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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 138: NOV-DEC 2001 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A Down Side To Moundbuilding?The thousands of earthen mounds and walls piled up basketful-by-basketful by Native Americans throughout the Midwest and, especially, Ohio, suggest only simple cultures that raised rude edifices and monuments to their chiefs and gods. But now some anomalies have arisen from below the Midwestern soil. Archeologists got a shock in 1998, when drillers installing a drainage system at huge, terraced Monk's Mound in Illinois discovered that the mound was not all dirt after all. Some 40 feet below one of the terraces they ran into a 32foot-thick layer of stones. Hidden for centuries, no one knows the extent or purpose of this huge mass of stones. (SF#117) Now, just 3 years later, scientists using magnetic and other noninvasive equipment have discerned a buried circle of "something" measuring 90 feet across. Like the stones in Monk's Mound, the find was entirely serendipitous. The locale is Paint Creek Prairie, Ross County, in Southern Ohio. There are run-of-the-mill mounds at the site but no one supposed there was anything of significance beneath the surface. (Sloat, Bill; "Mysterious Circle Found Buried beside Mounds," Cleveland Plain Dealer web site, September 6, 2001. Cr. P. Huyghe) Comment. The Hopewell Culture flourished in this region from about 400 BC to 400 AD. In fact, they ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 74: Mar-Apr 1991 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Echidna Eccentricities Monotremes: platypus (below); one of two species of echidnas (above) The echidna is one of the monotremes-- an egg-laying mammal. Like its relative, the platypus, it is a strange mixture of mammalian, marsupial, and reptilian characteristics. For example, echidna eggs are soft and leathery, like those of reptiles, but they are brooded in a marsupial-like pouch. The emerging baby echidna has an egg tooth like the birds and reptiles, while the adult has no teeth at all. Rather, it has a narrow snout through which it ingests ants and termites caught on its sticky tongue. In this it resembles the mammalian ant-eaters, which are also toothless but an ocean away from Australia. In fact, the echidna is often called a "spiny anteater" for it has the sharp spines of a hedgehog or porcupine. There are more anatomical peculiarities, but let us focus on the echidna's strange behavior during the mating season. At this time, 2 to 8 echidnas can be seen roaming the Australian bush in "trains" headed by a female with the smallest male acting as a caboose. When mating time arrives, the female anchors herself to a tree with her forelegs. To-gether the males dig a circular "mating rut" up to 10 inches deep around the tree. (Australians have puzzled over these circular trenches for years. ...
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... , and I can attest that the fishing there is good, too. And in today's electronic milieu, anomalies travel from computer screen to computer screen, by E-mail, and by fax. What an immense untapped resource! Yes, I am certain that nature is even more anomalous than the following pages intimate. I admit freely that this book and the Catalog of Anomalies harbor a scattering of fraudulent and questionable data. I try to weed these out; but no data base can be completely clean. On the other hand, I do not apologize for retaining phenomena upon which mainstream science has "closed the book." Didn't science do this to the idea of continental drift until the 1960s, only to canonize the the concept in the 1970s? Now, one believer has recommended that data contradicting plate tectonics no longer be published? (Be assured that the pages of Science Frontiers will always welcome such waifs. Scientific political correctness is anathema here. Mainstream science's response to my collections has been remarkably favorable despite my obvious iconoclastic tendencies. For example, Nature has reviewed five of my books without recommending their immediate incineration; other science journals have been likewise generous. The most annoying comment in the scores of reviews in my file has been that science should not waste time with esoterica! This reviewer apparently forgot about that tiny, esoteric advance of Mercury's perihelion that resisted explanation until Einstein came along. Also troubling have been warnings by more than one reviewer that undergraduates should not be exposed to my books lest the image of science be tarnished ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 103: Jan-Feb 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects I Hiss Therefore I Am E.R . Moliner, a neurologist, has written a curious yet provocative article for New Scientist. It is really a not-too-subtle attack on the Anthropic Principle, Darwinism, and science's insistence that the universe must be purposeless. He notes first that most proponents of the Anthropic Principle postulate that, in the beginning (whatever that was!), many different universes may have been created. The only one we observe is the one offering just the right combination of properties for evolving life and, especially, humankind. If this or that physical constant had been a tad different, humans would not have evolved. Even though humans obviously did evolve, it was all purposeless -- just the way atoms and molecules happened to combine. This outlook fits right in with Darwinism, for almost all Darwinists also see evolution as purposeless. It was blind chance that gave us the capabilities to build aircraft and tunnel into opposite sides of a mountain and meet in the middle. Moliner is highly skeptical that such amazing, "cooperative, adaptive" talents could have come about in an unbiased, purposeless universe. Suppose, he asks, vipers were philosophically minded. They might look at their marvelously complex fangs with the canals inside, a nearby poison gland, a poison storage reservoir with special ducts leading to the fangs, a fang-erection mechanism, a set of muscles to squeeze ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 103: Jan-Feb 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Einstein's nemesis: di herculis DI Herculis is an 8th-magnitude eclipsing binary about 2,000 light years from earth. These two young blue stars are very close -- only one fifth the distance from earth to our sun. They orbit about a common center of gravity every 10.55 days. So far, no problem! The puzzle is that, as the two stars swing around one another, the axis of their orbit rotates or precesses too slowly. General relativity predicts a precession of 4.27 /century, but for DI Herculis the rate is only 1.05 /century. This does not sound like a figure large enough to get excited about, but it deeply troubles astronomers. D. Popper, an astronomer at UCLA, says: "The observations are pretty clear. I don't think there's any question there's a discrepancy and, frankly, it is an important one and it's unresolved." Accentuating the challenge to general relativity is the discovery that a second eclipsing binary, AC Camelopardalis, also violates general relativity in the same way. It seems that wherever gravitational fields are extremely strong and space-time, therefore, highly distorted, general relativity fails. Ironically, it was a very similar sort of astronomical observation that helped make general relativity a pillar of the scientific edifice early in the 20th. century. The orbit of Mercury precesses a ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 34: Jul-Aug 1984 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The mind's control of bodily processes T.X . Barber has reviewed the role of the mind in the control of many physiological processes in a chapter appearing in a new book. The chapter is 58 pages long, with 176 references, making it a major contribution to the subject. To give the reader the flavor of this paper, two paragraphs are now reproduced: "The data presented in this chapter should, once and for all, topple the dualistic dichotomy between mind and body which has strongly dominated Western thought since Descartes. The meanings or ideas imbedded in words which are spoken by one person and deeply accepted by another can be communicated to the cells of the body (and to chemicals within the cells); the cells then can change their activities in order to conform to the meanings or ideas which have been transmitted to them. The believed-in (suggested) idea of being stimulated by a poison ivy-type plant, transmitted to a person who is normally hypersensitive to this type of plant, can affect specific cells (probably in the immunological and vascular systems) so that they produce the same type of dermatitis which results when the person actually is stimulated by a poison ivy-type plant. Similarly, individuals who are viewed as allergic to pollen or house dust may not manifest the allergic reaction when they believe (falsely) that they have not been exposed to the allergic substance. .. ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 100: Jul-Aug 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects When Humans Were An Endangered Species At one point during the last 400,000 years, the human population worldwide was reduced to only about 10,000 breeding men and women -- the size of a very small town. What caused this population "bottleneck"? Did a population crash engulf the entire globe. If not, who was spared? Such questions arise from a surprising observation: Human DNA is remarkably uniform everywhere humans are found. This hidden genetic uniformity is difficult to believe if one strolls through a cosmopolitan city like New York or Paris. Nevertheless, compared to the DNA of the great apes, whose mutation rates should be close to ours, human genes on the average show far fewer mutations. Human DNA from Tokyo and London is more alike than that from two lowland gorillas occupying the same forest in West Africa. Harvard anthropologist M. Ruvolo has commented: "It is a mystery that none of us can explain." The clear implication is that humans recently squeezed through a population bottleneck, during which many accumulated mutations were wiped out. In a sense, the human race began anew during the last 400,000 years. Unfortunately, DNA analysis cannot say where the very grim reaper came from. (Gibbons, Ann; "The Mystery of Humanity's Missing Mutations," Science, 267:35, 1995.) Comment. The hand that wiped the slate clean, or nearly so ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 97: Jan-Feb 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The "inscribed wall" at chatata, tennessee One of our favorite anomalies over the years has been the ancient "inscribed wall" at Chatata, near Cleveland, in Bradley County, Tennessee. The above quotation marks are intended to warn the reader that said wall may not be man-made, and its inscriptions may be natural rather than artificial. An old drawing of a section of the "inscribed wall" at Chatata, TN. Note the triangular marker stone projecting above ground level. The history of the Chatata wall is long and convoluted. Discovered over a century ago, new facts are still coming to light today, as reviewed by D.E . Wirth in a recent issue of The Ancient American. The wall was originally almost completely buried. It attracted attention only because its course was marked on the surface by stones projecting from the ground every 25-30 feet over a gently curving arc about 1,000 feet long. One of these surface stones seemed to be inscribed with strange symbols. Excavations, supported at first by the Smithsonian Institution, revealed a 3-ply sandstone wall-like structure seemingly cemented together by a reddish mortar. Splitting the sandstone sheets revealed diagonal rows of markings like those illustrated. At first, both wall and inscriptions were proclaimed to be artificial. More recent studies by geologists point to natural origins for the wall, the mortar, and even the inscriptions themselves. The latter ...
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... see is that astronomical fudge factor called "dark matter". Astronomers are sure it exists because its presence, though unseen, explains two anomalies: The high circular velocity of the stars and gas in the outer reaches of galaxies. Circular velocities should decrease with distance from the galactic center, just as planet velocities do in the solar system. They don't , so some gravitational force from some unseen mass must counterbalancing centrifugal force (mark that this is presumptious! The "force" need not be gravity.) Observations suggesting that galaxies formed when the universe was less than a billion years old. The gravitational pull of the visible mass is inadequate to cause this clumping so quickly in the history of the universe. Many candidates have been proposed to play the dark-matter role. One of the more popular possibilities is that vast sea of neutrinos pervading the cosmos -- if they really do display just a hint of mass. Two other candidates now on the table are so bizarre that we marvel at the ingenuity of the theorists. One involves exceedingly large particles, the other unbelievably tiny clumps of particles. At the "giant" end of the size spectrum are galaxy-size particles weighing only 10-24 as much as an electron, which is itself by no means large. It would be hard to experimentally distinguish such ethereal particles from a hard vacuum. A Princeton team, led by W. Hu, asserts that such particles would coalesce into giant globs of "fuzzy", cold, dark matter. Now if only Hu et al would tell us how ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 66: Nov-Dec 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Memory Structure Of Autistic Idiot Savants The first two paragraphs of this study by N. O'Connor and B. Hermelin provide some interesting background concerning the idiot savant phenomenon. "There are two basic questions which arise from the phenomenon of the idiotsavant. One is whether the specific memory of the idiot-savant is categorically organized or not and the second is whether this memory is IQ independent or IQ related. The first problem needing consideration is therefore concerned with the nature of the memory system which is involved. In the idiot-savant this has, until recently, been deemed to be a relatively unorganized rote memory. It is supposed to be mechanical, inflexible and extremely concrete. However, in a number of studies we have demonstrated that the outstanding memories of idiotsavant calculators and musicians are founded on strategies which are rule based, and which draw on a knowledge of the structure of the calendar or of music. "In addition to evidence concerning the organized nature of the specific memories of idiot-savants for dates and music, we have also accumulated evidence that the eliciting of rules and the development of rule-based strategies tended to be specific in the particular areas of ability of these subjects. For example, although able to calculate past and future dates rapidly, calendrical calculators were often quite poor in the addition and subtraction of numbers unrelated to the calendar. Similarly, in one experiment, musical memory in an idiot- ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 139: Jan-Feb 2002 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects When The Edges Of The Continents Were Naked Sea-level curves off the British Columbia coast versus time. (Left) Dashed curve in calendar years. (Right) Curves based on radiocarbon measurements. The aquatic-ape hypothesis may or may not hold water, but modern sonar undersea imaging and sampling reveal wide swathes of land that are now drowned that could once have been ideal habitat for water-adapted humans. One of these surveys was conducted offshore of Queen Charlotte Island, Canada. The surveyors discovered extensive post-glacial landscapes suitable for human use now covered by 150 meters (500 feet) of ocean, but which were exposed 10,000-12,000 years ago. In situ tree stumps and shellfish-rich paleobeaches are present on these drowned landscapes. A stone tool encrusted with barnacles and bryozoa were recovered from a drowned delta flood plain now 53 m below mean sea level. This is the first tangible evidence that the subaerial broad banks of the western North American Continental Shelf may have been occupied by humans in earliest Holocene and possibly late glacial time. (Fedje, Daryl W., and Josenhans, Heiner; "Drowned Forests and Archaeology of the Continental Shelf of British Columbia, Canada," Geology, 28:99, 2000.) Comment. A map in the referenced report reveals that 12,000 years ago broad stretches of land several hundred kilometers wide bordered Canada, Alaska, and Russia ...
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... pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The World Before Our World Genetically speaking, modern terrestrial life is bilingual in the sense that it employs two chemical languages. Function is written in the 20 amino-acid "alphabet" of proteins, while information is conveyed in sequences of four nucleotide "letters" called codons. We need go no further with the genetics lesson because our purpose here is to speculate a bit about the monolingual world that is believed to have preceded ours. This older world is commonly termed the "RNA World." It was and is monolingual because both function and information are carried on a single molecule. It is customary to call the RNA World "prebiotic," meaning that it was all chemistry and no life. But, one does wonder whether that was all there was to it. Catalysis and replication of genetic information occurred in the RNA World. What besides a chemical soup might have existed before "life-as-we-know-it" arrived upon the scene? A science fiction writer like H.P . Lovecraft could certainly come up with an ominous entity based upon RNA alone. Be that as it may, a book is now on the market bearing the title The RNA World (R .F . Gesteland and J.F . Atkins, eds., Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 1993) Nature reviewed the book in its January 20 issue. In addition, the RNA World was discussed recently in Science. We now extract one nugget from each of these two sources. From ...
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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 Two Tsumani Tales Only a few years ago astronomical catastrophism was denied as a major factor in geological change. Now one reads everywhere of huge terrestrial impact craters, iridium layers, and tektite deposits. Even so, one necessary consequence of 70% of the large impacts has been neglected until recently: the giant tsunamis and marine incursions that must have swept over the coasts of the continents following impacts at sea. This oversight is now being rectified. 100,000 BP. The South Pacific. A longstanding geological enigma of the New South Wales coastline is the curious distribution of sand dunes. Those headlands less than 40 meters high have lost most of their dunes, leaving only raw, unweathered rock. On the other hand, the higher headlands have retained these dunes. Australians B. Young and T. Bryant hypothesize that a tsunamis 40 meters high swept the lower headlands clean about 100,000 years ago. They can even plot the incoming wave's direction, because a few remnants of the coastal dunes still cling to the southwest corners of the headlands along the NSW coast south of Newcastle. In their scenario, the tsunamis came from the northeast, smashed into the Solomons, southeastern Australia, and northeastern New Zealand. The Great Barrier Reef protected northeastern Australia from the full force of the wave. Young and Bryant favor a Hawaiian landslip as the initiator of the tsunamis, but acknowledge that an asteroid impact could also have done ...
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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 Leif was Late This 10-foot-high standing stone is located near Ungava Bay, Quebec. It is said to resemble the Hammer-of-Thor motif. (From: Ancient Infrastructures) It took decades for a scientific consensus to emerge that the Norse did indeed establish a settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, circa 1,000 AD. This Viking outpost may have been only a short chapter in a long book on the Norse pre-Columbian presence in North America. Mainstream archeologists contemptuously dismiss the Kensington Stone Rhode Island's Newport tower, and those runestones from Oklahoma; but hard-to-explain artifacts continue to crop up in the Canadian Arctic. Recently, there have been purported rivets from a Viking longboat and strand of Norse yarn from the Arctic tundra -- the latter carbon-dated as 800 years old. The Canadian Arctic is also the location of strange stone towers, stone foundations, and standing stones like that illustrated. Canadian author, F. Mowat, asserts that these structures in the far north are neither Eskimo nor Viking in origin. In his new book, The Farfarers, he claims that some 200 years before the Vikings built L'Anse aux Meadows, voyagers from northern Scot-land crossed the Atlantic in walrus-hide boats and established a colony in Newfoundland. Mowat bases his conjectures upon the strong similarities between the stone structures in the Arctic and those on ...
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... reports of toppling penguins since the Falklands War in 1982. The flightless birds are said to be so mesmerized by helicopters and jets that they lose their balance as they attempt to keep track of them. (Tweedie, Neil; "Scientists to Check on Toppling Penguins," The Age, November 2, 2000. As downloaded from the web: www.theage.com.au/frontpage/20001102/A22021-2000Nov2.html . Cr. P. Huyghe) But a missive from the British Antarctic Survey insists: .. .there is no scientific evidence for penguins falling over backwards when helicopters overfly. (Holden, Constance, ed.; "Prostrate Penguins?" Science, 290:1495, 2000.) Comment. Some birds are easily mesmerized. For example, one can hypnotize a chicken simply by holding it down on a flat surface for a minute or two. This will sometimes immobilize it for over an hour! (See BBX3-X1 in Biological Anomalies: Birds.) Magpies pay for their meals. One day last July, Gill Waring noticed a magpie by the birdbath in her garden in Rosefield Avenue, Bebington, Wirral, Merseyside, after she had put some bread out for the birds. After that the magpie kept returning and she started finding coins around the birdbath. One day she saw it leaving money. After a month, the bird had left 1.70 pounds in denominations including 5p and 2p. Magpies, of course, are attracted to bright objects and have a reputation as thieves. (Anonymous; "Magpie Leaves ...
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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 Btt And Surreality If you think that Beloff's "rent" in the fabric of the cosmos is a bizarre concept, it's because you haven't heard about BTT. Named after S. Banach and A. Tarski, the Banach-Tarski Theorems (BTT) were conceived 70 years ago, and they have challenged common sense ever since. Of course, no one expects that all branches of mathematics will mirror physical reality; but BTT is definitely ultra-weird, so much so that we had to invent that adjective! Take, for example, this specific BTT result presented by B. Augenstein: "In particular, a solid sphere with unit radius can be cut into five pieces in such a way that two of the pieces can be reassembled into one solid sphere with unit radius, while the other three pieces are reassembled into a second solid sphere with unit radius. These are the minimum numbers of pieces required to do the trick, but it can be repeated indefinitely." Impossible, you say? Can one sphere fragment and be reconstituted as two solid spheres of the same size? Regardless of what the math says, it cannot happen in the real world! Well, BTT actually does mirror just such a phenomenon found in particle physics: "The magical way in which a proton entering a metal target can produce a swarm of new copies of protons emerging from that target, each identical ...
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... -destroy sperm Even book reviews can yield delightful anomalies. Take, for example, the January Scientific American review of Human Sperm Competition, by R.R . Baker and M.A . Bellis. Baker and Bellis have advanced the Kamikaze-Sperm Hypothesis. (SF#78) Central to this idea is the observation that the sperm of many animals, including humans, are polymorphic. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes, some of which are patently unsuited for penetrating an egg. Baker and Bellis draw upon their own studies and classifications of sperm types as well as research by R.A . Beatty and D. Ralt. They assert that sperm come in at least four varieties: "Fertilizers," the egg-penetration specialists, "Blockers," the ones that construct copulatory plugs to prevent further insemination, "Search-and destroy sperm" that hunt down as kill "enemy" sperm from other sources, "Family-planning sperm" that kill all sperm. One can liken this array of sperm types to polymorphic ant colonies with their castes of workers, soldiers, and queen. Baker and Bellis go further and suggest that the numbers of each sperm type are under the control (certainly not conscious control) of the males. For example, where promiscuity is observed, as is common in chimpanzee troops, the numbers of seek-and-destroy sperm are very high. All this out of a short review! Unfortunately, the book itself lists at $78.95, and we don't have a copy. ( ...
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... the same paths in what seemed a featureless ocean. How did they do it? It was quickly ruled out that they were following specific ocean currents or the bottom topography. The hammerheads seemed to possess some sort of unrecognized navigation sense. Suspecting they might be sensing the geomagnetic field, Klimley began towing a magne tometer behind the boat. Sure enough, the hammerheads were following paths coincident with lines of high magnetic gradient. And Espiritu Santo itself turned out to be a sort of magnetic beacon from which radiated these magnetic "paths" that the hammerheads followed so exactly. Now the question became: How do hammerheads -- and perhaps other animals -- sense such exceedingly small changes in the geomagnetic field? Some birds and mammals do have small particles of magnetite in their bodies, but no one knows how they might be incorporated into a sensory organ. On the other hand, hammerheads and many other sharks are extraordinarily sensitive to electrical fields, responding to fields as low as 10-8 volt/centimeter. Possibly the sharks' forward motion cuts the magnetic lines of force generating an electrical navigational signal. No one knows as yet. And so one mystery leads to another. (Klimley, A. Peter; "Hammerhead City," Natural History, 104:33, October 1995) Comment. Some marine biologists suspect that some deep-water whales and dolphins inadvertently strand themselves while following magnetic "paths" like those radiating from Espiritu Santo. (See SF#38) From Science Frontiers #104, MAR-APR 1996 . 1996-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 55: Jan-Feb 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Psyching Out Piezoelectric Transducers Our title is perhaps too flippant. The experiment described below is serious and was conducted at Stanford Research Institute. Five participants were chosen in an attempt to mentally affect an electronic device. "Each participant was asked to influence one of a pair of piezoelectric transducers, operating in a differential mode, so as to produce an event above a predetermined threshold. During the formal data collection, the transducer enclosure was located in a locked laboratory adjacent to the participants' room. Under these conditions, one of the participants produced a total of 11 events above threshold, distributed in three separate effort periods. Control trials were recorded with no one present in the experimental room but with normal activity in the rest of the building. No equivalent, uncorrelated events above threshold were detected in those control periods." The author emphasizes the preliminary nature of the results, but believes they warrant further investigaion. (Hubbard, G. Scott, "Possible Remote Action Effects on a Piezoelectric Transducer," The Explorer, 4:10, October 1987.) From Science Frontiers #55, JAN-FEB 1988 . 1988-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 96: Nov-Dec 1994 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Lazzarini eats humble pi (posthumously)If you are on a desert island and have forgotten the value of pi and need it desperately, you can find it experimentally. One amusing though tedious method would require throwing a short, straight twig onto parallel lines drawn in the beach sand. You will be able to compute pi from: pi = 2lN/dH, where l = the length of the twig, which must be less than d, separation of the parallel lines. N = the number of throws. H = the number of times the twig crosses one of the lines. One famous performance of this experiment was by M. Lazzarini in 1901. He reported that in 3408 throws he got 1808 intersections, leading to: pi = 3.1415929 Actually, the final digit should be a 6. Thus, Lazzarini measured pi to a few parts in 10 million. Recently, L. Badger, Weber State University, concluded that Lazzarini probably never actually performed his experiment. His results were just too good -- too fortuitous! If the number of hits had been 1807 or 1809, pi would have been wrong by 1 part in 2,000. As it turns out, a Chinese mathematician of the 5th Century pointed out that 355/113 = 3.1415929. It is very suspicious that Lazzarini's 3408 = 355 x 16, and 1808 = 113 x 16. Badger thinks that Lazzarini ...
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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 The Nomads Within Us It was originally believed that human chromosomes were fixed at conception and all subsequent organic development proceeded from the instructions encoded on them. Biologists have recently discovered that genes grasshopper about, constantly modifying genetic instructions -- at least that's the current thinking. Additional modification of genetic instructions seems to be accomplished by entities called "nomads" or "mobile dispersed genetic elements." One type of nomad is a simple ring of DNA called a plasmid. Plasmids seem to be identical to a kind of virus called a retrovirus, which can penetrate into cells and tamper with gene expression; that is, the way genetic instructions are interpreted. Plasmids have been discovered in maize, fruit flies, bacteria, and, now, humans -- and healthy people at that. No one is quite sure what these plasmids do. Even though they look like retroviruses, they may not be associated with illness, but rather help organisms adapt to changing environments. But no one really knows. (Anonymous; "Human Wandering Genes Can Live on Their Own," New Scientist, 94:18, 1982.) Comment. So, the human body is not only beset by new genetic instructions and the static introduced by invading viruses and other disease agents, but it has an indigenous population of nomads continually fiddling with our cells' genetic instructions. Our bodies seem more like Grand Central Station with trains loaded with new biological ...
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... Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Scrapie Transmitted By Prions Scrapie is an infectious neurological disorder in sheep. The infectious agent has been isolated, but it consists only of geneless prions. Somehow, these prions, which are merely protein filaments, get into a sheep's brain and replicate themselves to cause scrapie. With no genetic material of their own, how do the prions multiply? Recent laboratory work suggests that the prions subvert a gene that normally dwells in the brain. With the help of this gene, an endless stream of prions emerges, and the animal is sick. In hamsters, which are employed in laboratory research on scrapie, a gene demarcated PrP has been implicated in scrapie. PrP is present in both healthy and infected hamster brains, but no one knows what its normal function is, if indeed it has one. (Anonymous; "Prion Gene," Scientific American, 253:60, July 1985.) Comment. One can make an immediate connection between the traitorous PrP genes in the hamster brains and the excess genetic material in humans and all life forms. Biologists commonly call excess genetic material "nonsense DNA" which only means that they haven't devined its purpose. But, as already sugested, these unused blueprints may have had some past purpose or will be called into action in the future. The purpose may be insidious, as in the case of scrapie, or vital to the organism's survival in some unrecognized biological Armageddons. From Science Frontiers #41, SEP-OCT 1985 . 1985-2000 ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 43: Jan-Feb 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Voice Of God Back in 1976, Julian Jaynes promulgated a novel hypothesis about ancient man in his book, The Origin of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. "According to Jaynes, consciousness, as we know it today, is a relatively new faculty, one that did not exist until as recently as 2000 B.C . He holds that a basic difference between contemporary and ancient man is the process of decision-making. When faced with a novel situation today, man considers alternatives, thinks about future consequences, makes a decision, ruminates over it, and finally acts. He then reconsiders his action, evaluates it, worries about it, feels good or bad about it, makes resolves about future decisions, and so forth. The cerebral activity that precedes and follows an action response is consciousness. Jaynes believes that man of antiquity had no consciousness -- that when faced with a novel situation, he simply reacted. He reacted without hesitation by following the directions of a personal voice that told him exactly what to do. Ancient man called this voice God; today it is called an auditory hallucination. To ancient man, God was not a mental image or a deified thought but an actual voice heard when one was presented with a situation requiring decisive action." You must really read Jaynes' book to appreciate the evidence he has collected in support of his hypothesis. In the present article, ...
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... 20,000 BP for a few daring souls, have to be erroneous. How are the Pedra Furada chipped stones explained by mainstream archeologists? They are "geofacts, not artifacts. They were created when quartzite rocks were released by erosion and fell off cliffs to be smashed upon impact below. Gravity and not the human hand broke the quartz into pieces that just happen to look like prehistoric tools. F. Parenti, a coworker of Guidon, has tried to exorcise the geofact argument, which is used wherever tools are "too old", by showing that the 595 pieces of quartz have characteristics quite unlike those created by natural flaking. The doubters are unswayed. You see, despite Parenti's analysis, there remains a minute chance that a falling rock will fracture into pieces, one of which will look human-made. Maybe only one falling rock in 10,000 will fracture "unnaturally;" make it one in 10,000,000; it doesn't matter. Anthropologist D. Meltzer writes: "Of course, no matter how rare the chances, given sufficient time and raw material - Pedra Furada had plenty of both - nature can magnify even the slimmest odds to the point where geofacts occur in detectable frequencies." In this argument, you see how our title "Darwinism in Archeology" came to be. Random events (rock falls or mutations) plus a sorting mechanism (human selection or natural selection) can produce geofacts or new species. This sort of explanatory mechanism can, in principle, explain just about anything! (Meltzer ...
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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 Wrong-way stars in spiral galaxies Spiral galaxies are believed to form when gigantic clouds of gas collapse under the pull of gravity to create spinning discs. Further condensations give rise to the billions of stars that make up these immense rotating stellar wheels. Intuitively, one would expect all of the stars in a given galaxy to rotate around the hub in the same direction, like all of the water molecules in a whirlpool. But galaxy NGC4138, 50-million light years away, defies this common-sense expectation. M. Haynes and colleagues at Cornell have discovered that fully one-fifth of this galaxy's stars are rotating in a direction opposite from the rest. Otherwise, NGC4138 is a well-behaved spiral galaxy, almost a boring one, exhibiting no signs of internal turmoil or past collisions with another galaxy. However, all of the wrong-way stars appear to be youngish. This little clue may lead to some sort of explanation. (Muir, Hazel; "Counter-Revolutionaries Lurk in Spiral Galaxies," New Scientist, p. 18, March 16, 1996.) Comment. If all of NGC4138's counterrotating stars did condense from the original spinning gas disc, their large wrong-sign angular momentum would have had to be compensated for by a speed up of all the "right-way" stars. From Science Frontiers #105, MAY-JUN 1996 . 1996-2000 ...
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... 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. The affected "boy" also has noticeably asymmetrical facial features. Since one in every few hundred people display slight facial asymmetry, partial parthenogenesis may be more common than usually thought. (Cohen, Philip; "The Boy Whose Blood Has No Father," New Scientist, p. 16, October 7, 1995) From Science Frontiers #105, MAY-JUN 1996 . 1996-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 48: Nov-Dec 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Is there life on mars after all?G. Levin and P. Straat, who designed one of the three life-detection experiments on the Mars Viking landers, have always maintained that the positive results obtained with their experiment were unreasonably overruled by the negative data from the other two experiments. At a recent scientific meeting in Washington, they stated: "It is more likely than not that our experiment detected life on Mars." Their research in the decade following the Mars landings has only strengthened their belief. Further, they have demonstrated that one of the other life-detection experiments producing negative results was not sensitive enough to detect low population levels of microorganisms. Realizing that the no-life-on-Mars dogma is well-entrenched, they looked for other kinds of evidence for life. "In support of their claims, the two researchers presented two photographs of a Martian rock taken years apart by a camera on one of the landers. The photographs show greenish patches which had changed over time. Spectral analysis of the photographs compared favorably with the spectra given out by lichen-bearing rocks on Earth, as seen through a replica of the lander's camera." (Anonymous; "Is There Life on Mars After All?" New Scientist, p. 19, July 31, 1986.) From Science Frontiers #48, NOV-DEC 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... 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. One light sighted at 10,000 feet the other climbed until it disappeared. "December 28. 1st patrol saw 2 sets of 3 red and white lights. One appeared on the port side, the other on starboard at 1000 to 2000 feet to rear and closing in. Beau peeled off and lights went out. Nothing on GCI scope at the time "Observed lights suspended in air, moving slowly in no general direction and then disappeared. Lights were orange, and appeared singly and in pairs. These lights were observed 4 or 5 times throughout the period." There is no evidence as yet that any of the World War-II combatants had anything in their arsenals that could have accounted for the foo fighters. (Greenwood, Barry; Just Cause , no. 32, ...
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... 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 be released one at a time (usually). Therefore, if solar radiation levels (proportional to sunspot numbers) are high near her time of birth, her entire inventory of eggs will be bombarded by high levels of solar radiation. The ensuing damage might show up as shortened lifetimes for her children. (Rensberger, Boyce; "An Extraterrestrial Link, Sunspots and Life Span," Washington Post, p. A3, May 24, 1993. Cr. J. Judge and D. Swaner) From Science Frontiers #89, SEP-OCT 1993 . 1993 ...
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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 An Astronomer's UFO As long-time readers of Science Frontiers are aware, UFOs get little space here. Every once in a while, though, we see something UFOish worth passing along. The one below is from 1957, and the observer was a famous astronomer, Clyde Tombaugh, the discoverer of Pluto. Tombaugh was an avid skywatcher as well as an acute telescopic observer. He was very familiar with atmospheric phenomena. His experience belies the common assertion of UFO skeptics that "professional astronomers never see UFOs." An Unusual Aerial Phenomenon by Clyde W. Tombaugh I saw the object about eleven o'clock one night in August, 1949, from the backyard of my home in Las Cruces, New Mexico. I happened to be looking at zenith, admiring the beautiful transparent sky of stars, when I suddenly spied a geometrical group of faint bluish-green rectangles of light similar to the "Lubbock lights". My wife and her mother were sitting in the yard with me and they saw them also. The group moved south-southeasterly, the individual rectangles became foreshortened, their space of formation smaller, (at first about one degree across) and their intensity duller, fading from view at about 35 degrees above the horizon. Total time of visibility was about three seconds. I was too flabbergasted to count the number of rectangles of light, or to note some other features I wondered about later. ...
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... Triangle,' and Strange Attractors," Journal of Meteorology, U.K ., 15:317, 1990.) Comment. Could the English column of light have been created by the same force that made the Ohio burnt circle? The "triangle" nearby. The sides are 10-11 meters long. Des Ronds dans le Ble. Yes, the French are chasing crop circles, too. In fact, a team of 8 French observers (designated VECA 90) spent the summer of 1990 in England. After watching by night without success, reviewing the English data, they finally discovered the secret (" ils ont finalement decouvert le pot aux roses"). The crop circles and all the elaborate designs are man-made! In fact the French team demonstrated how one could quickly make circles and more complex designs with a garden roller. Case closed!? (Pinvidic, Thierry; "L 'Histoire Folle des Ronds dans le Ble," Science et Vie , no 878, p. 28, November 1990. Cr. C. Mauge.) Comment. That all crop circles are manmade is debatable, certainly many are, and one can make a case for a meteor ological origin for the simpler geometries. One English contact states firmly that a review of old aerial photographs found no complex patterns at all. But who knows what next week's mail will bring? From Science Frontiers #73, JAN-FEB 1991 . 1991-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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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 Gravity Anomaly Ripples Centered In Canada When scientists recently examined gravity anomaly data for North America, strange circular ripples appeared to surround a point near Hudson Bay. These ripples seem to have spread out like those from a pebble dropped into a pond, but here the ripples are actually ancient density variations in the earth's crust, now covered over by thick sediments. One hypothesis is that a 60-90 kilometer meteorite smashed into the earth some 4 billion years ago, wrinkling the young surface for several thousand kilometers in all directions around a colossal crater. Magma welling up in the crater solidified creating the nucleus of the North American continent. It is quite possible that the other continents began their existences in this way -- meteor impact. The gravity data that led to this hypothesis have been available for some time but apparently no one ever looked at them with continental patterns in mind. (Simon, C.; "Deep Crust Hints at Meteoric Impact," Science News, 121:69, 1982.) Comment 1: John Saul has discovered surface indications of immense ring structures in the American southwest. See ETC2 in our Catalog: Carolina Bays, Mima Mounds, which is described more fully here . Comment 2: If all our continents were initiated by meteor impacts, and if they were once clustered together in a supercontinent, as postulated by Continental Drift, then the incoming meteorites would have to have been focussed on ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 131: SEP-OCT 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A Mega-Megalith A reader of our most recent catalog volume, Ancient Infrastructure , informs us that in our rambles through the archeological literature we somehow missed the "mother of all megaliths." The sketch portrays the Tombs of the Genii, as they appeared circa 1876. These towering standing stones were -- and perhaps still are -- located on the Kora River in what was Soviet Turkestan, Siberia. When you learn of their sizes, you'll realize that these lithic monsters must still be there, because modern machinery would be taxed to nudge them. The largest of these standing stones rises 75 feet above ground level and probably penetrates 12 feet below. Its weight is in the neighborhood of 3,800 tons! This is more than 10 times the weight of Er Grah, the largest standing stone in Brittany and more than twice the size of the massive Trilithon still languishing in its quarry at Baalbek, Lebanon. This latter stone is routinely claimed to be the largest dressed monolith in the world. It isn't ! While the Siberian monolith is probably more recent than the Baalbek stone and not as finely finished, it is an unparalleled example of stone quarrying, transportation, and erection. The stones of the Great Pyramid and those Easter Island statues are puny in comparison. Who erected these giant megaliths and how did they wrestle them into place? (Howard, John Eliot; "The Early Dawn of ...
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... Subjects Edinburgh ufo a mirage?September 30, 1986. Edinburgh, Scotland. "Yvonne Westgarth looked out of a north-facing window of her house in south Edinburgh. She was amazed to see a white cylindrical object like a missile travelling westwards just above the roofs of houses opposite (as she thought). She called her husband who also saw the object. Their sketches of what they saw are shown in Fig. l. Although their descriptions differ slightly, they agree that the 'missile' had a black band around its centre. They watched the object for a period of between 0.5 min and 1.5 min (period uncertain). It was first seen almost due north and it disappeared in the west-northwest. No noise was heard." No one else reported seeing the object. A real missile was considered very unlikely. However, the object appeared in the direction of the glide path of the Edinburgh airport, where two aircraft had landed at about the time of the sighting. The witnesses were adamant that the UFO did not look at all like a plane; and that it was much higher in the sky than planes on normal glide paths, which were to be seen just above the horizon between the houses. S. Campbell, who investigated this event, suggests that the Westgarths saw an enlarged distorted mirage of a Boeing 757 landing at Edinburgh. The timing and direction were right. Mirage action would elevate the image. By assuming that both an erect and inverted image of the aircraft were projected one above the other, something ...
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... 15-20% of the earth's surface has three or less periods appearing in the "correct" order. Where are all the missing pages? Why, missing pages mean only that no deposition occurred in an area during the period in question or, if it did, erosion wiped it off the record. The "book" of strata forming the vaunted geologic column is really a composite of a few scraps from here and there. The enormity of what is missing is made all to clear by Woodmorappe's maps and statistics. (Woodmorappe, John; "The Essential Nonexistence of the Evolutionary-Uniformitarian Geologic Column: A Quantitative Assessment," Creation Research Society Quarterly, 18:46, 1981.) Comment. Do missing geological pages constitute anomalies? Not when taken one by one, for occasional lapses are to be expected. But taken en masse, the record seems so skimpy that one wonders. Woodmorappe turns the knife by emphasizing that most fossils used for dating overlap anywhere from a few to all ten periods, further compounding the uncertainty. From Science Frontiers #17, Fall 1981 . 1981-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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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 A Different Sort of Crop Circle Ball lightning reports are very common, but here is one worth recording because of its unusual physical effects. It was investigated and reported by O. Stummer. In May or June of 1988 or 1989 around 2 P.M . CEST, Mr. Alois Fuehrer, a farmer of 38 years from Jungschlag, a small village south of Ottenschlag, northern Lower Austria, 850 meters above sea level, returned early from fieldwork because a heavy thunderstorm moved in from the north-west. Fuehrer stood in the open on a wooden plank at the rear of the diesel tractor driven by his father. The vehicle had passed the last Ottenschlag houses southbound, when he noticed a falling object. It was round, 20 centimeters across, and "seemed to come down like a toy balloon", vertical, soundless, without rotation. It was brilliant white, a steady light, and had "something like a smoke trail". Only 20 to 30 meters to the right of the tractor and of the road, after 4 to 6 seconds, the object hit the surface of a green summer barley field, flashed up and "exploded with a loud, very high pitched bang". Mr. Fuehrer said "this was no thunder", and noticed no heat or pressure wave. However, what he felt caused panic--a tingling, and his hairs stood on end on his head ...
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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 Latte Stones When one thinks of megaliths, Stonehenge, Carnac, and the other classic sites of Europe come to mind. In actuality, megalithic ruins of sorts are to be found almost everywhere. In Oceania, for example, we have the Latte Stones found decorating many of the Mariana Islands in Micronesia: "Looking a bit like immense bird-baths, the Latte are shaped like truncated pyramids (halenges) capped with enormous hemispherical stones (tasas). They range in height from 5 to 20 feet with circumferences of up to 18 feet and weights that have been estimated at up to 30 tons. The columns are found throughout the Marianas, usually in double rows of up to six stones." Are the Latte Stones burial monuments or, as some are convinced, merely supports for the dwellings important personages in ancient Micronesia? But why would anyone build a house 20 feet above the ground? Even the Micronesians scoff at the idea. Instead they attribute the Latte Stones to the taotaomona, the spirits of the "before-time" people! The Latte Stones are so old that even when Magellan discovered the Marianas in 1521, no one remembered what they had been used for. (Davis, Esther Payne; "The Strange Latte Stones of Guam," World Explorer , 1:23, Spring/Summer 1992.) Reference. Scientific opinions concerning the Latte stones can be found in our handbook: Ancient ...
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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 How many migrations were there?One way of determining the directions and strengths of human migrations is through language analysis. People carry words along with them and, even after centuries of modification, traces of their original languages survive. In 1492, an estimated 30- 40 million Native Americans spoke more than 1,000 different languages. Can anyone discern patterns in such a hodgepodge? Careful study reveals many similarities. For example, all New World languages can be classified into three groups: The Eskimo-Aleut or Eurasiatic group, which is related to Indo-European, Japanese, Ainu, Korean, and some other languages. The Na-Dene family, related to a different set of Old World languages, such as Sino-Tibetan, Basque, (North) Caucasian, and others. The Amerind family. "The origins of the Amerind family are the most baffling, but there are a number of apparent cognates with language families of Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Oceania. For example, the root 'tik,' meaning 'finger, one, to point,' is found in Africa, Europe, and Asia, as well as in the Americas. The Amerind words for 'dog' bear a striking resemblance to the Proto-Indo-European word..." Can the language analysts answer the question in our title above? Based upon the above grouping, they say: " ...
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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 Bacteria One dictionary's definition: "Widely distributed group of microscopic, one-celled vegetable organisms..." As a matter of fact, the nearly universal image of a bacterium is that of a simple, single-cell organism. But: "That view is now being challenged. Investigators are finding that in many ways an individual bacterium is more analogous to a component cell of a multicellular organism than it is to a free-living, autonomous organism. Bacteria form complex communities, hunt prey in groups and secrete chemical trails for the directed movement of thousands of individuals." J.A . Shapiro, author of the preceding quote, attributes the simplistic picture of bacteria to medical bacteriology, in which disease-causing bacteria are classically identified by isolating single cells, growing cultures from them, and then showing that they cause the disease in question. In the microscopic real world, bacteria virtually always live in colonies, which possess collective properties quite different and much more impressive than those of the single-cell-in-a -dish! That old human urge for reductionism has led us astray again. Shapiro seeks to remove the blinders of reductionism in a wonderful article in the June, 1988, issue of Scientific Amer can . We have room here to mention only the Myxobacteria, many of which never exist as single cells in nature. Even those that do are "social" in the sense that ...
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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 The hypothesis of formative causation lives!Rupert Sheldrake's hypothesis has been roundly condemned by many scientists, presumably because it departs so radically from current thinking. Basically, the hypothesis maintains that the forms of things (from crystals to life forms) and the behavior of organisms is influenced by "morphic resonance emanating from past events." Convergent evolution, wherein human eyes closely resemble squid eyes, might well be explained by the hypothesis. Sheldrake has been testing his idea in various ways. One experiment involves the accompanying illustration containing a hidden image. Once the solution of this illustration is learned, it is hard to forget, but few people see the answer right off. The hypothesis of formative causation insists that once one or more persons learn the drawing's secret, the easier it will be for others to see the solution. Actual tests consisted of broadcasting the illustration and its solution (that is, the hidden image) on English television combined with before-and-after checks elsewhere in the world outside TV range. The results strongly supported the hypothesis, for it was far easier for people outside England to identify the hidden images after the broadcast. (Sheldrake, Rupert; "Formative Causation: The Hypothesis Supported," New Scientist, 100:279, 1983.) Comment. With all this prior publicity, the hidden image should pop immediately into the reader's mind. But if it doesn' ...
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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 The giant landslides of hawaii The island of Hawaii. The offshore stipled areas show the major submarine landslides. Application of the distance scale proves their immense areal extents. Depth contours are in kilometers! The heavy dashed line marks the axis of the Hawaiian Deep. Most landslides are not anomalous, but some of those that occurred on the flanks of the Hawaiian Islands are so immense that anomalists should at least take note of them. J. Moore et al have been mapping and sampling huge blocks of rock that slid off the sides of Mauna Loa in the socalled South Kona landslide. These blocks of lava and basalt are truly giants. One was measured at 10 kilometers in length, 300 meters in thickness. Some of these colossal chunks of rock slid 80 kilometers (50 miles) out to sea during the late Pleistocene. Imagine the tsunami (tidal wave) this landslide must have generated! (Moore, James G., et al; "Giant Blocks in the South Kona Landslide, Hawaii," Geology, 23:125, 1995.) Comment. The South Kona landslide, or one like it, and the resulting tsunami might account for the curious distribution of sand dunes along the coast of New South Wales, Australia. See Science Frontiers #85. From Science Frontiers #101 Sep-Oct 1995 . 1995-2000 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 Another Milky Sea January 25, 1995. Indian Ocean. Aboard the s.s . Lima , Juaymah to Rotterdam. Third officer, S.M .F . Masud, and others of the ship's company observed another instance of one of the sea's great unex plained phenomena. "At 1800 UTC on a clear moonless night while 150 n.mile east of the Somalian coast a whitish glow was observed on the horizon and, after 15 minutes of steaming, the ship was completely surrounded by a sea of milky-white colour with a fairly uniform luminescence. The bioluminescence appeared to cover the entire sea area, from horizon to horizon but above the surface, and it appeared as though the ship was sailing over a field of snow or gliding over the clouds. "There was no damping effect on capillary waves or reduction of visibility at all and there was no mist at deck level although at a distance it seemed as if there was either lowlying mist or the upwelling of the luminescence itself. The bow waves and the wake appeared blackish in colour and thick black patches of oil were passing by. Later, the Aldis lamp revealed that the 'oil patches' were actually light-green kelp, amazingly black against the white water." A water sample contained many singlecelled microorganisms, but they displayed no luminescence. After 6 hours, the luminescence disappeared. Commenting on this report, P.J ...
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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 A METEOR IMPACT OR EARTH SLUMP?November 22, 1996. The Honduras-Guate mala border. About 10:10 PM, the residents of this area observed a red-andyellow fireball moving east-to-west. The bolide's passing was marked by a loud detonation. From this information, one would bet heavily that this was simply a routine meteor detonation caused by the heat generated during entry into the atmosphere. The next morning, however, people discovered a landslide covering several acres on the slopes of Cerro Negro, a mountain 14 kilometers from San Luis. Did the meteor slam into the mountain overnight? So far, investigators have not been able to decide whether the landslide is just gravity-slumping on the slope or a disturbance created by the night's meteor. One observer believes he can see traces of a crater some 50 meters wide. Experts from the U.S . and Canada plan to examine the site in detail. (Anonymous; "A Hit in Honduras?" Sky and Telescope, 93:12, March 1997.) From Science Frontiers #110, MAR-APR 1997 . 1997-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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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 How can the sun influence chemical reaction rates?When water is added to bismuth trichloride, a precipitate, bismuth oxychloride, forms. The precipitation rate seems to vary with time, being different from one month to the next. This time variation has been confirmed at many laboratories around the world and is not dependent on any obvious meteorological condition. Instead, some investigators claim to have found a rather good correlation with the sunspot cycle! (Majorino, Gianfranco, and Zecca, Luigi; "Period Analysis of the Picardi P-Test," Cycles, 33:78, 1982.) Comment. This precipitation test, called the Piccardi P-Test, has been offered for years by cycle students as proof of extraterrestrial influences on earthly chemistry, including biochemistry. No explanation has been suggested; and one reads about it only in "fringe" publications. From Science Frontiers #22, JUL-AUG 1982 . 1982-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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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 Unidentified Light November 20, 1995. North Atlantic. Aboard the m.v . Uruguay Express enroute Santos to Bilboa. "At 0230 UTC a very bright light was noted on the port side about 50 from the bow, it lasted for about 5 seconds and then disappeared. "Knowing of no bright star in that position, the observers checked the area with binoculars and saw two small lights which were as bright as a star of very small magnitude, travelling at a very fast rate and at a steady distance from each other. No navigation lights were seen. One light then disappeared and the other changed course upwards before disappearing about 3 seconds later, neither object left a trail." The sky was cloudless and visibility was good. The vessel was about 200 miles south of the Cape Verde Islands. (Chiappara, H.; "Unidentified Light," Marine Observer, 66:186, 1996.) Comment. Another maddening, elusive, UFO-like sighting, of which there are many from similarly reliable sources. One wonders what caused the initial "very bright light." Reference. Many similar mysterious lights are cataloged under GLM2 in Lightning, Auroras. Book description here . From Science Frontiers #110, MAR-APR 1997 . 1997-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... No, this is not about crop circles, although these are easily as controversial -- at least among anthropologists. The story broke last September (1996), in Sydney, Australia, and has been simmering ever since. We have let the story cook for a while, hoping to get some confirmation of the dates involved. This will have to come later. These "circles of contention" are engraved on tall boulders (about 2 meters high on average) arranged in arcs hundreds of meters long at a site the aborigines call Jinmium. Jinmium is located near the western boundary of Australia's Northern Territory. The circles are obviously the work of humans. There are thousands of these etchings all told. Dimensions: 2-3 centimeters across and about half as deep. No one doubts that the Jinmium site is ancient. Judging from the sediments that cover the lowest circles, these engravings are about 60,000 years old. If this date survives scrutiny, the Jinmium carvings will be the oldest human art on the planet -- twice as old as anything found in Europe. No wonder the circles have created a stir. Actually, though, a larger issue is at stake. In the sediments around the engraved boulders, anthropologists have discovered what seem to be even-more-ancient signs of human activity: stone tools stratigraphically dated at 116,000 and 176,000 years. The problem here is that most anthropologists hold (rather fervently) that modern humans did not expand out of Africa until about 100,000 years ago. Paleoanthropologist R. Klein ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 113: Sep-Oct 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Can computers have ndes?When HAL, the treacherous computer in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, was being slowly throttled by the one surviving astronaut, it tried first to negotiate. Then, as board after board of electronic components were disconnected, it burst into the old song A Bicycle Built for Two . It had learned this tune early in its silicon-based life. Surprisingly, real computers can experience similar Near-Death Experiences (NDEs). S.L . Thaler, a physicist at McDonnell Douglas, was studying neural networks designed to mimic the structure and functions of the human brain. Such neural nets can actually learn as programmers train them. As a evening avocation, Thaler devised a program that randomly severed connections in the neural net, in effect destroying the artificial brain bit by bit. When between 10 and 60% of the connections were destroyed, the net spat out only gibberish. Near 90% destruction, though, strange "whimsical" information was produced that was definitely not gibberish. In contrast, untrained neural networks generated only random numbers as they were "put down"! Evidently, HAL's tuneful demise was not so fanciful after all. (Yam, Philip; "Daisy, Daisy," Scientific American, 268:32, May 1993.) Comment. A.C . Clarke, author of 2001, has stated firmly that HAL's name was not chosen ...
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... for his doubts about evolution and terming his approach "dispicable." (My! How conventional people hate unconventional people!) In this new book, Hoyle goes far beyond his previous thesis, which in essence declared that from statistical considerations life could not have arisen and evolved on earth. Rather, life had to come from outer space, probably in the form of bacteria and viruses. Evolution was and is dependent upon new information arriving from outer space on tiny bits of life. Hoyle now greatly extends his theory: "But where did a knowledge of amino acid chains of enzymes come from? To use a geological analogy, the knowledge came from the cosmological equivalent of a previous era, from a previously existing creature if you like, a creature that was not carbon-based, one that was permitted by an environment that existed long ago. So information is handed on in a Universe where the lower symmetries of physics -- and characteristics of particles and atoms -- are slowly changing, forcing the manner of storage of the information to change also in such a way as to match the physics. It is this process that is responsible for our present existence, and it is the one which our descendants would be fated to continue." To continue his search for the ultimate, Hoyle recognizes that, contrary to what transpires in the inorganic world, life as-a -whole is actually gaining order and information. He sees life leading the universe forward to a remarkable future: "That biological systems are able in some way to utilise the opposite time-sense ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 2: January 1978 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Does man survive death?In this remarkable paper, published in one of the most important medical/psychological journals, the author surveys the history of research into the survival of bodily death. He identifies three historical periods that mirror the scientific thinking of their times. At one point, research waned as many investigators believed that living individuals with paranormal powers were responsible for all the evidence. Now, however, research again proceeds on a broad front; even though hampered by most scientists' outspoken disbelief in the whole business. The important types of evidence reviewed include the speaking of languages not normally learned, out-of-the-body experiences, and reincarnation memories. [Subjects that 99% of the scientific community would dismiss without examination. Ed.] The author, a professor of psychiatry, feels that this contempt is unwarranted and that most scientists are simply not aware of the vast amount of high quality data available. The long, well-documented paper concludes with the assertion that the data acquired so far do not actually compel the conclusion that life exists after death but that it certainly infers it strongly. (Stevenson, Ian; "Research into the Evidence of Man's Survival after Death," Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 185:152, 1977.) From Science Frontiers #2 , January 1978 . 1978-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects An exploded planet and the "face on mars"Between Mars and Jupiter swirls the main main asteroid belt. In the view of many astronomers, including T. Van Flandern, there resides the debris of an exploded planet. Van Flandern has adduced considerable evidence supporting the exploded planet hypothesis, which we will pass over in favor of a look at the possible effects of said exploding planet upon a large but equally hypothetical satellite of said planet. Such a satellite would have been heavily pelted by debris on the side facing the exploding planet. Furthermore, this battered sphere, having lost its gravitational "anchor," would assume a new orbit around the sun as well as a new orientation in space. Is there any object in the solar system plastered mainly on one side with debris and craters? You guessed it: Mars! What possible connection could there be between this purported cataclysm and the "face on Mars"? The connecting thread is very weak but so beguiling that we must mention it. T. Van Flandern has proposed eight tests for the artificiality of the "face" and its associated "pyramids," "city," etc. One is the three-dimensionality of the "face." Another is the "fractal" test, which is useful in distinguishing between artificiality and naturalness. The "face" readily passes four of the eight tests. A fifth test (bilateral symmetry) cannot be decided until we get more pictures. But failure looms on the last three tests (location, orientation, cultural purpose), ...
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