2482 results found.
... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 82: Jul-Aug 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Does nature compute?Back in the 1960s, kids used to watch the TV series Lost in Space . Starring on this show was a robot which, when asked a stupid or answerless question replied, "It does not compute!" More seriously, we now ask, "Does Nature compute?" Science believes very deeply that mathematics reflects the real world, that we live in an ordered universe where everything can be reduced to mathematical expressions. The progress of science, particularly physics, seems to bear out this symbiotic relationship between mathematics and the physical world. However, P. Davies points out that that there are uncomputable numbers and operations. In fact, there are infinitudes of them. All the world's computers could chug away forever and not come up with answers in these cases. So far , Nature has been kind, or we have been lucky, because we have been able to nicely mirror Nature with "doable" math. Davies wonders if it has been entirely a matter of luck: "Einstein said that God is subtle but not malicious, and we must hope that the laws of physics will turn out to be computable after all. If so, that fact alone would provoke all sorts of interesting scientific and philosophical questions. Just why is the world structured in such a way that we can describe its basic principles using 'do-able' mathematics? How was this mathematical ability evolved in ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 83: Sep-Oct 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Cold-fusion update SRI explosion due to wayward piece of Teflon? The final report on the fatal explosion of a cold-fusion experiment at SRI International (SF#80) blames a loose piece of Teflon that may have blocked a gas outlet tube. Possible scenario: After many hours, the researchers finally noticed something was awry. When A. Riley lifted the cell from its water bath, it exploded. "The investigators believe that hot palladium ignited the pressurized mixture of oxygen and deuterium. The bottom blew off the cell, turning the rest of it into a rocket which shot upwards at 50 metres per second. It struck Riley in the head." (Charles, Dan; "Piece of Teflon Led to Fatal Explosion," New Scientist, p. 5, June 27, 1992. Also: Holden, Constance; "Fusion Explosion Mystery Solved," Science, 257:26, 1992.) Comment. The proposed scenario leading to the explosion is riddled with the words "may" and "believe." Another cold-fusion book: Huizenga, John R.; Cold Fusion: The Scientific Fiasco of the Century , 259 pp., 1992, The title betrays the book's slant. A single sentence from Nature's review will suffice: "Commenting on the hundreds of millions of dollars of research time and resources that were taken up in showing that there is no convincing ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 90: Nov-Dec 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Depths Of Ignorance Oceanographers have been heard to complain that science knows more about the surface of Mars than it does about the topography of the deep ocean floors. Marine biologists, however, have even more reason to feel slighted. To illustrate, the usual picture painted of the abyssal terrain beyond the continental shelves and slopes is one a a frigid biological desert -- endless plains of sterile muck, broken once in a while by oasis-like deepsea vents, where weird tube worms thrive amidst clouds of chemosynthetic bacteria. This is a highly misleading portrayal. The situation, in fact, recalls what happened when biologists first released clouds of insecticides in rain forest canopies, thus precipitating a deluge of uncataloged insects into collecting nets waiting below. Now, instead of a mere million species of insects worldwide, entomologists are thinking perhaps 10 million or more. Will the same diversity prevail in the deepsea muck? C.L . Van Dover believes so: "Away from the vents, in the great ocean plains, life is much less dramatic and often scaled down to minute proportions -- threadlike worms, tiny snails, delicate, transparent clams. Yet, the diversity of animals in the cold abyssal muds, it now appears, may rival the celebrated biodiversity of the tropical rain forests." We now know virtually nothing about this fauna, how it survives, and how it evolved. Millions of undescribed species may be awaiting discovery by ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 90: Nov-Dec 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Is nothing certain anymore?It was discouraging enough to learn that many natural systems, from simple pendulums to our weather, are basically chaotic; that is, tiny changes in the initial conditions upon which predictions are based can lead to highly unpredictable outcomes. Chaotic systems are usually qualitatively predictable but not quantitatively predictable. We have no choice but to live with this chaos; it seems that that's the way the cosmos is constructed! However, it now seems that the situation is even worse than chaotic! Some systems, perhaps most systems, are also indeterminate, meaning that we cannot predict their qualitative behavior either. A simple example is the water swirling down the bathtub drain. This is not only chaotic but it has two qualitative final states: clockwise and counterclockwise. Regardless of which hemisphere you are in, you can change the direction of swirl with negligible effort. Each of the two final states of motion is still quanti tatively unpredictable. Systems that are more complex will possess many different final states, all chaotic. Can nature really be fundamentally chaotic as well as qualitatively uncertain? J.C . Sommerer and E. Ott have mathematically examined a relatively simple system consisting of a single particle moving in a force field, experiencing friction, and being periodically jolted. Besides settling into chaotic motion, this particle may also be forced away to infinity -- two radically different final states. The analysis revealed that for any ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 80: Mar-Apr 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Cricket Coordination In the August 31, 1991, issue of Science News, there appeared an item on the famous synchronously flashing fireflies of Southeast Asia. W. Clements, writing in response to the firefly story, asserts that Indian crickets chirping in unison are much more impressive. He wrote: "I once rode on the back of a truck at night along mountain roads in India. There the crickets sound out quite loudly. The sound swells and diminishes with a persistent beat. As we drove along mile after mile, there was not the tiniest perceptible change in the rhythm. In other words, the insects we listened to at any point were modulating their sound at exactly the same frequency, if not phase, maintained by their contemporaries many miles back. Considering the vast areas that must be represented wherever it occurs, the phenomenon must involve unimaginable millions of insects all acting in concert. This is vastly more impressive than the spectacle of fireflies performing together in a single tree." Picture, if you will, millions, perhaps billions, of crickets all moving their limbs together in unison over many square miles! (Clements, Warner; "Flashy Displays," Science News, 140:323, 1991.) From Science Frontiers #80, MAR-APR 1992 . 1992-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 83: Sep-Oct 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Flat-faced hominid skulls from china The "African Eve" theory of human evolution was given much play in the media a few years back. According to the "African" view, modern humans arose exclusively in Africa and, about 100,000 years ago, expanded rapidly from there into Europe and Asia, displacing "lesser" hominids. Unfortunately, the DNA studies that stimulated this conjecture have been found to be flawed. And now new fossil testimony casts further doubt. In 1989 and 1990, near the Han River, in China's Hube Province, anthropologists found hominid skulls with the characteristic flat faces of modern humans. These skulls seem to be about 350,000 years old. Although they apparently retain some primitive features, paleoanthropologist D. Erler, of the University of California, asserted, "This shows that modern features were emerging in different parts of the world." In other words, all of the evolutionary action was not confined to Africa. Proponents of the "African Eve" theory retort that the dating of the Chinese skulls is questionable and that flat faces alone are not enough to support the idea that modern humans arose separately in widely separated locales? (Gibbons, Ann; "An About-Face for Modern Human Origins," Science, 256: 1521, 1992. Also: Bower, Bruce; "Erectus Unhinged," Science News, 141:408, 1992.) Comment ...
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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. 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. 83: Sep-Oct 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Earth's water not imported?That the earth is continuously bombarded by icy minicomets is unpopular in the Court of Science. Even less acceptable is the notion that over the eons these house-sized chunks of ice contributed substantially to our planet's inventory of water. In what will surely be hailed as the death knell of the icy comet theory is the discovery by K. Muehlenbachs, of the University of Alberta, and F. Robert and M Javoy, from the University of Paris, that the water contained in the earth's rocks, both ancient and recent, is isotopically different from the water found in meteorites. Meteoric water is assumed to be isotopically the same as cometary water. Conclusion: comets could not have contributed substantially to our planet's water inventory in the geological past. (Anonymous; "Earth's Water Did Not Come from Comets," New Scientist, p. 19, June 20, 1992.) Comment. Of course, the isotpic measurements have to be weighed against all the data supporting the icy comet theory Icy comets could, after all, be a recent phenomenon. Also, no one has ever actually analyzed a piece of cometary ice; it is simply assumed that it would be similar to meteoric water. From Science Frontiers #83, SEP-OCT 1992 . 1992-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 83: Sep-Oct 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Bc Sea Serpents Marine biologist E. Bousfield and oceanographer P. LeBlond have amassed impressive evidence for the reality of a large marine vertebrate presently unrecognized by science. "They say that in the past 60 years at least six specimens of the sea creature have been discovered, including a live baby and a dead youngster found undigested in the stomach of a whale. .. .. . "Since World War II, two apparent skeletons and two carcasses have washed up on the shores of British Columbia and neighboring Washington State." This British Columbia sea serpent, named "Caddy," is believed to measure 40-60 feet in length. It has been clocked at speeds up to 25 miles/hour -- fast enough to leave killer whales in its wake. (Anonymous; "Sea Serpent Sightings Substantiated by British Columbia Scientists," Baltimore Sun, July 30, 1992.) From Science Frontiers #83, SEP-OCT 1992 . 1992-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 82: Jul-Aug 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The humongous organism contest!When we read of that 10,000-kilogram fungus discovered in Michigan, it sounded like a good item for Science Frontiers. But then it was described as the "largest and oldest living organism," and we knew that if we waited a couple months this Guinness-like record would be eclipsed. (Superlatives are risky in this business!) A killer fungus in Washington State. In the foothills of Mount Adams, a specimen of the fungus Armillaria ostoyae covers 1,500 acres and seems to be 400-1 ,000 years old, as comapred to the 38-acre, 1,500-year-old Michigan fungus. Although younger than its Michigan counterpart, the Washington fungus is lethal and can wipe out whole populations of trees. (Anonymous; "The Great Fungus," Nature, May 21, 1992.) Comment. It has also been reported that a huge, spreading, pathological growth exists in Washington, DC ! Some even more humongous plants. "A grass clone, Holcus mollis , has been found with a diameter of 900 metres and an age of over 1000 years. A clone of box-huckleberry has been found with a diameter of 2000 metres and an age of 13 000 years. The big granddaddy is, however, an aspen ( Populus fremaloides ) covering 81 hectares and over 10 000 years old." (Bullock, James; ...
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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 When a bird in the hand is worse than two in the bush When J. Dumbacher, an ornithologist working in Papua New Guinea, scratched his hand while freeing a hooded pitohui from a collecting net, his first instinct was to suck the wound. This was a bad move, for he immediately experienced a numbing and burning in his mouth. The reason for this, it turned out, was because the skin and feathers of pitohuis are loaded with homobatrachotoxin, a type of poison. This discovery makes the pitohuis the first known poisonous birds. Like many other poisonous animals, the pitohuis also emit a foul odor and advertise their unsavory nature with bright colors. (Dumbacher, John P., et al; "Homobatrachotoxin in the Genus Pitohui : Chemical Defense in Birds?" Science, 258:799, 1992. Also: Anonymous; "Bird with a Sting in Its Tail," New Scientist, p. 10, October 31, 1992.) Comment. As we see from the diagram, homobatrachotoxin possesses a rather complex chemical structure. One wonders how the pitohuis acquired the ability to synthesize it through random mutations. The puzzle deepens when one discovers that homobatrachotoxin is also manufactured by the New World poisondart frogs. Although far-separated taxonomically, both species traveled along the same path of random mutations to achieve this evolutionary convergence. From Science Frontiers #85, JAN-FEB 1993 . 1993-2000 William ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 81: May-Jun 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Plants Of The Apes Many biologists are convinced that apes, bears, cats, and dogs eat plants -- many of them obviously distasteful -- in order to medicate themselves for diseases and parasites. What also seems likely, according to K. Strier, of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, is that some monkeys regulate their fertility by the judicious consumption of certain plants. Going even farther, K. Glander, Duke University, suggests that howler monkeys control the sex of their offspring through their diets. Glander divides howler monkey females into three groups. In the first are the high-ranking females that predominantly produce male offspring. This 'male-offspring' strategy favors these females because the males they produce tend to become dominant adults that will pass on more of the females' genes than would female offspring, who are limited in the number of infants they can engender in comparison to the males. Similar optimization strategies, according to Glander, induce middleranking females to produce mainly female progeny, and low-ranking females to birth almost all males. These howler monkeys seem to control the sex of their offspring pharmologically by selecting certain plants to eat. These plants, in turn, control the electrical conditions in the females' reproductive tracts to either attract or repel sperm carrying the male Y-chromosomes, which are thought to carry different electrical charges than the X-carrying sperm! (Lewin, Roger; "What ...
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... 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 Mixed-up people Mother-child chimeras. Investigators have discovered cells carrying male DNA among a mother's blood cells 27 years after the birth a male child. Evidently, descendents of fetal cells escape during pregnancy and persist in the mother for years after birth. The mother thus becomes a blend of herself and her child (or, possibly, children) - a kind of chimera. The question is: Why doesn't the mother's immune system destroy these foreign cells? Some scientists speculate that these escaped and still-surviving cells may help explain why women are more susceptible than men to autoimmune diseases. (Travis, J.; "Kids: Getting under Mom's Skin for Decades," Science News, 149:85, 1996) Fatherless blood. In Britain, a male child has been found with normal skin, with each cell carrying the expected X and Y chromosomes, but "his" blood is all female. Its cells contain the mother's two X chromosomes with no paternal contribution. What happened? One theory is that the mother's unfertilized egg spontaneously divided. Then, fertilization occurred, but it was only partial. The sperm got to just one of the two or more cells derived from the egg. The embryo continued to develop but it was part all-mother and part mother-father! "Partial parthenogenesis" seems to be the proper term here ...
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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 How A Fly Hears What A Cricket Hears As we all know, male crickets chirp long and loud for mates from spring until fall. That many males are successful in attracting females is obvious from this insect's population levels. Some of the singing males, however, attract parasitic flies that home in on their songs and deposit their maggots on or near them. Within 10 days, these singers are silent -- they have been consumed by the maggots. The really interesting part of this tale involves the hearing organs of the crickets and flies. Normally, they are radically different in design and frequency of operation. Crickets usually sing at frequencies above 3 kilohertz, and their ears are attuned to these high frequencies. The usual fly, on the other hand, hums and buzzes at only 100-500 hertz (cycles per second). Their ears are duly optimized at these frequencies. The cricket-hunting flies (genus Ormia ), however, would starve to death if they couldn't hear the highpitched cricket songs. Their response was to "evolve" a cricket-type ear so they could home in on their prey. This is a remarkable example of evolutionary convergence. (Robert, Daniel, et al; "The Evolutionary Convergence of Hearing in a Parasitoid Fly and Its Cricket Host," Science, 258:1135, 1992.) Comment. How did the parasitic flies survive until they evolved ...
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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 Late Survival Of Mammoths Many a sensational article has been written about how the Siberian mammoth population was deep-frozen by a sudden climate change due to a shift in the earth's poles or some other catastrophic event circa 10,000 years ago. But now, Russian scientist A. Sher and two colleagues claim that a dwarf version of the wooly mammoth survived on Wrangel Island, 120 miles off the Siberian coast until about 3,700 years ago. The Wrangel Island dwarf mammoths stood only about 2 meters high and weighed 2 tons. The British mammoth expert, A. Lister, said he was not really surprised at this discovery, because many islands supported dwarf versions of mainland animals during the Ice Ages. (Crenson, Matt; "A Mammoth Discovery," Dallas Morning News, p. 22A, March 25, 1993. Cr. L. Anderson. Also: Bower, B.; "' Dwarf' Mammoths Outlived Last Ice Age," Science News, 143:197, 1993.) Comment 1. If the full-size Siberian mammoths really met their demise because of a catastrophic climate change, how did the dwarf mammoths occupying the same region escape? Comment 2. Lister's remark about other dwarf island inhabitants brings to mind the dwarf elephants of Santa Rosa, off the Californian coast, which apparently were the main course in early human feasts. But, curiously, island isolation also ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 83: Sep-Oct 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects When Isotropy Confounds Angular distribution of 153 gamma-ray bursts detected by the GRO satellite in 1991 Take a look at the distribution of 153 gamma-ray bursts registered by the Gamma-Ray Observatory (a satellite). There is no pattern, gamma-ray bursters seem to be evenly distributed in all directions. This is not what the astronomers expected, and the implications of this isotropy are staggering. Gamma-ray bursts emanate from highly localized unseen sources. They may last for a few milliseconds or stretch out for several minutes. The energy in the bursts ranges over 26 orders of magnitude. The rise-times of the bursts are so short that the sources can only be a few hundred kilometers across. Before the accompanying map appeared, most scientists thought that the bursters were nearby, probably in the disk of the galaxy, and were due to asteroids being digested by neutron stars or possibly neutron-star quakes. If such were so, the bursters would be concentrated in the plane of the galaxy (the Milky Way), which clearly they are not. Another theory places the bursters in a distant spherical halo about our galaxy. But, in this case, the bursters would have to be much more energetic than astronomers care to contemplate. In fact, if they exist in a galactic halo, we should also be able to detect the bursters in our neighboring galaxies -- but we do not! A ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 81: May-Jun 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The tyranny of the [normal] senses R.O . Becker, author of Cross Currents , has contributed a thought-provoking article on the mechanisms by which humans perceive the cosmos. From the many stimulating ideas he presented, we select his rationale for believing that an electromagnetic basis may exist for the reception and processing of psi signals. A key concept in Becker's scheme is his belief in the presence, in humans and other organisms, of a dual system for receiving and processing information arriving from the environment. The system we are all aware of and which scientists study in depth is the nerve impulse system, which transmits digital signals; i.e ., 0s and 1s. This system connects to all our everyday senses and controls our motor functions. The second system Becker designates as "primitive." It transmits information in analog (continuously varying) form via electrical currents and magnetic fields, rather than as impulses along neurons. This second system is not recognized by mainstream science. Becker advances the notions that: (1 ) Psi-type phenomena are actually handled by the "primitive" analog system; (2 ) The flood of information normally arriving from our sensory organs via the "modern" digital system masks the psi-type signals; and (3 ) These assertions are consistent with the elusive nature of psi phenomena in both everyday experience and the parapsychological laboratories. Becker's ideas also ...
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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 Solar activity, your mother's birth year, and your longevity "According to two scientists who stumbled on a startling statistical association -- though not necessarily a causeeffect relationship -- your life span may depend on the number of sunspots that appeared in the year your mother was born. "They found that if the sun was at a maximum in its 11-year cycle (during which the number of sunspots rises and falls), children of mothers born at that time would die an average of two to three years sooner than if their mothers had been born during the sunspot minimum." Before dismissing this fascinating correlation as "nut science," consider that the study was conducted by two established scientists at Michigan State University, B. Rosenberg and D.A . Juckett. Their report was published in the March 1993 issue of the mainstream journal Radiation Research . Furthermore, in two English studies of longevity. the same periodicity was remarked. Although the population sample in the Michigan State work was small (7552), the phenomenon appears sufficiently robust to admit to the columns of Science Frontiers! (In truth we covet bizarreness as much as robustness!) But what possible causal link might connect one's longevity with one's mother's date of birth? Rosenberg and Juckett point to the fact that when a woman is born all of her eggs are already formed. Later, they will mature and ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 104: Mar-Apr 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Reinventing The Neandertals The public image of the Neandertal is that of a brutish, hardly human creature clad in a ragged skin and unable to speak save for a few grunts. Forget that picture. Several hundred meters deep inside a cavern near Bruniquel, in southern France, spelunkers stumbled across a complex quadrilateral structure, 4 x 5 meters in extent, built up from chunks of stalactites and stalagmites. Within its "walls" they found a piece of burnt bear bone that was later carbondated as at least 47,600 years old. A burnt bone and a geometrical structure certainly suggest the work of an intelligent creature, as does the site's great distance from the surface. Torches would have been a necessity that far in. That 47,600-year figure, though, presents a problem. The first Cro-Magnons didn't filter into western Europe until about 35,000 BP. According to the accepted anthropological schedule, only those subhuman Neandertals inhabited that part of France in 47,600 BP. So, we must conclude that the Neandertals knew well the sophisticated use of fire. They also had enough curiosity to venture deep into the earth, where for some unknown purpose they piled together an enigmatic structure. All this also seems to require more information transfer than possible with a few "ughs"! (Balter, Michael; "Cave Structure Boosts Neandertal Image," Science, 271:449, ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 81: May-Jun 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Rhythms In Rhythm "We are currently living in the last quarter-century of the fifth 500-year cycle, which began with the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century. All the harmonies we hear today were developed in this last cycle." So begins the final section of a recent reprinting of W.D . Allen's sweeping 1951 overview of the human fascination with music. But what's this about a 500-year cycle in music? It turns out that not only is there a 500-year pulse in musical creativity, but nested within the long swings are 100-year subcycles! Allen's article, as it appeared originally in the Journal of Human Ecology (1 :1 , 1951), ran 41 pages. We can hit only a few high notes here. And, since we are concerned mainly with anomalies, we shall concentrate on this unexpected periodicity in musical creativity. Allen describes how musical theorists have proposed both supernatural and evolutionary explanations for this periodicity, which commenced some 2,500 years ago with the Ancient Greeks. He is not convinced by either class of explanations. Instead, Allen has been beguiled by the long-period tones of environmental cycles: "Now we have knowledge of a constantly operating cyclic factor in our cosmos, scientifically based on a mass of inductive evidence that goes beyond recorded history into the tree-ring records from centuries B.C . For ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 80: Mar-Apr 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Steens Mountain Conundrum The layered lava flows of Steens Mountain, in southeastern Oregon, have preserved video-like records of the earth's magnetic field as it switched from one polarity to another about 15.5 million years ago. The scientific "instruments" here are the cooling lava flows. As they solidify from the outside in, a process taking about 2 weeks for a 2meter-thick flow, the lava is magnetized in the direction of the field prevailing at the moment of solidification. We would thus have a 2-week continuous record of the behavior of the earth's field. Ordinarily, we would not expect to see very much change in 2 weeks; even a reversing field is thought to take thousands of years to complete its flip-flop. However, at Steens Mountain, when the field reversed 15.5 million years ago, the lava flows suggest that the field's axis was rotating 3-8 per day -- incredibly fast according to current thinking, in fact a thousand times faster than expected. The conundrum (one might call it a scientific impasse) arises because the flowing electrically conducting fluids that supposedly constitute the earth's dynamo would have to flow at speeds of several kilometers/hour. No one has ever contemplated molten rock moving at such speeds in the core! (Appenzeller, Tim; "A Conundrum at Steens Mountain," Science, 255:31 ...
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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 Heavy traffic in near-earth space That region of outer space near the earth carries a heavier load of flotsam and jetsam than scientists expected. The devastation of the 1908 Tunguska impact in Siberia warns us that this space debris -- meteors, comets, asteroids -- is an active threat. A recent spate of articles paints an ominous future. The earth's retinue of mini-asteroids. "Asteroids as big as houses pass near the Earth 100 times more often than anyone suspected. On an average day, about 50 asteroids measuring at least 10 metres across come closer to the Earth than the Moon, and each year about five such objects may hit the planet." (Second reference below.) These startling data come from D. Rabinowitz and coworkers at the University of Arizona, who have been scanning nearby space with a telescope fitted with supersensitive charge-coupled devices (CCDs). They have picked up astronomical objects that have escaped conventional instruments. Several sources have been suggested for this unexpected, threateningly large population of small asteroids: (1 ) debris hurled earthward from collisions within the asteroid belt located between Mars and Jupiter; (2 ) the breakup of a large object formerly in orbit about the earth; and (3 ) fragments blasted off the moon by impacts of large asteroids there. (Kerr, Richard A.; "Earth Gains a Retinue of Mini-Asteroids," Science, 258 ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 84: Nov-Dec 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Galactic Shell Game W.G . Tifft, an astronomer at the University of Arizona, has maintained for some two decades that the redshifts of the galaxies do not fall on a smooth curve as one would expect. Instead, Tifft asserts, redshifts are bunched at intervals of 72 kilometers/second and at onehalf and one-third that value. Mainstream astronomers insist that redshifts be interpreted as Doppler shifts due to the expanding universe. Quantized redshifts just don't fit into this view of the cosmos, for they imply concentric shells of galaxies expanding away from a central point -- earth! Even though more recent redshift data have supported the notion of quantized redshifts, cosmologists find them undigestible, even pathogenic. But replication and non-replication are the essence of science, so B. Guthrie and W.M . Napier, at the Royal Observatory at Edinburgh, undertook another study. They selected 89 nearby spiral galaxies that had not been incorporated in any of the previous surveys. These galaxies had very accurately measured redshifts and were distributed all over the celestial sphere. "As expected, the galaxies' redshifts showed a smooth distribution. Clearly, no quantization was being introduced by the radio telescopes or the data reduction process. But after Guthrie and Napier corrected each redshift to account for the Earth's motion around the center of the Milky Way -- a different correction for each location in the sky -- out popped ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 82: Jul-Aug 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Efficacy Of Homeopathy Over the last several years we have been following the feud between the homeopathists and mainstream medicine, particularly the saga of J. Benveniste. Despite what the media writers say, homeopathy continues to produce positive results, as confirmed in the following item from the British Medical Journal: "Many doctors do not believe that homoeopathy [sic] is an efficacious treatment as it is highly implausible that infinitesimally diluted substances retain their biological effects. It is also often said that homoeopathy has not been evaluated with modern methods -- that is, controlled trials. The first argument may be true, the second is not. [J .] Kleijnen et searched the literature and found 96 reports containing 107 controlled trials of homoeopathy. Most trials turned out to be of very low quality, but there were many exceptions. The results show the same trend regardless of the quality of the trial or the variety of homoeopathy used. Overall. of the 105 trials with interpretable results, 81 showed positive results of homoeopathic treatment. A complicating factor in such reviews, especially of controversial subjects such as homoeopathy, is publication bias. If the results of Kleijnen et do not reflect the true state of affairs, publication bias must be considered a great problem in evaluations of homoeopathy. In any event, there is a legitimate case for further evaluation of homoeopathy, but only by means of trials with sound methodology." (Anonymous; "Clinical ...
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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 earth: a doubly charmed planet In SF#85, we learned that the evolution of advanced life forms on earth may have depended upon the protective influences of Jupiter and Saturn. These two giant planets can gravitationally deflect potentially devastating asteroids and comets away from the earth. It seems now that we are doubly lucky! Computer runs demonstrate that the presence of our large moon has stabilized the earth's spin axis down the eons. Presently, the earth's spin axis makes an angle of 23.5 with the plane of the earth's orbit (its "obliquity"). The well-known result is our yearly procession of seasons. Without the steadying effect of the moon, however, the earth's obliquity would probably have swung chaotically over much larger values. Such extreme changes would have been inimical to the development of life, particularly advanced life. As a case in point, the polar axis of Mars, with only two tiny moons to dampen its spin excursions, seems to have gone through many wild swings, as indicated in the figure. What deadly climatic changes must have wracked our sister planet! (Touma, Jihad, and Wisdom, Jack; "The Chaotic Obliquity of Mars," Science, 259: 1294, 1993. Also: Laskar, J., and Robutel, P.; "The Chaotic Obliquity of the Planets," Nature, 361:608, ...
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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 Cosmic Snowballs And Magnetic Asteroids The genesis of a cosmic "dust bunny". The nebulous meteor of July 29, 1970, as observed over Dover, England. The great diversity of the debris swirling around the solar system is making life difficult for scientists trying to reconstruct solar-system history. At the high end of the density spectrum, we now have an asteroid that seems to be mostly metal (probably iron). This is the asteroid Gaspra, some 13 kilometers across, that the Galileo spacecraft encountered in August 1992 on its way to Jupiter. Scientists had not expected Galileo's magnetometer to flicker as it passed Gaspra at a distance of 1600 kilometers -- but it did. In fact, considering the inverse square law and Gaspra's small size, it was a magnetic wallop. Thus, Gaspra is the first known magnetic asteroid; and it is probably mostly metal. (Kerr, Richard A.; "Magnetic Ripple Hints Gaspra Is Metallic," Science, 259: 176, 1993.) At the low end of the density spectrum, we now find that Pluto's moon, Charon, and some of Saturn's moons have very low densities (1 .2 -1 .4 ), meaning they are probably mostly water ice. Such density figures come from direct observation of these objects' volumes combined with mass estimates from their orbital dynamics. (Crosswell, Ken; " ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 101: Sep-Oct 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects More Hear Ears Just after SF#100* was sent off to the printer with its item "Straight from the Horse's Ear," another report on sound emissions from ears appeared in Nature. Although the body of the article deals with sounds emanating from the ears of chinchillas, humans are not neglected. First, from the abstract: "The inner ear sometimes acts as a robust sound generator, continuously broadcasting sounds (spontaneous otoacoustic emissions) which can be intense enough to be heard by other individuals standing nearby. Paradoxically, most individuals are unaware of the sounds generated within their ears." Second, the article's final sentence: "Apparently, some humans with intense spontaneous emissions owe their hearing loss to internal 'noise' which they are unable to perceive." (Powers, Nicholas L., et al; "Elevation of Auditory Thresholds by Spontaneous Cochlear Oscillations," Nature, 375:585, 1995.) * SF#100 = Science Frontiers #100. From Science Frontiers #101 Sep-Oct 1995 . 1995-2000 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 Growth Spurts In Children Daily length measurements (in centimeters) versus age (in years) for a male infant showing growth spurts. Despite much anecdotal evidence and the convictions of many parents, biologists have not generally recognized the reality of short, sharp growth spurts on the order of 1 centimeter in a single 24hour period. Rather, the consensus has been that child growth was divided into three stages (infancy, childhood, adolescence), each characterized by different, but steady rates of growth. This conclusion was based upon annual and quarterly length measurements. However, when children are measured more often (weekly or daily), the growth curve is seen to be step-like rather than smooth, as in the accompanying illustration. Indeed, the mean amplitude of the growth spurts was found to be about 1 centimeter; and the duration of the spurts, about one day. These spurts punctuated long intervals of no growth. In infants, for example, 90-95% of their development is growth-free! (Lampl, M., et al; "Saltation and Stasis: A Model of Human Growth," Science, 258:801, 1992.) From Science Frontiers #85, JAN-FEB 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 80: Mar-Apr 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Possible Chain Of Meteorite Scars In Argentina A string of linear depressions characterizes the Rio Cuarto crater field In the January 16, 1992, issue of Nature, P.H . Schultz and R.E . Lianza describe a curious chain of grooves incised in the Argentine pampas near Rio Cuarto. "During routine flights two years ago .. ., one of us (R .E .L .) noticed an anomalous alignment of oblong rimmed depressions (4 km x 1 km) on the otherwise featureless farmland of the Pampas of Argentina. We argue here, from sample analysis and by analogy with laboratory experiments, that these structures resulted from lowangle impact and ricochet of a chondritic body originally 150-300 m in diameter." There are ten gouges in all, strung out along 50 kilometers. The scars are young, perhaps only a few thousand years old, well within the time of human habitation. Schultz and Lianza also found pieces of meteoritic rock and glassy fragments of impact melt. (Schultz, Peter H., and Lianza, Ruben E.; "Recent Grazing Impacts on the Earth Recorded in the Rio Cuarto Crater Field, Argentina," Nature, 355:234, 1992. Also: Monastersky, R.; "Meteorite Hopscotched across Argentina," Science News, 141:55, 1992.) Comments. Note the similarities to the much more numerous Carolina Bays. See ETB1 in our catalog ...
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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. 83: Sep-Oct 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Crop-circle contest July 11-12, 1992. Buckinghamshire, England . On this dark night, in a barley field, 12 teams assembled in hopes of winning a $5 ,200 prize provided by the Koestler Foundation and the German Magazine PM. This sum was to be awarded to the best crop-circle hoaxers. First prize went to three engineers from a British helicopter company, who used rope, plastic piping, and a ladder suspended from a trestle. Close behind in the competition was American J. Schnabel, who, working all alone, required only a plank, some rope, and a small garden roller to produce a creditable, rather elaborate design. (Anonymous; "Circle Hoax Contest," Science, 257:481, 1992.) Comment. The quality of the best entries assures us that hoaxing is not to be discounted as a major factor in cropcircle studies. From Science Frontiers #83, SEP-OCT 1992 . 1992-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 84: Nov-Dec 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A Permian Polar Forest "An in situ Upper Permian fossil forest in the central Transantarctic Mountains near the Beardmore Glacier includes 15 permineralized trunks in growth position; the paleolatitude of the site was approximately 80 to 85 south. Numerous leaves of the seed fern Glossopteris are present in the shale in which the trunks are rooted. The trunks are perminealized and tree rings reveal that the forest was a rapidly growing and young forest, persisting in an equable, strongly seasonal climate -- a scenario that does not fit with some climate reconstructions for this time period." Some models of the Permian climate, based on astronomical and meteorological parameters, have winter temperatures at the site averaging -30 to -40 C, with the average summer temperature at merely 0 C. This fossil forest is clearly at odds with these models. (Taylor, Edith L., et al; "The Present Is Not the Key to the Past: A Polar Forest from the Permian of Antarctica," Science, 257:1675, 1992.) From Science Frontiers #84, NOV-DEC 1992 . 1992-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... 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 It "IT would mean abandoning a great deal of present research." (M . Disney, galaxy specialist, University of Wales) "I 'm not being dogmatic and saying IT cannot happen, but if it does, it's a real shocker." (J . Peebles, cosmologist, Princeton University)" Emphasis added above and for good reason. Yes, IT is resurgent again and after a remission of only a single issue. We are referring to those pesky quantized redshifts that won't go away. Now, a new study of them, by B. Napier and B. Guthrie, has appeared in Astronomy and Astrophysics . These astronomers had collected the redshifts for 97 spiral galaxies, measured and remeasured by various observatories, and had found in them a strong quantization in the power spectrum. (See figure.) So unbelievable was this phenomenon that, when they first submitted their paper to Astronomy and Astrophysics , a referee asked them to repeat their analysis with another set of galaxies. This, Napier and Guthrie did with 117 other galaxies. The same 37.5 -kilometers/second figure thrust itself out of the data; and their paper was accepted. It seems. therefore, that a lot of galaxies, maybe all of them, are receding from our telescopes at velocities separated by 37.5 kilometers/second, rather than in a continuous range of velocities. Unless Napier ...
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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. 83: Sep-Oct 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Checking Out Some Texas Ghost Lights Some members of the Houston Association for Scientific Thinking (HAST) have visited the sites of the famed Marfa Lights (West Texas) and the less-publicized Saratoga Lights (East Texas). With binoculars, telescopes, and road maps, it was fairly easy for them to ascertain that the Saratoga Lights were simply the headlights of automobiles traveling along Route 787. The Saratoga display is a bit eerie but not at all mysterious, according to HAST. The Marfa Lights turned out to be more impressive and, in consequence, quite a tourist attraction. The favorite viewing site is on Highway 90, 9 miles east of Marfa. HAST logged a total of 9 hours of observation there on three successive nights. All of the lights observed were easily attributed to cars traveling north from Presidio to Marfa. People at the viewing site who knew of the Presidio-Marfa road had no trouble identifying the lights as those of automobiles. But those unaware of the road called the lights mysterious. As for the frequent reports of Marfa lights cavorting and executing strange maneuvers, HAST thought they were probably due to low-flying aircraft in the neighborhood of the Chianti Mountains some 40 miles away. In fact, just such a plane was observed during a daylight trip to Shafter, a town near the mountains. Admitting that the Marfa Lights are indeed entrancing and even mildly mystical, the report closes (rather incongruously ...
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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. 90: Nov-Dec 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Mystery Light Flashes Above Storms Past issues of Science Frontiers have recorded several examples of anomalous luminous phenomena above cloud tops (in SF#89, for example). Almost all of these observations have been anecdotal and too qualitative to be of use to scientists. Happily, some atmospheric scientists are now taking more interest in "rocket lightning" and those strange light flashes seen above storm clouds. First, though, one more anecdotal report, and then we'll summarize two recent scientific efforts to elucidate these phenomena. July 28, 1993. 150 miles south of Panama. From an aircraft flying at 33,000 feet. "I and another pilot in the cockpit of American Airlines Flight 912 were watching and circumnavigating a large cumulonimbus cloud. About five times, a large discharge of lightning at the top of and within the cloud was followed by a vertical shaft of blue light that propagated from the top of the cloud upward to 100,000 ft. "The beam was very straight and the color distinctly different from the lightning. At the top of this shaft, the column fanned out just before its disappearance. All the occurrences were identical. At least one also was witnessed by three other American pilots about 30 min. behind us on the same route." (Hammerstrom, John G.; "Mystery Lightning," Aviation Week , 139:6 , August 30, 1993. Cr. J.S ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 90: Nov-Dec 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Ktb Hole KTB = Kontinentales Tiefbohrprogramm der Bundesrepublik Deutschland If you could drop a pfennig down the KTB hole, it would take several minutes to hit bottom, for this research drill hole has now penetrated to 7.5 kilometers. It is the second deepest man-made hole, after the Soviet 12-km hole in the Kola Peninsula. Drilled solely for scientific purposes, the rocks and strata encountered by the KTB drill bits have forced the redrawing of German geological maps. The "real" subterranean world turned out to be quite different from that inferred from both surface indications and the seismic and electrical probing of the depths. Three specific surprises are worth mentioning: Temperatures in the drill hole rose far faster than predicted. The expected boundary (" suture") between two old tectonic plates thought to exist at 3 km according to surface geology had not yet appeared at 7.5 km. Most interestingly, crevicular structure (crevices and pores) existed at almost all depths, even though theory said they could not because of intense pressures. And these voids were filled with fluids. P. Keher, a KTB scientist, was amazed at what the drill found: "When I started 25 years ago, the idea was that the deeper you go into the crust, the drier it gets." (Kerr, Richard A.; "Looking -- Deeply -- into the Earth's Crust in Europe ...
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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 Biogeology It is accepted that every cubic centimeter of the topsoil beneath our feet seethes with thousands of microorganisms. It is less well known that life's domain extends down much further. The hard rocks and strata of earth's crust -- seemingly sterile and inert -- are continuously being transformed by bacteria and other life forms. In fact, it was easy to find three examples of such processes from the literature collected from the past two months. Although the discoveries reported below may seem dull to anomalists ued to more exciting fare, it may well be that life from "inner space" has been and will be more important to humankind than life from "outer space," as implied in third item! Bacteria and placer gold. "Lacelike networks of micrometresize filiform gold associated with Alaskan placer gold particles are interpreted as low-temperature pseudomorphs of a Pedomicrobium -like budding bacterium. Submicron reproductive structures (hyphae) and other morphological features similar to those of Pedomicrobium occur as three-dimensional facsimiles in highpurity gold in and on placer gold particles from Lillian Creek, Alaska." In short, bacteria help create placer gold deposits. The author believes that bacterioform gold is widespread. (Watterson, John R.; "Preliminary Evidence for the Involvement of Budding Bacteria in the Origin of Alaskan Placer Gold," Geology , 20:315, 1992.) Microorganisms and iron deposits. At least 500 million years ago ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 101: Sep-Oct 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Male Dolphin Kills Man Male dolphins definitely prefer human females. In fact, a recent incident at a Sao Paulo, Brazil, beach reveals an antagonism toward human males. A wild, resident male dolphin, noted for his friendliness toward women swimmers, attacked two human males, who were evidently considered to be romantic competitors. One of the men died from internal hemorrhaging after being butted by the dolphin. The other man received a broken rib. (Anonymous; "Dolphin Prefers Women, Kills Male Playmate," Washington Times, December 11, 1994. Cr. S. Parker. COUDI item. COUDI = Collectors of Unusual DataInternational.) Comment. Obviously, dolphins are not always as friendly as Flipper. In fact, a recent TV documentary related how a female snorkeler was seized (gently) by a male false killer whale (a type of dolphin) and dragged down 100 feet before being released unhurt though nearly drowned. For additional discussions of the humananimal interface, see Biological Anomalies: Humans III. To order, see: here . From Science Frontiers #101 Sep-Oct 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 84: Nov-Dec 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Hunt For The Magnetoreceptor When magnetite particles were found in organisms from bacteria to bats, it was assumed that here was the long sought magnetoreceptor which animals used for magnetic navigation. But so far, biologists do not have the slightest notion how such magnetite particles can be turned into a "magnetic sense," which sends the brain information on the direction of the geomagnetic field or, perhaps, draws a magnetic map of sorts. A completely different sort of magnetreceptor is now under investigation, one that humans may also unknowingly possess. It utilizes special photoreceptors that employ an electron-spin resonance process which is modulated by the geomagnetic field. Some of our very sensitive magnetometers use similar phenomena. The biological version of such a receptor would be connected to the brain, as the eye is, and send signals as to the direction of the earth's magnetic field. Sounds interesting, but is there any basis for thinking such a sophisticated gadget could have evolved? It seems that some experiments with newts by J.B . Phillips and S.C . Borland support the idea. The newts were first trained to orient themselves in a certain direction with respect to the geomagnetic field. "When tested under one of four artificial field alignments (magnetic north at geographic north, east, south or west), the newts kept their training directions constant relative to the magnetic rather than the geographic system of reference, but they selected ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 84: Nov-Dec 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Odd Growths Found On Satellite We cautiously classify the following phenomenon as "biological," although it might well be inorganic in nature -- perhaps something akin to "whisker growth" seen in metals under some conditions. "Scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration are scratching their heads over how a tiny patch of something managed to grow even though it was exposed to the harshness of outer space for nearly six years. "The mystery growth has been found in a toothpick-sized region on what is known as the Long Duration Exposure Facility. The bussized LDEF was launched in 1984 and was retrieved by a space shuttle in January 1990, a few weeks before its decaying orbit would have sent it crashing back to earth. .. .. . "NASA scientists in Huntsville, Ala., discovered the growth while examining a brownish discoloration on a Tefloncovered section of the satellite. "Using an electron scanning microscope, they saw tiny, stalactite-like structures on the Teflon. Tiny means the longest were about seven microns in size. That's about one-tenth the width of a human hair. "At first NASA scientists thought the growth might be a fungus or a mold that had contaminated the LDEF upon its return. However, their tests came up negative," (Anonymous; "Odd Space Growth on Satellite Baffles NASA," Arkansas Demo crat-Gazelle , September 9, 1992. Cr. ...
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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 Blasting Rocks Off Planets "Can rocks from the surface of a major planet or satellite be launched into interplanetary space by natural processes? A few years ago the answer to this question would have been a resounding "no" from the experts on both volcanism and impact cratering, the only geological processes known to eject solid material at substantial velocities. Observation, however, has once again confounded expectation." In the snowy wastes of Antarctica, scientists have picked up meteorites that almost certainly came from the moon and Mars. And near St. Gallen, Switzerland, there was discovered a 22-centimeter block of Malm limestone that was apparently ejected from the Ries impact crater, almost 200 kilometers away, about 15 million years ago. We know all of these rocks are impact debris because they contain shatter cones indicating a violent origin. Not only did these bits of debris confound expectations, but their shatter cones implied shock-wave pressures far too low to achieve lunar and Martian escape velocities, or even the velocity necessary to propel that chunk of Malm limestone 200 kilometers. Something was wrong somewhere. It has turned out that shock-wave theory had been misapplied. It is not the pressure that is important in ejecting bits of debris from around the impact site, but rather it is the pressure gradient. Anomaly extirpated! (Melosh, H.J .; "Blasting Rocks Off Planets," Nature, 363:498, ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 83: Sep-Oct 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Official foo-fighter records revealed The famous foo fighters of World War II were bright balls of light, about a foot in diameter, of different colors, that appeared mostly over Germany to both German and Allied pilots. Although the foo fighters could maneuver around and through bomber formations with apparent ease, they were nuisances rather than physical threats. Most of the foo-fighter reports made by Americans came from the 415th Night Fighter Squadron. Recently a microfilm roll containing the Unit History and War Diary of the 415th was obtained from the U.S . Air Force. We quote below three incidents found on Frames 1613 and 1614. The year is 1944: "December 18. In Rastatt area sighted five or six red and green lights in a 'T ' shape which followed A/C thru turns and closed to 1000 feet. Lights followed for several miles and then went out. Our pilots have named these mysterious phenomena which they encounter over Germany at night 'Foo-Fighters.' "December 23. More Foo-Fighters were in the air last night...In the vicinity of Hagenau saw 2 lights coming toward the A/C from ground. After reaching the altitude of the A/C they leveled off and flew on tail of Beau (Beaufighter -- their aircraft, Ed.) for 2 minutes and then peeled up and turned away. 8th mission -- sighted 2 orange lights. ...
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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 The birthday: lifeline or deadline?The following abstract is from a paper in Psychosomatic Medicine: "This study of deaths from natural causes examined adult mortality around the birthday for two samples, totalling 2,745,149 people. Women are more likely to die in the week following their birthdays than in any other week of the year. In addition, the frequency of female deaths dips below normal just before the birthday. The results do not seem to be due to seasonal fluctuations, misreporting on the death certificate, deferment of life-threatening surgery, or behavioral changes associated with the birthday. At present, the best available explanation of these findings is that females are able to prolong life briefly until they have reached a positive, symbolically meaningful occasion. Thus the birthday seems to function as a 'lifeline' for some females. In contrast, male mortality peaks shortly before the birthday, suggesting that the birthday functions as a 'deadline' for males." (Phillips. David P., et al; "The Birthday: Lifeline or Deadline?" Psychosomatic Medicine, 54:532, 1992.) From Science Frontiers #89, SEP-OCT 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 82: Jul-Aug 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects For some, sex = death It has long been known that the males of some species of marsupial mice mate in their first year and then die off completely, leaving the perpetuation of their species to their male progeny. Females of these species usually survive to breed a second and even third year. The poor males, however, succumb due to "elevated levels of free corticosteroids in the blood and associated disease such as hemorrhagic ulceration of the gastric mucosa, anemia, and parasite infestation." In short, they seem programmed to die after mating, like the male octopus. And one wonders why evolution has wrought this mass die-off. In their studies of marsupial mice, C.R . Dickman and R.W . Braithwaite have extended the phenomenon to two new genera: Dasyurus and Parantechinus . They have also found that the phenomenon is a bit more complex. First, in P . apicalis, the male die-off occurs in some populations and not others. In D. hallucatus , the die-off may occur in the same population in some years and not others. Furthermore, the females of this species may on occasion all die off, too -- but after giving birth, of course. (Dickman, C.R ., and Braithwaite, R.W .; "Postmating Mortality of Males in the Dasyurid Marsupials, Dasyurus and Parantechinus ," Journal of Mammalogy , 73: ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 82: Jul-Aug 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Big-bang brouhaha Unless you have been in a coma the past couple months, you have heard that the Big Bang has now been elevated from a theory to a fact. The reason for the media hullabaloo was the announcement that minute fluctuations had been detected in the cosmic microwave background. The media hype was notably chauvinistic. Some Big-Bang proponents declared that discovery was the greatest scientific advance of the century, completely ignoring the genetic code, continental drift, nuclear fission, and so on and so on. More sober scientists rejected such extravagant claims. They pointed out that independent confirmation of the fluctuations was yet to come and that, after all, the fluctuations were very small (only some 30 millionths of a K). And which of the many variations of Big Bang was going to be enthroned? Even Nature advised extreme caution, quoting H. Bondi in this regard: ". .. the data in cosmology are so likely to be wrong that I propose to ignore them." (Anonymous; "Big Bang Brouhaha," Nature, 356:731, 1992.) Comment. It is ironical that before astronomers found large-scale inhomogeneities in the cosmos (galactic clusters and superclusters, the Great Wall, etc.), the Big Bangers claimed that the very smoothness of the microwave background proved the reality of the Big Bang. The Big Bang, it seems, is one of those " ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 81: May-Jun 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Four Luminous Spinning Vortices July 21, 1991. The following observations were made by D. and E. Haines, about 11 PM, after they had just passed through the village of Hill Deverill, Wiltshire, England: "We saw what looked like the reflection of the moon from the driver's window (i .e . we were looking in a westerly to south-westerly direction), and, as we travelled on, it then looked like four beams of a high-powered torch, but, as we went still further and were more or less alongside, we could see it was in fact four swirling shapes, shining white (not very bright, but bright against the night sky). We turned off the car engine and could hear a whooshing noise (like a car a distance away, going fast on a motorway -- but the sound did not come any closer). The national grid reference was ST 866392 approximately. "These four spinning shapes (like the top of a cotton bud -- not dense and solid) went round and round in a clockwise direction. They came together in the middle, out and round and round. They did this several times (once, one went off to the right but came back into 'formation'), and then they came back together and just disappeared." (Haines, David, and Haines, Elaine; "An ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 81: May-Jun 1992 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Shc or h/t homicide?The possible case of SHC (Spontaneous Human Combustion) just reported above may have a rational but bizarre explanation. S.L . Wernokoff commented as follows in the Journal of Meteorology: "The very first thing that comes to mind is whether overloaded hightension [H /T ] or low-tension wires were anywhere nearby. Since this incident occurred at a roadside, nearby power lines may well have been present. If such lines are overloaded or badly insulated, fatal arcing can occur from the ground at a considerable distance from the power lines. This has happened often in our country [the U.S .] , in rural areas where public utilities have quietly exceeded the capacity of their lines. The resulting discharges can easily electrocute livestock over mile from the 'leaky' H/T lines. I would wager that the Hungarian utility agencies are guilty of the same practice. Personally, I suspect that this unfortunate young man may have been electrocuted through his own urine! The 'blue light' witnessed by the victim's wife may have been St. Elmo's Fire -- an ungrounded luminous corona visible around the victim in the humid, pre-thunderstorm conditions. The hole in his heel and tennis shoe indicate where the current finally grounded itself." Wernikoff goes on to tell of a case in Canada where a man washing up at an outdoor table, 100 ...
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