... Science Frontiers Sourcebook Project Strange reports * Bizarre biology * Anomalous archaeology From New Scientist, Nature, Scientific American, etc Archaeology Astronomy Biology Geology Geophysics Mathematics Psychology Physics Guides available Biology Catalogs Biology Handbook Archeology Handbook Geophysics Catalogs Geological Catalogs Astronomy Catalogs Astronomy Handbook Science Frontiers Sourcebooks Ordering details Omni Edge Science Winner December 1996 Publishing History 2007: Dark Days, Ice falls, Firestorms and Related Weather Anomalies (Geophysics) 2006: Archeological Anomalies: Graphic Artifacts I 2003: Archeological Anomalies: Small Artifacts 2003: Scientific Anomalies and other Provocative Phenomena 2001: Remarkable Luminous Phenomena in Nature 2001: Ancient Structures (Archeology) 1999: Ancient Infrastructure (Archeology) 1998: Biological Anomalies: Birds 1996: Biological Anomalies: Mammals II: 1995: Biological Anomalies: Mammals I 1994: Science Frontiers, The Book 1994: Biological Anomalies: Humans III 1993: Biological Anomalies: Humans II 1992: Biological Anomalies: Humans I 1991: Inner Earth: A Search for Anomalies (Geological) 1990: Neglected Geological Anomalies 1989: Anomalies in Geology: Physical, Chemical, Biological 1988: Carolina Bays, Mima Mounds, Submarine Canyons (Geological) 1987: Stars, Galaxies, Cosmos 1986: The Sun and Solar System Debris 1985: The Moon and the Planets 1984: Rare Halos, Mirages, Anomalous Rainbows (Geophysics) 1983: Earthquakes, Tides, Unidentified Sounds (Geophysics) 1983: Tornados, Dark days, Anomalous Precipitation (Geophysics) 1982: Lightning, Auroras, Nocturnal Lights (Geophysics) 1982: Unfathomed Mind 1981: Incredible life (Biology) 1980: Unknown Earth (Geological) 1979: Mysterious Universe ...

... Science Frontiers The Book Strange reports * Bizarre biology * Anomalous archaeology From New Scientist, Nature, Scientific American, etc Archaeology Astronomy Biology Geology Geophysics Mathematics Psychology Physics Science Frontiers The Book Contents Science Frontiers is an indexed compilation of the first 86 issues of our Science Frontiers newsletter . Chapter 1. Archeology: Ancient Engineering Works * Small Artifacts * Epigraphy and Art * Bones and Footprints * Diffusion and Culture. Chapter 2. Astronomy: Planets and Moons * Solar System Debris * Stars * Galaxies and Quasars * Cosmology. Chapter 3. Biology: Humans .* Other Mammals * Birds * Reptiles and Amphibians * Fish * Arthropods * Invertebrates * Plants and Fungi * Microorganisms * Genetics * Origin of Life * Evolution. Chapter 4. Geology: Topography * Geological Anomalies * Stratigraphy * Inner Earth. Chapter 5. Geophysics: Luminous Phenomena* Weather Phenomena * Hydrological Phenomena * Earthquakes * Anomalous Sounds * Atmospheric Optics. Chapter 6. Psychology: Dissociation Phenomena * Hallucinations * Mind - Body Phenomena * Hidden Knowledge * Reincarnation * Information Processing * Psychokinesis. Chapter 7. Chemistry, Physics, Math, Esoterica: Chemistry * Physics * Mathematics. Comments from reviews: "This fun-to-read book may lead some to new scientific solutions through questioning the phenomena presented", Science Books and Films Publishing details: 356 pages, paperback, $18.95, 417 illus., subject index, 1994. 1500+ references, LC 93-92800 ISBN 0-915554-28-3 , 8.5 x 11. Order From:The Sourcebook Project P.O . Box ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 137: SEP-OCT 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Something Rotten At The Core Of Science H.F . Horrobin is a long-time critic of the anonymous peer-review system used in the scientific community. Most anomalists will readily subscribe to his complaint: The core system by which the scientific community allots prestige (in terms of oral presentations at major meetings and publication in major journals) and funding is a non-validated charade whose processes generate results little better than does chance. Given the fact that most reviewers are likely to be mainstream and broadly supportive of the existing organization of the scientific enterprise, it would not be surprising if the likelihood of support for truly innovative research was considerably less than that provided by chance. (Horrobin, David F.; "Something Rotten at the Core of Science," Meta Research Bulletin, 10:17, June 15, 2001.) From Science Frontiers #137, SEP-OCT 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. 133: JAN-FEB 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Fingers of God We present the following quotation without comment because "tfv" (the author) has obliged in his review of a recent article in Science: Large-scale structure of the universe. A vast redshift survey of over 100,000 galaxies shows hundreds of superclusters and "Great Wall"-like structures, but also "the ends of the biggest structures in the universe". Vast clumps and dark voids are seen. [tvf: No comment is made [in Science] on the clumps and voids both being elongated in directions along our line of sight. This phenomenon is called "the fingers of God" because galaxies seem to line up in filaments pointing at us. The simplest non-theological way out of this dilemma is to jettison redshift as a reliable distance indicator.] (Van Flandern, Tom; Meta Research Bulletin, 9:48, 2000. Citing: Science, 288:2121, 2000.) 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.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 What Sang First?Not WHO, but WHAT! Sophisticated music predates the advent of modern humans by tens or hundreds of million years. Whales and birds filled the ocean and primeval forest with song long before our hominid branch sprouted on the Tree of Life. As a matter of fact, our closest relatives, the great apes, sing not at all. Somewhere in the hominid genome "music" genes reside, unexpressed in the apes, but somehow triggered into activity in the human line. We have learned recently that the Neanderthals manufactured bone flutes as far back at 53,000 years. They may not have been able to speak to one another in words, but they had the language of music. Their music, and ours, may have been entrained in genes inherited from nonhominid ancestors that lived 60 million years ago, but which have been suppressed in primates until Neanderthals and modern humans came along. You may wonder where this argument is taking you. It goes back at least 60 million years to when the cetacea (whales and dolphins) split off from the evolutionary track leading to humans. It may even go back farther to when birds split away from the reptilian line. The music of birds and whales incorporate some of the complexity and sophistication of Beethoven's Fifth. The genes that have led to such musical talents may be ancient indeed, as speculated in the Science article under review. The authors go ...

... 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 The Sound of Shapes The ability of some humans to determine the pitch of a musical note in the absence of a reference note (" perfect pitch") has been a favorite topic in Science Frontiers (SF #99 , #102 , and #111 ). It now seems that the human ear-brain combination can also discern the shapes and dimensions of thin, vibrating plates by the sound they make. In one type of experiment, conducted by A.J . Kunkler-Peck (Brandeis University) and M.T . Turvey (University of Connecticut), subjects gave surprisingly accurate estimates of the heights and widths of three different vibrating plates. The plates were concealed behind a screen, but the subjects could remotely control a striker. In further experiments, other subjects could distinguish between the sounds of circular, rectangular, and triangular plates. (Anonymous; "Listen to the Shapes," Science News, 157:171, 2000.) Comment. We all know from experience that small, thin plates produce higher pitched sounds that larger plates. How-ever, the ability to assign accurate dimensions without some training is surprising. The same can be said for the identification of shapes. Who, for ex-ample, has been exposed to vibrating, triangular-shaped plates in ordinary life? Could we be dealing here with another innate talent that, like perfect pitch, seems to have no adaptive ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 130: JUL-AUG 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Still Another East-Coast Pre-Clovis Dig In SF#125 , we reported on the Topper pre-Clovis site in South Carolina, where stone tools tentatively dated as 12,000-20,000 years old were excavated. Finds like this challenge the claim that the Americas host no artifacts earlier than 11,500 B.P ., when the Clovis people first traipsed across the Bering Land Bridge. Now, on a sandy rise, called Cactus Hill, some 45 miles south of Richmond, Virginia, archeologists have uncovered another apparently pre-Clovis site. An upper level at Cactus Hill, dated at 10,920 B.P . does contain typical Clovis artifacts. These are warmly received by mainstream archeologists for they support a highly cherished paradigm. But only 6 inches below the Clovis level, the diggers gingerly brushed the dirt off crude projectile points that were clearly not of Clovis manufacture. This level seems to be about 5,000 years older than the Clovis level according to radiometric dating of charcoal. Skeptics suggest that there has been mixing of the sandy soil and that these early dates are suspect. But thermoluminescent dating has confirmed the 5,000-year time gap. Thorough analyses of the soil with its plant and animal re-mains indicated little if any mixing. D. Stanford, from the Smithsonian Institution, asserts that these purported pre-Clovis projectile points resemble those common in Europe in ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 128: MAR-APR 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Burps of Death Not only did the poor dinosaurs have to contend with an asteroid impact and a lurch of the poles, but also with the possible ignition of voluminous methane burps. 65-million years ago. This was the time of the well-publicized, but still hypothetical, asteroid impact. It is said to have wreaked havoc on our wounded planet and, especially, the dinosaurs. Volcanos spewed out vast lava fields and filled the air with greenhouse gases and dust. It was a bad time for many life forms. Actually, It may have been far worse than generally advertised. In addition to the volcanic activity and climate change, the shock of the asteroid impact could have been sufficient to destabilize the immense amounts of methane hydrate that have long been locked up, frozen and dormant, in oceanic sediments all over the world. According to this scenario, once the shock of the asteroid impact released the methane from its icy prison, it rose to the surface of the oceans in a world-wide burp. Methane, unfortunately for the dinosaurs and many other life forms, is highly flammable. Lightning could have ignited it almost immediately if it was concentrated enough. A colossal firestorm might have then enveloped the entire planet. The whole atmosphere could have been afire. This, according to B. Hurdle and colleagues at the Naval Research Laboratory, who speculate that the dinosaur hegemony may ended suddenly in flames rather than ...

... 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 Strange Snow Sculptures The most familiar snowflakes are those feathery, six-armed dendritic crystals. However, snow sometimes falls as needles and plates. In GWP3 in Tornados, Dark Days..., we also catalog three observations of conical snow. These conical forms seem to be aggregates of tapered needles of ice. However, none of the foregoing shapes can surpass in strangeness the "snowflake" in the accompanying illustration. Here we see the hexagonal symmetry retained in column form and again in the plates at each end of the icy dumbbell. What those peculiar iceworms projecting from the plates are is anyone's guess. (Kaiser, Jocelyn; "Snow Up Close," Science, 289:503, 2000. Comment. It is difficult enough to explain the formation of the common six-armed flakes; the worm-terminated dumbbells are even more puzzling. What sort of mechanism in the atmosphere can scuplt such complex shapes in prodigious quantities? 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.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 Speaking of ALH 84001 Among the various magnetic grains comprising ALH 84001 are some nanometersized, hexagonal prisms that are "indistinguishable" from those excreted by terrestrial magnetotactic bacteria: Just when scientists in general were convinced that ALH 84001's "worms" had a mineralogical (i .e ., non-biological) origin, along comes this revelation. The ALH-84001 controversy is not over yet. (Kerr, Richard A.; "Tiny Magnets Point to Martian Life," Science, 290:2242, 2000.) Comment. In terrestrial magnetotactic bacteria, these magnetic crystals are strung together to make a sort of compass needle that helps orient the organism in muck and other lightless and lowly habitats.) From Science Frontiers #134, MAR-APR 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. 128: MAR-APR 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects "Uprooting the Tree of Life"Yes, that is the title of a long article in the February 2000 issue of Scientific American. In the Table of Contents, we see words concerning this article that we never thought would be permitted in a mainstream science magazine. After first noting that 10 years ago it was generally agreed that all organisms evolved from a single ancestral cell that existed about 3.5 billion years ago, there comes the assertion that the Tree of Life: "is far more complicated than was believed and may not have had a single root at all." The article proper relates how the Tree of Life has its own evolutionary history. Twenty years ago, scientists had that single ancestral cell splitting into two main trunks: the prokaryotes (bacteria) and the eukaryotes (every-thing else). More recently, a third trunk has been grafted onto the Tree; namely, the archaea (microorganisms that look like bacteria but possess markedly different genes). The archaea favor extreme environments and, curiously, are more closely related to you and me than are the bacteria. But according to this article (by W.F . Doolittle), the triple-trunked Tree of Life is simplistic. One reason for this is that genes, once thought to flow only from parent to progeny, are now known to travel laterally. Species barriers are broken. Genes jump from trunk to trunk, from ...

... 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 A Lurch of Death Two geophysicists, W. Sager and A. Koppers, have plotted 27 ancient pole positions dated between 120 and 30 million years ago. Using rock samples brought up from submerged Pacific sea-mounts, they find that the earth's magnetic poles shifted 15-20-deg about 84 million years ago. The north magnetic pole was not slowly drifting, it was lurching. It took just a couple million years to shift 700 miles or more; that's more than ten times the rate of continental drift. The earth from afar must have seemed to be a disturbed top---on a geological time scale, of course! What could have perturbed the earth? One suggestion blames a sudden shifting of the planet's mass distribution, some sort of subterranean indigestion, like a subducted ocean plate suddenly plunging through into the lower mantle. (Kerr, Richard A.; "Did the Dinosaurs Live on a Topsy-Turvy Earth?" Science, 287:406, 2000.) The biological consequences of such a sudden tilting could have been severe. The event -- known as rapid true polar wander -- may have been accompanied by worldwide volcanic upheavals and reorganization of tectonic plates that would have played havoc with anything living in the Late Cretaceous period, 65 million to 99 million years ago. Although the notion that an asteroid was the immediate cause of dinosaur extinction about 65 ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 137: SEP-OCT 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Mysterious Losses And Acquisitions of Color Vision The eyes of most mammals incorporate two types of color-sensitive cones; one for seeing blue light, the other for green light. Such mammals have bichromatic vision and discern colors rather well. Humans and the other primates are blessed with trichromatic vision, for their eyes have cones that register red light. Does this indicate evolution superiority? Hardly, birds possess five types of color-sensitive cones that sense two additional parts of the spectrum. How and why these enhancements in color vision occurred are not well-understood. Nor do we know why they were restricted to mammals and birds; although it is easy to fabricate several survival-of-the-fittest scenarios. The "how" part of the mystery is particularly hard to grasp in neo-Darwinian terms because the complex pigments that confer spectral sensitivity upon the cones represent remarkable, complex chemical syntheses. Also mysterious is the apparent loss of color vision in 14 species of toothed whales and seals. (Only 14 species were examined; there may be more.) These particular whales and seals lack the blue-sensitive cones, even though they are descended from mammals with bichromatic vision (hippos and otters, respectively). This deficiency is doubly perplexing: Sensitivity to blue light is highly desirable in the ocean environment because it is blue light that penetrates seawater well. The loss occurred in two mammalian lineages not particularly closely related on ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 137: SEP-OCT 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Missing Helium The situation now described is analogous to the saga of the "missing solar neutrinos" mentioned under ASTRONOMY. Here, it is our model of the earth's interior rather than that of the sun that is at risk. There is simply not enough helium escaping from earth's crust to account for the heat flowing outwards from our planet's core. You see, most of the earth's internal fires are fueled by the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium. The heat produced by these disintegrations eventually makes its way to the surface where we can measure it. but the helium (4He) created by the radioactive decay of the uranium and thorium is mostly missing. The discrepancy is large, and scien tists are confronted with the possibility that we are wrong about either the source of the earth's heat or the facts of nuclear physics. You can bet it will not be the latter. We are confident that helium atoms cannot change their type like those solar neutrinos! Neither can we blame chemical sequestration because helium is a noble gas. Perhaps the missing helium is physically trapped and stored somewhere in the earth's mantle. No one knows the answer; nor does any one pay much attention to this clearcut anomaly. (Chin, Gilbert, ed. ; "A Scarcity of Gas," Science, 292:2219, 2001.) From Science Frontiers #137, SEP ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 137: SEP-OCT 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Unexpected Signals Within Life Forms Multicellular organisms are information networks. They have to be because life is conferred by the flow of information. We all learn how the nervous system carries a heavy traffic of electrical signals, but we hear less about chemical signals, and they are more important. Chemical signalling molecules help cells learn what is going on around them so that they can make decisions concerning metabolism, division, and even whether to die not not. This is mainstream biochemistry, although there is much here yet to be learned. A signalling medium that still survives well off the mainstream is the old idea that information is carried from cell to cell via electromagnetic radiation. Yes, we mean mitogenetic radiation--the infamous M-rays of the 1920s and 1930s. During this period about a thousand technical papers were published on mitogenetic radiation -- mostly in Russian. The champion of mitogenetic radiation was A.G . Gurwitsch. He claimed that fundamental biological functions, such as cell division, were communicated via ultraviolet light. Although a few other researchers said they detected mitogenetic radiation, most could not replicate Gurwitsch's work. Mitogenetic radiation was thereafter subjected to the "cold-fusion" treatment; it was one of those things that "wasn't so"! In a recent article in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, R. Van Wijk tries to reignite interest in "bio-photons" that carry "bio ...

... 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 Columbus Exonerated: Viking Blamed About 1500 A.D ., a major epidemic of syphilis swept across Europe. Up until this time, this continent had been thought to have been free from this dreaded affliction. In the New World, though, archeologists had uncovered many skeletons dated well before 1500 showing unmistakable signs of syphilis. America was obviously the source of this scourge, but how did it ever get to Europe? Of course, every child knows that Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492. It seemed pretty certain that Columbus's men and the American aborigines had been very, very friendly. Actually, about a dozen pre-1500 skeletons displaying hints of the disease had been found in England and Ireland, but they were not convincing enough to dethrone the Columbus theory. Recently, however, several additional syphilitic skeletons were dug up at a medieval friary in northeastern Britain. The earliest of these bones date back to about 1300. In fact, the new evidence suggests that there was a geographically limited mini-epidemic of syphilis in Britain about this time. Columbus was now off the hook, but who should be hung on it instead? The Vikings, of course. Viking merchants began visiting this part of England about 1300. And it is now admitted that the Vikings had made it to the New World source of the disease circa 1000. Case closed!? (Malakoff, David; "Columbus, Syphilis ...

... 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. 106: Jul-Aug 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Impact craters: the party line revised and re-revised 100 years ago. Back in 1900, a geologist risked his reputation by suggesting that Arizona's Meteor Crater was an impact structure. It had to be volcanic or perhaps due to a steam explosion! 50 years ago. In 1950, a geologist risked his reputation by suggesting that large impact structures existed; that is, bigger than 10 kilometers in diameter. 0 years ago. Today, geologists converse blithely about 100-kilometer structures buried beneath the Yucatan and Chesapeake Bay. They are, however, exceedingly chary about long chains of impact structures. Those eight craters in a row. Geologists are questioning whether the eight structures stretching from Kentucky to Kansas (mentioned in SF#105) are all impactcaused. In a letter to Astronomy. A. Goldstein asserts that only three are impact craters; the other five are cryptoexplosion structures; that is, due to internal activity of some sort. However, Goldstein adds that there are actually three additional structures on this long line in Kentucky. (Goldstein, Alan; "Multiple Strike Stricken," Astronomy, 24:20, July 1996) Comment. Even if eight of the eleven structures on the line are cryptoexplosive in origin, one has to wonder why these are all lined up. A long line of weakness in the crust? Meanwhile, in Africa. 1994 radar images from the Space Shuttle have revealed a ...

... 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 What's Up There?Some Leonid meteors are not behaving the way meteors should. They begin to burn up well above 100 kilometers where the atmosphere is too thin -- essentially a good vacuum -- to cause frictional heating and consequent vaporization. We mentioned this conundrum briefly in SF#125. We now have the scientific details at hand concerning the supporting observations made during the November 1998 Leonid bombardment. The observations were made by an international team in China. Photographic cameras were employed as well as an all-sky TV camera equipped with an image intensifier. All photographed meteors began to visibly burn up below 130 kilometers, but the TV camera consistently picked up the same meteors at higher altitudes. Both sets of cameras recorded the same final burn-up heights. The most startling observation was a meteor that the TV camera detected at roughly 200 kilometers altitude. The highest observed Leonid meteor with initial mass of about 1 kg started radiating at an altitude of almost 200 km. The origin of meteor radiation at such high altitudes is still not well understood and more detailed observations will be needed, including near-infrared spectroscopy. (Spumy Pavel, et al; "Atmospheric Behavior and Extreme Beginning Heights of the Thirteen Brightest Photographic Leonid Meteors...," Meteoritics and Planetary Science, 35:243, 2000. Cr. R. Spaulding) Comment. As in SF#125, we must add that sounds ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 128: MAR-APR 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects How to Win by Loosing (twice)It's all exceedingly counterintuitive. If you switch randomly between two games of chance, each of which is guaranteed to empty your pockets if played separately, you can actually win. This phenomenon can be proved mathematically, but we will not inflict this upon our readers, even if we understood it. Two games played with coins illustrate the effect. One game employs a weighted coin such that the probability of winning is much less than 50%. If played alone, your capital decreases steadily in a rather smooth curve, with a small win now and then but many small losses. The second game requires two weighted coins and is also a losing proposition by itself. Here, though, the graph of your assets vs. the number of games played is a sawtooth. There are sharp increases and downturns, but with an average downward trend. Switching between the two games in a random manner has the effect of locking in a win before the next loss comes along. It's a ratchet effect. Your overall capital will rise, at least it does according to the equations, though your intuition cannot help but doubt it. No wonder this Is called Parrondo's paradox! (Harmer, Gregory P., and Abbott, Derek; "Losing Strategies Can Win by Farrondo's Paradox," Nature, 402:864, 1999. Anonymous; "Losing ...

... 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 Interplanetary Doldrums A special session of the 1999 Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union was convened to discuss an extraordinary event: "The day of the solar wind almost disappeared." That was May 11, 1999. The doldrums lasted over 27 hours. Actually, the velocities of the particles constituting the solar wind did not slacken much: 360 kilometers/second, down just 10% from the norm. The wind's density, though dropped from 10 to 0.2 particles/cubic centimeter. Nothing untoward happened on the earth's surface. In space, the earth's magnetosphere expanded when the pressure of the solar wind diminished and more X-rays were emitted from the polar atmosphere, but these effects did not surprise anyone. The big question is: What happened on the sun that stopped its exhalations? No one seems to have an answer. (Lazarus, Alan J.; "The Day the Solar Wind Almost Disappeared," Science, 287: 2172, 2000.) 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 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 ...

... 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 Longevity And Sardinia If you were not born in the fall (see above item) and thereby received a few months' bonus in longevity, you might compensate for the loss by moving to sunny Sardinia in the Mediterranean. Nowhere else on the planet does a larger proportion of the male population live to the century mark. Strangely, female longevity is unaffected by whatever it is that produces the male Methuselahs. We have, therefore, two questions to answer: (1 ) Why do so many males reach the 100-year mark; and (2 ) Why are Sardinia's women short-changed? No one has good answers. It might be genetic (an inbreeding effect) or simply lifestyle (more imbibing of the island's red wine). (Koenig, Robert; "Sardinia's Mysterious Male Methuselahs," Science, 291:2074, 2001.) From Science Frontiers #135, MAY-JUN 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. 137: SEP-OCT 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Long Reach Of The Hawaiian Islands From aircraft and satellites, one can see strong contrasts in the roughness of the ocean surface in the lee of those idyllic islands with their volcanic peaks that poke over 10,000 feet into the Pacific airstreams. These long streaks on the ocean surface are called "wind wakes." The wind wake leeward the Hawaii is spectacular. These islands are swept by steady northeast trade winds. Mauna Kea (4201 meters), Mauna Loa (4201 meters), and other Hawaiian peaks penetrate high above trade inversion. Together they create a visible wind wake some 3,000 kilometers long to the west -- many time-greater than any other island wind wakes to be seen on the planet. The effects of these soaring peaks are more than visual. Their wind wake drives an eastward ocean current that, in turn, draws warm water away from the Asian coast 8,000 kilometers distant from Hawaii. Thus, a few island mountains affect the climate of a continent a fifth of the way around the globe! (Xie, Shang-Ping, et al; "Far-Reaching Effects of the Hawaiian Islands on the Pacific Ocean-Atmosphere System," Science, 292:2057, 2001.) Comment. The Hawaiian wind wake is not anomalous but it is surely interesting. From Science Frontiers #137, SEP-OCT 2001 . 2001 William R. Corliss Other Sites of ...

... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 105: May-Jun 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Real perpetual motion?Physicist R.A . Webb and coworkers magnetically induce electrical currents in tiny gold rings at the University of Maryland. The ring temperatures are low but not in the superconducting range. Magnetic induction of electricity is of course perfectly allowable in physics. What is not theoretically permitted is for tiny currents to persist long after the magnetic field has been turned off. The currents are small, only 10-6 of an ampere; but, they are there, and they shouldn't be. (Lipkin, Richard, and Travis, John; "Electric Currents That Merely Flow," Science News, 149:126, 1996) Comment. If you conceive of electrical currents as mists of palpable electrons circulating around inside those gold rings, the situation does resemble perpetual motion. The referenced item is brief and not forthcoming on such mat ters. Do the currents eventually die out? Will any metal work? Does the phenomenon appear at room temperature? From Science Frontiers #105, MAY-JUN 1996 . 1996-2000 William R. Corliss ...