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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 43: Jan-Feb 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Mysterious Tumuli Of New Caledonia The Isle of Pines, New Caledonia is spangled with about 400 large tumuli or mounds, ranging from 30 to 165 feet in diameter. Their heights are 2 to about 15 feet. All of the material making up the mounds seems to come from the immediate surroundings: coral debris, earth, and grains of iron oxide. The larger tumuli enclose a block of tuff, about 5 feet high and 6 feet in diameter, comprised of tumuli material held together by a calcareous cement or mortar. Some who have investigated these mounds believe that the presence of cement, presumably man-made, is proof-positive that the tumuli are the product of human activity. Other archeologists doubt this because the early settlers of New Caledonia did not use cement. Besides, there seem to be no other signs of human involvement. This has led to the hypothesis that the mounds were built by huge, now-extinct, flightless birds for the purpose of incubating their eggs. Some birds do indeed incubate their eggs in mounds today; and some 5,000 years ago New Caledonia did boast a giant bird (Sylviornia neocale doniae), which was 5-6 feet tall. The authors of the present paper feel that the giant bird hypothesis is just as reasonable as the theory that these mounds were built by ancient humans who knew how to make cement. (Mourer-Chauvire, Cecile, and Poplin ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 43: Jan-Feb 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects How old is the los lunas inscription?Volume 13 of the Epigraphic Society's Occasional Publications (one of two volumes for 1985) contains several articles of great interest to anomalists with an archeological bent. We have space for only two in this issue of SF. In the first of these, Barry Fell deals with the criticism that the now-famous Los Lunas (New Mexico) inscription cannot be the work of ancient Hebrew-writing visitors to the New World because it employs modern punctuation marks. Fell counters this by reproducing several ancient texts that use similar punctuation conventions, thus blunting this attack on the antiquity of the Los Lunas inscription. For readers unacquainted with the Los Lunas inscription, it consists of the Decalogue (the Ten Commandments) engraved in ancient Hebrew on a large basalt rock near Los Lunas, NM. In the second paper, geologist G.E . Morehouse comes to grip with a second criticism leveled at the inscription; namely, that the engraving looks fresh and lacks the patination characteristic of great age. Morehouse concludes that the freshness actually derives from the frequent, recent scrubbing of the inscription (with wire brushes on some occasions) to improve its visibility. Taking this into account, Morehouse estimates the age of the Los Lunas inscription by comparing its weathering with a nearby 1930 inscription. Conclusion: the Los Lunas inscription is much older than 1930. Any length of time from 500-2000 years or ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 126: Nov-Dec 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A Parade Of Early Visitors To America Early Europeans. D. Kelley, a Calgary archeologist, claims that rock carvings in Petroglyph Provincial Park were etched by European explorers circa 800 BC rather than by Native Americans. One petroglyph, for example, depicts a Viking-like ship almost identical to those carved on a rock near Boslund, Sweden. There are also abstract symbols like those used by Northern Europeans in the same time frame. (Anonymous; "Did Vikings Pay Early Visit?" Baltimore Sun, August 13, 1999.) Comment. Kelley's observations certainly bolster B. Fell's claims in his book America B.C . that Europeans made landfall in North America long before Columbus set sail. Early Chinese. Perhaps Chinese adventurers beat the Europeans to the New World. At a symposium in Anyang, China, M. Xu Hui (Texas Christian University) presented 56 matching sets of characters found in both the Americas and China. "They so closely resemble the 3,000-year-old Shang Dynasty characters for the sun, sky, rain, water, crops, trees, and astronomy that if they had not been found in America, Chinese experts would have classified them automatically as pre-221 B.C . Chinese script." (Rennie, David; "Carvings Link Chinese with American Indians," Chicago SunTimes , August 31, 1999. Cr. J. Cieciel. ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 43: Jan-Feb 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A JAPANESE PRESENCE IN ANCIENT MEXICO?A. von Wuthenau, a specialist in Precolumbian art, at the University of the Americas in Mexico City, has long been a champion of ancient contacts between the New World and Africa, the Orient, and the Mediterranean region. For example, his book Unexpected Faces in Ancient America contains hundreds of photographs of Precolumbian figurines and other artwork showing facial features typical of the Old World and Asia. His latest find consists of a terra cotta model of an ancient sailing ship manned by figurines of ten oarsmen, all with striking Japanese features. The model boat is one foot long; the oarsmen, two inches high. It was discovered at a burial site in the Guerrero region of Mexico. Von Wuthenau has tentatively dated the boat as 2,500 years old (Anonymous; "Sailors in a Model of an Ancient Ship Found in Mexico Have Asian Features," Boston Sunday Globe, November 10, 1985. Cr. J. Whittall.) A sketch of one of the giant Olmec stone heads from von Wuthenau's book. He believes this particular head, La Venta III, displays Asiatic features. Others seem African. From Science Frontiers #43, JAN-FEB 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 127: Jan-Feb 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Black Auroras July 23/24, 1998. Gulf of St, Lawrence. Aboard the m.v . Appleby , Port Cartier to Immingham. "The aurora borealis was sighted at 0330 UTC. There was a band measuring 35 long in azimuth, with deepblue almost black vertical bands lying between the altitudes of 15 and 25 . The colour changed to brilliant blue at 0335, lasting for about 15 minutes before cloud began to obscure it." What were the "almost black" vertical bands embedded in the main band? Aurora expert R. Livesey replied as follows. "There is a phenomenon called the 'black aurora' which consists of small regions of very low luminosity embedded in brighter auroral light; the 'black' rays reported from the Appleby could have been a phenomenon of this type." (Wilson, J.L .; "Aurora Borealis," Marine Observer, 69:112, 1999.) Black auroras may actually be more than just the contrast effect suggested by Livesey. Low-light TV systems detect clockwise vorticity in the black bands, and the bands seem to be associated with upward electron beams. In other words, black auroras are apparently a distinct phenomeon in their own right and not just nonluminous parts of the visible aurora. (Stenbaek-Nielsen, H.C ., et al; "Why Do Auroras Look the Way They Do?" Eos, 80:193 ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 43: Jan-Feb 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Planets As Fragments Of An Ancient Companion Of The Sun J. Webb has called attention to a fascinating feature of the solar system. "If one calculates the total energy and the total angular momentum of the planets, the numbers turn out to be very nearly the same as those of a single planet having a mass essentially the same as the total mass of all the planets, and orbiting the sun in an orbit which is near the present-day center of mass of all the planets. The possibility that the solar system was once a binary star (or is in the process of becoming one) needs to be examined more closely." (Webb, Jerry; "The Solar System and a Binary Star: Is There a Connection?" American Journal of Physics, 53:938, 1985.) Cross reference. See SF#42 for speculations about the solar system once being a quintuple star system. From Science Frontiers #43, JAN-FEB 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 43: Jan-Feb 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A RECENT TRANSFORMATION OF SIRIUS?Many Greek, Roman, and Babylonian sources definitely label Sirius as being a red star. Some dispute these old accounts because today Sirius is white with a bluish tinge, and is classified as a white dwarf. W. Schlosser and W. Bergmann have now found a "new," and apparently independent reference to Sirius' red color. It is in a manuscript of Lombardic origin, which contains the otherwise lost "De Cursu Stellarum" by Gregory of Tours (who lived about 538593 AD). This new source reiterates that Sirius was once a red star, leading Schlosser and Bergmann to speculate as follows: "Thus, Sirius B might well have changed from a red giant to the white dwarf as it appears today. However, the rapidity and smoothness of this transformation are quite unexpected, and its timescale is surprisingly short. Furthermore, no traces of catastrophic effects connected with such an event have ever been found. The only indication that something has happened is the somewhat higher metallicity of Sirius A, believed to have resulted from contamination by the giant's blown-off shell." (Schlosser, Wolfhard, and Bergmann, Werner; "An Early-Medieval Account on the Red Color of Sirius and Its Astrophysical Implications," Nature, 318:45, 1985.) References. See BHT5 in our catalog: Biological Anomalies: Humans I for the surmise that the ancients ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 43: Jan-Feb 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Return Of The Tasmanian Tiger "In March 1982, a park ranger in northwestern Tasmania awoke in the dead of night. From force of habit, he scanned the woods, his spotlight punching through black walls of rain. And there in the beam was one of the strangest creatures he had ever seen. About the size and shape of a dog, it was covered with stripes that ran from its shoulders across its back to its thick, rigid, tail. "The animal stood still as the startled ranger counted the stripes, then it nonchalantly gave an enormous jaw-stretching yawn. But when the ranger reached for his camera, the creature faded into the undergrowth, leaving nothing but a rank smell. It also left a trail of excitement, for the bizarre beast looked exactly like a Tasmanian tiger -- also called a thylacine or Tasmanian wolf -- an animal thought to have been extinct nearly 50 years ago." Hundreds of people claim they have spotted the Tasmanian tiger since the last captive died in 1936, but we have no good photos or other "proofs." Mediaman Ted Turner has offered a prize of $100,000 for "verifiable evidence" that the Tasmanian tiger still lives. Consequently, the Tasmanian wilds are being combed diligently and automatic cameras, triggered by infrared beams, are being set up in likely spots. (Bunk, Steve; "Just How Extinct Is Tasmania's ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 127: Jan-Feb 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Paradigm quake: the solutreans were here first!It's not just a paradigm shift, it's a paradigm "quake." The Bering Land Bridge theory is being superceded by the Solutrean Hypothesis. Of course, it will be a contentious, long-drawn-out transition; but it is as dramatic in archeology as the discovery of X-rays was in physics a century ago. The artifactual basis for the Solutrean Hypothesis consists of projectile points and blades found along the east coast of North America that are virtually indistinguishable from those manufactured by the Solutrean culture that flourished in Spain, Portugal, and southwestern France 20,000 years ago. Promoters of the Solutrean Hypothesis assert that adventurous inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula made Atlantic crossings in skin boats. With the help of the favorable currents and benign weather, they could have made the crossing in about three weeks. Diehard champions of the Bering Land Bridge ridicule such early trans-Atlantic crossings. Yet, South Pacific islanders had been making long ocean voyages for some 20,000 years before the Solutreans set sail. No one denies that some immigrants to the Americas used the Bering Land Bridge; it is just that they were latecomers. Archeological sites in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and South Carolina (SF#125) dating back 15,000-18,000 years demonstrate that the ocean-going Solutreans had footholds in the Americas 3,0006,000 years ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 43: Jan-Feb 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Life Seeks Out Energy Sources Wherever They May Be Life is opportunistic; it siphons off energy wherever it can find it. That life utilizes solar energy we all know. And, of course, humans have tapped the atom for energy. In just the past few years, remarkable colonies of life forms have been discovered congregated around deep-sea hydrothermal vents where sunlight is essentially nonexistent. Still more recently, similar life forms have been found clustered around oil seeps in the Gulf of Mexico. As at the hydro-thermal vents, the clams, worms, crabs, and other organisms depend mainly upon the ability of bacteria to chemosynthesize -- the primary energy source being hydrogen sulfide in the vented water. (Paull, C.K ., et al; "Stable Isotope Evidence for Chemosynthesis in an Abyssal Seep Community," Nature, 317:709, 1985; Also: Weisburd, S.; "Clams and Worms Fueled by Gas?" Science News, 128:231, 1985.) Comment. Since the earth's crust seems honeycombed with fissures and rivers of life-sustaining fluids, subterranean life may be as common as the abyssal chemosynthetic life at the vents and seeps. This versatility of life signals us that we should look for life wherever there is energy of any kind. From Science Frontiers #43, JAN-FEB 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 127: Jan-Feb 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Nuclear bombs will not save the earth!Not too long ago, geologists adamantly denied that there were any large meteor craters pockmarking our planet. Now, they find 100-kilometer craters on a regular basis. And scientists are casting worried looks at those near-earth asteroids, knowing that one day one will be on a collision course. Not to worry, say the modern-day Technocrats, we will launch nucleararmed rockets that will nudge such cosmic threats into harmless trajectories. These Pollyannas are presumptious. They assume that asteroids are hard, cohesive objects that will be shoved aside by a few megatons of explosive energy. There are two things wrong with this idea, and these reveal how radically our ideas about the nature of asteroids have changed in just 10 years. First, most astronomers will now agree that asteroids are orbiting rubble piles rather than monolithic objects. For example, the near-earth asteroid Mathilde, 53 kilometers in diameter, has a density of only 1.3 grams/cubic centimeter. Its porosity must be greater than 50%. It is not a hard, coherent object. Instead of a bullet, it is more like a cloud of shotgun pellets. It would be hard to divert all this debris with a nuclear blast. To make matters worse, asteroids like Mathilde are stickier than a cloud of buckshot. This fact is deduced from photos of asteroids showing many to be marked by huge craters ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 43: Jan-Feb 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Piscatorial Data Processing Mammals such as bats and porpoises have their acoustical navigational gear, while many fish have opted for electrical methods of scanning their surroundings. The short-range "radars" of these fish are marvelously sophisticated, considering the low limb fish occupy on the Tree of Life. In fact, the following introductory paragraph from an article in Nature sounds almost as if it came from a textbook on electronic signal processing. "Behavioural experiments have demonstrated that certain species of fish can perform remarkable analyses of the temporal structure of electrical signals. These animals produce an electrical signal within a species-specific frequency range via an electric organ, and they detect these signals by electroreceptors located throughout the body surface. In the context of one electrosensory behaviour, the jamming avoidance response (JAR), the fish Eigenmannia determines whether a neighbour's electric organ discharge (EOD), which is jamming its own signal, is higher or lower in frequency than its own. The fish then decreases or increases its frequency, respectively. To determine the sign of the frequency difference, the fish must detect the modulations in the amplitude and in the differential timing, or temporal disparity, of signals received by different regions of its body surface. The fish is able to shift its discharge frequency in the appropriate direction in at least 90% of all trials for temporal disparities as small as 400 ns." (Rose, Gary, and Heiligenberg, ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 127: Jan-Feb 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects What's Cooking On Europa?Data streaming back to earth from the Galileo spacecraft encode a curious fact about Europa, one of Jupiter's large, Galilean satellites. The nighttime flow of heat from Europa's polar regions is 1 watt/meter2 higher than can be accounted for by all known mechanisms, such as the tidal heating created as Jupiter's powerful gravitational field flexes the satellite's integument. (Anonymous; "Cozy Nights," New Scientist, p. 27, June 5, 1999.) Comment. What is happening beneath Europa's icy surface? "Something wonderful"? Recall that in the film 2010, humans were "given" all worlds except Europa. Was A.C . Clarke prescient again? From Science Frontiers #127, JAN-FEB 2000 . 1997 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 43: Jan-Feb 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Exploring The Suberranean World Of Life Examining fluid inclusions in hydrothermal quartz crystals obtained from a drill hole in Yellowstone National Park, K.E . Bargar and his colleagues from the U.S . Geological Survey noted many rodlike and threadlike particles that closely resembled bacteria. Although these partiles move, as if alive, they are only in Brownian motion. But even in death, they tell us that life forms can prosper deep underground at very high pressures and temperatures. The crystals that ultimately grew around the fluid particles came from fractures in Pleistocene rhyolite hundreds of feet below the surface. The authors concluded: "Thermophilic microorganisms may hold the key to an understanding of several biological and geochemical processes, including the origin of life. The discovery of possible microorganisms in these fluid inclusions from the Yellowstone volcanic area enlarges the range of potential environments over which subsequent investigations should be conducted." (Barger, Keith E., et al; "Particles in Fluid Inclusions from Yellowstone National Park -- Bacteria?" Geology, 13:483, 1985.) Comment. It is appropriate to note that similar "organized elements" have been noticed in meteorites for over a century. From Science Frontiers #43, JAN-FEB 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 127: Jan-Feb 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Shadow Dance Of The Gnats An curious phenomenon was reported recently to the New Scientist. "I travelled to Hungary to observe the recent total solar eclipse. About five minutes before totality, my wife and I noticed many curved shadows about 3 centimetres long dancing on a white paper lying on the ground, formed by a swarm of gnats. The shadows were exactly the same shape as the remaining bright portion of the Sun, by then only a thin arc of light. Why?" This phenomenon is not anomalous but it is entertaining. It is the reverse of the pin-hole-camera effect often seen during total eclipses. People standing in the shadow of a tree will see many bright arcs on the ground -- images of the sun being eclipsed. The interstices between the tree's leaves act as pinholes. The phenomenon happens in reverse when pin-holes are replaced by "pins"; that is, small opaque obstructions, such as gnats. (Scott, Andrew, and Diebold, Mike; "Shadow Dance," New Scientist, p. 93, October 30, 1999.) From Science Frontiers #127, JAN-FEB 2000 . 1997 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 43: Jan-Feb 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Underground Weather Most residents of central Oregon can tell you tales about winds blowing out of the ground, about roaring and whistling sounds emanating from their wells, and of mysterious holes in the winter snow on Mount Bachelor. Central Oregon is geologically young and plastered with lava flows and cinder cones. It is like a sponge, with many cubic miles of holes, air channels, and open fissures. The air in this rocky sponge is usually on the move in response to changes in atmospheric pressure. The earth absorbs air during barometric highs and expels it during lows. In some spots the expelled air is captured to cool homes during the summer. In the High Cascades, though, the underground winds pose hazards to skiers by creating blowholes in the snow. These blowholes are actually mildly anomalous because they blow out a gentle 40 F breeze regardless of the barometric pressure. Some of Oregon's blowing caves also "breath" without re gard to barometric pressure. Also, the water wells north of Fort Rock Basin often blow for days during periods of high barometric pressure -- times when they should be taking air in. (Chitwood, Larry; "Central Oregon's Underground World Filled with Wind That Roars, Whistles," The Oregonian, Octo ber 3l, 1985. Cr. R. Byrd) Comment. See category GHG2, in Earthquakes, Tides, Unidentified Sounds, for material on blowing wells, etc. ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 127: Jan-Feb 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Ants Like Microwaves Back in 1990, an item in SF was titled "Ants Like Amps." (SF#60/160) The subject then was the strange mesmerizing effect electrical equipment has on ants. They dote on airport runway lights, household electrical meters, and in particular electrical relays, where they congregate en masse. Now, a decade later, we discover that they are also not adverse to exploring microwave ovens -- even when they are turned on! We cannot explain the attraction of electrical relays, but we do know how ants survive in humming microwave ovens. It is because the microwaves inside the oven form standing waves. Energy is high in some areas -- ants would fry there -- and weak elsewhere. Ants seem to be able to find these lowenergy refuges and survive very nicely -- perhaps on the food you were planning to consume! (Anonymous; "Them!" New Scientist, p. 109, July 31, 1999. Comment. You can map you microwave's standing waves by filling a flat tray with marshmallows. A pattern of toasted and untoasted marshmallows will appear post-zapping. From Science Frontiers #127, JAN-FEB 2000 . 1997 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 43: Jan-Feb 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects 1500-POUND ICE CHUNK FALLS FROM SKY June 26, 1985. Hartford, Connecticut. "Scientists yesterday tried to determine the origin of a 1500-pound sheet of ice that mysteriously dropped from the sky and smashed into a backyard fence. David H. Menke, directory of the Copernican Observatory and Planetarium, said the ice was probably 6 feet long, 8 inches thick and moving at about 200 mph. 'It's unusual in the fact that it fell from the sky,' said Craig Robinson, curator at the planetarium. 'That does not happen often.' A 13year-old boy was in his backyard Monday with a friend when the ice came 'whirling' from the sky and smashed into the fence about 10 feet away from them." The remainder of the article gives the opinions of some scientists who were contacted about the fall. The director of the observatory thought the ice probably fell off the wing of an aircraft. The director of the American Meteor Society suggested a cosmic origin, providing the ice were pure. An astronomy professor assured everyone that it couldn't be cometary, because the sun would melt particles of ice in outer space. Instead, he opted for strong thunderstorm winds picking the ice up from "somewhere" and dropping it on Hartford! (Anonymous; "1 ,500-Pound Ice Chunk Falls from Sky," Manchester (NH) Union Leader, June ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 43: Jan-Feb 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The thorny way of truth: part ii This item was discovered by accident among the paid ads in Nature -- a place we do not routinely examine for scientific anomalies. Stefan Marinov or some-one acting for him evidently inserted the ad. We have met Marinov before on SF#41, where the Editor of Nature admitted that some of Marinov's ideas might have some scientific support. We missed Part I of the Marinov advertising campaign, in which he presented his fight with the scientific establishment to restore absolute space-time concepts. In other works, Marinov wants to dump Relativity, and believes he has experimentally disproved it. Part II, the present ad, is entitled "The Perpetuum Mobile Is Discovered." It is replete with equations, diagrams, and reference, like a scientific paper, but still a paid ad! Apparently, no scientific or engineering journal will publish Marinov's work. (Marinov, Stefan; "The Thorny Way of Truth: Part II," Nature, 317:unpaged, September 26, 1985.) Marinov's perpetuum mobile. From Science Frontiers #43, JAN-FEB 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 43: Jan-Feb 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects "AND SO ON INFINITUM"Connoisseurs of facetious scientific poetry will recognize the above title as coming from a poem about vortices which have littler vortices preying upon them, etc. Well, it seems that matter may not have a basement of truly fundamental, indivisible particles either. If one does not count the rather primitive notion of Air, Fire, Earth, and Water, there are five basic levels of compositeness: (1 ) molecules; (2 ) atoms; (3 ) nuclei; (4 ) nucleons; and (5 ) quarks and leptons. But now physicists are beginning to see regularities in the lowest accepted layer, quarks and leptons, that betoken a sixth layer of compositeness or subdivisibility. In other words, quarks and leptons are not really fundamental and instead are composed of something else, which will undoubtedly eventually receive fanciful names. In this article, O.W . Greenberg delves into this sixth stratum and the "regularities" it engenders. The article is really too technical for Science Frontiers, but we thought our readers might like to be warned that our concepts of matter are based on infinite quicksand. (Greenberg, O.W .; "A New Level of Structure," Physics Today, 38:22, September 1985.) Comment. With ever-more-gigantic galactic superclusters being charted and the possibility of Big Bangs occurring "somewhere else," matter may also be infinitely ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 44: Mar-Apr 1986 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology How the Incas Worked Stone Checking Out Those Australian Pyramids Astronomy Neptune's Partial Rings Space Spume Star Sludge Tunnelling Towards Life in Outer Space Biology Evolving on Half A Wing (And A Prayer?) Signals in the Night The Moon, the Stars, and Human Behavior Geology Squirrels As Measures of Geological Time Northwest Indian Tradition of A Large-scale Sea Inundation Of Dust Clouds and Ice Ages Geophysics Atmospheric Footprints of Icy Meteors Unusual Double Sun Unclassified Unidentified Flashing Object ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 44: Mar-Apr 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects How The Incas Worked Stone Inca stonework is famous for its large stones (some over 100 tons), which are fitted so precisely that "a knife cannot be inserted into the joints." An aura of mystery has always hung about the great "walls" at Saqsaywaman and Ollantaytambo (spellings vary). How could the Incas have quarried, dressed, transported, and lifted such huge stones? As usual with such remarkable ancient structures, the overzealous have proposed antigravity devices, stone-softening agents, and similar wild notions. In truth, as J. Protzen relates in the subject article, Inca stonemasonry was surprisingly unsophisticated and yet efficient, although some mysteries remain. Protzen has spent many months in Inca country experimenting with different methods of shaping and fitting the same kinds of stones used by the Incas. He found that quarrying and dressing the stones were not problems at all using the stone hammers found in abundance in the area. Even the precision-fitting of stones was a relatively simple matter. The concave depressions into which new stones were fit were pounded out by trial and error until a snug fit was achieved. Protzen's first-hand experience is impressive and convincing. Certainly he required no radical solutions. The problems that Protzen was not able to solve to his satisfaction involved the transportation and handling of the large stones. The fitting process necessitated the repeated lowering and raising of the stone being fitted, with ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 44: Mar-Apr 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Checking Out Those Australian Pyramids Several Australian readers have been kind enough to send this item about the Australian pyramids reported in SF#41, especially the one at Gympie, Queensland. The article's author, T. Wheeler, personally checked out the Gympie pyramid, the other supposedly ancient artifacts found in the area, and the testimonies of authorities and old-timers in the Gympie area. His results: "What are we left with? The facts are (probably) that the Gympie 'Golden' pyramid is actually an ordinary hill terraced by early Italian immigrants for viniculture that has been disfigured by erosion and the removal of stone from the retaining walls for use elsewhere; the stone wall around Gympie's Surface Hill Uniting Church is exactly what the Rev Mr Geddes says it is -- a wall made from irregular, freshly quarried stone. The 'Gympie Ape/Iron Man' statue was carved by a Chinese gold prospector and later abandoned. The sun symbol and snakes were carved quite recently. The prickly pear was introduced to Australia by early settlers journeying via South America. As for all the supporting statements by the various authorities, all but a few unimportant ones fade away as one after another proves to be a misquote, a falsification or an outright fabrication." (Wheeler, Tony; "In Quest of Australia's Lost Pyramids," Omega Science Digest, p. 22, November/December ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 44: Mar-Apr 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Neptune's partial rings Neptune's rings cannot be seen directly. Instead, earth-based astronomers watch for occultations or dimmings of stars as they pass behind the rings. This seems straightforward enough in theory, but the occultations have been perplexing in practice. First, one member of a closely spaced double star will be occulted normally by the rings but its companion won't . Second, some terrestrial observatories will record an occultation but another a few thousand miles away will not. Such experiences have led to the hypothesis that the rings are discontinuous; that is, they are arcs rather than complete rings. Why should Neptune's rings be different from those of the other major planets? On speculation maintains that the arcs are the consequence of one or more recently satellites. Another hypothesis, by J.J . Lissauer, has the arcs gravitationally shaped and maintained by two moons, one of the shepherd type (as with Saturn's rings), the other at a Lagrangian point in the arc's orbit. (Kerr, Richard A.; "Neptune's Ring Arcs Confirmed," Science, 230:1150, 1985. Also: Lissauer, Jack J.; "Shepherding Model for Neptune's Arc Ring," Nature, 318:544, 1985.) Comment. The theories employing "shepherd" moons to gravitationally mold and maintain planetary rings have been weakened by the apparent ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 127: Jan-Feb 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Some Funny Things Happened On The Way Around The World Weird things happen in the weightlessness of an orbiting spacecraft. In the many videos shot aboard the Space Shuttle s, we are treated to tools, even gently oscillating globules of water, floating aimlessly in midair. Even stranger are the effects of microgravity on humans and other life forms. Astronauts, for example, when they first arrive in orbit, sometimes perceive their world to be upside-down regardless of their orientation. Their nervous systems were apparently thrown for a loop when the force of gravity was cancelled out. These illusions disappear later in the mission. Speaking of loops, consider the medaka. This fish is the only vertebrate to have mated and laid eggs that developed into offspring in microgravity. Said offspring are doomed to lives of somersaulting swimming. (Wassersug, Richard J.; "Life without Gravity," Nature, 401:758, 1999.) Comment. Could there be a connection to the nervous affliction of tumbler pigeons? See BBB8 in Biological Anomalies: Birds. From Science Frontiers #127, JAN-FEB 2000 . 1997 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 44: Mar-Apr 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Star Sludge All of a sudden it seem that astronomers are finding dark -- even "charcoal-black" -- materials in unlikely places in the solar system. Three "sludgy" sites have been high-lighted in the recent literature. (1 ) Comets. "Black" comets certainly defy our expectations. Are all those pictures of white, flaming apparitions wrong? Not really. The comets approaching the sun are made visible by sunlight reflected from the gases and dust in the coma and tail, plus some direct emission. However, the heart of the comet, its nucleus, has long been considered a "dirty snowball"; that is, a mixture of dirt and ices. Now it appears that comets are more like "icy dirtballs"! And some of that dirt is pitch black. New measurments of the bare nuclei of comets, using a visual-infrared technique, find that the nuclei reflect as little as 2% of the incident sunlight. They are indeed charcoal black. Comet nuclei, according to W. Hartmann and his colleagues, are colored by a brownishblack primordial organic sludge, and have the appearance of "a very dark Hershey bar." The use of the adjective "organic" may be premature, but in light of the next item, maybe not. (2 ) Carbonaceous chondrites . This well-known class of meteorites sometimes appears tarry and is characterized by carbon contents ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 127: Jan-Feb 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Traitors Within One of the insidious talents of cancers is their ability to coax neighboring, normal tissue to do their bidding. What cancer cells need most, if they are to grow, is sustenance, as normally provided by blood vessels. Obligingly, even though it could lead to their own demise, the tissues surrounding the cancer will grow new blood vessels to supply the killer in their midst. It has now been discovered that some particularly aggressive cancers, some melanomas, for example, can grow without the help of nearby subverted tissue. They can manufacture their own blood vessels which carry nourishment to malignant cells deep in the cancers. These self-made blood vessels differ from normal vessels in their lack of endothelial cells. They are also organized in distinctive patterns of loops around clusters of cancer cells. Normal blood vessels tend to be arranged more randomly Although they originate in specialized tissues, such as the prostate gland, the cells in aggressive cancers become unspecialized. In a sense, they revert to embryonic cells that can then become any kind of cell, such as those in blood vessels. Cancer cells are atavistic -- throwbacks to the womb. (Barinaga, Marcia; "New Type of Blood Vessel Found in Tumors," Science, 285: 1475, 1999. Spinney, Laura; "Organized Killers," New Scientist, p. 11, September 11, 1999.) Comment. It's all very ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 44: Mar-Apr 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Tunnelling Towards Life In Outer Space Most books on biology begin the history of life in those apochryphal warm ponds of primordial soup. Leave comfortable earth for a moment and consider the immense, cold clouds of gas and dust swirling between the stars and galaxies. At near-absolute-zero, sunless and waterless, these clouds hardly seem the womb of life. Yet, there may be found the atoms necessary to life -- H, C, O, N, etc -- and in profusion. Collisions of cosmic rays can promote the synthesis of fairly large molecules. We have already detected molecules as complex as formaldehyde in the interstellar medium. But surely the immensely more complicated molecules of biology cannot be synthesized near absolute zero. This may not be true either because at extremely low temperatures the quantum mechanical phenomenon of "tunnelling" becomes important. To achieve molecular synthesis, repulsive barriers must be overcome. The warm temperatures in that terrestrial pond can provide the extra kinetic energy to climb over these barriers. In cold molecular clouds we must look elsewhere. The laws of quantum mechanics state that there is always a very low probability that atoms and molecules can tunnel through repulsive barriers -- no need to climb over them via thermal effects. "Specifically, entire atoms can tunnel through barriers represented by the repulsive forces of other atoms and form complex molecules even though the atoms do not have the energy required by classical chemistry to overcome ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 127: Jan-Feb 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Strange Case Of Angled Lines In The Atmosphere The subject phenomenon is weird to say the least. We have seen nothing like it before and have no idea how to explain it. January 30, 1965. Near Johannesburg, South Africa. Testimony of R. Crowder. "It was the day of Churchill's funeral. I had been flying a Piper-Colt around South Africa's southern Transvaal, dodging the usual huge CuNims, and headed back to Baragwanath airfield near Johannesburg as the towering thunderheads ran out of 'puff', and began to topple and decay. Coming in to land, it seemed that something was wrong with my eyesight as there seemed to be faint flickers in the air itself, only a dozen feet or so above the ground. Taxiing and parking, I found when my wife and I got out of the plane that there were clear straight lines in the air itself. My wife saw them too. So did half-adozen fellow pilots whom I routed out of the bar to act as witnesses. .. .. . "These sky-lines were quite characteristic. There were a least half-adozen in the air, apparently starting close to the ground and fading away twenty or thirty feet up. They were all inclined slightly to the vertical, were of a dirty-brown colour, slightly blurred, roughly four inches wide, several feet apart, of some depth ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 44: Mar-Apr 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The moon, the stars, and human behavior We humans have an inherited penchant for observing the heavens and wondering if the stars can affect our daily lives. Secular humanists hate astrology with a passion because, like Cassius in Julius Caesar, they believe we are masters of our own destinies. Nevertheless, astrol-ogy columns are still prominent in most newspapers. In the scientific press, however, we have to score a big plus for the anti-astrologers. First, Nature has just published a detailed analysis of the predictive power of astrology, and astrology has come up very short. The Nature study is by S. Carlson, a physicist at the University of California at Berkeley. At the end of seven data-packed pages Carlson concludes: "We are now in a position to argue a surprisingly strong case against natal astrology as practised by reputable astrologers. Great pains were taken to insure that the experiment was unbiased and to make sure that astrology was given every reasonable chance to succeed. It failed. Despite the fact that we worked with some of the best astrologers in the country, recommended by the advising astrologers for their expertise in astrology and their ability to use CPI (California Personality Inventory), despite the fact that every reasonable suggestion made by the advising astrologers was worked into the experiment, despite the fact that the astrologers approved the design and predicted 50 per cent as the 'minimum' effect they would ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 127: Jan-Feb 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Our Filtered Brains Beneath the thin bone of your cranium lies an organic information processor of prodigious speed and capacity. We see brief glimpses of its real power in the mental performances of those autistic savants who can tell us instantly the day of the week for January 1, 2022, [Saturday] or draw fantastically detailed and accurate sketches of scenes after just a brief glance. You may scoff, but you could do the same if your consciousness didn't suppress your innate mental talents. There is growing suspicion that our brains process and store just about everything our senses convey to them. Our brain is also a number-cruncher of great power that can "see" calendar pages stretching millennia into the future and far back into prehistory. The most formidible arithmetic problems are child's play to it. Some researchers maintain that it is our consciousness that prevents us from realizing the full potential of this spongy sack of neurons. Consciousness, you see, is a necessary filter that permits only useful, practical information to flash before us as we attempt to deal with the real world. Of what survival value is calendar-calculating in today's world when we have our PCs? Or even yesterday's threat-filled world? (Future worlds? Who knows?) The consciousness filter is only partially effective in autistic savants. It is a bit porous in normal childhood, when streaks of genius sometimes seep through ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 44: Mar-Apr 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Northwest indian tradition of a large-scale sea inundation Science, quite wisely, places little value on legend and tradition. The authors of this article stess the pitfalls of using data handed down verbally from generation to generation. With these caveats, they reproduce an Indian tradition originally set down by Judge James Swan back in 1888: "' A long time ago,' said my informant, 'but not at a very remote period, the water of the Pacific flowed through what is now the swamp and prairie between Waatch village and Neeah Bay, making an island of Cape Flattery. The water suddenly receded leaving Neeah Bay perfectly dry. It was four days reaching the lowest ebb, and then rose again without any waves or breakers, till it had submerged the Cape, and in fact the whole country, excepting the tops of the mountains at Clyoquot. The water on its rise became very warm, and as it came up to the houses, those who had canoes put their effects into them, and floated off with the current, which set very strongly to the north.'" The authors of the present article wonder if the above could be an account of a massive tsunami! They admit that the 4-day recession is inconsistent with tsunami action and that the warm water is hard-to-explain. The height reached by the inundation -- some 400 meters -- is also incredible. (Heaton ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 128: MAR-APR 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Archeometeorology (Top) Even with hazy viewing, the six brightest Pleiads are usually visible. (Bottom) With good seeing more of the stars come into view. Ancient farmers the world over counted off the seasons and fixed planting times by watching the stars and the sun. But the stars can also help forecast the weather, even though they have no influence over it. We'll call this unique sort of archeoastronomy: "archeometeorology." Farmer-astronomers in the drought-prone regions of the Andes learned how, after what must have been centuries of sky-watching, to wring rainfall predictions from observations of the Pleiades. This information allowed them to better time the planting of potatoes -- their most important crop. The astronomical phenomenon they employed is far from obvious. The Pleiades are a cluster of bright stars in the constellation Taurus. The visibility of these stars varies slightly depending upon the amount of subvisual cirrus. If the Pleiades were dull in the month of June, the Andean farmers knew from experience that an El Nino was on the way. This betokened reduced rainfall and told them to postpone the planting of their potatoes by 4-6 weeks for best yields. The critical observations were made between June 13 and 24, when the Pleiades shine brightly just before dawn over the northeastern horizon. At this low angle, the presence of the subvisual cirrus has an obvious effect on the brightness of the stars ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 44: Mar-Apr 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Of Dust Clouds And Ice Ages Ice cores from the polar ice at Camp Century, in Greenland, have been analyzed for the presence of cosmic dust. "It is concluded that on five occasions during the interval 20,000-14,000 years BP, cosmic dust mass concentrations in the solar system rose by one and two orders of magnitude above present day levels. Moreover if the particles found in these ice core samples are indicative of the particle size distribution which prevailed in the interplanetary medium at that time, then it may be concluded that the space number density of submicron sized particles must have uncreased by a factor of 105 or more. During these times the light transmission properties of the solar system would have been significantly altered resulting in major adverse effects to the earth's climate. Thus it is quite possible that these dust congestion episodes were responsible for the abrupt climatic variations which occurred toward the end of the last Ice Age." Whence these interplanetary dust clouds? The author of this article ruled out terrestrial volcanism (an insufficient source of iridium) and encounters with asteroids and cometary tails (too infrequent to account for the long periods of high dust levels). Rather, the dust source may have been the same event that created the recently discovered dust ring between Mars and Jupiter, which is believed to be only a few tens of thousands of years old. The nature of the "event" is not ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 128: MAR-APR 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Viruses as Ancient Artifacts HTLV-1 is a blood-borne retrovirus that causes leukemia in about 3% of those carrying it. In southern Japan, roughly 4% of the populace are afflicted with this virus, so are some isolated groups living today in Columbia and Chile. Does this correlation prove that South America received settlers from Japan in the distant past? Such a biological linkage would augment pottery evidence from Peru and, especially, Ecuador where Jomon-style pottery 4,000-5 ,000 years old has been found on the coast. However, the HTLV-1 virus also could have been introduced to South America by more recent visitors. Is there any way to fix the timing of HTLV-1 's introduction to South America? Actually, there is. The DNA in viruses is not as durable as pottery shards, but it does hang around for a while, as seen is recent efforts to ex-tract DNA from from frozen mammoths for possible "revival" of the species. A team of Japanese and Chilean scientists has been searching for DNA surviving in 104 mummies deposited in South America's arid Atacama Desert 1,200-1 ,500 years ago. Two of the mummies still retained DNA; and one of them included shards of DNA from HTLV-1 . This certainly doesn't prove trans-Pacific diffusion, but it helps. (Holden, Constance; "Backtracking ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 44: Mar-Apr 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Unidentified Flashing Object May 6, 1984. Equatorial Eastern Atlantic. "Whilst the vessel was approaching the equator, on a course of 023 and at a speed of 10.3 knots, flashing white lights were observed. The sea was rippled, with a low NW'ly swell and the wind light airs. The visibility was good, with the moon in its first quarter. At first it was thought that there were three lights, one being bright and the other two relatively dim, but as the vessel approached it it was decided that there were only two, one bright and one dim. "The radar, a 10-cm S-band Decca, was switched on and a single echo was detected initially at a range of 5 n. mile. By this time the lights had already been observed for halfan-hour, so it was estimated that they had first been observed when they were 10 n. mile distant. The time of the first sighting was 2220 GMT. The target, once detected, gave a very strong echo and gave the impression of being a large target. It was plotted and found to be stationary. The initial course of 023 was altered to 028 in order to enable the vessel to close the passing distance. "Throughout the observations neither light followed any set characteristic. Instead they just flashed at random, but never together. The intensity of the bright light would have ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 128: MAR-APR 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A Few Cracks in the Foundations of Mainstream Astronomy The latest issue of the Meta Research Bulletin digests ten recent unsettling astronomical discoveries. From these, we select four for your delectation. New laboratory experiments suggest a slightly non-symmetric behavior of matter and anti-matter that might explain the dominance of matter in the universe. But it creates a new mystery---why this asymmetry should exist. Distant supernovae have a rise time of 10-15 percent faster than nearby type supernovae. This throws doubt on their use as standard candles, and on the interpretation that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. Interestingly, the amount of the discrepancy is close to the size of the special relativity time dilation factor, gamma. If the cause of the red shift were something other than velocity, then no time dilation factor would be applicable, and this discrepancy would disappear. Evidence for water on Mercury implies a rapid-acting, exogenic water source, consistent with the exploded planet hypothesis expectations. Reasonable escape rates imply that deuterium on Venus is from a relatively recent water source. (Van Flandern, Tom; "Highlights of the Latest EME," Meta Research Bulletin, 8:64, no. 4, 199. Address: P.O . Box 15186, Chevy Chase, MD 20815) Comment. (1 ) Although humans are obviously partial to symmetry, there is no reason why nature must please us by ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 45: May-Jun 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Lost City Of Nan Madol Nan Madol has never been "lost" as the title of this item implies, but this fantastic complex of 92 artificial islets sees few tourists. Located on Pohnpei (formerly spelled "Ponape") in Micronesia, Nan Madol lacks the well-publicized glamour of the Pyramids and Chichen Itza. If Nan Madol is not glamourous, it is certainly incongruous. Who would expect such huge stone structures to rise in the middle of nowhere? William Ayres, a University of Oregon anthropologist sponsored by the National Geographic Society, has been a recent researcher at Nan Madol. In an interview, Ayres described Nan Madol in these terms: "To withstand time and the sea, the artificial platforms were built in a staggeringly laborious process. Multiton basalt columns, formed by volcanic activity, were stacked horizontally, log-cabin style, to form outer walls. The inside was then filled with coral rubble to form a dry surface several feet above high-tide level. Radiocarbon testing finds signs of human habitation at Nan Madol as early as A.D . 500, and the megalithic construction was completed by about 1500." Besides incongruity and a certain bizarreness, Nan Madol does pose several problems: How were the huge, very heavy prismatic columns of basalt quarried and transported? Why was Nan Madol built at all? Why about 1400 AD did the inhabitants stop building their massive ocean-going canoes and ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 128: MAR-APR 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects "Uprooting the Tree of Life"Yes, that is the title of a long article in the February 2000 issue of Scientific American. In the Table of Contents, we see words concerning this article that we never thought would be permitted in a mainstream science magazine. After first noting that 10 years ago it was generally agreed that all organisms evolved from a single ancestral cell that existed about 3.5 billion years ago, there comes the assertion that the Tree of Life: "is far more complicated than was believed and may not have had a single root at all." The article proper relates how the Tree of Life has its own evolutionary history. Twenty years ago, scientists had that single ancestral cell splitting into two main trunks: the prokaryotes (bacteria) and the eukaryotes (every-thing else). More recently, a third trunk has been grafted onto the Tree; namely, the archaea (microorganisms that look like bacteria but possess markedly different genes). The archaea favor extreme environments and, curiously, are more closely related to you and me than are the bacteria. But according to this article (by W.F . Doolittle), the triple-trunked Tree of Life is simplistic. One reason for this is that genes, once thought to flow only from parent to progeny, are now known to travel laterally. Species barriers are broken. Genes jump from trunk to trunk, from ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 128: MAR-APR 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Frozen in Time A map of Antarctica produced in 1997 using data from the Canadian satellite Radarsat has revealed some unexpected geological features at the bottom of the planet. Among these are vast areas of previously unrecognized snow dunes -- all lined up in parallel like the ripples on a stream bed. However, these snow dunes are no ripples. They measure up to 100 kilometers in length with separations of 1-2 kilometers. They are, in fact, called "megadunes." At ground level, though, the snow dunes are not obvious because they are only a few meters high. Since Antarctica is often buffeted by fierce winds, one would naturally think that these snow dunes have an aeolian origin like desert sand dunes. This does not seem the be the case. Comparisons made using recently declassified images taken in the 1960s by U.S . military satellites reveal that the snow dunes have not moved in over 30 years! Some-thing besides wind-driven snow must be helping to sculpt these immense stationary patterns. (Tomlin, Sarah; "Vast Snow Dunes Frozen in Time," Nature, 402:860, 1999.) Comment. The fossil "string dunes" of Australia closely resemble the Antarctic snow megadunes in pattern and size, but of course they are composed of sand. "Megaripples" charted by sonar and shaped by water currents on the ocean floors are also comparable. See ETR3 in Carolina ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 128: MAR-APR 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Burps of Death Not only did the poor dinosaurs have to contend with an asteroid impact and a lurch of the poles, but also with the possible ignition of voluminous methane burps. 65-million years ago. This was the time of the well-publicized, but still hypothetical, asteroid impact. It is said to have wreaked havoc on our wounded planet and, especially, the dinosaurs. Volcanos spewed out vast lava fields and filled the air with greenhouse gases and dust. It was a bad time for many life forms. Actually, It may have been far worse than generally advertised. In addition to the volcanic activity and climate change, the shock of the asteroid impact could have been sufficient to destabilize the immense amounts of methane hydrate that have long been locked up, frozen and dormant, in oceanic sediments all over the world. According to this scenario, once the shock of the asteroid impact released the methane from its icy prison, it rose to the surface of the oceans in a world-wide burp. Methane, unfortunately for the dinosaurs and many other life forms, is highly flammable. Lightning could have ignited it almost immediately if it was concentrated enough. A colossal firestorm might have then enveloped the entire planet. The whole atmosphere could have been afire. This, according to B. Hurdle and colleagues at the Naval Research Laboratory, who speculate that the dinosaur hegemony may ended suddenly in flames rather than ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 128: MAR-APR 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A Different Sort of Crop Circle Ball lightning reports are very common, but here is one worth recording because of its unusual physical effects. It was investigated and reported by O. Stummer. In May or June of 1988 or 1989 around 2 P.M . CEST, Mr. Alois Fuehrer, a farmer of 38 years from Jungschlag, a small village south of Ottenschlag, northern Lower Austria, 850 meters above sea level, returned early from fieldwork because a heavy thunderstorm moved in from the north-west. Fuehrer stood in the open on a wooden plank at the rear of the diesel tractor driven by his father. The vehicle had passed the last Ottenschlag houses southbound, when he noticed a falling object. It was round, 20 centimeters across, and "seemed to come down like a toy balloon", vertical, soundless, without rotation. It was brilliant white, a steady light, and had "something like a smoke trail". Only 20 to 30 meters to the right of the tractor and of the road, after 4 to 6 seconds, the object hit the surface of a green summer barley field, flashed up and "exploded with a loud, very high pitched bang". Mr. Fuehrer said "this was no thunder", and noticed no heat or pressure wave. However, what he felt caused panic--a tingling, and his hairs stood on end on his head ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 128: MAR-APR 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Fake Needles but Real Knives The effect of a patient's mind in medical procedures can be as powerful as drugs and real surgery. This is the well known placebo effect. But how can doctors differentiate between the healing power of the mind and that of chemicals and scalpels? The logical thing to do is to fake the procedure with one group of patients and compare results with a second group that got the "real thing." Of course, ethical problems come to the fore because doctors are supposed to cure people and not to pretend to. The ethical dimension is accentuated when real knives are employed and real blood flows. Our first item is not invasive but interesting nonetheless. Placebo acupuncture. Many physicians scoff at acupuncture. Placebo experiments could prove its efficacy. To this end, special placebo needles have been invented. Like the fake daggers used on the stage, the points are blunt and retractable. The acupuncture patient feels a pinprick and thinks he or she sees the needle penetrating the skin, but it's all fakery. At the University of Heidelberg, 52 people with rotator cuff tendinitis were split into two groups; 25 were punctured with real needles, the rest just thought they were. In this experiment, the first group showed much greater improvement than those treated with the fake needles. Real acupuncture was more powerful than the placebo effect. Now if we can only figure out how real acupuncture works! ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 128: MAR-APR 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects How to Win by Loosing (twice)It's all exceedingly counterintuitive. If you switch randomly between two games of chance, each of which is guaranteed to empty your pockets if played separately, you can actually win. This phenomenon can be proved mathematically, but we will not inflict this upon our readers, even if we understood it. Two games played with coins illustrate the effect. One game employs a weighted coin such that the probability of winning is much less than 50%. If played alone, your capital decreases steadily in a rather smooth curve, with a small win now and then but many small losses. The second game requires two weighted coins and is also a losing proposition by itself. Here, though, the graph of your assets vs. the number of games played is a sawtooth. There are sharp increases and downturns, but with an average downward trend. Switching between the two games in a random manner has the effect of locking in a win before the next loss comes along. It's a ratchet effect. Your overall capital will rise, at least it does according to the equations, though your intuition cannot help but doubt it. No wonder this Is called Parrondo's paradox! (Harmer, Gregory P., and Abbott, Derek; "Losing Strategies Can Win by Farrondo's Paradox," Nature, 402:864, 1999. Anonymous; "Losing ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 45: May-Jun 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Bats may have invented flight twice (at least!)Bats are divided into megas and micros. The "megabats," represented by the fruit bats, possess an "advanced" connection between their eyes and midbrains. No other mammals except the primates possess this type of advanced visual organization. In contrast, the "microbats," the common echo-locating insect-eaters have a "primitive" eyebrain connection. This deep division in the bat family -- mega/micro, vegetarian/carnivorous, sight-dependent/echolocating -- suggests that mammal flight has developed at least twice. (Pettigrew, John D.; "Flying Primates? Megabats Have the Advanced Pathway from Eye to Midbrain," Science, 231: 1304, 1986.) Reference. The problems of bat evolution can be found at BME1 in our catalog Biological Anomalies: Mammals II. Ordering information here . From Science Frontiers #45, MAY-JUN 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 45: May-Jun 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Scant Ant Chromosomes The Australian ant Myrmecia pilosula, called the "bulldog ant" because of its viciousness, carries all its genetic information in a single pair of chromosomes. (Males are haploid and have just one chromosome.) Although classified as a "primitive" ant, the bulldog ant exhibits complex social behavior and is obviously far from a simple biological entity. Biologists were therefore surprised to find all genetic instruction residing in a single chromosome pair. Social insects tend to have higher chromosome numbers. It is also interesting that Myrmecia pilosula, originally described as a single species, actually consists of several distinct sibling species with chromosome numbers (i .e ., pairs) of 9, 10, 16, 24, 30, 3l, and 32. Yet, they all look pretty much alike. (Crosland, Michael W.J ., and Crozier, Ross H.; Myrmecia pilosula, an Ant with Only One Pair of Chromosomes," Science, 23l:1278, 1986.) Comment. Chromosome number or the sheer quantity of genetic material seems poorly correlated with biological complexity. From Science Frontiers #45, MAY-JUN 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 45: May-Jun 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Champ in 1985 Below we quote two of the 14 digests of Champ sightings in 1985. Champ, as all cryptobiologists know, is the oft-reported monster of Lake Champlain. "June 29, 1985: Peg McGeoch and Jane Temple; off Scotch Bonnet, south of Basin Harbor, Vermont; 'length well over 30 feet'; head/neck similar to a brontosaurus, with head held 'about 5 feet above surface'; body was snakelike. "August 8, 1985: Jean and Becky Joppru; in Mullen Bay, New York; 4 or 5 black humps protruding 2 or 3 feet from water; total length, 30 feet." (Zarzynski, Joseph W.; "LCPI Work at Lake Champlain, 1985," Cryptozoology, 4:69, 1985.) Location of the 14 1985 sightings. From Science Frontiers #45, MAY-JUN 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 129, May-Jun 2000 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Leif was Late The Hidden "Gardens" Astronomy TLPs: One Fades, Others Flash The Extremophilic Terraforming of Mars Interplanetary Doldrum s Biology Why we "Roll in the Aisles" If Fingerprints Don't Lie, Neither to Toe Prints A Third Way? Geology Leaky Seas From Nature's Atelier The Anomalous Antiquity of Some Landforms Geophysics Crop Circles Can be Natural Contagious St. Elmo's Fire Uplifting may be Hazardous Psychology The Sound of Shapes Miscellaneous An Astronomer's UFO nnnbbbbbvccccccxzzzzzcvbn,;/////ppooo ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 45: May-Jun 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Polar Bear Coats Are Thermal Diodes "A polar bear's hairs are completely transparent. The bear appears white because visible light reflects from the rough inner surface of each hollow hair. However, the hairs are designed to trap ultraviolet light. Like light within an optical fiber, the radiation is conducted along the hairs to the skin. This summertime energy supplement provides up to a quarter of the bear's needs. Thus, even while actively pursuing prey, the bear can still concentrate on building up its blubber layers in preparation for winter." In other words, the bear's fur lets heat in but not out -- in effect a thermal diode. (Anonymous; "Solar Bear Technology," Science News, 129:153, 1986.) Comment. How come polar bears are favored with this "marvelous adaptation" while the arctic foxes and other mammals shiver? From Science Frontiers #45, MAY-JUN 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 45: May-Jun 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Wrong-way primate migration Scientists have long assumed that the primates originated in Africa, spread to Europe, and then jumped to North America. This hypothesis may be over turned by the discovery of fossils of early primates in Wyoming. The revised route would be Africa-Asia-North America, the reverse of the prevailing theory. This item also remarks that "Remains of early 'true' primates have not been uncovered in Africa." The reason is that the deposits that should contain them have all been eroded away. (Bower, B.; "Wyoming Fossils Shake Up Views of Early Primate Migration," Science News, 129:71, 1986.) Comment. One wonders about the "missing" African strata and fossils. Perhaps they never existed. Here is an in-stance where theory requires certain data, as with evolution's missing links. Sometimes "missing" data is really missing! From Science Frontiers #45, MAY-JUN 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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