768 results found.
... 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 The Spirit Pond Inscription Stone As with the 12,000-BP barrier across the Bering Strait, establishment archeologists have erected another barrier which researchers cross at their peril. This time, the line is drawn at L'Anse aux Meadows, in Newfoundland, where a Viking presence has been officially acknowledged. Any Viking innuendoes south of this point in North America are verboten. The Spirit Pond Inscription Stone, 10-line side. Nevertheless, tantalizing Viking traces are found along the New England coast and, even more anomalously, in interior North America. One of these traces is the famous and infamous Spirit Pond Insciption Stone, found in Maine. It is covered with Norse runes. This inscribed stone was found by W. Elliott in May 1971, while he was paddling around Spirit Pond in a little rubber boat. Actually, Elliott discovered three stones with markings, but here we attend only to the so-called Inscription Stone. It bears ten lines on one side and six on the other. (See illustration.) Since Spirit Pond is well south of the Viking "barrier," the Inscription Stone has been declared a hoax, like the even-more-infamous Kensington Stone. But this classification has not deterred out-of-the-mainstream archeologists from studying it. After all, the Viking "barrier" was once located in Greenland! S. Carlson, in the latest issue of the NEARA ...
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... based on old accounts that appeared in the British Daily Herald and the papal newspaper L'Osservatore Romano. Bailey et al write: "The Daily Herald report [March 6, 1931] describes the fall of 'three great meteors...[which]...fired and depopulated hundreds of miles of jungle...The fires continued uninterrupted for some months, depopulating a large area.' Unfortunately, although the fall is said to have occurred around "8 o'clock in the morning" and to have been preceded by remarkable atmospheric disturbances (a 'blood-red' Sun, an ear-piercing 'whistling' sound, and the fall of fine ash which covered trees and vegetation with a blanket of white), few details are provided that constrain the time and place of the event. Nevertheless, the story refers to an article in the papal newspaper L'Osservatore Romano [March 1, 1931], apparently written by a Catholic missionary 'Father Fidello, of Aviano', and it is to this that we now turn. Apparently, there were three bolides or fireballs seen. Father Fidello wrote: "They landed in the centre of the forest with a triple shock similar to the rumble of thunder and the splash of lightning. There were three distinct explosions, each stronger than the other, causing earth tremors like those of an earthquake. A very light rain of ash continued to fall for a few hours and the sun remained veiled till midday. The explosions of the bodies were heard hundreds of kilometres away." (Ref ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 94: Jul-Aug 1994 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Cancer: a precambrian legacy?Throughout much of Precambrian time until the onset of the Cambrian period some 540 million years ago, single-cell organisms dominated the planet. The goal of each individual cell was to prosper and proliferate. Competition with other cells, including those of the same species, was intense. Altruism did not exist. The most successful species were those that were tough and aggressive. Nevertheless, as the Cambrian began, some single cells suppressed their mutual antagonisms and formed partnerships. Thus were born the first metazoans -- the multicellular species. The road was now open to the evolution of what we term "higher" life forms. But before really complex organisms could evolve, the selfish, aggressive characteristics inherited from the ancestral single-cell species had to be tamed. Unfortunately, some of the controls that evolved -- and which we have inherited -- do not always work. Conversely, they sometimes work too well. J.M . Saul has described how the appearance of cancer in complex multicellular organisms may be the consequence of the failure of biochemical controls evolved to curb cell aggression: "Such failure may be seen as reversion to ancestral cellular behavior, or as failure of a cell with a monocellular heritage to perform metazoan tasks for which it was not originally designed. In such instances, the resultant types of wild and indiscriminate proliferation and variation would resemble pathologies classified as 'cancer.'" ...
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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 Ironclad proof of the moon's origin? Did earth and moon "coaccrete" at the same time? That is, did two clouds of debris simultaneously collect and coalesce into two rough spheres, which then began orbiting about a common center of gravity? Or, perhaps the earth and moon were once a single mass that ultimately fissioned due to the gravitational tugging of a passing massive object. If either of these scenarios were correct, earth and moon would have similar bulk compositions. This, however, does not seem to be the case. The abundance and distribution of iron on the moon's surface, as measured by the lunar probe Clementine , indicates that the moon is richer than the earth in refractory (high meltingpoint) compounds. The moon, therefore, almost certainly originated elsewhere, contrary to what most astronomers have longbelieved. Given the constraints of celestial mechanics, the most likely hypothesis postulates a colossal impact involving protoearth and the interloping protomoon. After considerable havoc, the two battered spheres settled down into their present configuration. Thus expire the two most popular theories of the moon's origin. (Lucey, Paul G., et al; "Abundance and Distribution of Iron on the Moon," Science, 268:1150, 1995) From Science Frontiers #101 Sep-Oct 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... reproduce one that is typical of the genre. [Another growing at an angle from a birdbath is sketched on SF#79.] In the formation of such icicles, liquid water is somehow forced upward from a reservoir through a central channel. As it reaches the top, it freezes. If this is indeed the mechanism, why do these upside-down icicles usually form crystal-like prisms with flat sides? (Bjørbaek, Gustav; "Unusual Ice Formations," Weather, 50:188, 1995.) Delightfully, the plot becomes more twisted with a beautiful horizontal helical icicle that was photographed in New Zealand. This truly strange icicle looks like a horizontal bedspring 6 inches long and 2 inches wide. There are eight complete turns in the helix. It has grown several times from a hairline crack in a handrail support which fills with water during a rainstorm. (Dowden, Richard, et al; "Helical Icicle," Weather, 49:435, 1994.) From Science Frontiers #100, JUL-AUG 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... . Korpimaki at the University of Turku, have demonstrated the above ultraviolet connection by somehow acquiring enough vole urine to lay out artificial trails in voleless areas. Sure enough, hunting kestrels were attracted to the experimental site and searched and searched the artificial vole highways -- volelessly. (Aldous, Peter; "Vole's Urine Is Their Downfall," New Scientist, p. 15, February 4, 1995. Gee, Henry; "In the Eye of the Kestrel," Nature, 373:387, 1995) Comment. Even as you read this, evolution is surely helping the voles by altering the ultraviolet signature of their urine! Sure, this is a bit facetious, but predator-prey relationships are always seesawing. We see this vividly in organisms with very short generation times, such as in antibiotic-resistant malaria. From Science Frontiers #99, MAY-JUN 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Darwinian abruptness after long periods of stability." In the article that follows, R.A . Kerr reviews several recent studies of fossil bryozoans and snails. Some of these painstaking dissections of the fossil record were carried out by scientists initially committed to Darwinian gradualism. Even these researchers have been forced to acknowledge that much biological evolution proceeds not in minute steps but by large jumps or saltations. Such abrupt speciation is tough enough to explain, but even more daunting are those species untouched by change over millions, even hundreds of millions of years. Indeed, the major characteristic of the fossil record and, therefore, earth life as a whole, has been stasis rather than speciation, despite all manner of asteroid impacts and climatic traumas. Nevertheless, many biologists think that species are somehow frozen in time by environmental forces that keep them from straying from their little niches. This being so, paleontologist D. Jablonski, University of Chicago, asks: If stability is the rule, how do you get large-scale shifts in morphology? How do you get from funny little Mesozoic mammals to horses and whales? From Archaeopteryx to hummingbirds? (Kerr, Richard A.; "Did Darwin Get It All Right?" Science, 267:1421, 1995) Comments. (1 ) The reality of sudden saltations in the fossil record or "punctuated equilibrium" implies that those unfound transitional fossils beloved by the gradualists are truly missing. (2 ) The higher the taxonomic level, the more silent the fossil record. There are few clues as to how the major divisions of life ...
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... 1) The case for massive black holes weighing in at millions of solar masses is not overwhelming either. These are supposed to lurk in the centers of galaxies. To find them, astronomers look for intensely bright spots in galaxies, around which swirl stars at speeds approaching the speed of light as they are sucked into the black hole's maw. Such fantastic celestial maelstroms do seem to exist, as evidenced by "something" in the giant elliptical galaxy M87. (Ref. 1) New claims for massive black holes are always being put forward. The spiral galaxy NGC 4328, for example, is thought to harbor a supermassive black hole weighing in at 40 million solar masses! (Ref. 3) However, claims for massive black holes are also being shot down all the time. Several have thought they had found a massive black hole at the center of our own galaxy. This no longer seems likely. (Ref. 4) Conclusion. Don't be too quick to accept such bizarre constructs as black holes, whether small or massive. References Parker, Barry; "Where Have All the Black Holes Gone?" Astronomy, 22: 36, October 1994. Flam, Faye; "Theorists Make a Bid to Eliminate Black Holes," Science, 266:1945, 1994. Cowen, R.; "New Evidence of a Galactic Black Hole," Science News, 147:36, 1995. Goldwurm, A., et al; "Possible Evidence against a Massive Black Hole at the Galactic Center," Nature, 371: ...
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... about 8700 years ago. To this must be added the appearance of an apparently fresh skin of the animal in 1897. Even more recently, gold miners are said to have killed a giant sloth. As with the North American Bigfoot, hard data are elusive, particularly actual specimens, dead or alive. Owen is optimistic, however. He sees his hunt for the Mapinguari as more than just another useless monster hunt: "If South America's largest terrestrial mammal has been hidden to science until 1994, what else does the Amazon have in terms of biodiversity that's new to us?" (Stolzenberg, William; "Bigfoot of the Amazon," Nature Conservancy , p. 7, July/August 1994. Anonymous; "The Mother of All Sloths," Fortean Times, no. 77, p. 17, October/November 1994.) Comment. Where is the 1897 skin? What happened to the sloth killed by the gold miners? Cryptozoology has always been plagued by disappearing critical evidence! The possible survival of the giant sloth is covered in greater depth under BMD11 in our catalog: Biological Anomalies: Mammals II. See description here . From Science Frontiers #97, JAN-FEB 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... and this is very frustrating to the white-tailed black cockatoo: "This shrub according to plant ecologist Byron Lamont of Curtin University of Technology in Perth, exhibits the first known case of self-mimicry in a plant: to avoid losing valuable seeds to predators, it disguises some of its leaves as fruits. Young plants produce only the long, needle-shaped leaves. But mature five-year-old shrubs also grow broad leaves that cluster around the slightly smaller, almost identical-looking green seed-filled fruits." When offered branches stripped of real leaves and bearing just fruits, the cockatoos quickly demolished them. Normal branches bearing both leaves and fruit were attacked at first -- especially the larger leaves. But when the cockatoos found themselves duped a large proportion of the time, they gave up in obvious frustration. (Anonymous; "Fruit Dupes," Discover, 15:16, August 1994.) Comment. An even more amazing case of plant mimicry occurs among Passiflora species, which craft precise copies of the eggs of a butterfly, whose larvae decimate these plants. The butterflies see the fake eggs and go look for places to lay their eggs where there is less competition. (See SF#16) From Science Frontiers #97, JAN-FEB 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... " Abstract. The big bang theory postulates that the entire universe originated in a cosmic explosion about 15 billion years ago. Such an idea had no serious constituency until Edwin Hubble discovered the redshift of galaxy light in the 1920s, which seemed to imply an expanding universe. However, our ability to test cosmological theories has vastly improved with modern telescopes covering all wavelengths, some of them in orbit. Despite widespread acceptance of the big bang theory as a working model for interpreting new findings, not a single important prediction of the theory has yet been confirmed, and substantial evidence has accumulated against it. Here, we examine the evidence for the most fundamental postulate of the big bang, the expansion of the universe. We conclude that the evidence does not support the theory, and that it is time to stop patching up the theory to keep it viable, and to consider fundamentally new working models for the origin and nature of the universe in better agreement with the observations." This paper's author, T. Van Flandern, dismisses quickly two pillars of the Big Bang; i.e ., its supposed predictions of the cosmic microwave background and the abundances of light elements in the universe: "The big bang made no quantitative prediction that the "background" radiation would have a temperature of 3 degrees Kelvin (in fact its initial prediction was 30 degrees Kelvin); whereas Eddington in 1926 had already calculated that the "temperature of space" produced by the radiation of starlight would be found to be 3 degrees Kelvin. And no element abundance prediction of the big bang ...
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... shallow earthquakes are generally created when rocks snap and fracture. Since the deep quakes seem to be concentrated in subducted slabs of terrestrial crust that plunge down deep into the earth's mantle, geophysicists suppose that the increasing heat and pressure applied to the descending slabs may cause "explosive" phase changes in minerals contained in the slabs. Phase changes often involve volume changes that, if sudden, might generate seismic waves. Too, water of hydration in minerals may be explosively turned into vapor. But this is all surmise at present. The Bolivian quake also caused the whole earth to ring like a bell. Every 20 minutes or so, the entire planet expanded and contracted a minute but detectable amount. Another surprise: the Bolivian earthquake was felt a far away as Seattle -- the first time that a quake in that part of South America has been actually felt in North America. (Kerr, Richard A.; "Bolivian Quake Deepens a Mystery," Science, 264:1659, 1994. Also: Monastersky, R.; "Great Quake in Bolivia Rings Earth's Bell," Science News, 145:391, 1994.) Deep-focus earthquakes are cataloged in EQQ1 in our catalog: Inner Earth: A Search for Anomalies. Details here . From Science Frontiers #95, SEP-OCT 1994 . 1994-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... -as-we-know-it. The Science article supposed that this discovery of extraterrestrial glycine might reignite speculation that earth life might not be unique after all. (Travis, John; "Hints of First Amino Acid outside Solar System," Science, 264:1669, 1994.) Structure of the amino acid glycine What Science did not mention but New Scientist did is that F. Hoyle and C. Wickramasinghe have long predicted that the molecules of life, as well as life itself, would be found in outer space. Now, after much ridicule, they are being vindicated. "It's been a long hard struggle," said Hoyle. Wickramasinghe remarked that the discovery was "no surprise at all." "He believes it is only a matter of time before other amino acids, together with nucleotide bases, the components of nucleic acids that make up genetic material, are found in space. 'This is just the tip of the iceberg,' he says. 'I would fully expect a vast array of life molecules to be discovered in space, and then there would be no doubt as to where terrestrial life began.'" (Hecht, Jeff; "' Molecule of Life' Is Found in Space," New Scientist, p. 4, June 11, 1994.) Comment. Here is a case where a scientific prediction was made, but its author labelled heretical. It is a scientific victory, but we guess that Hoyle and Wickramasinghe are too iconoclastic for Science to give them credit for their prediction. From ...
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... the Nile flooded and its waters reached a gap in the hills separating the Lake and the Nile, the Egyptians were able to float the blocks of basalt over to the Nile and down to Cairo. Good thinking! But how did they transport the heavy blocks 7 ½ miles from quarry to quay? The answer: What was apparently the first paved road on the planet. This 4,600-year-old engineering feat averaged 6 ½ feet wide and was paved with thousands of slabs of sandstone and limestone, with some logs of petrified wood thrown in. Since the slabs show no grooves, it is thought that the stone-laden sleds moved on rollers. (Wilford, John Noble; "The World's Oldest Paved Road Is Found near Egyptian Quarry," New York Times, May 8, 1994. Also: Maugh, Thomas H., III; "Earth's Oldest Highway," San Francisco Chronicle, May 22, 1994. Cr. J. Covey) From Science Frontiers #94, JUL-AUG 1994 . 1994-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... explanation for the long-term decline effect, for it was Stepanek's great strength that he was constitutionally incapable of ever being bored! Nor can we take seriously Martin Gardner's attempt to explain how he might have relied throughout on trickery. If indeed he was a trickster, he should have steadily improved as he became more practiced. Whatever the explanation of these long-term declines, it must surely be something deep and pervasive." Further, it seems that while "strong" parapsychological phenomena declined rapidly, the "weak" parapsychological phenomena persisted. Here, Beloff cites as "weak" phenomena those measured by R. Jahn's Princeton group, in which thousands of PK (psychokinesis) attempts consistently show small, but statistically significant positive effects over long periods of time. Beloff sees two possible explanations for the decline effect: Each new strong parapsychological phenomenon consists only of a succession of deceptions and blunders, which under severe scrutiny soon fades away -- as with high ESP scorers using the venerable Zener cards. Beloff rejects this skeptical interpretation because of "its failure to offer any specific, plausible, normal counterexplanation to the various episodes that go to make up our history;" i.e ., the long history of parapsychological research. [? ?] Instead, Beloff suggests that a paranormal phenomenon actually represents a "violation of the natural order." Nature, he says, reacts to these rents in the fabric of the cosmos by healing them just as our bodies heal wounds. The more robust the phenomenon, the more strenuously nature reacts ...
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... strands of DNA are analogous to computer codes that control the manufacture and disposition of proteins. Perhaps our current fascination with computers has fostered this narrow view of heredity. Do our genes really contain all the information necessary for constructing human bodies? In the April 1994 issue of Discover, J. Cohen and I. Stewart endeavor to set us straight. The arguments against the "genes-are-everything" paradigm are long and complex, but Cohen and Stewart also provide some simple, possibly simplistic observations supporting a much broader view of genetics. Mammalian DNA contains fewer bases than amphibian DNA, even though mammals are considered more complex and "advanced." The implication is that "DNA-as-a -message" must be a flawed metaphor. Wings have been invented at least four times by divergent classes (pterosaurs, insects, birds, bats); and it is very unlikely that there is a common DNA sequence that specifies how to manufacture a wing. The connections between the nerve cells comprising the human brain represent much more information than can possibly be encoded in human DNA. A caterpillar has the same DNA as the butterfly it eventually becomes. Ergo, something more than DNA must be involved. [This observation does seem simplistic, because DNA could, in principle, code for metamorphosis.] Like DNA, this "something more" passing from parent to offspring conveys information on the biochemical level. This aspect of heredity has been by-passed as geneticists have focussed on the genes. Cohen and Stewart summarize their views as follows: "What we have been ...
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... Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Why Snakes Have Forked Tongues Laymen and scientists alike have wondered for millennia why some reptiles possess forked tongues. It seems that we may now have an answer: Some variations of the forked-tongue theme among lizards and snakes. "Theory, anatomy, neural circuitry, function, and behavior now support a hypothesis of the forked tongue as a chemosensory edge-detector used to follow pheromone trails of prey and conspecifics [especially the opposite sex]. The ability to sample simultaneously two points along a chemical gradient provides the basis for the instantaneous assessment of trail location." The framer of this hypothesis, K. Schwenk, adds that the forked tongue and, obviously, the muscles and neural circuitry to use it properly, have evolved independently at least twice, possibly four times. (Schwenk, Kurt; "Why Snakes Have Forked Tongues," Science, 263:1573, 1994.) Comments . One can compare the forked tongue to binocular vision. Both require the parallel evolution of impressive infrastructures of data processing "equipment." From Science Frontiers #93, MAY-JUN 1994 . 1994-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... ONLINE No. 93: May-Jun 1994 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Lactating Male Bats The scene is a Malaysian forest, where scientists are sampling canopy wildlife with nets: "When the researchers captured a group of bats in a wide-ranging effort to survey animals that inhabit the Malaysian canopy, they were dumbfounded to see that the eight adult male Dyaks [a species of fruit bat] in the net all had visibly swollen breasts that produced milk upon being gently squeezed." No other wild male mammals are known to give milk, although inbred domestic male goats and sheep will -- rarely -- lactate. It is not known if the male bats actually nurse the young. (Angier, Natalie; New York Times, February 24, 1994. Cr. J. Covey. Also: Francis, Charles M., et al; "Lactation in Male Fruit Bats," Nature, 367:691, 1994. Fackelmann, K.A .; Science News, 145:148, 1994.) Comment. In their book Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine, G.M . Gould and W.L . Pyle record several cases of human males lactating and even suckling infants. From Science Frontiers #93, MAY-JUN 1994 . 1994-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... . D. Brownlee, R. Walker, and others: ". .. suggest that interplanetary dust has probably carried organic matter to Earth since the early aeons of the solar system. The complexity of the organic molecules found on these particles has fueled the imaginations of many who ponder the role extraterrestrial matter may have played in the prebiological evolution of organic material on the primordial Earth." Beyond these conjectures, several other things about interplanetary dust particles bother scientists: "' What is surprising,' Walker notes, 'and still not understood, is the fact that the organic molecules we see in the dust particles are different from those previously seen in meteorites.' Another enigma is the observation of striking isotopic anomalies -- large enrichments of deuterium relative to hydrogen, as much as ten times greater than one sees in terrestrial samples -- in the particles in which Zare's group observed the organic molecules." Yes, the original dust of life may have been extraterrestrial. (Zeman, Ellen J.; "Complex Organic Molecules Found in Interplanetary Dust Particles," Physics Today, 47:17, March 1991.) Comment. Nature it seems is a great recycler. It was Walt Whitman who wrote: "And as to you, Life, I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths." From Science Frontiers #93, MAY-JUN 1994 . 1994-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... (Ref. 1) Second, Jahn sees a remarkably similar information channel, but of a cryptic nature, connecting humans to the environment in PEAR's psychokinesis and remoteviewing experiments. In describing his model of this information channel, Jahn writes: "Like physical light (energy) and elementary particles (mass), consciousness (information) enjoys a wave/ particle duality that allows it to circumvent and penetrate barriers and to resonate with other consciousnesses and with appropriate aspects of the environment. Thereby it can both acquire and insert information, both objective and subjective, from and to its resonant partners." (Ref. 2) The immense body of empirical data amassed by Jahn's PEAR laboratory certainly suggests the existence of an allpervading information-transfer medium that is independent of space and time. Persinger relies upon a different corpus of research: neurological experiments as well as scores of his own studies of the effects of the geomagnetic environment upon human perception and consciousness. Both Jahn and Persinger write of information flow. The ideas of brain matrices and resonances are not too dissimilar. Persinger relies upon the electromagnetic medium; Jahn's is not specified. Jahn and Persinger are visionary regarding their research. It is perhaps well to reproduce Persinger's warning: "Within the last two decades, a potential has emerged which was improbable but which is now marginally feasible. This potential is the technical capability to influence directly the major portion of the approximately six billion brains of the human species without mediation through classical sensory modalities by generating neural information within a physical medium within which all member ...
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... . First, there is the phenomenon we have called "rocket lightning" in our books and newsletters. Scientists now call these upwardly directed discharges "sprites." (SF#84) The sprites are short-duration red flashes in the ionosphere, sometimes with bluish tendrils extending down into the thunderclouds. Second, there are the newly recognized "blue jets," a new class of upward discharges. This phenomenon is detailed in a paper by E.M . Wescott et al. Here is their abstract: "Initial observations of as newly documented type of optical emission above thunderstorms are reported. "Blue jets," or narrowly collimated beams of blue light that appear to propagate upwards from the tops of thunderstorms, were recorded on B/W and color video cameras for the first time during the Sprites94 aircraft campaign, June-July 1994. The jets appear to propagate upward at speeds of about 100 km/s and reach terminal altitudes of 40-50 km. Fifty-six examples were recorded during a 22-minute interval during a storm over Arkansas. We examine some possible mechanisms. but have no satisfactory theory of this phenomenon." (Wescott, E.M ., et al; "Preliminary Results from the Sprites94 Aircraft Campaign: 2. Blue Jets," Geophysical Research Letters, 22:1209, 1995.) Comment. The blue jets may be related to other controversial phenomena that suggest surface-to-ionosphere electrical discharges, such as mountain-top glows and low-level auroras, as presented in our catalog Lightning, Auroras. ...
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... have done it without modern lapidary tools -- the skull is so smooth and perfect? Well, maybe the Aztecs didn't carve it! A. Rankin, of Kingston University, has examined the tiny trails made by fluid inclusions in the quartz matrix. He finds that they are characteristic of Brazilian quartz. In fact, there seem to be no suitable sources of massive quartz crystals anywhere in Mexico; and the Aztecs do not appear to have made any incursions into Brazil. Even worse, British Museum experts have now found small cuts made by steel tools on the insides of the teeth. The skull, they suggest, is actually modern and carved with a jeweler's wheel. (Hawkes, Nigel; "Famous Aztec Skull Is Thought to Be a Fake," London Times, September 30, 1995. Cr. A.C .A . Silk) From Science Frontiers #103, JAN-FEB 1996 . 1996-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... -long suspension bridge built in the seventh century A.D . The bridge, which spanned the Usumacinta River, had massive concrete piers, a rope-cable suspension system anchored to stone mechanisms, towers, and a bed of hard wooden planks. It probably stood for 500 years above water 40 to 150 feet deep, with a steady current of 5 to 7 m.p .h ., which increases to 10 to 15 m.p .h . at flood stage. Civil engineer and archeologist Jame O'Kon says the bridge was the world's longest until 1377, when a larger one was built in Italy." (Anonymous; "Mayan Suspension Bridge," INFO Journal, no. 73, p. 44, Summer 1995. Source cited: Washington Times, February 26, 1995. INFO = International Fortean Organization) Comment. One wonders why such a talented society collapsed so suddenly! From Science Frontiers #103, JAN-FEB 1996 . 1996-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 102: Nov-Dec 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Huge fireball explosion in 1994 This remarkable event was mentioned by C. Keay in his review of D. Steel's book Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets . It seems to have escaped or been ignored by the scientific press. We quote from Steel's book, in which he complains that such events get little publicity despite their ominous implications for the future of humanity. "It is therefore not surprising that the 10-meter-or-so asteroid that blew up over a largely vacant area of the western Pacific on February 1, 1994, producing an explosion equivalent to at least ten times that of the Hiroshima bomb (and possibly rather more), was not seen prior to impact. Surveillance satellites registered it as the brightest such explosion that they have picked up so far. Despite the efforts of numerous scientists in this area of study to make the military aware that such detonations do occur naturally, it appears that the U.S . President was awakened because the Pentagon thought that this incident might be a hostile nuclear explosion." From Science Frontiers #102 Nov-Dec 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... 0900 GMT on Christmas Eve. The hailstones were roughly spherical in shape, with a diameter of 4 to 8 mm, and translucent, with a faint, crystalline structure radiating from their centres. There were also some agglomerates of two or three stones and, unusually, a few contained four to as many as eight stones in an irregular but planar arrangement, with the larger ones tending towards a hexagonal conformation and dimensions of approximately 15 x 12 x 6 mm." (Cinderey, Mike; "Unusual Hail -- 24 December 1993," Weather, 50:194, 1995.) Comment. That snowflakes may agglomerate in large pancake-like aggregations has often been observed (GWP2 in our catalog: Tornados, Dark Days, etc.*), but this is the first time we have heard of hail being welded together in flat, hexagonal configurations. What draws the separate hailstones together into the same hexagonal geometry displayed by snowflakes? *Described here . From Science Frontiers #100, JUL-AUG 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... east coast of Africa. November 16, 1994. Eastern North Atlantic. Aboard the m.v . City of Durban . Enroute from Le Havre to Capetown. As seen by three of the ship's officers: "At 2230 UTC the observers noted on both the 3-cm and 10-cm radars, as well as visually, a wave or band-like phenomenon shown as a succession of 'bands' approximately 4 n.mile long with a uniform separation of about 0.8 n.mile. "The bands appeared as if they were precipitation but on passing through one of them nothing was observed nor were there any other particles [i .e ., no wind-blown dust], seeing as the vessel was off the West African coast at the time. The bands themselves caused a rippling effect on the sea surface of roughly 150 m wide, giving an otherwise calm sea a black appearance beneath them on what was a well moonlit night. Although the phenomenon looked like rain bands, the observers could not give an otherwise definite solution for it." (Herring, R.M .; "Radar Echoes," Marine Observer, 65:170, 1995) From Science Frontiers #103, JAN-FEB 1996 . 1996-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 99: May-Jun 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Biological precursors of the 1995 kobe earthquake The Japanese are meticulous observers of animals. Many keep birds, insects, fish, etc. as pets. When scientists at the Osaka City University asked for reports of unusual animal behavior around the time of the great January 17 quake, over 1,200 people in the Kobe-Osaka area came forth with anecdotes. Some typical pre-quake observations were: Doves flying into walls. Caged birds (Chinese hawk-cuckoos) flying against the sides of their cages. Fish rising to the surface in great numbers. At the port of Shioya, "millions" of gizzard shad turned the surface of the water into silver. Captive stag beetles and turtles emerging from hibernation. And strangest of all, silkworms and fish in ponds orienting themselves in the same directions. (Minami, Shigehiko; "Creatures Went a Bit Batty, Maybe Knew Quake Was Coming," Asahi Evening News, February 25, 1995. Cr. N. Masuya) Cross reference. Many luminous phenomena were also seen. For descriptions of so-called "earthquake lights" refer to GLD8 in our catalog Lightning, Auroras, etc. It is listed here . From Science Frontiers #99, MAY-JUN 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... controlled almost all features of the earth's evolution. For example: Impacts have determined the positions of the continents. They have controlled the geomagnetic field. They have created volcanoes and massive basalt flows. They have caused mass extinctions. Of course, for two centuries, other catastrophists have proposed similar dire consequences of giant impacts. But Shaw does introduce three ideas that are worth recording here. Large impact craters occur in swaths. Although this has been suggested before, Shaw has mapped out several swaths where large craters of about the same age are located. His "K -T swath" includes the Chicxulub crater (Yucatan), the Manson crater (Iowa), the Avak crater (Alaska), and three more in Russia -- all of which were gouged out about the time of the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K -T ) boundary. Shaw has plotted several other swaths of different ages. The application of chaos theory to solar system debris. Shaw hypothesizes that nonlinear gravitational effects channel asteroids and comets into the inner solar system in intermittent bursts. The bursts are then captured by the earth and other inner planets, with some of these objects grouped in like orbits. Gravitational feedback occurs from earth to orbiting debris. Shaw believes that the uneven distribution of mass inside the earth -- due probably to the impact that created the moon -- influences where asteroids and comets impact. In turn, these large objects keep smashing into the same regions and their cumulative effect contols the flow of material inside the earth. Then, this change in mass distribution feeds back to ...
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... earth's atmosphere is difficult, because the infrared energy received from the moon is only 10-5 that in sunlight. Nevertheless, a slight but statistically significant temperature effect does exist. In one study, the microwave emission of molecular oxygen was measured by a polar-orbit satellite. These data gave meteorologists the temperatures of the lowest 6 kilometers of the atmosphere from all areas of the planet. The temperature difference between full moon and new moon was only 0.02 C, with the full-moon temperature being the higher. (Ref. 1) A second study took actual surface temperatures measured at noon GMT each day at 51,200 locations around the world. These near-surface temperatures revealed a difference of 0.2 C between full and new moons -- ten times larger than that from the satellite study. (Ref. 2) 0.2 C and even 0.02 C are much too large to be attributed to direct lunar "heating." Instead, geophysicists wonder if the moon's orbit modulates the influx of meteoric dust which may affect solar heating of the earth by absorption. References Ref. 1. Balling, Robert C., Jr., and Cerveny, Randall S.; "Influence of Lunar Phase on Daily Global Temperatures," Science, 267:1481, 1995. Ref. 2. Gribbin, John; "A Mysterious Monthly Temperature Cycle," New Scientist, p. 18, January 28, 1995. From Science Frontiers #100, JUL-AUG 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. ...
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... Institut Pasteur that cholera microbes died within three hours in Ganga water, but continued to thrive in distilled water even after 48 hours. A French scientist, Monsieur Herelle, was amazed to find "that only a few feet below the bodies of persons floating in the Ganga who had died of dysentery and cholera, where one would expect millions of germs, there were no germs at all. More recently, D.S . Bhargava, an Indian environmental engineer measured the Ganges' remarkable self-cleansing properties: "Bhargava's calculations, taken from an exhaustive three-year study of the Ganga, show that it is able to reduce BOD [biochemical oxygen demand] levels much faster than in other rivers." Quantitatively, the Ganges seems to clean up suspended wastes 15 to 20 times faster than other rivers. (Kalshian, Rakesh; "Ganges Has Magical Cleaning Properties," Geographic , 66:5 , April 1994.) From Science Frontiers #94, JUL-AUG 1994 . 1994-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Market, UK, had just removed a tumor from the lip of a 5-year-old Welsh pony, when they heard a strange, high-pitched hum emanating from its right ear. The hum was surprisingly loud and quite obvious to the surgical team standing a meter away. The hum's pitch was a steady 7 kilohertz. E. Douek, an ear, nose and throat surgeon, stated that audible sound coming from ears is extremely rare. Such sounds are usually caused by muscle spasms in the inner ear or throat, or by resonance due to abnormalities in the ear's blood supply. (Bonner, John; "Humming Horse Puzzles Vets," New Scientist, p. 5, April 29, 1995.) Comment. This is not the first time we have heard about humming ears. In SF#31*, H. Zuccarelli stated that human ears normally emit a faint reference sound, which mixes with incoming sound to form an interference pattern inside the ear. The resulting "acoustic holograms" allow humans and some other primates to locate the source of a sound without turning their heads. The affliction called "tinnitus" is evidently not involved. *SF#31 Science Frontiers #31. The book Science Frontiers also contains this reference. It is described here . From Science Frontiers #100, JUL-AUG 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 95: Sep-Oct 1994 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects "AN UNPRECEDENTED AND BIZARRE OBJECT"So said C. Burrows, codiscoverer of this new cosmic conundrum. The instigator of all the astronomical head scratching is our old friend Supernova 1987A, the subject of several past SF items. This time, the anomalies are associated with three bright rings now gracing 1987A's environs. The thin, dense, elliptical inner ring, the first to be noted, has always been a puzzle. Its diameter suggests that it was probably created about 30,000 years before 1987A blew up. But what is it? Its existence is hard to explain, as N. Panagia has confirmed: "The presence of a dense, thin, ring surrounding a massive star at the end of its evolution is not easy to account for." In other words, this ring is foreign to mainstream astronomical theory. Now, with the help of the Hubble Space Telescope, two additional faint rings near 1987A have been detected. One seems to be the mirror image of the other. The bizarre part is that they are not centered on 1987A at all, like the ring mentioned above. One of the new rings seems to be in front of 1987A, the other in back -- but this is a subjective call. Speculation is rampant, and all three rings are enigmatic. Is 1987A blowing out rings of matter front and back? (Panagia, Nino; "Origins Revealed in Demise, ...
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... dust itself is also a constituent of marine snow). The bigger marine snowflakes -- over 0.5 mm -- are a major food source for deep-sea denizens waiting below for this manna from the watery heaven. The reason for mentioning marine snow in Science Frontiers is that biologists like Alldredge are really pio-neering new territory, where new anomalies must surely dwell. "' We've essentially discovered a whole new class of particles in the ocean that no one knew was there," she exults. .. .. . "' They're islands, really, where the metabolic activities of algae, bacteria, and protozoans produce unique chemical environments,' says Alldredge." To illustrate, the carbon content of bacteria on marine snow is 10,000 times higher than that of bacteria found away from the snow. Why? (Cox, Vic; "It's No Snow Job," Sea Frontiers , 40:42, March/April 1994.) From Science Frontiers #93, MAY-JUN 1994 . 1994-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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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 The Giant Crystal At The Heart Of The Earth Geophysicists have been forced to consider this possibility because of two anomalies: Seismic waves from earthquakes pass through the earth's core faster when they travel parallel to the earth's axis than when they travel in the plane of the equator. The transit time difference is 2-4 seconds. Apparently, the earth's core is not perfectly spherical or its properties are different in different directions. The natural vibration or "ringing" frequencies of the earth are "split," that is, instead of a series of single "tones" we detect a series of closely paired frequencies. This is symptomatic of a core that is anisotropic; that is, its properties are different in different directions. J. Tromp, of Harvard, may have de-anomalized both sets of observations with a single theory: "For the shape of the core alone to explain the observations, he says, the shape of the inner core would have to be very unrealistic. Instead, he claims that the inner core behaves like a giant asymmetric crystal, aligned with the Earth's axis so that seismic waves travel faster in that direction. Tromp's analysis fits neatly with suggestions that the inner core is made of a high-pressure phase of iron in which the atoms are close-packed in hexagons, because such a 'sigma' phase is anisotropic." But, ...
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... measured the mtDNA of 18 other tribes throughout the Americas and, using the mutation rate just mentioned, computed how long ago these peoples had diverged from a common ancestor. The result: 22,000-29,000 years ago. The Emory study was published in the February 1, 1994, issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . All this is very well, but suppose that the tribes had split from that common ancestor before they even crossed the Bering land bridge into the New World, thereby starting the molecular clock too early? Or, perhaps Southeast Asians arriving by boat tossed sand into the gears of the vaunted molecular clocks? So, be careful with this apparent anomaly. Molecular clocks are tricky. (Holden, Constance; "Early American Gene Clock Gains Time," Science, 263: 753, 1994. Also: Anonymous; "DNA Dates for First Americans," Science News, 145:126, 1994.) From Science Frontiers #93, MAY-JUN 1994 . 1994-2000 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. 97: Jan-Feb 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects How can some stars be older than the universe itself?The answer is, of course, if the astronomers' clocks keep bad time. On one hand, stellar age theory assures us that stars in the globular clusters that pervade the universe were born about 15 billion years ago. On the other hand, new measurements of the distance to the Virgo cluster of galaxies are equally adamant that these objects are much closer than thought -- so close that, assuming the standard Big Bang model and the resultant expanding universe, the age of the universe may be as small as 8 billion years! In other words, the universe is younger than some of the stars in it; an obvious and painful dilemma for astronomy. How will this conflict between the two dominant astronomical paradigms play out? Many are betting that the Big Bang theory will require a major over-haul. Or more, as suggested in the next item. (Jacoby, George H.; "The Universe in Crisis," Nature, 371:741, 1994. Travis, John; "Hubble War Moves to High Ground," Science, 266:539, 1994.) Comment. A clever resolution of the above age problem would be for the ancient globular cluster stars to be left-overs or interlopers from an older universe. The globular clusters are anomalous in several other ways. See: Stars, Galaxies, Cosmos. Ordering information here ...
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... path, but often it would follow a really contorted path that made the "mist" look like a snake engaged in a rather violent path -- rather captivating to watch. "We suspected that the effect was some sort of remnant of the vapour trails that sometimes came off the tips of the wings and tried to confirm this by direct observation, but we could never keep track of such a trail for more than 5 seconds. Also, we were never totally convinced that the two effects were correlated. Anyway, wouldn't such a trail dissipate within a few seconds?" (Surendonk, Timothy; "Just Plane Weird," New Scientist, p. 58, March 5, 1994.) Comment. If these "mists" are merely trailing vortices, the long time delay between passage of the plane and the tube of mist is puzzling. From Science Frontiers #93, MAY-JUN 1994 . 1994-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 98: Mar-Apr 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The earth has recently been swallowed by a cloud of inter-stellar gas Using cosmic-ray data and stellar spectra gathered by seven satellites, P.C . Frisch, at the University of Chicago, has constructed a cosmic scenario that reminds us of F. Hoyle's science fiction tale, The Black Cloud . According to Frisch, until just a few thousand years ago, the solar system was cruising through interstellar space that was almost devoid of matter. Then, perhaps within historical times, 2,000-8 ,000 years ago, the solar system plunged into an interstellar gas cloud. This cloud is believed to be the remnant of the bubble of matter shot into space perhaps 250,000 years ago by a supernova in the Scorpius-Centaurus region. This tenuous cloud of gas feeds matter into the solar system, some of which interacts with the solar wind and, therefore, affects the geomagnetic field, too. Climate changes may have been caused by entry into this cloud, and very likely the flux of cosmic rays impinging on the earth would have been modulated. (Frisch, Priscella C.; "Morphology and Ionization of the Interstellar Cloud Surrounding the Solar System," Science, 265:1423, 1994. Also: Peterson, I.; "Finding a Place for the Sun in a Cloud," Science News, 146:148, 1994.) Comment. Note that the 2 ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 109: Jan-Feb 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Greenwich Late Time When J. Brink recently visited the Old Greenwich Observatory, in England, he saw a flag hanging on the building giving the longitude of the site, which by definition is 0 0' 0". The flag also announced that: "The Next Millennium Starts Here." Why is this in error? Answer below. (Brink, Johan; "Greenwich Late Time," New Scientist, p. 59, October 19, 1996) LONGITUDE FAUX PAS The next millennium (the year 2001 or 2000, depending upon your mind-set) really begins where all days begin: at the International Date Line, longitude 180 . From Science Frontiers #109, JAN-FEB 1997 . 1997-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... . A paleontological fact of life is that all known body plans (phyla) seem to have evolved suddenly -- within a few million years -- after the onset of the Cambrian period some 545 million years ago. Evolutionists are understandably uncomfortable with such a high rate of evolutionary innovation. Nothing like the Cambrian Explosion appears in the hundreds of millions of years of geological strata that followed. So rapid was speciation during the Cambrian Explosion that doubt is cast upon the accepted mechanisms of evolution: slow, stepwise accumulation of mutations plus natural selection. (Refs. 1 and 2) But G.A . Wray and colleagues seem to have rescued Darwinism. They have analyzed the DNA sequences of seven genes found in living animals. Assuming that these genes mutate at constant rates and working backwards in time, they calculate that animal diversification (i .e ., when chordates diverged from invertebrates) actually began about 1 billion years ago, rather than about 545 million years ago. This expansion of the time frame gives accepted evolutionary processes much more time to innovate and create all those new body plans. The evolutionists are pleased. The paleontologists, however, are in a quandry. They see nothing -- or very little -- in the Precambrian fossil record that substantiates the claim of Wray at al. Thus, molecular biology directly contradicts the findings of paleontology. Not to worry say supporters of the new and much more comfortable scenario: The Precambrian animals were so soft and "squishy" that they did not fossilize well. (Ref. 3) Comment. The molecular biologists are ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 114: Nov-Dec 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Quantum mechanics is definitely spooky "I cannot seriously believe in [the quantum theory] because it cannot be reconciled with the idea that physics should represent a reality in time and space, free from spooky actions at a distance." (Ref. 1) So Einstein wrote Max Born in March 1947. Well, even Einstein could have been wrong! "It's getting even spookier out there. Particles can be strangely connected over at least ten kilometres, according to results from physicists in Geneva. Using pairs of "entangled" photons, Nicolas Gisin and his colleagues from the University of Geneva have shown that the measurement of one particle will instantaneously determine the state of the other." (Ref. 2) This particular spooky aspect of quantum mechanics was demonstrated 15 years ago over a distance of just a few meters. Many physicists had expected (probably "hoped") that this "mysterious link" between separated particles would weaken with distance. But this quantum-mechanics effect does not conform to "common-sense" expectations! Now it seems that one particle of an "entangled pair" knows instantaneously what its mate is doing, possibly even if it is located on the other side of the universe. More quantum-mechanics spookiness is seen in "tunneling" phenomena, such as that mentioned in AR#3 , where a Mozart symphony zipped through a barrier at 4.7 times the speed of ...
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... be established here. The writer of the two articles digested below is an M.D . and a graduate of the Harvard Medical School. This is not a hoax! Melanoma sniffing. In 1989, the Lancet , a respected British medical journal, published an article relating how a female dog, half border collie, half doberman, sniffed out a spot of melanoma on a woman. In fact, the dog ignored all of the other moles on the woman and even tried to bite off the melanoma. Melanoma is the most dreaded form of skin cancer, so this bizarre report stimulated A. Cognetta, an American dermotologist, to try an experiment. First, another dog, named George, was trained to find tubes containing melanoma samples, which he did correctly 99% of the time. Next, a human with active melanoma was enlisted. Several bandages were placed on the subject's body including one over the melanoma site. Once again, George was almost 100% accurate in his diagnosis. Subsequently, George successfully identified malignancies on other patients. (Walker, Kenneth; "George the Dog Helps Take a Bite out of Skin Cancer," Chicago Sun-Times , September 6, 1998. Cr. J. Cieciel.) Seizure sniffing. An English woman subject to epileptic seizures never goes anywhere without her dog Rupert. Rupert has a nose for the odor that precedes epileptic seizures in humans. He barks about 40 minutes before the actual seizure, giving the woman a chance to get to a safe place. Of course, Rupert barks at other things ...
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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 Those Ancient Greek Pyramids That's right. Greek pyramids! On Greek soil, at Hellenikon and Ligourio west of Athens in the Argolid region, are two limestone pyramids that are stylistically very much like those at Giza near Cairo. The big difference is size; the Greek pyramids are only the size of a large room compared to the Great Pyramid's height (with capstone) of almost 500 feet. When excavations were made around the Greek pyramids in the early 1900s, pottery fragments from the Fourth Century B.C . were found, and it was presumed that the pyramids were also constructed then; that is, about the time of Alexander the Great. Recent dating of crystals from internal surfaces of the limestone blocks using thermoluminescence puts the construction times back two millennia. The Hellenikon pyramid dates to 2730 B.C .; the Ligourio, to 2260 B.C . This means that the Greek pyramids were built in roughly the same time frame as the Egyptian pyramids. Why would the ancient Greeks want to build miniature pyramids? The classical scholar Pausanias wrote in the Second Century A.D . that the Hellenikon pyramid was a cenotaph for the dead fallen in a fratricidal battle 4,000 years ago. Nobody believed his story until now. (Hammond, Norman; "Did the Early Greeks Simply Copy the Pyramids of Egypt?" London Times, August 1, 1997. Cr. A.C . ...
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... Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Large rotating ice discs on ice-covered rivers The fringe literature has made much of the huge, slowly spinning discs of ice seen on some rivers in northern climes. UFOs are connected somehow. Or, more recently, they must be associated with the infamous crop circles! These ponderously rotating ice discs have also caught the attentions of scientists, who have been able to dispel some of these wild speculations. One well-observed ice disc formed on the Pite River in northern Sweden in 1987. It was rotating in a circular hole in the ice covering the rest of the river. "The rotating ice disc had a diameter of 49m [just over 160 feet] while the hole in the ice was 54m in diameter. The time of one full rotation was measured at 545s and 575s on 20 and 24 January respectively. Unverified measurements suggest that the time of rotation had been about 8 min a few weeks earlier. The rotation of the ice disc was anticlockwise and for most of the time the disc was in contact with the border ice. This contact point moved clockwise, i.e . the ice disc was not 'rolling' on the walls of the hole. This erosion by contact, which caused a low-frequency sound, explains why the hole in the ice was kept open for months." The ice thickness was 0.43m. Estimated weight of the ice disc = 864 metric tons -- almost 2 million pounds! Formation of the disc began when ice floes formed upstream were captured by ...
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... Frontiers ONLINE No. 109: Jan-Feb 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Too Much Order In The Early Cosmos Astronomers are becoming accustomed to the idea that many nearby galaxies are concentrated in spherical shells separated from one another by about 400 million light years. This onion-skin geometry is inferred from the fact that galactic red shifts cluster around specific values; that is, they are quantized. Since red shifts are held to be proportional to distance in the expanding universe paradigm: Voila! We have shells! This evidence of nearby cosmic order does not seriously disturb cosmologists, because in the nearby galaxies we are seeing that portion of the universe that is billions of years old. In other words, nearby there has been enough time for some degree of order to have evolved out of the primordial chaos of the Big Bang. Now though, "deep" surveys of galaxies, looking much farther back in time, still show clustered red shifts -- not the expected increasing chaos required by theory. Although the surveys are incomplete, astronomers are discomfited by this early lumpiness. Their theories say that there was not enough time for galaxies to organize themselves into sheets, shells, and skeins. If further "deep" probings of the cosmos confirm this redshift clustering, we may need a new evolutionary scenario. Good bye Big Bang and expanding universe! (Vogel, Gretchen; "Goodness, Gracious, Great Walls Afar," Science, 274:343, 1996. Vergano, D.; "New Evidence of ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 118: Jul-Aug 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Day The Laws Of Physics Changed Well, maybe there weren't such things as "days" as we now know them back when the universe was very young. In fact, "time" then might have been different from "time" now. This sounds like so much physics-speak; but, seriously, during the birth pangs of the universe, there seems to have been what cosmologists call a "phase change," a mysterious moment when the laws of physics suddenly became more complex. You can reasonably ask: "How can supposedly immutable physical laws change?" The answer seems to be that anything can happen when something is being made from nothing! This apparent plasticity in the laws governing the cosmos is suggested by observations of how galaxies in the early universe were distributed. The standard theory for the origin of the universe predicts that clumps of galaxies of all sizes were created early on. This is not what a survey by S. Sarkar et al, at the University of Oxford, found. A split second after the Big Bang, galaxies were organized in structures about 300-million light years across. The standard model of particle physics cannot account for this preferred size. The theorists' recourse is a phase change, a point in time when the warp and woof of the universe changed; that is, change the rules until they fit. (Chown, Marcus; "In the ...
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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 G: The Embarrassing Constant Of Nature Of the four fundamental forces of nature, gravity was the first to be discovered. Even the Neanderthals knew of it! That's hardly surprising; it's everywhere. Unfortunately, we don't know much more about it than the Neanderthals. Though it seems powerful when you trip and fall, gravity is the weakest of the fundamental four. In a helium nucleus, the force of repulsion between two protons is 1040 times the gravitational attraction between them. Weak though it may be, gravity controls the trajectory of a baseball, the motion of the planets, and the shape of our Galaxy. Physicists describe gravitation with Newton's Law of Gravitation, which incorporates the Gravitational Constant G. Here's where the embarrassment arises. Many other constants of nature, such as the charge on the electron, are known to eight significant figures. We only know G to three. What's worse, modern attempts to refine the measurement of G come up with wildly different answers. Torsion-pendulum experiments in the U.S ., Germany, and New Zealand are far apart in their G-measurements. And physicists are perplexed -- to put it mildly. Of course, G is hard to measure. Seismic waves from ocean surf hundreds of miles away can affect the experiments. If a colleague a few offices away brings in some boxes of books for his ...
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... when faced with identical boards. R.G . Everit responds that this is not really mysterious. The better chess-playing computers are actually designed to behave unpredictably when confronted by several moves of roughly equal promise. This feature makes it more interesting for human players. Everit also sets us straight in the matter of computer determinacy. "However, contrary to your basic assumption, most computers (even a home PC) can be forced to behave truly unpredictably. This cannot be done using the random-number generators supplied with the software, as these depend upon some mathematical formula and so are determined in advance, even if they appear to show no pattern. But if the machine has an internal clock readable by the programmer, he can determine the machine's choice depending upon the time required for some complex calculation, which will vary according to such factors as minute voltage variations and the aging of the machine's components. For example, the CDC 3600, on which I learned to program in 1975, had an accessible microsecond clock, and my program to calculate the first five perfect numbers* required about 15 minutes of run time; the last few digits of the exact number of microseconds required to run this program each time varied quite unpredictably. In other words, it was a random number, except perhaps from the standpoint of philosophical determinism, which claims that every event in the entire universe has been determined from the beginning." (Everit, Richard G.; personal communication, November 2, 1996) *A perfect number is equal to the sum ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 120: Nov-Dec 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Bye-bye Mercury, and Maybe Mars During the 1950s, the campaign of mainstream science to discredit Velikovsky assured the public that the solar system was the epitome of stability -- wayward planets were impossible. Then along came chaos theory which implied that the flight of a butterfly in Brazil could, in principle, affect weather in Canada. In effect, a slight change in initial conditions could, in the fullness of time, have very large effects. Now, it is generally admitted that the solar system is chaotic after all. Each planet is subject to the tiny, butterfly-like gravitational tugs of the other planets, especially Jupiter. Given enough time, these gravitational nuances can result in the ejection of a planet from the solar system -- and may already have done so in the past! Mercury and Mars are the most vulnerable on a billion-year time scale. In the case of Mercury, its orbit will become more and more elliptical according to computer simulations. Eventually a close gravitational encounter with Venus is possible. This could send Mercury careening off into deep space. The probability of this happening is only 1 in a 1000 over 5 billion years, but it is not zero. Mars might likewise be ejected by a passing nudge from earth. However, this encounter could go the other way. Depending upon the celestial dynamics of the encounter, Mars might gravitationally fling earth out into the Galaxy, and ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 35 - 15 May 2017 - URL: /sf120/sf120p03.htm
