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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 89: Sep-Oct 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Ganzfeld experiments: do they prove telepathy exists?[ Ganzfeld = total field] In Ganzfeld telepathy experiments, the receiver's eyes are covered with halves of ping-pong balls and his ears disappear under huge earphones that soothe his auditory sense with white noise. In his padded cubicle, deprived of most sensations, he drifts into a foggy blankness. After a quarter of an hour, the receiver begins to experience brilliant, dreamlike images -- even without the benefit of a telepathic 'sender.' C. Honorton (now deceased), the chief proponent of Ganzfeld experiments, believed that human telepathy, a very weak phenomenon at best, would be best detected during such sensory-deprivation experiments, in which extraneous sensory 'noise' was greatly reduced. In actual Ganzfeld tests, the receiver and sender are placed in separate insulated cubicles. The sender is shown still photos and/or film clips. He tries to send these images, or the sense of them, to the receiver telepathically. In the best Ganzfeld experiments, photo and film clips are selected automatically and everything possible is computerized. Because of the great care Honorton lavished on his experiments and his strong claims of positive results, we easily cannot ignore his work. In fact, Honorton designed his Ganzfeld experiments specifically to counter the critics of parapsychology, who are numerous and vocal. If telepathic transmissions really do exist, they just might be discerned when the ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 89: Sep-Oct 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Transcendental Messages In Transcendental Numbers Those complex crop circles supposedly conveying messages from extraterrestrial entities all seem to be hoaxes. We must, therefore, search out other sources of transcendental signals. Fortunately, a brand-new, unhoaxable communication channel has opened up. Forget standard numerology, the Number of the Beast (666), and all that. Instead, give the letter A the value 1, B = 2, C = 3, etc. Next, add to your scheme a breakthrough discovery of L. Sallows, let 0 = _, and interpret _ to be a space, so that we can make sentences out of words. Finally, discard our usual base of 10 and adopt as a base 27 -- the number of letters in our alphabet plus _, the space. In this system, B_C decodes as 2 x 272+ 0 x 271+ 3 x 270 , which equals 1461 in decimal. Now we have a way to convert numbers into words in a novel, though tedious, way, and vice versa. For example, CHAT+ TALK = WIND, which is not an unlikely word equation. Really fantastic word-number equalities can be found with the help of a computer. Who would have ever guessed that the following magic square of meaningful words could be constructed? DIM OWE TUG RAP RIG TAP DOT RAY THE TIP NAP DID PAP DUD SPY TOW The magic constant is ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 89: Sep-Oct 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Looping Lightning March 17, 1992. Delta Flight 1083 en route from Pittsburgh to Atlanta. At approximately 8:30 PM, this flight was thought to be flying safely high above thundercloud tops, which were situated at 20,000-22,000 feet. The pilot, W.F . Blanchard describes what he observed: "Then, from one of these clouds, a lightning bolt appeared that changed my mind instantly. This bolt came from the top of the buildup closest to our line of flight and formed an enormous loop in the sky. It started at the top of the cloud and went well above our altitude (to at least 40,00045,000 ft.) and then circled back down into the cloud. My impression is that it joined back into itself at the top of the cloud, but it may have returned to another of the peaks in the same cloud." (Grynkewich, N.E ., Jr.; "Lightning Loop," Weather, 47:493, 1992.) Comment. There have been numerous recent reports of upwardly directed "rocket" lightning, but none in which the lightning returned back to the same cloud. Grynkewich may have seen some bizarre form of intercloud lightning. Reference. Unusual and anomalous forms of lightning are cataloged in section GLL in our catalog: Lighting, Auroras . Details here . From Science Frontiers #89, SEP-OCT ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 89: Sep-Oct 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Homo erectus never existed!( Left) Homo erectus skull. (Right) Homo sapiens skull. Are these markedly different skulls representative of two different species or merely variants of the same species? The record of human evolution is littered with skeletons -- not only the legitimate bones of early hominids but also with discarded evolutionary charts and discredited taxons. A taxon is a welldefined biological classification, such as a phylum or species. We modern humans are given the label Homo sapiens. We are told with great assurance that we evolved from earlier hominids, such as Homo erectus and, perhaps, Homo nean derthalis. Homo erectus has long been a key feature of all those charts of human evolution decorating our textbooks. But this venerable taxon is getting fuzzier and fuzzier. "Reappraisal by Cornell University paleontologists of a 200,000-year-old skull from India's Narmada River suggests that the fossil was probably a Home sapiens -- not a Homo erectus -- and marks another spot of the globe where humans may have evolved. .. .. . "The reappraisal of Narmada Man preceded the recently announced discovery of two Middle Pleistocene fossils from Yunxian, China, that seem to share the traits of Homo erectus and Homo sapiens. Kennedy would like to bury the taxon Homo erectus altogether, "Those who would like to keep the taxon see a 200,000year-old Narmada Man as a last gasp for Homo ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 89: Sep-Oct 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Electric Fish Not Backward In Data Processing The incredible sophistication of the brain and nervous system of fish using active electric sensing is evident in the South American fish Eigenmannia . This fish (different from the knife fish above) emits electric pulses at frequencies betwen 250 and 600 per second for electrolocation and communication. M. Kawasaki, at the University of Virginia, has investigated what happens when two of these fish operating on similar frequencies meet. Ordinarily, the fish would jam each other's sensory apparatus and "blind" each other. To circumvent this Eigenmannia has evolved a "jamming avoidance response," in which they both shift their pulse frequencies away from each other. To accomplish this, the fish must be able to detect time disparities between the two sets of signals less than 1 microsecond long. Their individual electroreceptors are not capable of handling such small time differences. Kawasaki has concluded that the jamming avoidance response can come only from highly sophisticated signal processing in the fish's central nervous system. (Kawasaki, Masashi; "Temporal Hyperacuity in the Gymnotiform Electric Fish Eigenmannia ," American Zoologist , 33:86, 1993.) Comment. Echo-locating bats and dolphins also possess sophisticated data processing apparatus for analyzing the echos they receive back from their prey and surroundings. It will be interesting to discover if evolution has come up with similar organic "components" for handling acoustic and electric signals. Further, we know ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 89: Sep-Oct 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects In The Dark About Dark Matter During our last two-month collecting cycle, four "dark matter" items worth mentioning turned up. A wider search undoubtedly would have netted many more, because dark matter is worrying a lot of astronomers. Observations of visible matter, the only kind we can see directly, suggest that most of the universe is, in fact, composed of dark matter. This conclusion comes mainly from the belief that something unseen (dark matter) is tugging on visible matter, making it do things the laws of motion say it should not do. All visible bodies, therefore, seem to be careening about in a dense cloud of unseen, unknown masses. These might be dark, Jupiter-sized objects, black holes, and/or some exotic forms of matter. We must choose between the reality of dark matter or admit that something is awry with our laws of gravitation and motion when they are applied on a cosmological scale Now, let us examine those four darkmatter items from the recent literature: D. Lin, a University of California astronomer, has shown that the Large Magellanic Cloud that orbits around our own galaxy (the Milky Way) is being torn apart (" cannibalized") by the powerful gravitational pull of a dense cloud of dark matter surrounding the Milky Way. This dismemberment of the Large Magellanic Cloud cannot be explained by the gravitational forces exerted by the stars in our galaxy ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 89: Sep-Oct 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects An Age Paradox "Cosmologists say the universe may be 8 to 15 billion years old. Stellar astronomers disagree. They say the oldest stars are much older, perhaps 16 to 19 billion years old. Because the oldest stars can't be older than the universe in which they lie, this age paradox presents a thorny problem for astronomers." At least two solutions to the paradox are possible: (1 ) The cosmological distance scale used to determine the age of the universe is incorrect; and/or (2 ) Our theories about how stars work and evolve are in error. Something has to give. (Jayawardhana, Ray; "The Age Paradox," Astronomy, 21:39, June 1993.) Comment. Also pertinent here are H. Arp's collection of red-shift anomalies, which also call into question the cosmological distance scale; and those missing solar neutrinos, which cast doubt on our ideas about how stars work. H. Arp's redshift anomalies are cataloged in AQB and AWB in our catalog: Stars, Galaxies, Cosmos. To order, see: here . From Science Frontiers #89, SEP-OCT 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 89: Sep-Oct 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A ROBOT'S MYSTERIOUS DISCOVERY A cross-section of the Great Pyramid looking west. The King's Chamber is #1 on the diagram, the Queen's Chamber is #8 , the ventilation shafts are #6 . The arrow marks the location of the newly discovered "door" and possible chamber. (Adapted from: W. R.; Pyramid Odyssey , 1978 A German roboticist, R. Gantenbrink, was hired to clean out the debris clogging the 8-inch-square "ventilation" shafts in the King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid at Giza. Remotely controlling a robot resembling a miniature tank, Gantenbrink subsequently explored the cleared shafts. Finding nothing worth noting there, he requested permission to send the robot crawling up a similar shaft in the Queen's Chamber below. Early archeologists had already plumbed this shaft with long pipes and had concluded that it ended after about 9 feet. Gantenbrink's robot, using its camera eye, found that this shaft did not end where expected but instead veered upward at a 45 angle. Climbing the incline, the robot found that the texture of the limestone walls changed from the rough-hewn, locally quarried limestone to the highly polished tura limestone often found in the entryways of tomb chambers. "At the end of the polished section was what appears to be a door, made of the same tura limestone and with tongue-and- ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 89: Sep-Oct 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects California's maze stones Humans have been carving and drawing mazes and building labyrinths from prehistoric times. Primitive peoples laboriously carved cup-and-ring designs; newspapers today print puzzle mazes in the Sunday editions. There is something fascinating, even mystical, about mazes. They are "signs that snare men's minds." We will never know why the Indians of southern California lavished so much labor etching mazes on hard rock surfaces, D.F . McCarthy, a University of California archeologist, has been studying these California maze stones for over 20 years. He has found over 50 of them so far. Some are over 3,000 years old, he thinks. Most are carved on rocks and boulders. They are just like our modern Sunday-paper mazes, with rectangular passageways, some blind, but always with a devious route leading to the center. Could they symbolize human life, full of potentially wrong turns, but with a Way to enlightenment? (Hillinger, Charles; "Ancient Carvings of Indians Remain Enigma to Expert," Richmond News Leader , November 11, 1991. Cr. H.C . Nottebart.) From Science Frontiers #89, SEP-OCT 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 88: Jul-Aug 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Computers can have near-death experiences!When HAL, the treacherous computer of 2001: A Space Odyssey, was being slowly disconnected, it began singing "A Bicycle Built for Two." In other words, the cutting of the computer's interconnections did not result in gibberish, rather memories that were previously stored flashed through its data processors. Something similar seems to happen with nonfictional computers. When a type of computer program termed an "artificial neural network" is "killed" by cutting links between its units, it in effect approaches a state which "might" be something like biological "death." S.L . Thaler, a physicist at McDonnell Douglas, has been systematically chopping up artificial neural networks. He has found that when between 10% and 60% of the network connections have been severed, the program generates primarily nonsense. But, as the 90% (near-death!) level is approached, the network's outout is composed more and more of previously learned information, like HAL's learned song! Also, when untrained artificial neural networks were slowly killed, they responded only with nonsense. (Yam, Philip; "' Daisy, Daisy'," Scientific American, 268:32, May 1993.) From Science Frontiers #88, JUL-AUG 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 88: Jul-Aug 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Effect Of Noncontact Therapeutic Touch On Healing Rate "The effect of Noncontact Therapeutic Touch (NCTT) on the rate of surgical healing was examined in a doubleblind study. Full-thickness dermal wounds were incised on the lateral deltoid region, using a skin punch biopsy instrument, on healthy subjects randomly assigned to treatment or control groups. Subjects were blinded both to group assignment and to the true nature of the active treatment modality in order to control placebo and expectation effects. Incisions were dressed with gaspermeable dressings, and wound surface areas were measured on Days, 0, 8, and 16 using a direct tracing method and digitization system. Active and control treatments were comprised of daily sessions of five minutes of exposure to a hidden Therapeutic Touch practitioner or to sham exposure. "Results showed that treated subjects experienced a significant acceleration in the rate of wound healing as compared to non-treated subjects at day 8." (Wirth, Daniel P.; "The Effect of Noncontact Therapeutic Touch on the Healing Rate of Full Thickness Dermal Wounds," Subtle Energies , 1:1 , 1990. Quoted abstract text above taken from Exceptional Human Experience , 10:248, 1993.) From Science Frontiers #88, JUL-AUG 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 88: Jul-Aug 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Mystery Signals Beam From Space A report from the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society. Over the past fourteen months, a radio telescope in Puerto Rico has analyzed over 30 billion signals, as it kept its 1,000-foot metallic ear cocked for messages wafting in from out space. Of this large number, only 164 signals cannot be explained either in terms of natural phenomena or human causes. Since some of these 164 signal sources are fixed in the same locations in the sky, they just might mean that "something" is trying to get our attention, or the attention of "something else" more intelligent than ourselves! (Anonymous; "Mystery Signals Beam from Space," Baltimore Sun, p. 2A, June 9, 1993.) From Science Frontiers #88, JUL-AUG 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 88: Jul-Aug 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects "ALREADY, NOW, WE ARE FORGOTTEN ON THOSE STELLAR SHORES" *Humans have many ways to predict the future: animal entrails, Tarot cards, and the Copernican Principle. The Copernican Principle, in particular, leads to all sorts of profound prophecies. The Copernican Primciple states that the earth does not occupy a special place in the cosmos. To this we add Darwinism, which asserts that, in the realm of biology, human origin is not special either; i.e ., we enjoy no special place among life forms. Building upon these two general "beliefs," J.R . Gott, III, proceeds to estimate the longevities of various observables, such as the lifetime of a particular species. What follows is a long, highly technical computation of various probabilities, such as the evolution of intelligent life in the universe. All this (and there is a lot of it) leads to the following: "Making only the assumption that you are a random intelligent observer, limits for the total longevity of our species of 0.2 million to 8 million years can be derived at the 95% confidence level. Further consideration indicates that we are unlikely to colonize the Galaxy, and that we are likely to have a higher population than the median for intelligent species." Why won't we colonize the Galaxy? Not because we are not able to, Gott says, but because " ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 88: Jul-Aug 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Bruised Apples A serious problem has cropped up in supermarkets, where fresh, ripe apples are piled up high in beckoning pyramids. Surely, as the heights of the pyramids increase, the bottom-most apples will be crushed, particularly those in the center under the apexes. Common sense tells us that crushing forces will be greatest at Position #4 in the illustration. But grocers need not be concerned about Apple #4 . Two Czech researchers, J. Schmid and J. Novosad, using pressure sensors, found that in a horizontal plane through a stacked pyramid the maximum pressure actually occurs in a ring of objects (apples) some distance from the pyramid's vertical axis. How come? (Watson, A.; "The Perplexing Puzzle Posed by a Pile of Apples," New Scientist, p. 19, December 14, 1991.) A theoretical analysis of the problem by J. Grindlay doesn't help much. He analyzed a two-dimensional pile of disks, as shown, and calculated that maximum bruising forces should occur at the outermost disks instead of at the center, (Grindlay, J.; "Bruised Apples," American Journal of Physics, 61:469, 1993.) Comment. Thus, common-sense expectations, experimental measurements, and theoretical calculations lead to three different results. Much more work needs to be done here. From Science Frontiers #88, JUL ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 88: Jul-Aug 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Another Elliptical Halo Measurements of an elliptical lunar halo obvsered in the Indian Ocean. June 6, 1992. Aboard the m.v . British Skill in the Indian Ocean. "Between 1300 and 1345 UTC, a complete halo phenomenon was observed round the moon, as shown in the sketch. The ring was complete although its appearance was elliptical. Its horizontal diameter was 40 with its vertical diameter being 53 . "The illuminated part of the moon was not in the centre of the halo, its altitude at the lower limb (phase, new waxing) being 38 54'. The altitude of the upper part of the halo was 59 whereas the lower edge was at 6 ." (Anderson, P.R .; "Elliptical Halo," Marine Observer, 63:65, 1993.) Comment. Once again we have another observation called "impossible" by geophysicists. Halos, they say, must be symmetrical about the sun or moon. Yet, photos and precise measurements, like those above, demonstrate the reality of the phenomenon. From Science Frontiers #88, JUL-AUG 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 88: Jul-Aug 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Seashore Seiches At many spots around the world, sealevel rises and falls with periods of only a few minutes -- much shorter than the common semidiurnal tides and much longer than wind-generated waves. These oscillations of the water surface are termed "seiches." Two fundamentally different kinds of seiches have been noted in the recent literature. The first variety is transitory and can be set into motion by weather disturbances and earthquakes. The second is permanent and a bit more mysterious. Let's take transitory seiches first September 17, 1992. Anglesey, England. At about 0700 in the morning: "I was on the beach at Trearddur on western Anglesey, when an acquaintance drove down the beach towing a fishing boat. He launched the boat in about six inches of water and we then engaged in conversation for a couple of minutes. Turning to the boat, we were amazed to find that it was high and dry about 20 metres from the water's edge. Small flatfish, mainly immature brill, could be seen stranded and flapping in the wet sand. About a minute later, the sea started to return and quickly rose up the beach beyond where the boat had originally been launched. An hour later, the oscillation in sea level was still taking place. I determined that the period was just over three minutes and the amplitude just under one metre, the latter measured with reference to a half-submerged ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 88: Jul-Aug 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Antipodal Hotspot Pairs Hotspots are isolated areas of the earth's crust where there is an unusually large amount of basaltic volcano activity. At present, over 120 hotspots are recognized by geophysicists -- and they are not distributed randomly about the globe. In fact, many seem to be diametrically opposite one another, as described by M.R . Rampino: "The observed number of antipodal hotspot pairs depends on the maximum allowable deviation from exact antipodality, At a maximum deviation of 700 km, 26% to 37% of hotspots form antipodal pairs in the published lists examined here, significantly more than would be expected from the general hotspot distribution. Two possible mechanisms that might create such a distribution include: (1 ) symmetry in the generation of mantle plumes; and (2 ) melting related to antipodal focusing of seismic energy from large-body impacts." (Rampino, Michael R.; "Antipodal Hotspot Pairs on the Earth," Geophysical Research Letters, 19:2011, 1992.) Similar Phenomenon. On the moon, the magcons (magnetic concentrations) seem to be located diametrically opposite large lunar impact basins. See ALZ3 in The Moon and the Planets. This catalog volume is described here . From Science Frontiers #88, JUL-AUG 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 88: Jul-Aug 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Early Life Surprisingly Diverse The three life forms sketched below are tiny microorganisms, not the worms they appear to be. They are thought to be bacteria, for they closely resemble modern cyanobacteria. What is most important about these fossilized micro-organisms is that they were found in the Apex chert of Western Australia. The Apex chert is designated Early Archean and assigned an age of 3.465 billion years [Four significant figures!]. It is rare to find any fossils at all in rocks this old, but apparently the Apex chert escaped most of the fossil-destroying metamorphism afflicting most Precambrian formations. Even more remarkable is the diversity of these suspected bacteria. J.W . Schopf reports finding no less than eleven different kinds so far--and our planet was only a few hundred million years old at the time the Apex chert was formed. Schopf's discoveries generate at least three questions: How could life have originated and diversified to such an extent in just a few hundred millions years? Why after such rapid diversification did these microorganisms remain essentially unchanged for the next 3.465 billion years? Such stasis, common in biology, is puzzling. If these microorganisms are really cyanobacteria, they would have released oxygen to the atmosphere. Is the standard assumption that the earth's atmosphere lacked oxygen until 2.2 billion years ago correct? (Schopf, J. William; "Microfossils of the Early ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 88: Jul-Aug 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Whale falls: stepping stones across the ocean abysses Unique biological communities flourish at widely separated "oases" on the deepsea floors, where hydrothermal vents supply the energy and chemicals necessary for life. Here are found free-living bacteria, tube worms, molluscs, and several other species that prosper without the benefit of photosynthesis. These chemosynthetic, thermal-vent communities are separated by thousands of kilometers of sea-floor "desert." Yet, the species involved are similar worldwide and must, at some time, have crossed these wide, forbidding expanses. One possible mechanism for this mysterious dispersion came in 1987, when the research submersible Alvin chanced upon the remains of a 21-meter whale at a depth of 1,240 meters off California's coast. The whale's skeleton was covered with bacterial mats like those at the hydrothermal vents. Also sustained by the carcass were mussels, snails, and worms; all in all, a community much like those at the vents. Furthermore, many of the species partaking of the whale's energy and chemical resources are not normally found in that part of the Pacific. Subsequently, more "whale falls" with attached biological communities were found elsewhere. Calculations suggest that whale falls are more common that one might suppose -- perhaps occurring with average spacings of only 25 kilometers. They could very well be the stepping stones that allow hydrothermal vent communities to disperse across the ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 88: Jul-Aug 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Ship falls: supplements to whale falls?" Strange tube worms up to six feet long have been discovered off the Spanish coast, dining on the hydrogen sulphide from rotting beans [beams?] in the hold of a ship that sank 13 years ago. Lacking mouth, gut and anus, they rely on bacteria to process the nutrients in minerals and dissolved in sea water. They had been found previously in the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico. It was thought they liked to live in huge colonies around cracks in the ocean floor where hot, mineral-rich lava pours out and areas where oil and gas leak from the seabed." (Anonymous; "Gas Guzzlers," Fortean Times, p. 19, no. 68, 1993. Via Daily Telegraph , June 22, 1992.) From Science Frontiers #88, JUL-AUG 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 88: Jul-Aug 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects There never was a "crater"!Humans favor tales with beginnings and endings, perhaps because we are mortal ourselves. The universe must, we suspect, have been created either naturally or supernaturally, and it will end either according to the Laws of Thermodynamics or by fiat on Judgment Day! Some scientists, though, see other possibilities. In 1948, F. Hoyle, H. Bondi, and T. Gold proposed that the universe had no beginning and was, therefore, infinitely old. Originally, they hypothesized that, as the universe expanded, new matter was continuously created, and thus the density of matter stayed about constant in time. This Steady State Universe was kicked around for a while but ultimately consigned to the cosmological wastebasket. Now, the idea is being revived as the prevailing Big Bang Universe runs into problems, which have been documented perhaps too thoroughly in past issues of SF. The revised steady state model has jettisoned the idea of continuous creation in favor of many discrete "creation events," which will doubtless be called "little bangs." They also fill space with small metallic needles which absorb microwaves and reemit the uniform microwave background. The new theory needs more work, but Hoyle and his colleagues write in the June 20 issue of the Astrophysical Journal: "This paper is not intended to give a finished view of cosmology. It is intended rather to open the door to a new view ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 88: Jul-Aug 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Where's the big bang's "crater"?This question was posed in a recent issue of New Scientist: "Where the big bang happened, there must by now be an enormous hole. Where is it?" (Barber, M.G .; "Images in Time," New Scientist, p. 49, May 8, 1993.) Comment. A silly question? Well, it is ar any rate a nice introduction to our next item. From Science Frontiers #88, JUL-AUG 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 88: Jul-Aug 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Voyages Of The Imagination We would be remiss if we did not record here an article by F.J . Frost, a professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Frost proceeds to shoot down all claims, save one, of Precolumbian contacts with the New World. He accepts only the Viking signs found at L'Anse aux Meadows in northern Newfoundland, dating back to about 1000 AD. Everything else: Roman amphorae in Brazil, Japanese pottery in Ecuador, Egyptian architecture in Mesoamerica, Celtic inscriptions in New England, etc.; is the product of hoaxes, misinterpretations, and sloppy archeology. Frost has no patience with the (mainly) amateur archeologists; he is not impressed by all the mountains of evidence they have collected. (Frost, Frank J.; "Voyages of the Imagination," Archaeology, 46:46, March/April 1993.) Comment. Frost's stonewalling reminds one of other negative pronouncements, such as: "Stones cannot fall from the sky"; and "Continents cannot drift." From Science Frontiers #88, JUL-AUG 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 88: Jul-Aug 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Egyptians in acadia?The Micmac are an Algonquian tribe living in that part of eastern Canada called Acadia. In contrast to most tribes of North American Indians, the Micmac possess their own written language. This language was supposedly invented and taught to them by Pierre Maillard, a French priest who lived among the Micmac in the Eighteenth Century. The strange part about the Micmac writing is that its signs are often very similar to Egyptian hieroglyphs having the same meanings. B. Fell made this association in his book America B.C . He noted further that the priest Maillard actually had died 61 years before Champollion first published his decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics. It is unreasonable, therefore, to believe that Maillard could have invented Micmac writing with its Egyptian affinities. Either the affinities are the product of chance or Precolumbian contacts occurred between the Micmac and Egyptian voyagers. In the latest volume of Epigraphic Society papers, Fell discusses many additional similarities between Micmac and Egyptian hieroglyphics. We have room here for only a few of the simpler comparisons. Refer to the article for a great many more -- so many more that the "chance" theory seems most unlikely. (Fell, Barry; "The Micmac Manuscripts," Epigraphic Society Occasional Papers , 21:295, 1992.) Reference. Anomalous epigraphic is treated in our handbook: Ancient Man. To order, visit: here . From Science Frontiers #88, JUL-AUG ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 87: May-Jun 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Calculating prodigies, gnats, and smart weapons In a thought-provoking letter to New Scientist, J. Margolis commences with the observation that calculating prodigies (idiot savants), who are often also mentally retarded, can easily and almost instantaneously recognize 20-digit prime numbers! Gifted mathematicians with so-called photographic memories cannot perform such mental feats using known methods for identifying primes. What do the calculating prodigies know that the rest of us do not? Better algorithms; that is, calculating methods? Margolis expands on this: "All this suggests some relatively simple, subconscious algorithms which have not, as yet, been explicitly formulated. Research in this direction might well result in new mathematical insights. "It need not be surprising that mathematical insight is more fundamental than language. Even a primitive animal brain is 'wired" to perform exceedingly complex computations essential for survival in an unpredictable environment. The latest 'smart' weapons are rudimentary compared with a humble gnat. Mathematics could be a by-product of these functions. Language is a comparatively recent evolutionary innovation and it is quite possible that conscious manipulation of abstract symbols has not caught up with an innate ability to perceive quantitative relationships." (Margolis, Joel; "What Gnats Know," New Scientist, p. 58, January 30, 1993.) From Science Frontiers #87, MAY-JUN 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 87: May-Jun 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The bottle-green icebergs of antarctica Antarctic icebergs frequently incorporate sediments that turn them dark, even zebra-striped on occasion. But it is the bottle-green icebergs that provoke the most interest, for it is not certain why they are green. Is it due to intrinsic optical properties of the ice or impurities? A recent paper by J. Kipfstuhl et al suggests the latter and tells us where these translucent, strikingly green bergs originate. "A comparison of samples from a translucent green iceberg with a core from the Ronne Ice Shelf revealed an excellent agreement in isotopic composition, crystal structure, and incorporated sediment particles. Marine shelf ice which constitutes the basal portion of some ice shelves is considered to be the source of green icebergs. It [the green ice] most likely results from 'ice pump' processes which produce large amounts of ice platelets in the water column beneath ice shelves. These subsequently accumulate and become compacted into bubble-free, desalinated ice." The inclusions in the green ice are probably trapped by the accumulating platelets. Since the green ice is confined to the bottoms of the bergs, it becomes apparent only after the bergs capsize. The green icebergs in the Weddle Sea originate mainly from the Amery Ice Shelf. (Kipfstuhl, J. et al; "The Origin of Green Icebergs in Antarctica," Journal of Geophysical Research, 97:20,319, 1992.) Similar phenomenon ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 87: May-Jun 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The vent glow and "blind" shrimp In 1988, when the research submersible Alvin was exploring those remarkable hydrothermal vents or "black smokers." Its CCD (Charge-Coupled Device) camera detected a ghostly glow emanating from the vents. Since this mineral-laden water gushing from these cracks in the deep-sea floor exits at 350 -400 C, the simplest explanation of the vent glow is that is is simply thermal radiation from the hot fluid. Indeed, color filters on the camera recorded a spectrum close to that of a 350 C plume. But the deep-sea shrimp camped around the vents have raised second thoughts. The shrimp, only a few inches long, live in the perpetual darkness of the miles-deep vents. They do not need and do not have ordinary eyes. Rather, they sport a mysterious organ on their backs that is connected to their brains by a nerve-fiber bundle much like an optic nerve. This organ is packed with the same light-sensitive pigments found in the eyes of surface creatures. Despite its unusual location on the shrimp, it is an "eye" of sorts. But of what use is it in the Stygian abysses? To find, perhaps, vent glows that betray the presence of chemosynthetic food sources. If this is so, the shrimps' optical organ, which is most sensitive in the blue-green portion of the spectrum, is ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 87: May-Jun 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Whence the earth's pulse?Geological history records a restless planet subject to a succession of chemical and physical upheavals. Have these great paroxysms been random in time? M.R . Rampino and K. Caldeira do not think so: Number of geological events during geologic time "Published data sets of major geologic events of the past 250 Myr (extinction events, sea-level lows, continental flood-basalt eruptions, mountain-building events, abrupt changes in sea-floor spreading, ocean-anoxic and blackshale events and the largest evaporite deposits) have been synthesized (with estimated errors). These events show evidence for a statistically significant periodic component with an underlying periodicity, formally equal to 26.6 Myr, and a recent maximum, close to the present time. The cycle may not be strictly periodic, but a periodicity of 30 Myr is robust to probable errors in dating of the geologic events." The obvious question is: What could cause a 30-million-year periodicity? Internally, the earth's innards might be periodic, possibly in terms of plume eruption, mineral phase changes, core convection, etc. Externally, comets and asteroids are cyclic. Rampino and Caldeira point out that the solar system crosses the heavily populated plane of the Galaxy every 30 million years. (Rampino, Michael R., and Caldeira, Ken; "Major Episodes of Geologic Change: Correlations, Time ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 87: May-Jun 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Animals Attack Human Technological Infrastructure We are accustomed to termites feasting on our homes' timbers and mice gnawing in the walls, but in recent years many species have developed a taste for more sophisticated fare: Pine martens are chewing through the electical wiring of Swiss cars. Mammal repellents popular there. British dormice seem to enjoy the electrical fittings of Rolls Royces. The keas (mountain parrots) of New Zealand have an innate urge to strip out the rubber gaskets around car windows. Land crabs on Tahiti bite through the electrical cables of film crews. Rarely are they electrocuted. New Zealanders have to put metal collars on telephone poles to prevent bushy tailed possums from getting at the cables. Squirrels, rabbits, langurs, and others species are also on the attack in all countries. (Ager, Derek; "Unwary Animals and Vicious Volts," New Scientist, p. 47, January 9, 1993.) Comment. We mustn't forget that sperm whale that got tangled up in an undersea cable over a mile down! From Science Frontiers #87, MAY-JUN 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 87: May-Jun 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Uniqueness Of Human Adolescence What major biological characteristics separate humans from other animals? The usual list begins with our large brain and bipedality, but these features are shared with dolphins and birds, respectively. Even our peculiar reproductive biology (permanent breasts, continuous sexual receptivity of both sexes, etc.) no longer seem so unique, particularly after reading about the antics of the bonobos (pygmy chimps)! But wait! No other animal, even the other primates, go through adolescence. That time period between puberty and the attainment of adult stature turns out to be something uniquely human. The great puzzle of adolescence, according to B. Bogin, is its evolutionary origin. What possible advantage does adolescence confer on humans in the battle for survival? To the contrary, skipping the teens would appear to be an advantage in the survivability of parents! One guess is that adolescence -- all 8 or so years of it -- is required for the development of the complex social skills needed by adults. (Bogin, Barry; "Why Must I Be a Teenager at All?" New Scientist, p. 34, March 6, 1993.) From Science Frontiers #87, MAY-JUN 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 87: May-Jun 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Fossil Feathers Fly A. Feduccia's cartoon of the bug-catching phase of bird evolution Our alliterative title is apt on two counts: (1 ) Recent research on the famous Archaeopteryx fossils suggest that this animal could indeed fly and was arboreal rather than terrestrial; and (2 ) The paleontologists and ornithologists are still fighting (sometimes emotionally) over how Archaeopteryx fossils should be interpreted. The scientific acrimony centers on whether this ancient bird really evolved from small theropod dinosaurs. Prevailing theory has it that these dinosaurs first evolved feathers to keep warm and then used their feathered "arms" to help capture insects, and so on, with some aimless flapping, to the attainment of true flight. A rival, officially frownedupon theory has it that birds evolved from tree-dwelling reptiles that evolved feathers to break their falls while jumping from branch to branch! [Somehow, neither theory strikes a realistic chord. Why couldn't feathers have evolved solely for the purpose of flight? Answer: because evolutionists cannot countenance purpose in nature. WRC] One reconstruction of Archaeopteryx. There is a remarkable superficial resemblance to the living South American hoatzin. Young hoatzin even sport claws on their wings. Anyway, the latest fusillade in the Archaeopteryx wars was fired by A. Feduccia in Science. Feduccia demonstrated that the claws of Archaeopteryx are sharp and curved like those of modern arboreal birds and quite unlike either terrestrial birds or theropod dinosaurs. In ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 87: May-Jun 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Is caddy a mammal?" Caddy" is short for Cadborosaurus , the speculative sea animal seen rather frequently off the British Columbia coast and as far south as Oregon. Professor P. LeBlond, University of British Columbia, recently presented a paper on Caddy at a joint meeting of the Canadian and American Societies of Zoology. Of all the supposed sea serpents, Caddy seems closest to respectability. Not only are there many sightings on record, but the remains of a 3-meterlong carcass of an apparent juvenile specimen of Caddy was discovered in the stomach of a sperm whale. Adult Caddys are about 7 meters long. "The descriptions [of Caddy] are generally similar. They suggest a long-necked beast with short pointed front flippers, a horse-like head, distinct eyes, a visible mouth and either ears or giraffe-like horns. Often Caddy is described as having hair like a seal, and sometimes a mane along its neck." Most interesting is Caddy's body hair, which implies a mammal rather than a reptile. But if it is a mammal, how does it get air, since it surfaces so rarely? Some have suggested that the giraffe-like horns are snorkels! But E. Bousfield, a colleague of LeBlond, thinks that the tubercules reported along the animal's back might be gill-like tissues that would allow a mammal to extract oxygen from seawater! With so ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 87: May-Jun 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Cosmic Soot And Organic Asteroids Just as we were getting used to carbonaceous chondrites and tarry comets, we have been hit with cosmic soot and organic asteroids. Truly, it seems as if the universe is one vast factory of complex chemicals. This is not a trivial observation, for it betrays a synthesizing, efflorescent cosmos rather than a universe slowly succumbing to the deepfreezing Second Law of Thermodynamics. Any of these soots and tars wafting down upon the surface of a suitable planet might initiate or accelerate life processes. Cosmic soot. A 70-year-old astronomical enigma is the origin of the DIBs (Diffuse Interstellar absorption Bands). These dark absorption bands in stellar spectra have never been correlated with known chemical compounds. Now, L. Allamandola and F. Salama (NASA-Ames) find that the DIBs may be due to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons! A more digestible descriptor would be "soot," like that found in automobile exhaust and on your barbecued steak. (Weiss, Peter; "Cosmic Soot Fills Space between the Stars," New Scientist, p. 15, March 13, 1993.) Organic asteroids. Some asteroids are abnormally red. Newly discovered asteroid 5145 Pholus is 3 times brighter at near-infrared wavelengths than it is in the visible portion of the spectrum. The best explanation so far for this redness is that 5145 Pholus is veneered with organic compounds called "tholins." Tholins are synthesized ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 87: May-Jun 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The american discovery of europe!Wow, that's an inflammatory title, and we must be very wary here. Who could be promoting such an idea? The perpetrator is J. Forbes, a professor of Native American Studies at the University of California-Davis. The title above is, in fact, the title of Forbes' forthcoming book. Forbes recently gave a talk on his thesis in Berkeley, and the evidence below is based on a newspaper account of his talk. The account began with: "It is a common perception, and one which is taught in most history classes, that the Europeans 'discovered' America. Some scholars, however, postulate that it may be quite the opposite: Native Americans went across the Atlantic and 'found' their European counterparts first." Now for the claimed evidence: Carribean people were the Polynesians of the Americas. Excellent mariners, they built sophisticated sailing vessels 80-feet long, carrying up to 80 people. With the favorable winds and currents, they had the capabilities of reaching Europe. There are tales of "redmen" arriving on the west coast of Portugal during the Middle Ages. Columbus himself, during a visit to Ireland, noted the presence of people resembling North Americans. Columbus also made notes on Indians in canoes wrecked off the coast of Germany in 1410. Inuits (Eskimos) are said to have landed in the Orkneys, off Scotland ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 87: May-Jun 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The 50,000-year-old americans of pedra furada French archeologists (not American) have established to the satisfaction of most European archeologists (not American) that humans were present in Brazil at least 50,000 years ago. F. Parenti, with N. Guidon, presented their data at a recent Paris meeting. The main site studied was the sandstone rock shelter of Pedra Furada, which is one of several hundred painted rock shelters discovered in northeastern Brazil. Guidon began her work in 1978; Parenti, in 1984. The fourvolume, 7-kilogram report (actually Parenti's doctoral thesis) concentrates on three lines of evidence: A coherent series of 54 radiocarbon dates ranging from 5,000 to 50,000 years. Crudely flaked stones, some 6,000 of which are deemed of human manufacture, even when the most stringent criteria are applied. Many of these came from Pleistocene strata 50,000 years old or older. Some 50 Pleistocene "structures" consisting of artificial arrangements of stones, some burned, some accompanied by charcoal. These are likely ancient hearths. (Bahn, Paul G.; "50,000-Year-Old Americans of Pedra Furada," Nature, 362:114, 1993.) Comment. With the Brazil and Chile (Monte Verde) sites looking more and more convincing, it is reasonable to ask why even older sites have not been found in ...
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... 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 Hypnosis And Basketball Hypnosis has often been applied to imroving various aspects of human performance -- both intellectual and physical -- with debatable success. Basketball may now be added to this file, according to a recent paper by E.H . Schreiber: "Throughout one basketball season 12 male and 12 female basketball players were interviewed prior to individual and group sessions with hypnosis. The athlete's shooting scores were compared with those of the previous basketball season. The hypnosis groups showed higher cumulative scores for shooting than players in the control group." (Schreiber, Elliott H.; "Using Hypnosis to Improve Performance of College Basketball Players," Perceptual and Motor Skills , 72:536, 1991.) From Science Frontiers #86, MAR-APR 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... 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 All roads lead to 123 "Start with any number that is a string of digits -- , say, 9 288 759 -- and count the number of even digits, the number of odd digits, and the total number of digits it contains. These are 3 (three evens), 4 (four odds), and 7 (seven is the total number of digits), respectively. Use these digits to form the next string or number, 347. If you repeat the process with 347, you get 1, 2, 3. If you repeat with 123, you get 123 again. The number 123, with respect to this process and universe of numbers, is a mathematical black hole." We have a black hole because we cannot escape, just as spaceships are doomed when captured by a physical black hole! You end up with 123 regardless of the number you start with. Other sorts of mathematical black holes exist, such as the Collatz Conjecture, but we must not fall into them because our printer awaits. (Ecker, Michael; "Caution: Black Holes at Work," New Scientist, p. 38, December 19/26, 1992.) From Science Frontiers #86, MAR-APR 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... 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 Hypnosis And Skin Temperature The mind can affect the body in many ways. One of the most bizarre is the use of hypnosis to raise skin temperature on selected parts of the body. A recently published example of this phenomenon was observed by P. Hajek et al, at the Institute of Physiology in Prague: "Eight patients with atopic eczema and six healthy subjects were given hypnotic suggestion to feel pain in the upper part of the back and in one case on the palm. An average local increase in skin temperature of 0.6 C (detected by thermovision) occurred under this condition. For some patients, cutaneous pain threshold was increased before the experiment by means of repetitive hypnotic suggestion of analgesia. These subjects reported feeling no pain subjectively, but the local change in skin temperature was equal in both cases. The results suggest a central mechanism induced by measuring changes in pain threshold in the skin, which changes are independent of local changes in blood flow." (Hajek, P., et al; "Increase in Cutaneous Temperature Induced by Hypnotic Suggestion of Pain," Perceptual and Motor Skills, 74:737, 1992.) From Science Frontiers #86, MAR-APR 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... 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 Cloud Plumes Natural But Still A Bit Anomalous During the mid-1980s, satellites photographed strange cloud plumes that stretched hundreds of kilometers downwind of some nothern islands, especially Bennett Island, in the Soviet Arctic. Some wondered if perhaps the Soviets were conducting tests of some new type of weapon in these remote locations. With the end of the Cold War, flights of instrumented aircraft over the islands were permitted. Data from these flights support the idea that the mystery cloud plumes are formed by air currents passing over the islands. In other words, they are only orographic or mountaincaused clouds, like those sometimes seen over the Rockies. But puzzles persist: Why are the plumes so long? Why do they form at such high altitudes -- more than 3 kilometers above the tops of the relatively small mountains on the islands? (Monastersky, R.; "Mountains Give Rise to Perplexing Plumes," Science News, 141:422, 1992. Also: Fett, Robert W.; "Major Cloud Plumes in the Arctic and Their Relation to Fronts and Ice Movements," Monthly Weather Review , 120: 925, 1992.) From Science Frontiers #86, MAR-APR 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... 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 The milky sea a.k .a . "white water"June 1854. South of Java. Aboard the American clipper Shooting Star . Captain Kingman reporting: "The whole appearance of the ocean was like a plain covered with snow. There was scarce a cloud in the heavens, yet the sky...appeared as black as if a storm was raging. The scene was one of awful grandeur; the sea having turned to phosphorus, and the heavens being hung in blackness, and the stars going out, seemed to indicate that all nature was preparing for that last grand conflagration which we are taught to believe is to annihilate this material world." We selected this account of the milky sea phenomenon because of its vivid verbiage -- something absent from the modern reports: "August 13, 1986. Northwest Indian Ocean. The entire sea surface took on an intense white glow which was not unlike viewing the negative of a photograph." The milky sea is a rather common phenomenon. In fact, the British Meteorological Office has established a Bioluminescence Database, which presently contains 235 reports of milky seas seen since 1915. P.J . Herring and M. Watson have employed this Database in a review paper on these impressive displays. Geographical plotting of the reports shows a strong concentration in the northwest Indian Ocean (see figure). Seasonally, there is a strong peaking in August and a secondary blip in ...
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... 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 A Curious Sighting September 29, 1991. Winchester, Eng land. A wet day, but the rain had stopped and the wind velocity dropped. The 'subject' is a B. Brumpton. His actual words are in single quotes, as told to B. Hayes: "A high easterly breeze was blowing along New Road which runs eastwest and is about 400 yards long. The subject was 30 yards from the western end facing east. He first noticed the 'object' at approximately 150 yards, at which his reaction was that he was 'seeing things'. The object 'filled the highway', so this suggests a width of eight metres or so. It was 'on the ground' and 'round-topped', suggesting to me a hemisphere. The 'object' was a 'mass of mist' and 'looked very wet'. It seemed to 'roll' toward the subject at a speed that he estimated at 30 m.p .h . However, his estimate of halfa-minute for travelling 150 yards gives a speed of 20 m.p .h . Let us not forget that time is difficult to estimate after an event. "The object emitted a noise 'like very heavy rain pounding on the road', except that it was not raining at the time, and the subject became concerned about 'getting soaked'. Also, the 'mist' ...
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... 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 Rethinking Aids The columns of SF have frequently publicized the heresy of P. Duesberg, who holds that the so-called AIDS virus, HIV, is not the sole cause of AIDS. Echoing many of Duesberg's assertions is biochemist and immunologist R.S . Root-Bernstein. He points out that: "People all over the world are getting AIDS without being exposed to or infected with HIV." Root-Bernstein continues with: "The implications of this revelation are truly astounding. Essentially there are only three possibilities. The HIV may really be there, but everyone has missed it. This is un-likely, since many of the researchers reporting HIV-negative cases of AIDS are the top HIV experts in the world. Another possibility is that there is a new virus that everyone has missed. This is again unlikely given the huge amount of retroviral research that has been performed in the past decade on AIDS patients. Finally, these may be the cases that demonstrate that AIDS can be produced by the types of synergistic, multifactorial assaults on the immune system that Joseph Sonnabend and I have been proposing for years." Although most AIDS researchers are still wedded to the theory that HIV is the sole and only cause of AIDS, cracks in the stonewalling are beginning to appear. In fact, C.A . Thomas, Jr., formerly a Professor of Biochemistry at Harvard, has organized the Group ...
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... 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 Once more science fiction predicts the future!In SF#85, the paper by M. Lampl et al demonstrated how children actually grow in sharp spurts, contrary to scientific expectations. It seems that H.G . Wells foresaw this discovery in his novel The Food of the Gods , published first in 1904. Wells had his Professor Redwood working with a measuring tape, too: (Wells, H.G .; Seven Famous Novels , Knopf, New York, 1934. Cr. A. Mebane) From Science Frontiers #86, MAR-APR 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... 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 Must we die? the medfly's answer In the early 1800s, B. Gompertz, an actuary, crafted an empirical law stating that mortality rates increase exponentially with age. Later analyses of census records indicated that the situation was not quite as bad as Gompertz had supposed. Nevertheless, the death rate does increase with age; but we might be able to do something about it. Immortality might be achievable -- if we take recent medfly studies seriously. "Growing old does not increase your immediate risk of dying -- at least, if you are a fruit fly. The chances of a Mediterranean fruit fly ( Ceratitis capitata ) dying on a particular day reaches a peak and then declines, according to James Carey of the University of California at Davis and James Vaupel of Duke University, North Carolina, and Odense University in Denmark. Their results contradict the notion that the death rate rises with age in all species." The upshot is that there may be no genetic limit to an individual medfly's lifetime. And, if these results can be extended to humans, "then medical advances might eventually allow the elderly to live indefinitely." (Bradley, David; "Who Wants to Live Forever?" New Scientist, p. 16, November 14, 1992.) From Science Frontiers #86, MAR-APR 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... 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 Geysers As Detectors Of Distant Earthquakes June 1992. Landers, California. An earthquake of magnitude 7.5 shook this small town. In apparent sympathy with the Landers disturbance, seismic activity appeared from one end of California to the other, as well as in Nevada, Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming. The Landers quake stimulated unusual seismicity in the solid black areas. Yellowstone Park, Wyoming. Here, 1100 kilometers from Landers, the geyser Echinus, which had been erupting on a regular schedule of every 56 minutes, went berserk. It didn't settle down for 34 hours. Geyser eruptions are frequently disturbed by nearby quakes, but Landers was hardly nearby! The seismology community. "Those distant shocks have startled seismologists as well as ordinary residents. Conventional thinking, at least among U.S . researchers, holds that stress generated when a fault slips in an earthquake peters out within a distance equal to a couple of times the length of the ruptured fault. For Landers, where about 70 kilometers of fault ruptured, this would amount to only about onetenth of the observed reach." Seismologists are now searching for ways to account for these unexpectedly far-reaching effects. (Monastersky, Richard; "Yellowstone Geyser Shows Quake Effect," Science News, 142:428, 1992. Also: Kerr, Richard A.; "Landers Quake's Long Reach Is Shaking Up Seismologists," Science, 259 ...
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... 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 Meteoric "dust bunnies"All around the world, watching through the long nights, is a band of dedicated meteor observers -- mainly amateur astroomers. Collectively, they record many meteor showers and fireballs; all quite respectable astronomical objects. But sometimes fuzzy, rapidly moving luminosities appear, as in the following paragraph written by J.S . Gallagher: "Diffuse luminous objects moving at angular velocities similar to those of meteors were observed during over 200 hours of meteor watching in 1991. They fell in three broad categories: arcs, patches, and 'meteors' similar in appearance to comet comas. Though I at first dismissed the possibility of their being related to meteors, I reconsidered this relation after eliminating other possible causes such as reflections from aircraft lights and tricks of vision. Their meteor-like behavior suggested that perhaps these events might be caused by clouds of exceedingly small meteoroids, visible only because of their numbers and compact grouping. Because such a formation would be unlikely to be maintained long in space, it appeared necessary that the particles involved must have maintained some weak physical contact until just prior to becoming visible. Perhaps some type of 'cosmic dust bunny,' disrupted by air resistance, might be the cause of these events." These moving patches of light also resemble the "auroral meteors" cataloged under GLA3 in Lightning, Auroras, Nocturnal Lights. Physically, they might be related to the small, icy ...
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... 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 The Acoustics Of Rock Art S. Waller has visited rock art sites in Europe, North America, and Australia. Standing well back from the painted walls, he claps or creates percussion sounds, and records the echos bouncing back. A casual observer might be tempted to call 911. It turns out, though, that rock art seems to be placed intentionally where echos are not only unusually loud but are also related to the pictured subject matter. Where hooved animals are depicted, one easily evokes echos of a running herd. If a person is drawn, the echos of voices seem to emanate from the picture itself! "At open air sites with paintings, Waller found that echos reverberate on average at a level 8 decibels above the level of the background. At sites without art the average was 3 decibels. In deep caves such as Lascaux and Font-de-Gaume in France, echos in painted chambers produce sound levels of between 23 and 31 decibels. Deep cave walls painted with cats produce sounds from about 1 to 7 decibels. In contrast, surfaces without paint are 'totally flat'." What did the ancient artists have against cats? (Dayton, Leigh; "Rock Art Evokes Beastly Echos of the Past," New Scientist, p. 14, November 28, 1992.) From Science Frontiers #86, MAR-APR 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 85: Jan-Feb 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Three Views Of Mortality The death of matter. Physicists have maintained for over a century that the Second Law of Thermodynamics guarantees that our universe with run down one day and that life must cease. This cold reductionist view is seconded by recent evidence that protons, long con sidered immortal, may after all decay. The consequences of proton decay are even more dismal than the dire predictions of thermodynamics: "Perhaps the most disturbing piece of speculation to come out of theoretical physics recently is the prediction that the whole universe is in decay. Not only do living things die, species go extinct, and stars burn out, but the apparently immutable protons in the nucleus of every atom are slowly dissolving. Eventually -- in more than a quadrillion years -- nothing will be left of the universe but a dead mist of electrons, photons, and neutrinos." (Flam, Faye; "Could Protons Be Mortal after All?" Science, 257:1862, 1992.) The death of memory. With increasing entropy and decaying protons on their minds, it comes as no surprise that physicists likewise believe that when one dies, that's it . An afterlife is impossible. How do physicists conclude this? In a letter to the American Journal of Physics, J. Orear proffered an interesting sort of "proof": "One such proof: human memory is stored in the circuitry of the brain and after death ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 85: Jan-Feb 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Electronic Channeling Those ubiquitous solar-powered calculators may be the latest mechanism by which other "intelligences" are trying to communicate with us. Here is how this novel information channel works. You put your solar-powered calculator (a cheap one will do) in your desk drawer and close it. When you again open the drawer and light hits the calculator, a number, perhaps a letter, or even an unrecognized symbol may appear. What's going on here? What do these "messages" mean? C. Bentley, in a letter to the New Scientist, related how his calculator most frequently flashes the number 5, but many other numbers may also appear. His calculator works perfectly after he has disposed of the gratuitous information. Something must be generating these strange data. In his final paragraph, Bentley muses: "It has occurred to me that perhaps someone or something is trying to communicate but I fear that if this is the case the message has so far eluded me. The numbers don't work on pools either." (Bentley, Chris; "Dark Secret," New Scientist, p. 52, October 10, 1992.) From Science Frontiers #85, JAN-FEB 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 85: Jan-Feb 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Ball Lightning Punches Circular Hole In Window Window glass with a 7-centimeter hole fitting glass circle believed to have been created by ball lightening. In the Autumn 1992 issue of the Journal of Scientific Exploration, A.I . Grigor'ev et al collected 43 eyewitness accounts of ball lightning penetrating into closed rooms. Most of the reports came from the former USSR and are new to Western scientists. The majority of these balls entered through closed glass windows. Sometimes the balls penetrated the windows without damaging the glass at all, but in a few cases neat circular holes were somehow melted or punched through the glass. The accompanying photograph illustrates an incident in which lightning (supposed to be ball lightning) surgically excised a coin-like piece of glass. (Girgor'ev, A.I . et al; "Ball Lightning Penetration into Closed Rooms: 43 Eyewitness Accounts," Journal of Scientific Exploration, 6:261, 1992. Journal address: ERL 306, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-4055.) Reference. An entire chapter of our catalog Lightning, Auroras is devoted to ball lightning. Ordering information here . From Science Frontiers #85, JAN-FEB 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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