitro (IVF) fertilization. Probably both a male embryo and a female embryo were transferred to "his" mother's uterus, where they fused and formed a single fetus. (Anonymous; "Two into One," New Scientist, p. 21, January 24, 1998. Cited source: The New England Journal of Medicine, 338:166, 1997.) Comments. We have already cataloged two similar conditions: Human blood-chimeras, where one person has two types of blood due to the absorption of one fetus by its twin, each having different blood types. (BHC15 in Biological Anomalies: Humans II) Birds that are female on one side and male on the other (bilateral gynandromorphism). (BBA1 in our forthcoming Biological Anomalies: Birds) From Science Frontiers #116, MAR-APR 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 115: Jan-Feb 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Frog Fall June 16, 1937. Frackville, Pennsylvania. "Astonished householders of this little mining town, ten miles north of Pottsville, went out with brooms and swept bullfrogs off their open porches after a thunderstorm today. "The tiny frogs sounded like the thudding of hailstones as they dropped by hundreds on tin roofs. "Miniature "twisters" accompanying the rain had lifted the frogs several yards into the air, it was suggested, and dropped them over Frackville." (Anonymous; "Bullfrogs by the Hundred Fall in Pennsylvania Rain," New York Times, June 17, 1937. Cr. M. Piechota. Comment. The "whirlwind theory" is always trotted out to account for fish, frog, and toad falls. It is not easy to find hundreds of tiny frogs in a marsh and then vacuum them up without also levitating considerable plant debris and other marsh dwellers. From Science Frontiers #115, JAN-FEB 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 116: Mar-Apr 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Ten Strikes Against The Big Bang T. Van Flandern, editor of the Meta Re search Bulletin, has compiled a list of Big-Bang problems -- and it is not a short list. Can the Big-Bang paradigm be that shaky? Like Evolution and Relativity, the Big Bang is usually paraded as a proven, undeniable fact. It isn't . Static-universe models fit the data better than expanding-universe models. The microwave "background" makes more sense as the limiting temperature of space heated by starlight than as the remnant of a fireball. Element-abundance predictions using the Big Bang require too many adjustable parameters to make them work. The universe has too much largescale structure (interspersed "walls" and voids) to form in a time as short as 10-20 billion years. The average luminosity of quasars must decrease in just the right way so that their mean apparent brightness is the same at all redshifts, which is exceedingly unlikely. The ages of globular clusters appear older than the universe. The local streaming motions of galaxies are too high for a finite universe that is supposed to be everywhere uniform. Invisible dark matter of an unknown but non-baryonic nature must be the dominant ingredient of the entire universe. The most distant galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field show insufficient evidence of evolution, with some of them apparently having higher redshifts (z = 6-7 ) than ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 115: Jan-Feb 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A SKY-SPANNING AURORAL ARCH August 28, 1916. Canada. "The usual Northern Lights were feeble, but at half past ten there grew in the sky an immense arc or ribbon of light -- practically a complete semicircle -- stretching from a point on the horizon practically due east nearly up to the zenith, but a little to the south of it, and passing down practically to the western point of the horizon. Throngs of people gathered to see it and according to their account the like was never seen before. It was a fairly uniform band of light of about the same width as the rainbow. Its definiteness was surprising, there was very little fading away at the edges; it was as if a paint brush had been drawn across the sky...For about an hour it arched the sky and during that time it was noticeably fixed relative to the earth, for some of the stars as they got higher in the east crossed it from the northern or convex side to the other." (Anonymous; "Great Auroral Displays," Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Journal, 10:469, 1916.) Comment. This sharp and precisely drawn arc is so different from the swaying draperies, pulsing arcs, and "merry dancers" that characterize the usual auroral displays. We have not seen any good explanation of this phenomenon. More examples may be found in GLA2 in our ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 116: Mar-Apr 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Plant Life On Mars?" Strong evidence that plant life exists on Mars was advanced today by Earl C. Slipher, American astronomer, after observation of the planet, which is closer to the earth this month than at any time since 1924. .. .. . "His theory is founded on an apparent change in the planet's surface, regarded as his most important discovery. "The huge dark spot (Solis Lacus) or the Great Eye of Mars, seems to have assumed a shape not observed for fifty years, if ever before. Mr. Slipher indicated that this was strong evidence that plant life existed on the planet, and suggested that the change was due to fresh vegetation over an area roughly the size of the United States." (Anonymous; "Evidence of Plant Life on the Planet Mars Is Announced by an American Astronomer," New York Times, July 21, 1939. Cr. M. Piechota.) Comment. What a difference 59 years make! Could those tiny structures in ALH 84001 be fossilized pollen grains? From Science Frontiers #116, MAR-APR 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 115: Jan-Feb 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Splitting The Electron's Charge We all know that the atom can be split, but the electron's charge? No way! R.A . Millikan's oil-drop experiments, circa 1911, demonstrated conclusively that the basic, indivisible unit of electrical charge was that on the electron. Later, an exception was made for those quarks that are firmly locked up inside nuclear particles. They each have 1/3 the electron's charge -- but they never, never escape to the outside world. It was, therefore, counterintuitive when R. Laughlin proposed in 1982 that fractional electrical charges actually could show up elsewhere in physics. The phenomenon that suggests this possibility is the Fractional Quantum Hall (FQH) effect. Physicists reluctantly accepted the likelihood of fractional charges in this well-verified phenomenon; but the experiments demonstrating fractional charge were a bit esoteric -- the fractional charges were not "palpable" enough. Two new experiments have made fractional charges much more tangible. When a layer of electrons, held just above absolute zero, is subjected to a powerful magnetic field, you can almost "hear" the fractional charges. The signals from these experiments have been likened to hail hitting a tin roof. Just as you can gauge the size of hailstones from their impact, so you can estimate the electrical charges involved in these experiments -- they are 1/3 that of the electron. ( ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 116: Mar-Apr 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects An Anasazi Reservoir In Morefield Canyon, Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado, a strange earthen mound, 200 feet wide, rises 15 feet above the canyon's grassy floor. Archeologists have debated the mound's purpose for decades. Being elevated above the floor of a usually dry canyon as it is, the mound certainly does not seem to be a reservoir, but that is what recent research says it is. The mound is shaped like an inverted frying pan, with a 1500-foot-long handle that leads to a normally dry stream bed higher up in the canyon. The Anasazi were excellent water managers and took advantage of the flash floods that roared down the canyon every few years. To impound some of this valuable water, they initially built a conventional reservoir, but it was soon silted up by the freshets. So, they gradually raised the reservoir walls and constructed a raised canal to the stream bed. It was all very logical. The engineering of the canal is particularly impressive. The channel is 4-8 feet wide, but only 1-2 feet deep. Its steep, 15-foot-high sides are shored up with neatly aligned stones that were carried in from somewhere outside the canyon. (Anonymous; "Mystery Mound Appears to Be an Ancient Reservoir," San Francisco Chronicle, June 6, 1997. Cr. D. Phelps. Also: Anonymous; "Mysterious Mesa ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 116: Mar-Apr 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Microscopic Life On Mars?The worm-like structures present in that (supposed) Martian meteorite ALH 84001 superficially resemble miniature bacteria. On this basis NASA loudly proclaimed that they might be the fossils of primitive Martian life forms. (SF#108, #110) Some scientists were suspicious of this claim. J.P . Bradley et al, in a recent letter to Nature, declared the putative fossils to be only the fractured surfaces of lifeless crystals. Responding, K. Thomas-Keprta insisted that her group was not so stupid that it would mistake crystals for fossils! Her group, too, had noticed the crystals. The claimed fossils are much larger and more numerous than the crystals. To settle the matter, Thomas-Keprta and associates plan to dissect the suspect structures. Stay tuned to this newsletter! (Bradley, J.P ., et al; "No Nanofossils in Martian Meteorite," Nature, 390:454, 1997. Also: Kerr, Richard A.; "Putative Martian Microbes Called Microscopy Artifacts," Science, 278:1706, 1997.) From Science Frontiers #116, MAR-APR 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 116: Mar-Apr 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Dry Fogs And Bright Nights June 1783. Much of Europe. ". .. the atmosphere was suddenly invaded, in Europe, by a sort of dry fog of peculiar character. It did not moisten objects, did not affect the hygrometer, and persisted when the wind rose, and rain fell. The sun looked pale through it. This fog lasted a month. One curious point is, that it was phosphorescent, and gave a light like moonlight at night." August 18, 1821. Western Europe. ". .. a similar fog was observed throughout Western Europe; it lasted twelve days. It deprived the sun of so much brightness, that one could look at this star at any hour; it gave the disc a glossy blue tint. Twilight assumed an extraordinary brightness, so that the day was greatly prolonged, and one could even read at midnight." (Houzeau, M.; "On Certain Enigmas of Astronomy," English Mechanic , 29:32, 1879.) From Science Frontiers #116, MAR-APR 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 115: Jan-Feb 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Woodhenges Before Pyramids The ancient inhabitants of Britain were constructing massive structures before Cheops, builder of the Great Pyramid, was even born! One of these structures is 5,000 years old. It is located at Stanton Drew, in southwestern England. But tourists at the site see only the Great Circle of standing stones, which is impressive enough but only the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. What is more spectacular is "seen" only by sensitive magnetometers. These instruments detect faint, ghostly remains of the magnetotactic bacteria that consumed the giant oak pillars that graced this site five millennia ago. The soil inside the Great Circle reveals that there were once 400-500 oak pillars on the site. These massive cylinders were probably a meter in diameter, 8 meters (26 feet) high, and weighed 5 tons each. The rings of pillars occupied an area about the size of a football field (100 meters in diameter). The Stanton Drew woodhenge was probably too large to have been roofed, but the oak columns might have been carved or decorated. Why would anyone cut, haul, and array hundreds of massive oak pillars in nine concentric circles? Obviously, the ancient Britons used this oaken temple to seek help from supernatural powers! Well, that's what the archeologists say, but who really knows? (Hawkes, Nigel; "Woodhenge Find Rivals Stone Circles," London Times, November ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 107: Sep-Oct 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Precocious Structure In The Cosmos Allied to the problem of old galaxies in young regions of the cosmos is the appearance of substantial amounts of structure early in the history of the universe. The new Keck 10-meter telescope in Hawaii has revealed giant "walls" of youthful galaxies rather than the more uniform distribution expected right after the Big Bang. There is just too much order much too early. (Glanz, James; "Precocious Structures Found," Science, 272:1590, 1996 From Science Frontiers #107, SEP-OCT 1996 . 1996-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 107: Sep-Oct 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects "NOT WITH A BANG BUT A WHIMPER"Poet T.S . Eliot speculated that life on earth might not after all be terminated catastrophically, as in the impact of a large asteroid (today's popular doomsday machine). Rather, we might depart slowly, quietly, and mournfully. Of course, Eliot was not thinking of asteroids -- no one foresaw impact havoc in his day. But, his use of the word "whimper" can be attached to another, much slower astronomical agent of planetary death: cosmic dust and gas. Here's the current situation: "For the most part of the past five million years, the Solar System has been moving through a rather empty region of interstellar space between the spiral arms of the Milky Way. But a few thousand years ago, it entered a diffuse shell of material expanding outward from an active star-forming region called the Scorpius-Centaurus Association. Such 'super-bubble' shells of gas and dust result from the formation of massive stars, or the explosion of those stars as they become supernovas, and contain gas and dust clouds of varying densities." The density of matter in this solarsystem-engulfing shell could well shroud our planetary system with dust and gas a million times more dense than that we now encounter. If this happens, the sun's rays would slowly dim and life forms dependent on photosynthesis would expire. ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 107: Sep-Oct 1996 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Who built the kaimanawa wall? The irish in iceland Astronomy An old galaxy in a young part of the universe Precocious structure in the cosmos "NOT WITH A BANG BUT A WHIMPER" Biology Organ music High social order in a new order Subversive cancer cells Rock-based life Geology Antarctica's lake vostok revisited Geophysics More sparks on the beach Horizon-to-horizon bioluminescent bubbling band Tear of the gods? Psychology Did mozart use the golden section? The perils of dhmo Ten myths of science ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 116: Mar-Apr 1998 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Mystery of the stoned pharaoh Those ancient greek pramids An anasazi reservoir Astronomy Microscopic life on mars? Plant life on mars? "A FANTASTIC RESULT!" Ten strikes against the big bang Biology Eyeless vision The ultimate in unisex Eco-darwinism: diffuse individuals Monarch compasses Geology Miles of mush Global cooling has begun! Geophysics Target: greenland Ball lightning collides with car Earthquake weather High-fling catfish More on the mekong mystery Dr fogs and bright nights Physics G: THE EMBARRASSING CONSTANT OF NATURE Unclassified Evolution of cyberlife ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 107: Sep-Oct 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Organ Music Your doctor is understandably concerned if he finds your heartbeat is irregular. But it turns out that the healthy heart does not beat steadily and precisely like a metronome. In fact, the intervals between normal heartbeats vary in a curious fashion: in a simple, direct way, they can be converted to musical notes. When these notes (derived from heartbeat intervals) are heard, the sound is pleasant and intriguing to the ear -- almost music -- and certainly far from being random noise. In fact, a new CD entitled: Heartsongs: Musical Mappings of the Heartbeat , by Z. Davis, records the "music" derived from the digital tape recordings of the heartbeats of 15 people. Recording venue: Harvard Medical School's Beth Israel Hospital! This whole business raises some "interesting" speculations for R.M . May. "We could equally have ended up with boring sameness, or even dissonant jangle. The authors speculate that musical composition may involve, to some degree, 'the recreation by the mind of the body's own naturally complex rhythms and frequencies. Perhaps what the ear and the brain perceive as pleasing or interesting are variations in pitch that resonate with or replicate the body's own complex (fractal) variability and scaling.'" (May, Robert M.; "Now That's What You Call Chamber Music," Nature, 381:659 ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 107: Sep-Oct 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Subversive Cancer Cells It has been generally believed that most cancers originate in a single founder cell, which then multiplies to create the tumor. But cancer is more insidious than expected. A precancerous founder cell may actually subvert nearby noncancerous cells and turn them into cancerous cells. In this sense, the first precancerous cell recruits and transforms healthy cells, enlisting them in its destructive operations, and thereby turning them against the body that produced them. No one yet knows how this subversion is effected or how it evolved. (Why is there cancer anyway?) The basis for this claim involves a few rare human mosaics, whose bodies are built of cells with two different genetic complements. Cancers in human mosaics have been found to contain both types of cells and, therefore, did not grow from a single cell alone. (Day, Michael; "Cancer's Many Points of Departure," New Scientist, p. 16, June 1, 1996) Comments. Curiously, some "primitive" animals, such as sharks, seem to have evolved defenses against cancer that mammals lack. With reference to "mosaics," see item in SF#105 on "Mixed-Up People." Also relevant is BHH25 "' Insidious' Properties of Cancer Metastases" in Humans II . For information on this book, visit here . From Science Frontiers #107, SEP-OCT 1996 . 1996-2000 William R. ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 107: Sep-Oct 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects An Old Galaxy In A Young Part Of The Universe As the Hubble Space Telscope has probed ever farther toward the supposed edge of the universe, it has discerned. as expected, many youthful-looking galaxies. Since such deep-viewing telescopes are thought to be looking far back into time as well as space, youthful galaxies are not only expected but demanded by the Big-Bang/expanding universe theory. Unfortunately for theory, these telescopes have also identified a handful of apparently very old galaxies cavorting amidst the youthful ones! "The problem, if conventional cosmological models are correct, is that galaxies that old and that far away simply should not be there. The observation tightens the thumbscrews on the Einstein-de Sitter cosmological model, and offers evidence that at least some galaxies formed at very early epochs, within a billion years after the Big Bang." (Kennicutt, Robert C., Jr.; "An Old Galaxy in a Young Universe," Nature, 381:555, 1996) Comment. A similar age discrepancy has been claimed for some galaxies that seem to harbor stars older than the universe itself! (SF#97) Reference. The subject of galaxy distribution is covered in Chapter AWO in the Catalog: Stars, Galaxies, Cosmos. For a description of the book, visit here . From Science Frontiers #107, SEP-OCT 1996 . 1996-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 107: Sep-Oct 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Irish In Iceland That the Norse colonized Iceland, Greenland, and even a bit of North America is not contested today. What is a hot issue on Iceland is whether today's inhabitants are predominantly Irish or Norse. The pro-Irish faction maintains that most Iceland settlers were Irish wives and slaves installed there by the Norse. The scientific basis for this claim is the distribution of blood types; specifically, types A and AB. In Iceland these two types are present in 19% of the populace. In Norway the figure is 30%, while Ireland weighs in with 18% -- matching modern Icelanders very closely. Modern Norse match other northern Europeans in this respect, not the Icelanders. Somewhat smugly, the pro-Irish faction notes that in Viking days the Irish had the highest literacy rate in northern Europe. And of all the Norse colonies, only the Icelanders recorded their history (the "sagas"). Ergo, the Irish exerted a strong influence in Iceland more than a millennium ago. Possibly, say the anthropologists, but small pox may have skewed the Iceland population figures. People with blood types A and AB are much more susceptible to small pox. The six devastating Icelandic small pox epidemics between 577 and 1061 would have hit Norse settlers harder than the Irish the Norse had brought along with them, thereby boosting the fraction of Irish in the modern Iceland populace. Whatever the scientific explanations ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 107: Sep-Oct 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects More Sparks On The Beach Sharp eyes often pick out unusual phenomena in very usual places. From California, A. Hastings writes: "I also had an experience with 'Sparks on the Beach' as in SF#104/4 . This was on the Pacific Ocean Beach at San Gregorio, south of San Francisco, several years ago. I was walking on fairly wet sand, just above the tide line. As I stepped, the sand around my feet lit up with small bright dots of phosphorescence. I would not have said that the color was blue, but it could have been like blue-white, like the star Rigel. I found that if I stepped hard or stamped my foot, the lights flashed brighter and the lit area went out farther from my foot. I could see the movement expanding out. After a stamp or two, they did not light up as much. I assumed that this was caused by some organism that lit up when it felt pressure, and 'wore out' after it had done this a few times -- a refractory period probably occurred." (Hastings, Arthur; personal communication, March 21, 1996) Comment. This is probably a pressureinduced biological phenomenon, but we have no idea what kind of organism produces the lights. Footsteps do produce a rapidly expanding pressure wave on damp sand, which whitens the sand as it moves outward. But we ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 107: Sep-Oct 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Antarctica's Lake Vostok Revisited Based upon a Japanese account, we reported the discovery of Lake Vostok in SF#102 almost a year ago. Some details are finally appearing in Western science publications. We can now offer a good cross section of the lake, plus some thoughts about potential ecosystems existing deep under the lake's ice. Although Lake Vostok lies under some 4 kilometers of ice, it remains liquid as geothermal heat seeps up through its floor. Surprisingly, the thick ice cover does not preclude all contact with the surface above. The covering ice sheet moves slowly across the lake and, as it does so, its bottom melts a bit, releasing frozen-in oxygen as well as life forms -- still-living microorganisms and dead creatures that fell onto the Antarctic ice thousands of years ago. Thus, there is a perpetual source of food and new life. Cores drilled from the ice sheet capping Lake Vostok have brought up a great diversity of live microbes that have survived despite the low temperatures and passage of time. A living unicellular alga was found 2,375 meters down in ice about 110,000 years old. Spore-forming bacteria brought up from 2,395 meters are about 200,000 years old and still alive! Although science has proclaimed that Lake Vostok biology must consist entirely of microorganisms, no one really knows what is down there. Another fascinating fact is that some 70 ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 107: Sep-Oct 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Horizon-to-Horizon Bioluminescent Bubbling Band June 5, 1995. East China Sea. Aboard the m.v . Tokyo Bay enroute Busan to Kaohsiung. "At 1830 UTC whilst the ship was on a course of 218 at 21.5 knots, what seemed to be hundreds of fishing lights were seen right ahead of the ship and stretching from horizon to horizon. As the ship approached them, it became apparent that the lights were bioluminescence. "The appearance was like large single 'blobs' approximately the size of tennis balls, while at the main concentration the water seemed to be 'bubbling up' in a line stretching to both horizons. When the ship passed through the line, the luminescence gave off such a glare, as bright as daylight, that it was possible to read the identification numbers of the containers on the focsle. The duration of the phenomenon was about 5 minutes or 1.5 n.mile." (Hughan, D.S .; "Bioluminescence," Marine Observer, 66:62, 1996) Comment. P.J . Herring, Southampton Oceanography Centre, called this display "a most unusual account which I am unable to interpret." He opined that the blobs were probably cylindrical colonies of luminous sea squirts, but he could not account for the 1.5 -milewide, horizon-to-horizon bright glare and associated bubbling. Reference. For more ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 107: Sep-Oct 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Tear Of The Gods?" This huge teardrop of ice, weighing four pounds, fell out of the sky and landed on a grass verge near stunned commuters at a bus stop in Ecclesfield, near Sheffield. Firemen took it back to Tankersley fire station and preserved it in a freezer. Later, someone took it out and dropped it." (Anonymous; "Tears of the Gods," Fortean Times, p. 9, no, 88, August 1996. Source cited: Sheffield Star, March 18, 1996.) Comment. Based on its weight, this "drop" of ice is about 5 inches across. One wonders where in the sky such a large drop of water could form and then freeze solid. The hackneyed explanation that ice falls come from leaky aircraft lavatories seems unlikely here! Reference. Ice falls or "hydrometeors" are described in GWF1 in the catalog: Tornados, Dark Days. This book is listed here . From Science Frontiers #107, SEP-OCT 1996 . 1996-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 107: Sep-Oct 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Perils Of Dhmo Warnings are appearing in many places about the dangers of the "killer" chemical dihydrogen monoxide (DHMO). The situation is serious enough to warn the readers of Science Frontiers. We quote from New Scientist, which got it from a notice on the Internet. "Dihydrogen monoxide is colourless, odourless, tasteless, and kills uncounted thousands of people each year," the notice warns. "Most of these deaths are caused by accidental inhalation of DHMO, but the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide do not end there. Prolonged exposure to its solid form causes severe tissue damage. Symptoms of DHMO ingestion can include excessive sweating and urination, and possibly a bloated feeling, nausea, vomiting and body electrolyte imbalance..." Contamination by DHMO is worldwide. It has been found in every stream and lake, even in the Antarctic. It is a major component of acid rain and contributes to the greenhouse effect. Yet, world governments refuse to take steps to ban its use in solvents, coolants, fire retardants, etc. (Anonymous; "Feedback," New Scientist, p. 96, May 18, 1996) From Science Frontiers #107, SEP-OCT 1996 . 1996-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 107: Sep-Oct 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Did Mozart Use The Golden Section?Does the brilliance of Mozart's compositions derive entirely from his musical genius, or did he rely in part upon a mathematical construct: the famous Golden Section or Golden Ratio? The Golden Section is a mathematical formula for dividing into two parts: a geometrical line, a musical composition, or anything else possessing the property of length. The ratio of the two divided parts is the Golden Section, which equals 0.618.* For some artists, musicians, architects, the Golden Section is the most esthetic way of dividing the length of anything. For humans, the history of the Golden Section goes back at least as far as Euclid in 300 BC. For nature, it began eons ago: The shapes of pine cones, starfish geometry, and other dimensions of living things incorporate the Golden Section. The questions we address here are: (1 ) Did Mozart consciously make use of this ratio, 0.618, in his music? (2 ) Why is the Golden Section esthetically pleasing? It is not well known that Mozart was fascinated by mathematics as well as music. He even jotted down equations in the margins of some of his compositions. Chances are excellent that he knew of the Golden Section and its reputation for conferring elegance on structures -- even musical compositions. J.F . Putz, a mathematician, has measured some of Mozart's works ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 108: Nov-Dec 1996 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology More evidence of precolumbian contacts from asia Deflating a paradigm: brazil's pedra furada Astronomy Life forms in meteorites? Sunspots and planetary alignments Biology Those selfish genes may also be intelligent! Lake victoria's cichlid fishes: can random mutations explain them? Hair rarity The glow below Geology Earthquakes and mima mounds The motor of the world* Geophysics Heard above cayuga's waters A BLUE FLASH Unclassified An innovative computer Are we reall robots? Nominative determinism ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 107: Sep-Oct 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Ten Myths Of Science We have at hand a lengthy paper bearing the above title. It is copyrighted with ominous warnings about quotations. So, we will paraphrase a lot. The significance of the article is so great that we dare to quote the first sentence: "This article addresses and attempts to refute several of the most widespread and enduring misconceptions held by students regarding the enterprise of science." We now paraphrase the ten myths of science, as recognized by W. McComas of the School of Education, University of Southern California. McComas analyzes each "myth" in depth, explaining why it is not a "truth." Myth 1. Hypotheses turn into theories which eventually become enshrined as laws. Myth 2. Hypotheses are really only educated guesses. Myth 3. There exists a scientific method that is general and universal. Myth 4. Certainty results when facts are accumulated and analyzed. Myth 5. The scientific method leads to absolute truth. Myth 6. Science is less creative than it is procedural. Myth 7. All questions posed by the universe can be answered via the scientific method. Myth 8. High objectivity is the hallmark of science. Myth 9. Scientific knowledge is based mainly on experiment. Myth 10. Scientists always review and check the work of their colleagues. (McComas, William; "Ten Myths of Science: Reexamining What We Think We Know...," School Science ...
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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 Deflating a paradigm: brazil's pedra furada The paradigm. The New World was peopled from Asia by migration across the Bering Land Bridge about 12,000 years ago, or perhaps a wee earlier. The Pedra Furada site has been dated at 50,000 BP by N. Guidon and her team of archeologists. This challenge to the dominant paradigm is powerful and unambiguous. Picking up the gauntlet, several more-conservative archeologists visited the Brazilian site and penned a blistering critique in Antiquity. (Ref. 1) Their major contention was that the 500+ supposedly human-made stone "artifacts" collected by Guidon's team are actually "geofacts"; that is, they were chipped and flaked naturally as rocks fell one upon the other from nearby cliffs. We discussed this problem in some detail in SF#105. Several other reservations about the Pedra Furada work are also offered in Ref. 1. The reaction of Guidon et al to the Antiquity paper was thunderous to say the least. It revealed the depth of the chasm separating archeologists on the date of human occupation of the New World as well as internecine politics in archeology. (Ref. 2) Guidon et al flung two serious charges at the authors of the first Antiquity paper: (1 ) They had their facts all wrong; and (2 ) Their objectivity was distorted by their loyalty to the aforestated paradigm. Not withholding any punches, ...
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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 Sunspots And Planetary Alignments Many scientists and laymen have noticed that the sunspot cycle and Jupiter's period are both about 11 years. This must be a coincidence, because the tidal forces exerted on the sun by distant Jupiter seem far too weak to disturb the sun's internal operations. (See details in ASO9 in The Sun and Solar System Debris.) Could it be that we are missing something, for there is some evidence that some planetary alignments also exert influence on the number of spots seen on the sun's face? In particular, the Uranus-Neptuneearth conjunction has been investigated by B. Payne, who wrote the following in Cycles: "Sunspots increase when two or more planets line up, an effect I have observed for more than a decade. During the last six years, Uranus and Neptune have been within a few degrees of each other. Their conjunction, which occurs every 137 years, is an ideal situation to validate the hypothesis that sunspot numbers are associated with planetary positions." Payne's lengthy analysis is omitted, but the essence of his study can be seen in the accompanying graph. He concludes: "The results clearly show that sunspot numbers increase markedly during Uranus-Neptune-Earth-sun alignments." (Payne, Buryl; "Sunspot Number Changes during Planetary Alignments," Cycles, 45:146, 1995) Comment. It will take a lot more than ...
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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 Those selfish genes may also be intelligent!R. Dawkins has proposed that we humans and other organisms are merely lumbering life-support systems for our genes. In this view, genomes are the masters, controlling our evolution and behavior to ensure their own survival and multiplication. In short, our genes are "selfish." J. Shapiro, at the University of Chicago, has gone a step further and ascribed still another human attribute to genomes. "Genomes function as true intelligent systems, which can be readjusted when conditions require. We still lack testable theories to explain how this can be done. ( Genetica , 84:4 , 1991)" Perhaps we see evidence of this "intelligence" of genes when bacteria and other microorganisms rapidly accommodate to environmental challenges, as in the application of new antibiotics. In this context, read below about the fast-evolving cichlid fishes of Lake Victoria. These fish must have macho genes! From Science Frontiers #108, NOV-DEC 1996 . 1996-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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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 Lake victoria's cichlid fishes: can random mutations explain them?Lake Victoria is Africa's largest lake (420 kilometers long, but only 69 meters at its deepest). It is also the home of more than 300 species of cichlid fishes. Ordinarily, that number of different species would pose no problem for the biologists -- look at the 400 or so species of hummingbirds in Central and South America! Lake Victoria, however, is a very young lake, and all of these cichlid fishes are endemic. Therefore, they must have evolved rather rapidly. Recent seismic surveys of Lake Victoria and piston cores from its deepest parts by T.C . Johnson et al have surprised everyone: Lake Victoria was completely dry 12,400 years ago. Nor were there deeper "satellite" lakes that could have served as refuges for Lake Victoria's biota during extreme droughts. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the present-day 300+ species of cichlid fishes all evolved in less than 12,400 years. This being so, can random mutations -- the accepted source of evolutionary novelty -- have generated so many new species in such a short time? That would be one new species every 40 years or so on the average. (Johnson, Thomas C., et al; "Late Pleistocene Desiccation of Lake Victoria and Rapid Evolution of Cichlid Fishes," Science, 273:1091 ...
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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 Hairy Rarity Ordinarily, we avoid two-headed snakes, six-legged calves, and the like. Sometimes biological machinery sputters a bit and freaks (terata) result, just as Detroit assembly lines turn out lemons once in a while. Occasionally, though, we come across a defect so rare and curious that we must pass it along. So, here is the Summary of a serious scientific paper, along with a sketch, that satisfies our Fortean urge. "A Burmese family with congenital hypertrichosis lanuginosa [excessive hairiness] had an eventful history in the nineteenth century. The earlier members of this family were employed at the court of Ava, but the later ones spent their lives in show business, being widely exhibited for money in the 1800s. Their extraordinary hairiness attracted much curiosity, and they were photographed several times. The hairy Burmese are the only example of a fourgeneration pedigree of congenital hypertrichosis lanuginosa, which is consistent with an autosomal dominant mode of inheritance. There is good evidence that, when members of this family were hairy, their dentition was also deficient." (Bondeson, J., and Miles, A.E .W .; "The Hairy Family of Burma: A Four Generation Pedigree of Congenital Hypertrichosis Lanuginosa," Royal Society of Medicine, Journal, 89:403, 1996. Cr. A.C .A . Silk) Reference. Excessively hairy people are cataloged at BHA26 ...
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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 The motor of the world*The innards of our planet, as presently visualized, consist of an inner core of solid iron about 2,400 kilometers in diameter. Surrounding this is a fluid outer core, which in turn is wrapped onionlike by the mantle and outer crust. Earthquakes are always sending seismic waves through these regions and jostling seismometers installed all over the globe. From this wealth of seismic signals, geophysicists have found that the inner core, lubricated by the fluid outer core, rotates about 1.1 per year faster than the mantle and crust. The inner core interacts with the geomagnetic field and is, in effect, like the rotor of a slow, ponderous induction motor. Expanding upon this vision of the earth as a colossal electrical machine, E. Stokstad writes: "Electric currents of about a billion amps flow across the boundary between the solid inner core and the fluid outer core that lies around it. In the presence of the Earth's magnetic field, these currents generate massive forces that tug on the inner core. And because the outer core has a relatively low viscosity, the inner core can spin freely." (Stokstad, Erik; "Earth's Heart Is in a Spin," New Scientist, p. 18, July 20, 1996. The basic paper is: Song, Xiadong, and Richards, Paul G.; "Seismological Evidence for Differential Rotation of the ...
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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 A Blue Flash Green flashes occasionally appear when the sun (or moon or Venus or Jupiter) sink below the horizon. Blue flashes are much rarer but still well-recognized phenomena. An example of the latter was observed in 1995 on the Indian Ocean. August 11, 1995, Bay of Bengal. Aboard the m.v . Repulse Bay enroute Jeddah to Port Klang. "Prior to sunset the vessel was proceeding due east across the Bay of Bengal and it was quite apparent that the sun was still very bright and had not taken on its usual darkorange or red appearance; even with half its diameter above the horizon, the sun was much too bright to view directly. As the last segment of the sun dipped below the horizon, a blue 'horn' formed at each end of it, as shown in sketch (a ), and these then closed up to form a bright-blue arc, as shown in sketch (b ). " (Leslie, A.J .; "Blue Flash," Marine Observer, 66:115, 1996) Comment. The blue flash is a shorter-wavelength version of the green flash. The basic phenomenon is explained in terms of dispersion of the sun's spectrum by the atmosphere near the horizon. Even so, many enigmas remain about these low-sun phenomena. There have been observed: multiple flashes, flashes preceding sunset, complex flash ...
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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 More Evidence Of Precolumbian Contacts From Asia The following news item appeared in the NEARA Transit: "Dr. George Carter excitedly reported news of a possible breakthrough in Asian/pre-Columbian contact. Dr. H.M . Xu is a Chinese scholar teaching linguistics at the Central Oklahoma State University at Enid, OK. There is a small publication reporting Dr. Xu's ability to read some Chinese characters plainly visible on several ceremonial jade adzes from La Venta, Mexico. The dates would be about 1100 B.C ., relating well to the beginning of the Olmecs." (Anonymous; NEARA Transit, 8:7 , no. 2, September 1996) NEARA = New England Antiquities Research Association. Comment. This is a first-class anomaly because mainstream archeologists wince visibly at the mention of ancient Chinese visits to the New World. Hopefully, details will be forthcoming. Reference. Our Handbook Ancient Man contains much more information on precolumbian contacts. To order this book, see here . From Science Frontiers #108, NOV-DEC 1996 . 1996-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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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 An Innovative Computer In SF#106, we chronicled the chess match between IBM's Big Blue computer and human champion G.K . Kasparov. Incidental to the match itself was the fact that Big Blue sometimes made different moves when confronted with identical chessboards! With these denials of cyberdeterminism in mind, consider the following anecdote. About 40 years ago, D. Herschbach witnessed the first test of an early chess-playing program written by the renowned S. Ulam for the MANIAC I computer. "In this test, the MANIAC I computer played both sides of the board. After a rather bizarre game, Black made a move that checkmated White. Only then did Ulam realize that the program did not say what to do when mated; it just required that a move be made to escape check. While Ulam and his colleagues debated what might happen, the computer whirred on for about ten minutes. Finally it punched out White's move (on paper tape, then the mode). The uncanny solution: a spurious pawn appeared and began to march down the board to become a new queen." (Herschbach, Dudley; "Computer Milestones," Discover, 17:12, October 1996) Comment. If vacuum-tube-equipped MANIAC I was so resourceful and innovative, what might a modern supercomputer "think" up? Remember HAL of 2001: A Space Odyssey and treat your own computer ...
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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 Nominative Determinism We can no longer resist passing along this very important anomaly, which in essence is the human compulsion to take up a profession described by his or her surname. No less an authority than C. Jung wondered about this common phenomenon in his classic Synchronicity; An Acausal Connecting Principle . He noted, for example, that Herr Feist (Mr. Stout) was the food minister and Herr Rosstauscher (Mr. Horsetrader) was a lawyer. He mused: "Are these whimsicalities of chance, or the suggestive effects of the name, as Stekel seems to suggest, or are they 'meaningful coincidences'?" Jung never answered his own question. The British New Scientist, in its "Feedback" column, has since tackled this enigmatic phenomenon many times. Nominative determinism was introduced first in 1994, when it was remarked that a paper on incontinence in the British Journal of Urology was authored by J.W . Splatt and D. Weedon! New Scientist readers added many more examples, proving just how powerful this psychological force really is. "The head of planning for British Airways is Rod Muddle...Frances Crook is the director of the Howard League for Penal Reform...S .M . Breedlove writes on sexual dimorphism for the Journal of Neuroscience...The US Heritage Foundation's senior researcher on children in foster care is Patrick Fagan...etc. ad infinitum. ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 109: Jan-Feb 1997 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Riddles of the sphinx And they went forth and multiplied Kennewick man: a 9300-ear-old caucasian skeleton in north america? Astronomy Lunar landslide lights Greenwich late time Too much order in the early cosmos Biology Biology lite Biology heavy Geology Wind-driven ice sheets in death valley The nodoroc Geophysics Rogue wave smashes the queen elizabeth ii Unclassified The return of the monolith Indeterminacy in computers ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 109: Jan-Feb 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects And They Went Forth And Multiplied Archeologists excavating the ancient city of Hazor, in Israel, have uncovered a handy-size chip made from red clay and engraved with symbols. This 3,000-yearold artifact has turned out to be a multiplication table! (Anonymous; "And in Israel," USA Today , July 30, 1996. Cr. COUD-I ) COUD-I = Collectors of Unusual Data-International. From Science Frontiers #109, JAN-FEB 1997 . 1997-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 109: Jan-Feb 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Return Of The Monolith Some readers have asked that UFOs receive more attention in SF. We now address these complaints with a case of adequate strangeness. T.M . Olsen has investigated a bizarre observation from Kentucky. The date was September 28, 1996. "Vance C. Johns, a secondary-school horticulturist, lives a rural area east of Louisville. Sometime between midnight and 1:30 AM, he got up to use the bathroom and saw a strange object outside his bedroom window. His wife, Florence, keeps the drapes open on the center of three picture windows, and he immediately opened the other drapes for a better look. The open view through the windows, which face south, is of a grass lawn sloping to a curved driveway. This 0.8 -hectare cleared area is devoid of trees and other objects. Two large, automatic floodlights illuminate the ground around the entire house, and under a full moon, it was bright enough to read a book. The night was clear and about 10 C with no noticeable wind. No aircraft were in the area. "At a distance of 14 m (measured after the incident) from his vantage at the bedroom window, there appeared on the lawn an object resembling a common railroad cross tie but oriented in a vertical position, with one end on the ground. It was matte black, 2 1/2 - 2 3 ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 109: Jan-Feb 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Lunar Landslide Lights Moonwatchers have reported light flashes, strange red glows, and mist-like patches emanating from certain lunar locales, particularly the huge craters Alphonso and Picard. Hundreds of such observations have accumulated since the Middle Ages. Modern more-systematic scrutiny indeed confirms that the moon is not such a dead place after all. (See ALF in The Moon and the Planets for much more on this fascinating subject.) Moonquakes, gaseous emissions, and even volcanic activity have been the favorite explanations of these TLPs (Transient Lunar Phenomena), but these are only surmises. The many close-up photos of the lunar surface taken in 1994 by the lunar satellite Clementine gave B. Buratti, K. Herkenhoff, and T. McConnochie the opportunity to search for geological common denominators connecting the sites where TLPs have been most frequent. The suspicious sites are characterized by bluish spectra that usually indicate unusually fresh deposits of lunar debris. Furthermore, these areas are usually found along the inside edges of large craters. Buratti et al opine that these are the sites of recent landslides that have cascaded off the crater edges. The dust and volatile gases released by these events might account for the observed luminous phenomena. (Cowen, Ron; "Explaining a Lunar Mystery," Science News, 150:314, 1996.) Reference. To order the book The Moon and the Planets (mentioned above), visit here . The lunar ...
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