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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 52: Jul-Aug 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Nose news "Renewed discussion of a nasal breathing cycle, first discovered 5000 years ago, has recently been documented in the November 1986 issue of American Health by David Shannahoff-Khalsa of the Khalsa Foundation for Medical Science. Apparently the yogis of ancient India were the first to notice that breathing is dominated by either the right or left nostril for short cycle spans of one to three hours. (Cycles of this duration are known as ultradian rhythms, and are common to many biological functions.) By simply placing a mirror under your nostrils and watching for the larger amount of condensation, one can determine which nostril is in use. "What are the ramifications of this seemingly insignificant phenomenon? The yogis reportedly have said that improved sleeping, more satisfying sex, enhanced digestion, and appropriate thought patterns were controlled by the use of a certain nostril." It is further maintained that one can force a change in nostril breathing through meditation. In this way, it is possible to enhance sleeping, sex, digestion, and mental acuity! (LeBow, Howard A.; "Have You Heard about This One?" Cycles, 37:191, 1986.) Comment. All we know is what we read in the journals! The next time you feel down, think about your breathing, or try a little cotton. From Science Frontiers #52, JUL-AUG 1987 . 1987-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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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 From the sunswept lagoon Mitchener fans will recognize the above title as heading one of his chapters in Hawaii . Many Polynesian navigators did indeed set out from sunswept lagoons into the superficially featureless Pacific. How did these peoples, a thousand years ago, sail reliably from one speck of land to another, thousands of miles distant? The archeology of Oceania confirms that the Polynesians made such voyages centuries before they learned about compasses and navigation satellites. But were these voyages anomalous; that is, did the Pacific peoples possess devices or talents unrecognized today by mainstream science? For the most part, the answer seems to be NO. While the navigational abilities of the Polynesian seafarers seemed supernatural to early European explorers, it has been convincingly demonstrated -- through modern voyages -- that the senses of sight, hearing, smell, touch, and time-passage are and were sufficient for most interisland voyages. The early Pacific navigators were adept at observing the waves, stars, birds, clouds, winds, and several other natural phenomena that carry subtle directional cues. There are, however, modern instances in which Pacific navigators bereft of the usual sensory cues seem to employ an anomalous "sense." B. Finney, in his study of the possibility of human magnetoreception, tells how one native Hawaiian navigator, though wellschooled in traditional Polynesian navigational techniques, conquered the dread doldrums on a 3,000mile voyage from Hawaii to Tahiti in a way ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 16: Summer 1981 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Belief Systems And Health Can one's mind-set affect one's immunity to disease? Lenard explores (in popular style) the roles of mental attitude, visualization techniques, and placebos in fighting and preventing cancer and other ailments. Placebos are nothing new. Most doctors admit they sometimes work for some people. Why, they don't know. Placebo action seems closely allied to a person's mental attitude. Many doctors will also allow that a positive attitude helps a lot in fighting illness and that depression aggravates it. Visualization techniques, though, are hotly debated. Will cancer cells be destroyed, or at least stop growing, if the patient visualized them as weak things that are vulnerable to the body's killer cells? Proponents of visualization recom-mend that a cancer patient visualize his killer cells as protecting knights in armor that swoop down and skewer the enemy cancer cells. In a visualization session, one focuses one's mind on such images and, in essence, wills his body to fight back. There is some evidence that visualization helps. (Lenard, Lane; "Visions That Vanquish Cancer," Science Digest, 89:59, March 1981.) Comment. The crucial scientific question in all the above methods is: How does a belief system mobilize biological systems? From Science Frontiers #16, Summer 1981 . 1981-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 60: Nov-Dec 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Purposeful evolution?One seemingly unassailable dogma of evolutionary biology insists that natural selection involves, first, the continuous, random, environment-independent generation of genetic mutations; and, second, the subsequent fixation of those mutations that are favored by prevailing conditions. In other works, the genetic mutations cannot be influenced by external events and conditions. But in recent experiments with bacteria (E . coli), J. Cairns et al, at the Harvard School of Public Health, find they actually do produce mutations in direct response to changes in their environment. The adjective "purposeful" has even been applied to the action of these bacteria! Can anything be more heretical? "One of the experiments involves taking colonies of E. coli that are incapable of metabolizing lactose and exposing them to the sugar. If the lactose-utilizing mutants simply arise spontaneously in the population and are then favored by prevailing conditions, then this would lead to one pattern of new colony growth. A distinctly different pattern is produced if, under the new conditions, the rate of production of lactose-utilizing mutants is enhanced. The observation is something of a mixture of patterns, indicating that directed mutation appears to be occurring. 'This experiment suggests that populations of bacteria...have some way of producing (or selectively retaining) only the most appropriate mutations,' note Cairns and his colleagues." (Lewin, Roger; "A Heresy ...
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... Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects When Identical Twins Are Not Identical Past studies of identical twins separated at birth have documented remarkable similarities between them, despite the fact that they were reared under radically different circumstances. Their physical appearances, habits, vocations, health histories, and other factors are often eerily the same. For example, two female identical twins, who had never seen each other, each wore eight rings! The upshot of such investigations is that most of a person's characteristics are genetic in origin; that is, Nature dominates nurture. But what about identical twins who are remarkably different? They can, for instance, differ appreciably in size, intellect, and behavior. In such cases, does nurture dominate nature? No! Identical twins may diverge even in the womb, where one may receive more oxygen and nutrients than the other. One also may be assailed in by viruses, bacteria, or drugs, while the other escapes. Even more drastic is the possi bility that one twin may pick up an extra chromosome soon after the original egg has split. Also, mutations may doom one twin to Down's syndrome or some other genetic affliction, while the other is unscathed. Identical twins may even be of different sex! Of course, such twins are genetically different, but they are still monozygotic (from the same egg). Blood tests will show them to be identical. It used to be thought that the small differences that did exist between identical twins separated at birth were surely due to nurture, not nature. But, considering all the differences ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 20: Mar-Apr 1982 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Missing links: the big ones still elude us "Under the very best circumstances, however, morphological and stratigraphically graded transitions between classes and subclasses have been found. At the level of phyla and higher categories, any information on transitions as far as the fossil record is concerned is essentially nonexistent." (Olson, Everett C.; "The Problem of Missing Links; Today and Yesterday," Quarterly Review of Biology, 56:405, 1981.) From Science Frontiers #20, MAR-APR 1982 . 1982-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 47: Sep-Oct 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Clump Of Antimatter The clumpiness of the universe described above assumed ordinary matter. Perhaps there are inhomogeneities on a different, more basic level -- matter vs. antimatter. According to one popular theory, the universe began with equal amounts of matter and antimatter. If so, where did all the antimatter go? We assume we observe a universe that is virtually 100% matter. Of course, we cannot really tell for certain because an antimatter galaxy would appear to us just like a galaxy composed of ordinary matter. The only clues revealing substantial pockets of antimatter would be the annihilation radiation produced where matter and antimatter regions rubbed against one another. The two types of matter always annihilate one another in bursts of very distinctive radiation. Well, there seems to be at least one region of antimatter near the center of our galaxy. The HEOS3 satellite and ballon-borne instruments have pinpointed a source of 511 kev gamma rays that can come only from a spot where electrons and positrons are mutually annihilating each other. (The positrons are antimat-ter analogs of electrons.) This region of mutual destruction is about 1013 kilometers across. Is it a pocket of antimatter left over after the Big Bang that a sea of surrounding matter is finally wiping out, or is it newly created antimatter in the vicinity of a black hole? No one knows. The mystery has deepened with the discovery that the intensity of the annihilation radiation varies with ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 93: May-Jun 1994 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Strange explosions at sasovo, in russia Some most peculiar phenomena have occurred recently about 200 miles southeast of Moscow. Discussioms have appeared in Russian publications, but we have not yet seen anything in the English-language journals. These phenomena have a bearing on the still-enigmatic Tunguska event of 1908 -- customarily attributed to a celestial projectile of some sort -- and perhaps even those bizarre "cookie-cutter" holes found in the U.S ., Canada, Norway, and elsewhere. One of our Russian correspodents has summarized what is known about the Sasovo explosions, and we are pleased to be able to present part of his (lightly edited) letter here: "On April 12, 1991, a strange explosion took place near the Russian town of Sasova (350 km to the southeast of Moscow). After the explosion, a crater, diameter about 30 m and depth 3m, was found. At first, several ideas about its nature were proposed, but now almost all of them are abandoned, except one: that it was a tectonic (endogenic, to be exact) origin. This is proved by geophysical research in the region and a secondary, weaker explosion (a crater also appeared) taking place in 1992 in a sparsely populated area about 9 km away from the first one. For some years before the explosions, there were signs of increased tectonic activity in the region: a great ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 26: Mar-Apr 1983 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Maybe there's one stable particle!The new Grand Unified Theories (GUTs) of physics predict that the proton decays radioactively -- contrary to what you may have been taught in physics class. Several experiments in deep mines and tunnels seem to have registered proton decays. Is nothing stable anymore? There is hope. A huge cubical detector, 21 meters on a side, is now operating 2000 feet under Lake Erie in a salt mine. The water-filled cube is monitored by 2048 photomultipler tubes, and is serviced by divers! After 80 days of operation, no events resembling proton decays have been detected, whereas many would have been expected if the other reports were true. The GUTs may be in trouble; and there may be something stable in the universe that we can count on! (Thomsen, D.E .; "Decay-Resistant Protons in Ohio," Science News, 123:85, 1983.) Comment. See SF#14 for some of the strange particles detected in the Kolar Gold Fields, in India, where some of the supposed proton decays were reported. From Science Frontiers #26, MAR-APR 1983 . 1983-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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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 An invisible information superhighway?The eclectic nature of anomaly research occasionally uncovers connections between diverse areas of research. We recount one such instance here. On one hand is the neurological research of M.A . Persinger, at the Laurentian University, inquiring into the claimed effects of minute electromagnetic signals, such as those observed in the geomagnetic field, upon human consciousness and perception. On the other hand, we have R.G . Jahn's work in the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) program, which looks into the anomalous information transfer between humans and the environment, as claimed to be seen in psychokinesis and remote viewing experiments. The research goals and methodologies differ, and the resulting reports couched in different terminologies, but the similarities are what is really important. Both scientists are exploring unconventional information pathways connecting the human brain (consciousness) and the environment. The pathways are open in both directions. First, we quote the summary from a recent Persinger paper. The jargon may be technical, but one can readily visualize the human brain immersed in a sea of signals -- nominally electromagnetic but possibly of other sorts. "Contemporary neuroscience suggests the existence of fundamental algorithms by which all sensory transduction is translated into an intrinsic, brain-specific code. Direct stimulation of these codes within the human temporal or limbic cortices by applied electromagnetic patterns may require energy levels which are within the range of both geomagnetic activity and contemporary ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 85: Jan-Feb 1993 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Three Views Of Mortality The death of matter. Physicists have maintained for over a century that the Second Law of Thermodynamics guarantees that our universe with run down one day and that life must cease. This cold reductionist view is seconded by recent evidence that protons, long con sidered immortal, may after all decay. The consequences of proton decay are even more dismal than the dire predictions of thermodynamics: "Perhaps the most disturbing piece of speculation to come out of theoretical physics recently is the prediction that the whole universe is in decay. Not only do living things die, species go extinct, and stars burn out, but the apparently immutable protons in the nucleus of every atom are slowly dissolving. Eventually -- in more than a quadrillion years -- nothing will be left of the universe but a dead mist of electrons, photons, and neutrinos." (Flam, Faye; "Could Protons Be Mortal after All?" Science, 257:1862, 1992.) The death of memory. With increasing entropy and decaying protons on their minds, it comes as no surprise that physicists likewise believe that when one dies, that's it . An afterlife is impossible. How do physicists conclude this? In a letter to the American Journal of Physics, J. Orear proffered an interesting sort of "proof": "One such proof: human memory is stored in the circuitry of the brain and after death ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 112: Jul-Aug 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Sea turtles: from one end to the other Leatherback turtles are mysterious in several ways: flexible shell, warmbloodedness, etc. (See SF#76 for more.) Now, we add two more remarkable capabilities to their dossier. Precision navigation. The oily, flexible shells of leatherbacks have made it difficult for researchers to attach radio transmitters to the animals. Their very deep dives (over 1,000 meters) are also inimical to human instrumentation. But S.J . Morreale's group at Cornell have succeeded in attaching pressure-resistant transmitters to the shells on short tethers. This team was able to track female leatherbacks as they left their nesting beach in Costa Rica and headed southward, past the Galapagos, out into the open South Pacific. Surprisingly, all the leatherbacks plied a very narrow corridor each year of the experiment (1992-1995). In fact, the paths were almost for at least 2,700 kilometers southwest of the Galapagos. Highprecision navigation equipment is required here. Among the leatherbacks' "instruments" are probably sensors that detect the angle of the geomagnetic field, the length of daylight, and the identities of the oceanic currents encountered. There are probably other sensors and, of course, a brain to process all the signals; but virtually nothing is known about them. (Morreale, Stephen J., et al; "Migration Corridor for Sea Turtles," Nature, ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 61: Jan-Feb 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Synchronous Rhythmic Flashing Of Fireflies We humans are pretty smug about our ability to communicate complex messages via sound waves. Of course, we recognize that whales and other cetaceans also seem to "talk" to one another, and that other animals employ their sense of smell for relaying messages. But most of us do not realize that lowly fireflies congregate to communicate en masse, with untold thousands of individuals cooperating in huge synchronized light displays. In reading some of the descriptions of these great natural phenomena, one recalls the light displays used to communicate with the aliens in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind . J. Buck has been studying flashing fireflies for over half a century. In fact, his first review paper was published in 1938. Buck has now brought that paper up to date in the current Quarterly Review of Biology with a 24page contribution. It is difficult to do justice to this impressive work in a newsletter. Our readers will have to be satisfied with a mere two paragraphs, in which Buck summarizes some of the incredible synchronies. "More than three centuries later Porter observed a very different behavior in far southwestern Indiana in which, from the ends of a long row of tall riverbank trees, synchronized flashes '. .. began moving toward each other, met at the middle, crossed and traveled to the ends, as when two pebbles are dropped simultaneously into the ends of a long narrow tank of water ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 14: Winter 1981 Supplement Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Eyes of deep-sea fish have spare parts The sunlight that filters down into the depths of the sea is exceedingly weak. It is so dark down there that one would expect deep-sea fish to be blind like many cave-dwelling animals. They are not blind; rather many have eyes of fantastic size and novel construction. An unusual feature of some deep-sea eyes is a layered retina. In the conger eel, five layers of photoreceptors are plastered on top of one another. Yet, experiments with conger eel eyes reveal that only one layer of photoreceptors is active at any one time. R. Shapley and J. Gordon, who carried out these experiments at the Plymouth Lab., surmise that the extra retinal layers are being held in reserve, much like the rows of spare teeth found in sharks' mouths. If so, deep-sea fish are the only animals that have evolved spare stores of visual pigments. (Anonymous; "The Mystery of the Non-Functioning Receptors," New Scientist, 88:366, 1980.) Comment. Why haven't cave-dwelling fish taken the same evolutionary route? From Science Frontiers #14, Winter 1981 . 1981-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... a superorganism called a "slime mold." If you viewed an amoeba through the microscope in biology lab, you know that they are very tiny, very simple, and most certainly not very bright. But given enough food, some species of amoeba divide and keep dividing until they clump together in a "slug" that sends out streamers and sort of flows along the surface. We now have a mobile superorganism searching for food (mostly bacteria). Eventually, the moving colony of amoebas anchors itself. Some of the superorganism's cells specialize to create a stalk called a "fruiting body." The amoebas in the fruiting body change into spores and are wafted away on the wind. In this way, the simple, lowly amoebas are transformed into a radically different entity. One wonders how this superorganism, this slime mold, is controlled. Where are its sensors and its information processing center, if it possesses one? (Stewart, Ian; "Spiral Slime," Scientific American, 283:116, November 2000.) This question becomes more difficult to answer when we learn that slime molds can display rudimentary intelligence in the sense that they can solve mazes in their search for food. They are not as clever as rats, but they do optimize their travels through the maze. (Nakagaki, Toahiyuki, et al; "Maze-Solving by an Amoeboid Organism," Nature, 407:470, 2000.) Biofilms. Down near the bottom of life's ladder dwell the bacteria. Their genomes must be miniscule and gray matter is not ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 50: Mar-Apr 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The fossil record and the quantization of life!A recent article on the possible quantization of galaxies was placed immediately before an interview with S. Stanley, one of the proponents of punctuated evolution. Either fate or the mysterious forces of seriality seemed to be saying that it is now time to broach the subject of the quantization of life itself. The reader can blame Stanley only for the stimulus and his discussions of speciation and the discontinuous (quantized?) fossil record. (Campbell, Neil A.; "Resetting the Evolutionary Timetable," BioScience, 36:722, 1986.) Comments. When we suggest quantization in biology, two phenomena come to the fore: 1. The obvious splitting of life into well-defined states -- the species -- as defined morphologically and/or by the genetic code; and 2. The gaps in the fossil record, which imply a frequent lack of transitional forms from one species to another. As Stanley asserts repeatedly in his interview, the fossil record is actually quite good in many places, despite the long-voiced claims of the gradualists that transitional forms do not exist merely because of the deplorable state of the fossil record. In physics the analogous phenomena would be: (1 ) The chemical elements and their isotopes (or an atom's energy levels); and (2 ) The lack of transitional forms. Straining the analogy still further, the evolution ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 127: Jan-Feb 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Traitors Within One of the insidious talents of cancers is their ability to coax neighboring, normal tissue to do their bidding. What cancer cells need most, if they are to grow, is sustenance, as normally provided by blood vessels. Obligingly, even though it could lead to their own demise, the tissues surrounding the cancer will grow new blood vessels to supply the killer in their midst. It has now been discovered that some particularly aggressive cancers, some melanomas, for example, can grow without the help of nearby subverted tissue. They can manufacture their own blood vessels which carry nourishment to malignant cells deep in the cancers. These self-made blood vessels differ from normal vessels in their lack of endothelial cells. They are also organized in distinctive patterns of loops around clusters of cancer cells. Normal blood vessels tend to be arranged more randomly Although they originate in specialized tissues, such as the prostate gland, the cells in aggressive cancers become unspecialized. In a sense, they revert to embryonic cells that can then become any kind of cell, such as those in blood vessels. Cancer cells are atavistic -- throwbacks to the womb. (Barinaga, Marcia; "New Type of Blood Vessel Found in Tumors," Science, 285: 1475, 1999. Spinney, Laura; "Organized Killers," New Scientist, p. 11, September 11, 1999.) Comment. It's all very ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 49: Jan-Feb 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Those Old Maps Of Antarctica Was Antarctica nearly ice-free within the last few thousand years? Did the old navigators sail into these now-frigid waters and map this great southern continent? One way to answer such questions is by turning to old maps and, then, asking the geophysicists if most of the continent's ice cover could have disappeared fairly recently, as some ancient maps are purported to show. C.P . Hapgood, well known for his book Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings, believed that ancient mariners did indeed map Antarctica when those climes were warmer. More recently, J.G . Weihaupt came to similar conclusions by a different route, which included geophysical considerations. (See SF#36 and #38.) Now, D.C .Jolly has put the whole problem in perspective in an excellent review. Jolly has studied the data in depth, as indicated by his 51 sources. In his view, it boils down to the fact that the old maps, which people of all persuasions use, are often incomplete and ambiguous. One can read a lot into them. To claim an ice-free Antarctica, one has only to make a few assumptions. For example, one reduces the size of a map feature here and rotates another there. It seems that those old map-makers didn't get things quite right! Jolly is fair about the whole business and ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 41: Sep-Oct 1985 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Genetic Garrulousness It is tempting to predict that those cells with the most genetic material will belong to the most advanced organisms. One would, for example, expect to find more DNA or nucleotide pairs in human cells than the cells of bacteria or plants. In the case of the bacteria, this expectation is realized. Some plants, however, have one hundred times more DNA per cell than humans. Some fish and salamanders do, too. One reason why there is no simple relationship between a cell's genetic complement and the organism's complexity is that a lot of genetic material is apparently useless, with no known functions. Human genes, by way of illustration, possess about 300,000 copies of a short sequence called Alu. The Alu sequences seem to be simply dead weight -- functionless -- yet continuously reproduced along with useful sequences. One purposeless mouse gene sequence is repeated a million times in each cell. (Stebbins, G. Ledyard, and Ayala, Francisco J.; "The Evolution of Darwinism," Scientific American, 253:72, July 1985.) Comment. Why so much redundance? Or is there some purpose for this excess genetic material that we haven't yet descried? The "useless" sequences may merely be left over from ancient gene shufflings; or they may be awaiting future calls to action. The above tidbits come from a long review article that is ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 62: Mar-Apr 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Researches In Reincarnation I. Stevenson, at the University of Virginia, has long studied claims of reincarnation. The method employed (and there are precious few alternatives) focuses on children who claim to have lived before and can provide verifiable details about their past lives. If the details check out, one can at least claim that reincarnation is a possible interpretation of the data. Usually, however, before a researcher can get to the scene of the phenomenon, the parents of the deceased have been found and the way has been left open for much exaggeration. In his present contribution, Stevenson reports three cases in Sri Lanka where the recollections of the supposedly reincarnated children have been written down in detail and the family of the deceased has not been located. Here is one of his cases: "The Case of Iranga . The child was born in a village of Sri Lanka near but not on the west coast, in 1981. When she was about 3 years old she spoke about a previous life at a place called Elpitiya. Among other details, Iranga mentioned that her father sold bananas, there had been two wells at her house, one well had been destroyed by rain, her mother came from a place called Matugama, she was a middle sister of her family, and the house where the family lived had red walls and a kitchen with a thatched roof. Her statements led to the identification of a family in ...
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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 Blasted By A Beam Weapon On The Edge Of Space January 31, 1993. Aboard NASA's Compton Gamma Ray Observatory. This satellite detected a gammaray burst containing ten times more energy than any other burst ever observed. It was one hundred times stronger than any known constant source of gamma rays. Even so, careful searches with ground-based telescopes found nothing visible in the direction of the burst. Scientist B. Dingus remarked: "It's clear that it is unique event that liberates more energy in a few seconds than any other process in the Universe." Gamma-ray bursts remain one of the outstanding mysteries of astronomy. The depth of the mystery is underscored by the belief that the gamma rays must be confined to a narrow beam by their sources, rather than being emitted in all directions. No one knows how this focussing might be accomplished. Also, since we detect only those bursts that happen to be aimed at the earth (at a rate of about one per day), there should be a colossal number of bursts that we are unaware of. Yet, we cannot divine what these common, immensely powerful energy sources are. (Kiernan, Vincent; "Blasted by a Beam Weapon on the Edge of Space," New Scientist, p. 13, May 8, 1993.) From Science Frontiers #88, JUL-AUG 1993 . 1993-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... the town of Moodus, Conn. Many were accompanied by sounds like gunshots; the strongest vibrated a van. The phenomenon was another swarm of Moodus quakes that have puzzled generations of earth scientists. The earliest was recorded in 1568 and Indians knew of them long before then: Moodus is an Indian word meaning 'place of noises.'" Sullivan's article was derived from a spate of scientific papers delivered at the Spring meeting of the American Geophysical Union. (Sullivan, Walter; "A Connecticut Mystery Still Defying Scientists," New York Times, May 22, 1988. Cr. P. Huyghe, D. Stacy, R.M . Westrum) Abstracts of all the scientific papers presented at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union appeared in Eos. Here are excerpts from one of them: "Since the installation of a six-station microearthquake network in the Moodus, Connecticut, area in 1979, four extensive microearthquake swarms of several months duration each, all accompanied by main shocks of Mc greater than 2, have been recorded. All of the swarms have occurred at shallow depths (less than 2.3 km) and have been concentrated primarily in one small source volume... The 1986 swarm was characterized by a number of small bursts of activity culminated by the largest event near the end of the swarm. The 1987 swarm behaved in a very similar temporal manner to that of the 1986 swarm with one strong difference in that the largest event was the first one in 1987...the shallow depths of all the earthquakes there, the small ...
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... profound anomalies raised by the book. We begin with a paragraph from Van Valen's review: "Williamson has given us a new set of anomalies. Mostly he does this by showing that what we know doesn't fit together as well as we thought it did. In particular, the major phylogeny of the animal kingdom as estimated from adult characters doesn't fir very well with that estimated from larvae. Such a discrepancy for different stages has occasionally been reported within families of insects, and it has an apparent resemblance to the discordance occasionally found between phylogenies inferred from morphological and molecular characters. In such cases, the usual conclusion (I ignore data chauvinists) is that we should somehow use all the available information to infer the correct phylogeny. After all, there was just one real phylogeny that occurred in the past, and we want to find it as closely as we can." Comment inserted by the compiler. Van Valen is saying that three evolutionary Trees of Life can be drawn from adult morphology, DNA structure, and larval morphology, and that they may not look the same. Caterpillars may yield a family tree different from that inferred from the butterflies. Which is correct, or are they all correct? Back to the review. Waxing heretical, Williamson points out that an organism may have more than one phylogeny ! Larvae may have ancestries different from the adults. How heretical can one get? But in the ocean, spermatozoa often cannot find an egg of the correct species. They may then fertilize eggs of a distantly related species. In such ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 64: Jul-Aug 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Cold Fusion Update We gingerly approached the topic of cold fusion in SF#63. Sure enough, a lot has happened in the past two months. For one thing, a panel of physicists got together and "voted" down cold fusion almost unanimously. This authoritative declaration seemed to be the beginning of the end for cold fusion - good riddance to those impertinent electrochemists! At the end of May, scientists assembled at Santa Fe for a Workshop on Cold Fusion Phenomena. Most thought this would be the coup de grace for cold fusion. Not so! More and more researchers reported either anomalous heat production or anomalous emission of neutrons from experiments based on the cold fusion results of Pons and Fleischmann at the University of Utah. Curiously, no one seemed able to get heat and neutrons at the same time and in the amounts Pons and Fleischmann had reported. We cannot go into all the experiments here. The upshot seems to be that cold fusion is not dead at all. In fact, a lot of people now believe that cold fusion actually does take place in palladium and titanium electrodes. Why, no one is sure. Nor is anyone able to explain the anomalous heat generation. Some think that two separate and distinct phenomena are being observed. One unbelievable anomaly has fissioned into two more-believable anomalies! Tune in next issue for the latest. Con't believe anything until things cool down a bit. ( ...
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... The different clusters react quite differently chemically. The "chocolate" niobium, on the right, is a capped icosahedron and reacts readily with hydrogen. The "vanilla" double pyramid (left) has flatter surfaces and does not readily combine with hydrogen. Cluster research is embryonic, with new surprises popping up almost every day. Once a cluster size exceeds a few hundred atoms, its properties begin to resemble those of the bulk material. However, "cluster-assembled materials" have been made by attaching clusterto-cluster in a sort of patchwork quilt. Such materials have unique properties that are quite different from those of the normal crystalline and amorphous materials. (Pool, Robert; "Clusters: Strange Morsels of Matter," Science, 248:1186, 1990.) Comment. One would expect that the effects of clustering would be important in biology, too. We obviously have a lot to learn about this new realm between single atoms/molecules and bulk materials. Quasicrystals . Quasicrystals, once considered physically impossible, have been found easy to grow -- once one's mindset is corrected. At Bell Labs, for example, quasicrystals of an aluminum-cobaltcopper alloy reveal atoms packed together in pentagonal arrays -- the very geometry that crystallographers assured us could not exist. As one of the Bell researchers remarked, "Most of the ap plications are unimagined." This goes for the basic properties of quasicrystals, too. (Keller, John J.; "Bell Labs Confirms That New Form of Matter Exists," Wall Street Journal, February 8, ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 58: Jul-Aug 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Lanzarote: un noveau bimini?Yes, we are drawing on the Frenchlanguage journals again; this timme from Kadath , an archeological publication from Belgium. The reason, of course, is that the mainstream English-language archeological journals are notoriously conservative and, well, mainstreamish! The catchword in the title is "Bimini," a word which loses nothing in translation, for it is well-known in that States as one of the Bahamian resort islands. It was in the waters off Bimini that divers found the famous Bimini "road" or "wall," which some maintain is constructed of human-sculpted stone blocks. (See our handbook Ancient Man.) Lanzarote, on the other hand, is one of the Canary Islands. Here, too, one finds a submerged, Bimini-like row of apparently man-made blocks of stones. Some 22 meters down, the blocks are arranged in a sort of staircase, as shown in the figure. The steps, however, are 40-cm high, too big a step for humans. Is this structure a submerged pier, an altar, or something else. No one knows. Possibly relevant is a statuette, stylistically Olmec, which was also found in Lanzarote waters. (Bajocco, Alf; "Lanzarote: un Nouveau Bimini?" Kadath , no. 66, p. 6, Winter 1987.) Comment. The name, Kadath ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 126: Nov-Dec 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Number Module B. Butterworth, author of the new book The Mathematical Brain , proposes that your brain boasts a tiny module of cells -- just over your left ear -- that endows you with a sense of number. These cells allow you, for example, to grasp instantly "fourness," say the number of corners on a square without counting them one-by-one. Unfortunately, this capability usually does not exceed fiveness. If there were 10 people on a corner, you would have to count them individually -- if you are normal. But some people are abnormal. Recall from SF#125, the savant who could tell at a glance that 111 matches littered the floor without counting each individually. He grasped 111-ness! At the other end of the scale, Signora Gaddi cannot even distinguish that 20 is greater then 10. She cannot use the telephone or catch numbered busses. Facts involving numbers above four are a mystery to her. Even when there are four or fewer objects, she must count them one-byone. Nevertheless, Gaddi's intelligence and social skills are normal. She lost her number-savvy when she suffered a stroke that apparently short-circuited that number module over her ear. Are other mammals equipped with number modules? No one knows. And what forces encouraged the human brain to sprout a few extra cells on the inferior parietal lobule; that ...
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... than the chance mean, in accordance with their prerecorded intentions. In 3 850 000 experimental sequences of 200 binary samples, the overall results were that means in high intensity runs exceeded means in low intensity runs by 4.38 sigma. (The probability of chance occurrence of this outcome is less than 6 x 10-6 .) Jahn also reviewed the results of other types of psi experiments which also produced positive results. Replying to Jahn, Anderson admitted that he indeed had Jahn in mind when he wrote his original article. "What my piece actually said was within my competence as a theorist, which is to make logical connections, and the logical point I made is that physics as it is practiced, and specifically precise mensuration, is not compatible with Jahn's claims; one must choose one or the other, not both, as he also emphasizes. If the 'observer effect' as he calls it -- or 'magic' as one might equally well characterize it -- is correct, precise measurement is not possible. His ideas are as incompatible with the intellectual basis of physics as 'creation science' is with that of cosmology and biology. It is for this reason that I feel measurements such as Jahn does must be tested with more rigor and more suspicion than their proponents, for some reason, are ever prepared to undergo." In other words, if psi exists, one cannot measure anything exactly, because the experimenter's mind can skew the results. (Jahn, Robert G., and Anderson, Philip W.; ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 40: Jul-Aug 1985 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Most Profound Discovery Of Science This is what one scientist calls Bell's Theorem. Certainly not all scientists would agree with such an absolute declaration. Since Bell's Theorem lurks in the fog-shrouded country of quantum mechanics, most biologists probably haven't even heard of it. In any event, they would probably think the discovery of the genetic code more profound. Why all the fuss over Bell's Theo-rem? In the laboratory, Bell's Theorem is associated with an admittedly spooky effect: the measurements made on one particle affect the measurements made on a second, far-removed particle. In theory, the second particle could be on the other side of the galaxy, with absolutely no physical connection between the two -- unless you admit to spooky action-at-a -distance forces. (Some over-ly zealous think-tankers have even contemplated applying this effect to long distance, untappable, unjammable communications with submarines!) The article (referenced below) in which this apparent magic is discussed also dwells on another profundity associated with quantum mechanics: does that which is not observed exist? Einstein felt intuitively that it did; and one of his remarks on the subject led to this article's title. Unfortunately for Einstein, all recent laboratory experiments demonstrate that spooky actionat-a -distance forces do exist and that Einstein's intuition was incorrect. (Mermin ...
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... . These then provided the ideal breeding ground in which early organisms could thrive and later evolve." (Greene, Mark D.; "How Life Began," Time, 142:8 , November 1, 1993.) Comment. Charles Fort would certainly have chuckled over the near-simultaneous mentions of intergalactic pizzas in two diverse publications. A second report underscores the mystery presented by the unexpected diversity of life in the deep-sea ooze. J.D . Gage and R.M . May ponder in Nature : "Why there should be such exuberant biological diversity in an environment apparently lacking in the habitat complexity of, say, tropical rain forest -- whose species richness it might rival -- remains an enigma." In fact, the enigma becomes more profound when one finds there exists a "depth effect" paralleling the terrestrial "altitude effect." "This phenomenon is associated with an increase in species richness with depth, and is essentially like the pattern of increasing numbers of plant and animal species as one moves down from mountain tops to sea level." This "depth effect" is just the opposite of what one would expect as one descends into the ever blacker, ever colder, higher-ambient-pressure environment. The cause(s ) of this increasing biological diversity eludes us. (Gage, John D., and May, Robert M.; "A Dip into the Deep Seas," Nature, 365:609, 1993.) From Science Frontiers #91, JAN-FEB 1994 . 1994-2000 William R ...
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... years -- having been found at the Calico site in California. (See SF#51.) First, J.G . Duvall, III, attacked Bower's article, asserting that the human origin of the Calico "artifacts" had long ago been shown to be untenable. For a reference, he cited an article by himself and W.T . Venner in the Journal of Field Archaeology. Duvall's major point was that the Calico "tools" did not resemble proven Paleoindian tools. Responding to Duvall, G.F . Carter first pointed out that the Duvall-Venner paper was "almost instantly shown to be erroneous" by L.W . Patterson in the pages of the very same journal. As for the differences in artifacts, Carter asked why one should expect 12,000-year-old Paleoindian artifacts to look like 200,000-year-old artifacts from an entirely different culture. (Duvall, James G., III; "Calico Revisited," Science News, 131:227, 1987. Carter, George F.; "Calico Defended," Science News, 131:339, 1987.) Comment. We don't really know whether or not the Calico "artifacts" were really made by humans 200,000 years ago. No one really does! One may opine or theorize, and that's it. The really annoying aspect of the Calico business is the tendency of scientists to make absolute statements in the face of contradictory evidence. This desire for certainty extends to all of science ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 52: Jul-Aug 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Do dreams reflect a biological state?Scientists have never been able to agree on the meaning of dreams or even if there is one. Mostly dreams were thought to have psychological import, as in the work of Freud and his followers. But there has also been another group of researchers who have considered dreams to be a consequence of one's biological state; that is, one's physical health. The present paper supports this latter belief. Some 214 patients were heart problems participated in this study. "The patients' dreams were evaluated for the predicted correlations of the number of dream references to death (men) and separation (women) with different levels of severity of heart disease. The severity of heart disease was evaluated with anatomical (coronary angiography) and physiological (ejection fraction) measures obtained at cardiac catheterization, each represented by a 6-point scale of increasing severity. There was no correlation of the number of dream references with the severity of abnormalities on coronary angiography. However, the number of dream references to death and separation correlated with the severity of cardiac dysfunction, as measured by the ejection fraction, which is a more sensitive parameter of disease severity." (Smith, Robert C.; "Do Dreams Reflect a Biological State?" Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 175:201, 1987.) Comment. One would suppose that the minds (and dreams) of people who ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 35: Sep-Oct 1984 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Caenorhabditis Elegans The creature with this formidable name is only about a millimeter long and develops from egg to adult in about 3.5 days, at which time it possesses about 1,000 somatic cells. C. elegans is a roundworm, but a famous one. Its growth has been followed on a cell-bycell basis from egg to adult. The history of each cell is known from birth to death. The fact that C.elegans is nicely transparent helps the cell-watcher. Here are some of the interesting things to be seen as cells proliferate, live, and die. First, C. elegans is bilaterally symmetrical, but the pattern of cell generation on the right differs from that on the left. Nevertheless, the creature ends up symmetrical, making one wonder where the directions for symmetry come from. Some cells are transients, dying when their jobs are done. A few doomed cells are generated only because they produce sister cells that are needed in the final animal. Such a programmed loss of cells may be a method of modifying an organism during evolution. John Sulston, one of the researchers, says, "Within the lineage you can see the fossil of its past." (Marx, Jean L.; "Caenorhabditis Elegans: Getting to Know You," Science, 225:40, 1984.) Comment. Sulston's statement reminds one of "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny," ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 13: Winter 1981 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects More Anomalous Redshifts Halton Arp, of the Mount Wilson and Las Campanas Observatories, has discovered three more pairs of galaxies that seem to threaten that cornerstone of astronomy, the redshift distance scale. The new pairs are all in the Southern Hemisphere and, like others on Arp's list, seem to be interacting physically. For example, the filaments of one pair member seem to reach out and connect with the companion. Surely, these dynamically connected galaxies should be equidistant from earth. Such distances are measured by the object's redshift, which is supposedly proportional to its recessional velocity. Thus, each member of a pair should have the same redshift. This does not occur with these three pairs. In one pair, the recessional velocity appears to be 4,600 km/sec for one galaxy and 37,300 km/sec for the other. Arp's conclusion is that at least some of the redshift must be intrinsic; that is, not due to recessional velocity alone. If this is true, the basic cosmological distance scale is suspect. (Anonymous; "X -ray Quasars Fit Theories .. .But Some Galaxies Refuse to Play Ball," New Scientist, 88:22, 1980.) Reference. For more on discordant redshifts, see AWB7 and AWO4 in our Catalog: Stars, Galaxies, Cosmos, which is described here . From Science Frontiers #13, Winter 1981 . 1981- ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 128: MAR-APR 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Fake Needles but Real Knives The effect of a patient's mind in medical procedures can be as powerful as drugs and real surgery. This is the well known placebo effect. But how can doctors differentiate between the healing power of the mind and that of chemicals and scalpels? The logical thing to do is to fake the procedure with one group of patients and compare results with a second group that got the "real thing." Of course, ethical problems come to the fore because doctors are supposed to cure people and not to pretend to. The ethical dimension is accentuated when real knives are employed and real blood flows. Our first item is not invasive but interesting nonetheless. Placebo acupuncture. Many physicians scoff at acupuncture. Placebo experiments could prove its efficacy. To this end, special placebo needles have been invented. Like the fake daggers used on the stage, the points are blunt and retractable. The acupuncture patient feels a pinprick and thinks he or she sees the needle penetrating the skin, but it's all fakery. At the University of Heidelberg, 52 people with rotator cuff tendinitis were split into two groups; 25 were punctured with real needles, the rest just thought they were. In this experiment, the first group showed much greater improvement than those treated with the fake needles. Real acupuncture was more powerful than the placebo effect. Now if we can only figure out how real acupuncture works! ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 129: MAY-JUN 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A Third Way?A THIRD WAY? In the never-ending, ever-acrimonious "dialog of the deaf" between the Darwinists and the Creationists, we are perpetually exposed to their extreme, non-negotiable positions. The Darwinists insist upon their one-gene/one-protein genome in which random mutations slowly accumulate and adapt living things to the changing environment. The Creationists only accept a one-time, supernatural creation of "kinds" plus minor adaptations (" microevolution"). J.A . Shapiro, a professor at the University of Chicago, is searching for a "third way," a scientific, non-Darwinian way. Shapiro maintains that five decades of genetic and molecular-biology research have transformed our vision of life. Ile compares the conceptual changes to those accompanying the transition from classical physics to relativity and quantum mechanics. This new theory of evolution -- his "third" way -- will emerge from the convergence of biology and information science. Genomes, asserts Shapiro, are not really the static "beads on a string" envisioned by the Darwinians. Rather, they are fluid and complex. Genes are now seen as multipurpose elements that turn on and off as required for the survival and well-being of the organism they belong to. In this paradigm-eroding paper (referenced below), Shapiro describes four categories of molecular discoveries that have revised our thinking about how ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 110: Mar-Apr 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Nannobacteria: life on a different scale Who ever heard of nannobacteria until those tiny, worm-like objects were photographed inside that putative Martian meteorite ALH 84001? It turns out that these very tiny cells (only 0.1 - 0.4 micrometers in diameter) are everywhere on earth, but it seems that virtually no one knows about them. The furor over ALH 84001 has underscored professional and public ignorance of nannobacteria. Some scientists have asserted that bacteria could never be as small as those "objects" seen in the greatly magnified photos of ALH 84001. This claim led R.L . Folk to fire off a letter to Science that began with these two sentences: "Enough! As one of the discoverers of mineralized nannobacteria on Earth*, I must come to their defense. They are so abundant in samples I have studied that I believe they may make up most of the Earth's biomass." Folk reports that nannobacteria are found just about everywhere: hot-spring waters, decaying leaves, even blood. Nannobacteria are key players in the earth's surface chemistry, precipitating a host of minerals and acting symbiotically to precipitate organic hard parts. (Folk, Robert; "In Defense of Nannobacteria," Science, 274:1288, 1996.) Comment. Ignorance of nannobacteria is not surprising. One needs a scanning electron microscope to see them. * See: Folk, R.L ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 47: Sep-Oct 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Oceans from outer space?Back in SF#44, we related how L.A . Frank, at the University of Iowa, had detected dark spots on satellite images of the earth's dayglow. Frank thought that the spots might be due to clouds of water vapor released as small, icy comets hit the atmosphere. P. Huyghe has recently written more about Frank's discovery, his theory, and its reception by the scientific community. "These comets are not occasional visitors, he [Frank] says, like the one that comes by every 76 years and -- lucky for us -- never actually drops in. No, these are very small, cometlike objects that enter our atmosphere at a rate of 20 per minute, he says. These comets, which he believes must contain about 100 tons of water apiece, vaporize on impact with the atmosphere and fall as rain or snow. Now that may seem like one sizeable cold shower, but on a yearly basis he says it's actually only a tiny fraction of the annual preciptation. Then again, over a span of 4.5 billion years, which is about how old the earth is, that's enough water, he says -- trumpets blaring -- to create the oceans." Naturally, such a theory is very disturbing because it runs counter to the widely accepted idea that the oceans were created by the ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 122: Mar-Apr 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Black Pyramids Spain's Canary Islands off the northwest coast of Africa hardly seem a place for pyramids, but there seem to be six of them on Tenerife, near Guimar. The inhabitants of this island have generally ignored these dilapidated piles of black volcanic stones. However, one perceptive native described them in a letter to T. Heyerdahl of Kon Tiki fame and a leading proponent of ancient cultural diffusion across all oceans. Quick to respond, Heyerdahl perceived amid the debris six stepped pyramids of black stone. He persuaded a Norwegian businessman to buy the site, clean up the debris of centuries, and found a museum. One of the "black" pyramids has now been restored, but some experts are still unconvinced. However, recent excavations under one pyramid have yielded artifacts identified with the pre-Spanish inhabitants of Tenerife. Meanwhile, Heyerdahl has been checking out a rumored pyramid on Sicily. Could Heyerdahl be right when he claims there were age-old cultural links between Mesopotamia, Egypt, Mexico, the Canaries, and even the Pacific Islands? (Mead, Robin; "Riddle of the Black Pyramids," London Times, December 19, 1998. Cr. A.C .A . Silk) Comment. The pre-Spanish inhabitants of the Canaries were the Guanches, who are noted for two other interesting things: (1 ) A very high frequency of the olecranon perforation of the upper arm bone ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 22: Jul-Aug 1982 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Old hannah's explosions December 10, 1899. Staffordshire, Eng land, near Old Hannah's Cave. Two men heard explosions like rifle shots. "Realizing that no one was shooting, they looked up the cliff and witnessed an explosion which emitted a flash from a hole or fissure in the upper part of the cliff. This had a bluish column 'not of steam or fire or smoke, but apparently of aqueous vapour,' which travelled with immense force across the valley (approximately 12 m wide). Within minutes another discharge from higher up the cliff and then 'several ones with crackling sounds producing semi-transparent wavy streaks in the air, not smokey in appearance.' Next came a very loud explosion which 'we had the good fortune to see plainly.' Wardle describes this as 'like a gun but with crackling, a series of continuous reports, cleaving the air in a zigzag or riverlike course in a narrow band about 15 cm to 20 cm broad, of bluish colour." Several other reliable descriptions exist of detonations and flame-like discharges around old Hannah's Cave. The supposition is that natural gases liberated by decaying organic material and, perhaps, geochemical reactions are ignited by static electricity. A recent landslip seems to have extinguished this curious phenomenon. (Pounder, Colin; "Speculations on Natural Explosions at Old Hannah's Cave, Staffordshire, England," National ...
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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 Ball Lightning Materializes In A Sitting Room July 24, 1994. Oxfordshire, England. It was a hot, humid day that produced strong thunderstorms. Some 14 kilometers west of Oxford, Mr. and Mrs. Langer were in their sitting room when the following sequence ensued: "The storm was almost overhead and I knew the next one would be a cracker, but almost five minutes went by in perfect silence. The window is very big, almost one wall in glass, and was wide open. My husband and I sat in recliner chairs side by side with our backs to the window. Suddenly a shaft of brilliant light came over our heads into the middle of the room and seemed to form itself into a white ball as big as a car tyre. It bounced gently upwards and about five feet from the ground it exploded with a terrible noise. "No rain was falling at the time of observation. The ball was in view for two or three seconds and emitted no noticeable heat or odour. It was opaque in appearance and its colour changed from reddish gold to white before it blew up, at which point it was about one metre away from the room's occupants. No traces were left by the ball other than 'some slight brown marks on the carpet', which were all but removed by cleaning." (James, Adrian; "Ball Lightning in Oxfordshire, July 1994," ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 31: Jan-Feb 1984 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Unidentified Phenomena September 17, 1982. South Atlantic Ocean. 2103 GMT on a clear dark night. "The first thing noticed was the formation of a bright patch of white light in the general area between Rasalhague and Alphecca. Gradually a dark eye formed in the centre of the patch in which shortly afterwards a very bright object appeared like a star of magnitude -2 . After one or two seconds this object appeared to undergo a tremendous explosion and became a large bright orange gaseous fireball, which appeared to be hurled earthwards directly down the observer's line of sight, growing constantly larger and larger. One witness described the fireball as resembling rolling orange smoke. The ball then ceased to increase in size, giving the impression that it had stopped. Its orange colour rapidly gave way to rainbow colours which gradually gave way to white and faded in brilliance until all that remained were several patches of luminous white light, although these were impressive in their own right." A similar phenomenon was noted the following night, although the ship was 7 farther south. September 18, 1982. South Atlantic Ocean. From a different ship in the same area as the one above. "The altitude of the first sighting was approximately 24 , level with the planet Jupiter and offset to its right. The six subsequent bursts were above the first, and slightly to the right, leaving a fantail of purple/white lenticular clouds which leaned ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 18: Nov-Dec 1981 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Long Arms Of Venus And Jupiter Many times in the two or three "scientific" centuries now behind us, investigators have discovered, almost against their wills, that the moon and planets affect the earth. The moon's influence is understandable, but the planets are too far away for their gravitational fields to influence one terrestrial dust mote. Well, here is one more study showing that the planets (Venus and Jupiter, in this case) do affect the peak electron density in the earth's ionosphere. The effect is most noticeable when these planets are close to earth and dwindles as they swing around to the other side of the sun. The authors are at a loss to explain this effect in terms of gravitation, suggesting that perhaps Venus or Jupiter may instead affect solar activity, which in turn modifies the terrestrial ionosphere. (Harnischmacher, E., and Rawer, K.; "Lunar and Planetary Influences upon the Peak Electron Density of the Ionosphere," Journal of Atmospheric and Terrestrial Electricity, 43:643, 1981.) Comment. Actually, no one has shown how the planets can possibly influence the sun with known action-at-a -distance forces. Electrical forces are taboo. There are no other "recognized" forces. From Science Frontiers #18, NOV-DEC 1981 . 1981-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 41: Sep-Oct 1985 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Inka Road System An important new archeological book bears the above title (and an alternate spelling of "Inca"). As one reviewer puts it: "The Imperial Inka road system must rank alongside the Great Wall of China and the Egyptian Pyramids as one of the greatest achievements of any ancient civilization. Yet despite this, relatively little is known about the nature, extent and functioning of this vast communications network." Some impressive statistics: The Inka Road System runs for more than 23,000 kilometers through Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile, and Argentina. Generally, the roads were 11-25 meters wide. They were greatly superior to anything built in Europe at that time. One reviewer notes that many of the so-called Inka highways had a non-Inkan origin -- and then leaves us hanging. What pre-Inkan civilization built such roads? (Saunders, Nick; "Monumental Roads," New Scientist, p. 31, June 8, 1985. Also: Lyon, Patricia J.; "Imperial Connection?" Science, 228:1420, 1985.) From Science Frontiers #41, SEP-OCT 1985 . 1985-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 60: Nov-Dec 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Unbelievable Baalbek The city of Baalbek, called Heliopolis by the ancient Greeks, lies some 50 miles northeast of Beirut. Here are ruins of the greatest temple the Romans ever tried to construct. However, we must focus not on mundane Roman temples but upon a great assemblage of precisely cut and fitted stones, called the Temple today, which the Romans found ready-made for them when they arrived at Baalbek. It was upon this Temple, or stone foundation, that the Romans reared their Temple of Jupiter. No one knows the purpose of the much older Temple underneath the Roman work. J. Theisen has reviewed the basic facts known about the Temple's construction -- and they are impressive, perhaps even anomalous. Being 2,500 feet long on each side, the Temple is one of the largest stone structures in the world. Some 26 feet above the structure's base are found three of the largest stones ever employed by man. Each of these stones measures 10 feet thick, 13 feet high, and is over 60 feet long. Knowing the density of limestone permits weight estimates of over 1.2 million pounds. Some people with impressive engineering skills cut, dressed, and moved these immense stone blocks from a quarry 3/4 of a mile away. A walk to this quarry introduces the observer to the Monolith, an even larger block of limestone: 13 feet, 5 inches; 15 ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 9: Winter 1979 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Hazards Of Sewer Exploration A modern bit of folklore tells of dis-carded pet baby alligators flushed down toilets into the sewers of New York. There they grew fat on rats and confronted startled sanitation workers. Is there factual basis for such wild tales? Coleman states that he has compiled a list of 77 encounters with erratic or out-of-place alligators for the period 18431973, including one 5.5 -foot specimen found frozen to death in Wisconsin in 1892. Only one in the 77 is a sewer specimen, but it is from New York City. The New York Times of February 10, 1935, reported a 125-pound alligator, almost 8-feet long, pulled out of a snow clogged sewer on East 123rd Street. Obviously half-frozen from the cold, the animal snapped weakly at its captors. "Let 'im have it!" the cry went up. The only known sewer alligator perished un der flailing snow shovels. No one could explain how the alligator got into or survived in a New York sewer. (Coleman, Loren; "Alligators-in-the-Sewers: A Journalistic Origin," Journal of American Forlkore, 92:335, 1979.) From Science Frontiers #9 , Winter 1979 . 1979-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 116: Mar-Apr 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Dry Fogs And Bright Nights June 1783. Much of Europe. ". .. the atmosphere was suddenly invaded, in Europe, by a sort of dry fog of peculiar character. It did not moisten objects, did not affect the hygrometer, and persisted when the wind rose, and rain fell. The sun looked pale through it. This fog lasted a month. One curious point is, that it was phosphorescent, and gave a light like moonlight at night." August 18, 1821. Western Europe. ". .. a similar fog was observed throughout Western Europe; it lasted twelve days. It deprived the sun of so much brightness, that one could look at this star at any hour; it gave the disc a glossy blue tint. Twilight assumed an extraordinary brightness, so that the day was greatly prolonged, and one could even read at midnight." (Houzeau, M.; "On Certain Enigmas of Astronomy," English Mechanic , 29:32, 1879.) From Science Frontiers #116, MAR-APR 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 59: Sep-Oct 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Enigma Of Multiple Personality The multiple personalities of individuals afflicted with this disorder are sharply defined. Each personality has its (his or her) distinctive handwriting, artistic talents, foreign language capabilities, and other aspects of behavior -- all in the same body. Such mental and behavioral facets of multiple personality are well-recognized, even if not understood. What is even stranger and more anomalous about multiple personality is the remarkable mind-body relationship manifested. Consider, for example, the case of Timmy: "When Timmy drinks orange juice he has no problem. But Timmy is just one of close to a dozen personalities who alternate control over a patient with multiple personality disorder. And if those other personalities drink orange juice, the result is a case of hives. "The hives will occur even if Timmy drinks orange juice and another personality appears while the juice is still being digested. What's more, if Timmy comes back while the allergic reaction is present, the itching of the hives will cease immediately, and the water-filled blisters will begin to subside." How does one explain such phenomena? We cannot obviously, at least not yet. What the phenomenon of multiple personality does do is offer us a "window" for observing that mysterious interface between one's thoughts and bodily functions. Perhaps, if we can heal the mind, we can also heal the body. (Where have ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 28: Jul-Aug 1983 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Chiron: the black sheep of the solar system Charles Kowal discovered the smooth, very dark sphere called Chiron over five years ago. Only a little more is known about it today. Chiron is 300-400 kilometers in diameter -- asteroid-size. But its orbit (aphelion, 18.9 A.U .; perihelion, 8.5 A.U .) is definitely anomalous for asteroids. One would expect to find only comets in this region of the Solar System. To compound the mystery, Chiron's orbit is unstable. This planetoid was originally somewhere else (no one knows where) and was nudged into its present orbit by a major planet. One group of researchers calculates that Saturn could have been the nudger, and that the event might have happened as recently as 1664!! (Lipscomb, R.; "Chiron," Astronomy, 11:62, March 1983.) Comment. Only a minor bit of extrapolation will carry a proponent of catastrophism from a 1664 nudge of a 400-kilometer body to a much more violent Solar System rearrangement sometime during the past 10,000 years. From Science Frontiers #28, JUL-AUG 1983 . 1983-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 51: May-Jun 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Rare but there: hypnotic enhancement of eidetic imagery Eidetic imaging is a remarkable capability, manifested more often in children, in which complex images can be recalled with great detail and realism in a format similar to a hallucination. This mysterious "talent" can be enhanced by hyp notism, indicating perhaps that it is latent in us all. "The production of eidetic-like imagery during hypnosis in subjects with high but not low hypnotizability was supported in three separate experiments using nonfakable stereograms. In Experiment 1, 6 (25%) of 24 stringently chosen, high hypnotizables were able to perceive one of the superimposed stereograms (presented monocularly) during conditions of standard hypnosis or age regression, or under both conditions, but not during waking. In Experiments 2 and 3, low and high hypnotizables were presented stereograms in an alternating, monocular fashion (one-half to each eye). In Experiment 2, 10% of the high hypnotizables perceived one or more stereograms in hypnosis or age regression, but not during waking. In Experiment 3, none of the 17 low hypnotizables reported correct stereograms, but 6 of the 23 high hypnotizables (26%) did. Relationships between imagery performance and visuospatial abilities were investigated. Results support the general hypothesis that hypnosis enhances imaginal processing of information to be remembered that is a literal or untransformed representation." (Crawford, Helen J., et al; "EideticLike Imagery in Hypnosis: ...
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