... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 106: Jul-Aug 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Mud Springs Regurgitate Ancient Fossils Mud springs in Wiltshire, England, may be the only ones of their kind on the planet. The Wiltshire mud springs are cold. They are not hot and steaming like those seen where geothermal heat is close to the surface, as in New Zealand, Java, and Yellowstone. They are also unique in their entrainment of subterranean fossils and bringing them to the surface. "There is no explanation of the way the springs ooze a pale, cold, grey mud to the surface, forming blisters that spurt high into the air. "Neville Hollingworth of the Natural Environment Research Council said: 'They are like a fossil conveyor belt bringing up finds from the clay layers below and then washing them out in a nearby stream.'" The fossil conveyor belt yields bones of marine reptiles, oyster shells, and the remains of sea creatures that lived during the Jurassic, about 165 million years ago. Some of the bivalves still retain their organic ligaments. Geologists wonder what forces squeeze the mud to the surface like toothpaste from a tube. (Nuttall, Nick; "Mud Springs a Surprise after 165 Million Years," London Times, May 2, 1996. Cr. A.C .A . Silk) From Science Frontiers #106, JUL-AUG 1996 . 1996-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 133: JAN-FEB 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Ubiquitous Bird-and-fish Motif Pre-Columbiana, a new journal, promote the popular but "out-on-the-fringe" theory that all our planet's oceans were crossed repeatedly before Columbus (an the Vikings, too). One type of evidence adduced to prove such Precolumbian cultural diffusion is the widespread appearance of motifs that are so specific and unusual that one is forced to admit that independent invention seems very unlikely. In the latest issue of Pre-Columbiana, G. Farley has collected examples of the singular "bird-and-fish" motif from Asia, Africa, both Americas, and the Middle East. As you can see from the illustrations, the similarities are striking, and the bird-fish "contact" highly specific. Bird-and-fish motifs. Clockwise from upper left: Mimbres culture, New Mexico; ancient Egyptian hieroglyph; Chimu culture, Peru; ancient China. (Farley, Gloria; "World-Wide Occurrence of a Bird-and-Fish Motif," Pre-Columbiana, 1:187, 1999.) Comment. Yes, we do know that the birds involved are all fish-eaters, but the "kisses" seem more symbolic than pre-consumption. Also, the fish portrayed are often too big to swallow. From Science Frontiers #133, JAN-FEB 2001 . 2001 William R. Corliss Other Sites of ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 132: NOV-DEC 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Fish Tales From the Mouth of Fishes Several species of fishes live inside the mouths and gills of larger species of fish. Some are true parasites. Attached by their teeth, they drink the blood of their hosts. Other fishes have fins that have been transformed into adhesive disks that allow them to also live inside the mouths and gill cavities of larger fish. These are true symbionts that feed on food scraps. The sizes and shapes of these invaders are neatly adapted to the mouths and cavities of each host. It is possible, but not easy, to explain how these remarkable physiological and behavioral transformations were initiated and perfected via random mutations and natural selection. (Gudger, E.W .; "Fishes That Live in the Mouths or Gill Cavities of Other Fishes," Scientific Monthly, 24:556, 1927.) A fish living within a fish. The shapes and sizes of such symbionts and parasites have evolved to fit their unusual niches. E.W . Gudger (see above) collected all sorts of piscine anomalies. He would have been delighted to learn of a really bizarre type of parasitism involving the spotted rose snapper (and probably other species) and a parasitic isopod (a relative of crabs and lobsters). The isopod first invades the mouth of the host fish and then consumes its tongue. It then hooks itself into the place where the tongue used to be and, being about the same ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 136: JUL-AUG 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects More Carolina Beach Booms January 25, 2001. North Carolina coast. About 11 PM, residents of Wilmington, North Carolina, just north of Cape Fear, were startled by deep booms that shook houses. Anxious residents from Wilmington to Bladen County telephoned the National Earthquake Information Center, in Boulder, Colorado, to report the supposed seismic activity. But instruments recorded nothing of the sort in the afflicted area. The booms had a different source. (Anonymous; "Coastal Residents Jolted by Mysterious Booms," Lincoln Times-news, January 29, 2001. Cr. G. Fawcett via. L. Farish.) Comment. Such booms have plagued the North Carolina shore for many years -- perhaps centuries. (SF#73) Rather than earthquakes, the booms are more likely due to the spontaneous detonations of methane "burps" rising from destabilized methane hydrate, which exists in large quantities off the Carolina shores. (SF#100) The Carolina booms probably are, therefore, analogous to the "mistpouffers" heard along European shores and the famous Barisal Guns of India. From Science Frontiers #136, JUL-AUG 2001 . 2001 William R. Corliss Other Sites of Interest SIS . Catastrophism, archaeoastronomy, ancient history, mythology and astronomy. Lobster . The journal of intelligence and political conspiracy (CIA, FBI, JFK, MI5, NSA, etc) Homeworking.com . Free resource for people thinking ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 132: NOV-DEC 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Viking Mooring-Stone Saga Sails On One of the more fascinating types of North American artifacts is the so-called Viking mooring stone. It has been impossible to ignore them in past issues of this newsletter. ( SF#69 and SF#113 ) The latter issue displays a photograph of three of the unique triangular holes characteristic of the "mooring stones" drilled into a boulder resting in a North Carolina stream bed. North Carolina is hardly Viking country no matter how receptive you are to claims of an early and extensive Norse presence in North America. After all, the interior of North Carolina is hundreds of miles from L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, and nowhere near the site of the infamous Kensington Stone in Minnesota. Yet, several hundred of these Viking mooring stones have been found all the way from Canada south to Missouri. Most, however, are clustered in Minnesota. For those unfamiliar with this unusual artifact, it is the curious triangular holes that are diagnostic of the Viking mooring stones. These holes are essentially identical everywhere: an inch across, 4-5 inches deep, triangular in cross section, with neatly rounded corners. The saga is reviewed in our catalog Ancient Infrastructure . Cross section of one of the strange triangular holes found in boulders. Note the rounded corners. Drillers and purpose are unknown. Our purpose here is to flag a recent article in Ancient American that tells of the ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 136: JUL-AUG 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Are We Merely Fancy Crystals?Just about everyone will concede that when sodium and chlorine atoms arrange themselves to build salt crystals that they are simply obeying the well-known laws of physics. In other words, salt crystals are "natural." "Intelligent design" need not be invoked in explaining their existence. This is OK for salt crystals but can we say the same for biological forms such as proteins and, ultimately, human beings? Are these more complex biological forms also natural; that is, reducible to and explainable by the laws of physics? Human beings certainly seem irreducible; and some proteins are so large and complex that one is unsure that physics is up to the task of explaining these tangled structures consisting many hundreds of atoms. Some of these doubts have been relieved by recent advances in protein chemistry. It appears that the different types of protein folds, which number in the thousands, can be classified and sorted into distinct structural families -- just like the much simpler crystals of salt, quartz, galena, etc fall into orderly classes. The clear implication is that protein folds and, by extension via further research, the protein molecules themselves, are also natural and reducible just like the salt crystals. If proteins are natural, perhaps even more complex biological forms are also, and so on up the complexity ladder to viruses (which often look like crystals through the microscope), bacteria, and ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 131: SEP-OCT 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Oh, The Complexity of it All!The headlines say that the human genome has been charted and further imply that we now can read life's total blueprint. Closer study of the announcement reveals that there still remain unreadable snippets of the genome here and there. In fact, the total number of human genes is still in doubt: maybe 30,000, some say 120,000. This wide range of uncertainty does not inspire belief in the accurate readability of this biological blueprint at the present time. Usually left unsaid is the fact that the present blueprint covers only 2-3 % of the territory. That's right, 97-98% of the human genome isn't mapped at all. This uncharted territory is assumed to be "junk" or "nonsense" DNA that plays no role in heredity. Want to bet that this assumption is correct? And don't forget that genes jump around. The genome is really a moving target. Genes also work in concert. It is not one gene coding for one protein, which then has a singular role in creating an operational human being. For example, some 5,692 genes are active in breast-cancer cells. Genes may also have multiple roles. Our present blueprint of the human genome does not display all the mobility and complex interrelationships of the genes. We do know that genes are the blue-prints for the ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 136: JUL-AUG 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Bacon Bits Roger Bacon may have been involved with the Voynich Manuscript described in SF#135, but it was Francis Bacon who, some claim, wrote some of the plays commonly attributed to Shakespeare. We apologize for this slip-up and thank all who pointed it out. As for the possibility of a cipher in Shakespeare's plays, this idea was promoted by that trouble-maker I. Donnelly. His book, The Great Cryptogram (1875). was proof, Donnelly asserted, that it was really Francis Bacon who penned what is now erroneously attributed to Shakespeare. Donnelly was a great collector of anomalies. From his vast researches came Atlantis: the Antediluvian World, a book that sparked worldwide interest in that lost city, and the equally seminal Ragnarok: the Age of Fire and Gravel, that introduced Velikovskian catastrophism 67 years before Worlds in Collision. From Science Frontiers #136, JUL-AUG 2001 . 2001 William R. Corliss Other Sites of Interest SIS . Catastrophism, archaeoastronomy, ancient history, mythology and astronomy. Lobster . The journal of intelligence and political conspiracy (CIA, FBI, JFK, MI5, NSA, etc) Homeworking.com . Free resource for people thinking about working at home. ABC dating and personals . For people looking for relationships. Place your ad free. ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 134: MAR-APR 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Plate Tectonics Subducted?In the Fall 2000 number of the Journal of Scientific Exploration, D. Pratt fired a thunderous broadside at that revered paradigm of geophysics: plate tectonics, nee continental drift. This 47-page study, which includes 10 pages of references, is best summarized by quoting from the author's own conclusions. Plate tectonics -- the reigning paradigm in the earth sciences -- faces some very severe and apparently fatal problems. Far from being a simple, elegant, all-embracing global theory, it is confronted with a multitude of observational anomalies and has had to be patched up with a complex variety of ad hoc modifications and auxiliary hypotheses. The existence of deep continental roots and the absence of a continuous, global asthenosphere to "lubricate" plate motions has rendered the classical model of plate movements untenable. There is no consensus on the thickness of the "plates" and no certainty as to the forces responsible for their supposed movement. The hypotheses of large-scale continental movements, seafloor spreading, and subduction , as well as the relative youth of the oceanic crust are contradicted by a substantial volume of data. Evidence for significant amounts of submerged continental crust in the present-day oceans provides another major challenge to plate tectonics. (Pratt, David ; "Plate Tectonics: A Paradigm under Threat ," Journal of Scientific Exploration," 14:307, 2000.) Definition. Asthenosphere = ...

... 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 Numberless Black Discs Somehow, the following observation was omitted from our catalogs on anomalous atmospheric phenomena -- perhaps because it was hard to classify! What do you think: UFOs or windblown debris? November 4, 1867. Chatham, England . On the afternoon of Monday the 4th, between the hours of three and four, I witnessed a very extraordinary sight in the heavens. I have not heard of any one hereabout having seen it. The facts are as follow: -- At the time above mentioned I was passing by the Mill by the Water-works Reservoir. On the gallery I noticed the miller uttering exclamations of surprise, and looking earnestly towards the west. On inquiring what took his attention so much, he said, "Look, sir, I never saw such a sight in my life!" On turning in the direction towards which he was looking, the west, I also was astounded -- numberless black discs in groups and scattered were passing rapidly through the air. He said his attention was directed to them by his little girl, who called to him in the Mill, saying, "Look, father, here are a lot of balloons coming!" They continued for more than twenty minutes, the time I stayed. In passing in front of the sun they appeared like large cannon shot. Several groups passed over my head, disappearing suddenly, and leaving puffs of greyish brown ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 134: MAR-APR 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects I Must Go Down To The Goo Again!With apologies to Masefield for mangling a line of his poetry. it really is tine to go down to the sea and examine its microstructure. The ocean is not what it seems. When you snorkel in crystal-clear Caribbean waters, you do not sense that you are swimming in a very thin jelly. In reality, ocean water is filled with a complex tangle of microscopic strands and particles of gel. According to F. A zam , an oceanographer at Scripps: It's not in the textbooks or in the classical explanations. The gel's existence fundamentally changes our ideas of the microcosmos in which sea organisms live. It has added another layer of complexity that people are only now starting to consider in the context of whole ocean systems . . Gel is like the dark matter of the sea. While sea gel does not impede the snorkeler, . it does herd microbes into clumps or microniches . which we cannot see either. These microbes. in effect, exist in a tangled. 3-D mesh that affects not only their movements but also those of their prey and predators. A few statistics confirm the amazing complexity of the seawater microcosm and its incredibly high microbe population density. The long strands in the oceanic gel are mostly crosslinked polysaccharides. If the polysaccharides in 1 milliliter of seawater could be placed end-to-end, they would stretch out ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 135: MAY-JUN 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Asteroid Ponds, Beaches, And Boulders Once considered only dull, nondescript vagabonds of the solar system, asteroids are turning out to be rather mysterious and surprisingly complex bits of celestial real estate. The close-up photos of the asteroid Eros (35-kilometers long) from the spacecraft NEAR-Shoemaker have added two new phenomena to the list of asteroid enigmas. Boulders. Eros is covered with huge boulders -- perhaps a million of them over 8-meters wide. The boulders are likely just accreted solar-system debris; but why are they strewn naked on the surface of Eros instead of being intermixed with other rocky debris? Speculation is that the large boulders were coaxed to the surface preferentially over the eons by seismic vibrations -- said vibrations being caused by multitudinous impacts. This type of jostling action also explains why Brazil nuts greet you when you open a well-travelled can of mixed nuts! Ponds and beaches. The fine debris coating Eros may also have responded to the same vibrations, but in different ways. It sort of "flowed" downhill to form curious flat features resembling ponds. Between the ponds and rough terrain, the fine debris has also built up transition zones that look like beaches. Cormell's J. Veverka isn't betting on any of the proposed theories as yet. He declared: We're facing processes we're not familiar with. I truly don't ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 138: NOV-DEC 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects It's Time For A Bit Of Generalization No one can contest that quantum mechanics has been extremely successful in describing the phenomena of physics. This fact does not mean that it is easy to understand. In fact, there are eight competing "interpretations" of quantum mechanics, none of which is completely convincing. No wonder, because quantum mechanics implies four characteristics of the universe that are seriously at odds with our everyday experience: The quantization of the properties of matter; The probabilistic nature of physical measurements; Entanglement; that is, the mysterious instantaneous connection of objects and processes across immense distances; and Superposition; for example, an electron is both here and there until we look at it! A. Zeilinger, University of Vienna, advances the idea that we can truly understand quantum mechanics only when we discover an underlying principle -- something akin to the concept of energy which led to the quantification of the laws of thermodynamics. (Incidentally. we only think we know what energy is, but it is a human construct and is not a physical dimension like mass or distance.) Zeilinger asserts that the underlying principle of quantum mechanics is the quantization of information. Every inquiry science makes into the nature of the universe, says Zeilinger, can be reduced to a yes-or-no question; i.e ., a 1 or 0. To a scientist, nature is really like a person on a ...

... 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 100-Mile-Long Wall in Africa A 100-mile-long wall? Well, sort of! Sungbo's Eredo, as it is called, is really an earthen embankment with an accompanying ditch. Whatever you call it, it does enclose an area 25 miles north-tosouth and 22 miles east-to-west. That's a lot of earth-moving, for at some spots the "wall" measures 70 feet from the bottom of the ditch to the top of the embankment. Today, this impressive structure is mostly concealed by the Nigerian jungle. A thousand years ago it enclosed a flourishing African kingdom. Sungbo's Eredo is hardly a military structure. Blow could a 100-mile-long embankment be defended with a reason-able number of warriors? Instead, it might have been a boundary marker or perhaps a "spiritual barrier." In fact, shrines are located along the wall where locals still leave offerings to protect themselves from outsiders. (Onishi, Norimitsu; "A Wall, a Moat, Behold! A Lost Yoruba Kingdom," New York Times International, September 26, 1999. Cr. R. Swanson) Comment. An interesting parallel to Sungbo''s Eredo is seen in Offa's Dyke, the largest ancient earthwork in Dritain. It is also an embankment-plus-ditch. Offa, the king of Saxon Mercia, had ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 133: JAN-FEB 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Rochester Residents See Mirage Of Canadian Shore 65 Miles Distant May 16, 1921. Rochester, NY. On this day, many citizens climbed to the roofs of tall buildings to view a splendid mirage of the Canadian shore located 65 miles north of the city. The weather was very clear, and the mirage rested high in the northern sky. The colors were a deep blue and near-black, the uneven shoreline being distinctly depicted against the cloudless sky. An occasional forest appeared darker than the regular line of the mirage and indicated that the shore line displayed was several hundred miles in extent. The mirage disappeared about 4 PM. (Anonymous; "Rochester Sees A Remarkable Mirage of Canadian Shore, 65 Miles Away," New York Times, May 17, 1921. Cr. M. Piechota.) Comment. This mirage is notable for its clarity and distance. An even more remarkable mirage of the same type appears in our catalog Rare Halos, Mirages. In this instance, a mirage of the Snaefells Jokull, an Icelandic peak, was seen from a schooner 335-350 miles distant. Details in GEM2. From Science Frontiers #133, JAN-FEB 2001 . 2001 William R. Corliss Other Sites of Interest SIS . Catastrophism, archaeoastronomy, ancient history, mythology and astronomy. Lobster . The journal of intelligence and political conspiracy (CIA, FBI, JFK, MI5, NSA, etc) Homeworking. ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 122: Mar-Apr 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Unusual Wave January 14, 1998. Indian Ocean. Aboard the m.v . Oriental Bay , enroute Port Klang to Suez. "At 2230 UTC the vessel was on a course of 269 at 23 knots when a line was observed on the radar at a range of 3 n mile, travelling from northwest to southeast at an estimated speed of 15 knots, as indicated on the sketch. The line was observed to be a wave. "It was about 10 minutes after the first sighting that the vessel passed over the wave, which was approximately 4 m [13 feet] high, and she heeled 5 to port while the autopilot deviated 3 off course. At the time of the event, there was a low swell of 1.0 m from 320 and the sea was 0.5 m from 360 . The current was estimated to be 2.5 knots running to the west." (Talbot, A.P .; "Unusual Wave," Marine Observer, 69:10, 1999.) Comment. The wave could not have been a tsunami because it was travelling too slowly. Tsunamis travel at jet speed and are rarely visible on the deep ocean. Since the wave was solitary and four times the height of the gentle swells, it is unlikely that it was a chance combination of the swells. Most likely it was a surface manifestation of an internal wave that had been reflected from ...

... 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 The Consciousness Gene We humans assume that our consciousness is something more than just the sum total of all our senses, as integrated by our brains. In other words, consciousness is something "special" that makes us more than automatons. Other animals may be automatons, but not us! D. Jones speculates in Nature that if consciousness is a definite, inheritable characteristic, it must have had survival value for it to have evolved. It then follows that consciousness must be en-coded somewhere in our genes. Only a single gene may be enough, for consciousness seems to be an uncomplicated phenomenon. Why? Because just a few simple molecules, such as those found in anesthetics, can disable it completely without affecting other bodily functions. Eventually, Jones continues, the gene (or small number of genes) responsible for consciousness will be identified. Then, we can determine for certain if any of the lower animals are also conscious. We think chimps and dolphins might be, but we're not really sure until we see if they have the necessary genes. In fact, the old-time behaviorists could be right, and all the other animals really are merely automatons. That would definitely make us "special"! Once we have the consciousness genes in our labs, we can introduce them into those other species, such as Rover and Kitty, upon whom we would like to confer the boon of consciousness ...

... 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 Heart-Stoppers Galapagos marine iguana The marine iguanas of the Galapagos are remarkable in their unlizard-like ability to forage for vegetation and other tidbits underwater. These iguanas make good eating, and they are at risk along the rocky shores of the Galapagos. But the marine iguanas have special card to play when approached by sharks armed with their supersensitive hearing. The iguanas voluntarily stop their hearts from beating. Otherwise, sharks as far away as 3-4 meters can home in on their heartbeats. Amazingly, marine iguanas can survive up to 45 minutes without functioning hearts. This represents a remarkable evolutionary adaptation in the perpetual warfare between prey and predators. But, to the west across the Pacific, in Indonesia, another reptile, the fear-some Komodo dragon, can also voluntarily stop its heart. Komodo dragons have no sharks to fear. In fact, they are the top predators on the islands they inhabit, dining on deer and, rarely, a human or two. Was this a purposeful adaptation? If so, to what threat? (Knight. Jonathan; "King of Hearts," New Scientist, p. 51, November 20, 1999.) From Science Frontiers #128, MAR-APR 2000 . 1997 William R. Corliss Other Sites of Interest SIS . Catastrophism, archaeoastronomy, ancient history, mythology and astronomy. Lobster . The journal of intelligence and political conspiracy (CIA, FBI, JFK ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 106: Jul-Aug 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Facing Up To Divebombers When spring arrives Down Under, the black-backed magpies divebomb everything that moves in the vicinity of their nests. No one is spared: kids, cats, politicians, and even ornithologists are fair targets. But the solution is simple: "The National Parks and Wildlife Service reminds blitzkrieged Aussies that the birds are less likely to attack if they believe they are being watched. So the chic and the sensible don hats with sunglasses propped on top -- facing backwards, of course." (Anonymous; New Scientist, p. 84, February 24, 1996) Comment. The same solution has been adopted by Indians who work in tiger country. They wear human face masks on the backs of their heads. Tigers don't like to be watched either. From Science Frontiers #106, JUL-AUG 1996 . 1996-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... 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 Target: Southern Spain Early in January 2000, southern Spain was bombarded with at least 30 rather large blocks of ice, some weighing 4 kilos (about 9 pounds). Chemists at the University of Valencia found none of the microorganisms that would identify the ice chunks as falling off aircraft with leaky toilets. One frozen projectile hit an automobile, but the driver was not hurt; another glanced off the shoulder of an elderly woman living in Almeria. As to be expected, the Spanish news-papers played the phenomena for all they could. Also to be expected were a few fraudulent reports. It was all great fun, but scientific explanations for the bona fide hydrometeors are lacking. (Anonymous; "Fortean Ice," New Scientist, p. 5, January 29, 2000. We also referred to several items posted on the Web. Cr. E. Murphy and COUD-I .) Comment. It is extremely rare for ordinary meteorites to hit humans or their structures. Yet, in this icy Spanish fusillade involving only a small handful of ice chunks there were two humans Involved. Suspicious! From Science Frontiers #128, MAR-APR 2000 . 1997 William R. Corliss Other Sites of Interest SIS . Catastrophism, archaeoastronomy, ancient history, mythology and astronomy. Lobster . The journal of intelligence and political conspiracy (CIA, FBI, JFK, MI5, NSA, etc) Homeworking.com . Free ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 129: MAY-JUN 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Why we "Roll in the Aisles"Some of the research pursued by the Leiden Medical Center, Netherlands, was truly a laughing matter. G.J . Lammers and colleagues investigated the effects of laughing upon the H-reflex that affects the soleus muscles in our calves. A decrease in the H-reflex is usually accompanied by a marked weakness in these muscles. They first showed slides -- some funny, some not -- to volunteers at 2-second intervals. Sure enough, when the subjects laughed, their H-reflexes nearly disappeared. Trying to quantify the phenomenon: The researchers then repeated the experiment with several new volunteers, but in this case they tried to make the subjects laugh by telling them jokes. When individuals laughed at the jokes, their H-reflexes de-creased in amplitude by 89 percent---significantly more than when the jokes merely made them smile. (Anonymous; "Falling Down Laughing," BioScience, 49:940 Comment. Presumably the subjects were firmly seated during all the hilarity. If they had been standing when their calf muscles gave way, the lawsuits received by the Medical Center would not have been so funny! Who said science was no fun? From Science Frontiers #129, MAY-JUNE 2000 . 2000 William R. Corliss Other Sites of Interest SIS . Catastrophism, archaeoastronomy, ancient history, mythology and astronomy. Lobster . The journal of ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 86: Mar-Apr 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Precariously Balanced Rocks As Earthquake Detectors PBRs, such a this "rocking stone" near Peekskill, NY, signify a lack of recent quakes in the area Precariously balanced rocks (PBRs) are rather common where earthquakes have never occurred. In this sense, balanced rocks are measures of seismic stability. For example, says J. Brune, you won't find PBRs within 10 miles of spots where quakes have shaken the ground over the past few thousand years. To illustrate: "Rocks stacked in piles and balanced on their narrow ends on Yucca Mountain near the Nevada border with California, he said, have not moved in at least 10,000 years and perhaps as many as 100,000 years, judging from the depth of "rock varnish," or weathering, on their exposed surfaces." Looking for PBRs is not really as useless as it sounds, for they are indicators of stability to construction engineers planning nuclear waste disposal sites and similar projects requiring long-term seismic quiet. (Petit, Charles; "Seismologist Studies Precariously Balanced Rocks," San Francisco Chronicle, December 8, 1992. Cr. J. Covey) Comment. How do rocks become "precariously balanced" in the first place? Melting glaciers and snow packs are known to ease their cargos of rocky debris gently down into unstable configurations. From Science Frontiers #86, MAR-APR 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 85: Jan-Feb 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Biogeology It is accepted that every cubic centimeter of the topsoil beneath our feet seethes with thousands of microorganisms. It is less well known that life's domain extends down much further. The hard rocks and strata of earth's crust -- seemingly sterile and inert -- are continuously being transformed by bacteria and other life forms. In fact, it was easy to find three examples of such processes from the literature collected from the past two months. Although the discoveries reported below may seem dull to anomalists ued to more exciting fare, it may well be that life from "inner space" has been and will be more important to humankind than life from "outer space," as implied in third item! Bacteria and placer gold. "Lacelike networks of micrometresize filiform gold associated with Alaskan placer gold particles are interpreted as low-temperature pseudomorphs of a Pedomicrobium -like budding bacterium. Submicron reproductive structures (hyphae) and other morphological features similar to those of Pedomicrobium occur as three-dimensional facsimiles in highpurity gold in and on placer gold particles from Lillian Creek, Alaska." In short, bacteria help create placer gold deposits. The author believes that bacterioform gold is widespread. (Watterson, John R.; "Preliminary Evidence for the Involvement of Budding Bacteria in the Origin of Alaskan Placer Gold," Geology , 20:315, 1992.) Microorganisms and iron deposits. At least 500 million years ago ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 90: Nov-Dec 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A Tale Of Two Noses The vomeronasal and olfactory sensory systems. (L . Stansass, M. Reingold) First: An Anecdote. Some 30 years ago, D. Berliner, at the University of Utah, was studying human skin. To acquire raw material, he scraped skin cells from the insides of casts discarded by skiiers who had had broken bones. From this debris, Berliner extracted numerous chemical compounds. As far as anyone could tell, these substances were odorless, so he stored them in open flasks. However, Berliner noticed that when people were working in the lab with the flasks, they were more friendly and relaxed than normal. He could not divine the reason until some months later when he decided to cover the flasks of skin-derived substances. Curiously, the lab workers soon reverted to their usual grumpy selves! What could account for this strange behavior change? Knowing that animals often communicated with one another employing chemicals called pheromones, Berliner suspected that the flasks had been releasing odorless human pheromones. Sure enough, analysis of the skin-derived materials proved him correct. Next: A Look Up the Nose. Biologists have long realized that animal noses actually contain two sensory channels. The first is the familiar olfactory system, which humans also possess. The second channel is the vomeronasal system. In animals, each system has its own separate organs, nerves, and bumps in the brain. The function ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 90: Nov-Dec 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Missing: 500,000 tons of copper A grooved maul used by ancient miners of Michigan copper ore. (S . Braker) For some 1800 years, beginning abruptly about 3000 BC, some industrious peoples mined ore equivalent to 500,000 tons of copper from Michigan's Isle Royale and Keweenaw Peninsula. Who were these mysterious miners, and what happened to all all that copper? It certainly hasn't been found in the relics of North American Indians. And where was the ore smelted? About all the unidentified miners left behind are some of the crude tools they used to pound out chunks of ore from their pit mines (5000 pit mines on Isle Royale alone). Outside of some cairns and slabrock ruins, there is little to help pin down these miners. Mainstream archeologists attribute all these immense labors to a North American "Copper Culture" -- certainly not to copper-hungry visitors from foreign shores. Admittedly, many copper artifacts have been dug up from North American mounds, but only a tiny fraction of the metal the Michigan mines must have yielded. Curiously, North American Indian mounds have contained copper sheets made in the shape of an animal hide. Called "reels," their function, if any, is unknown. The reels do, however, resemble oddly shaped copper ingots common in European Bronze Age com merce. Their peculiar shape earned these ingots the name "oxhydes." They ...