697 results found.
... 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 The Mysterious First Green Egg In SF#138, we addressed the subject of birds' eggs as signals. Another similar and even more curious case occurs on the Antipodes Islands 500 miles southeast of New Zealand. There, five species of erect-crested penguins breed. These birds normally lay two eggs but raise only one chick. The first egg is distinctly greenish and much smaller than the second white egg. The little greenish egg is totally neglected and often ejected from the nest. No one knows why. (Davis, Lloyd Spencer; "A Superlative Penguin," Natural History, 110:46, November 2001.) First and second eggs of an Erect-Crested Penguin, respectively. (Left) Small and greenish (Right) Large and white. Comment. We suppose the first little egg could be a trial run of the female's reproductive machinery. Its small size and subsequent neglect seem to indicate that it is not a "back-up" egg in case the second egg is defective or eaten by a predator. Or maybe the little egg is a sop to predators with a hope that they will be satisfied with it. It would be interesting to know if the first eggs are ever hatched and what sort of chicks emerge. From Science Frontiers #139, Jan-Feb 2002 . 2001 William R. Corliss Other Sites of Interest SIS . Catastrophism, archaeoastronomy, ancient history, mythology ...
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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 Tunguska: An Inside Job?Virtually all speculation about the 1908 Tunguska Event assumes an external cause: a meteor, a comet, an asteroid, or even the accidental explosion of an alien spaceship. A recent meeting of Tunguska experts in Russia looked down rather than up for Tunguska's initiating phenomenon. In this open-minded review, two little-publicized but highly pertinent Tunguska observations were discussed. The catastrophe had five centers of destruction rather than one. At the Tunguska site are many large root stumps, not yet rotted away, that cannot be linked to any pits associated with their origin. These stumps were apparently blown out of the ground and hurled dozens of meters from where they stood prior to the Event. Next to be considered were the unappreciated similarities between the Tunguska Event and the 1883 explosion of Krakatoa. The four bright nights in Europe and western Asia, straddling 30 June 1908, are remimiscent of the 1883 Krakatoa outburst, they ask for transient scatterers in the upper atmosphere, above 500 km, at heights which only methane and hydrogen are light enough to reach in sufficient quantity. Fast-rising natural gas has been repeatedly detected in recent years, in the form of "mystery clouds"---by airplane pilots---and indirectly as pockmarks on 6% of the sea floor. In other words, Tunguska might well have been---not an extraterrestrial impact--- ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 127: Jan-Feb 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Throat-Singing Humans are born with one organ that is capable of astonishing performances that greatly exceed what is required for the tracking of animals and the grubbing of edible roots. This is the human brain, of course. Not as widely appreciated for its versatility is the human vocal tract. It can generate much more than brute grunts. It renders operatic arias of great beauty and frequency range. The vocal tract can do even more than that; it can carry two musical lines simultaneously. This skill is called "throat-singing" or "overtonesinging." The best-known throat-singers live in the Tuva region of southern Siberia. The semi-nomadic herders of this wild region were evidently inspired to develop throat-singing so that they could better mimic the sounds they heard in nature: the singing of birds, the wind, the sounds of insects. Throat-songs have two components. The first is at a low, sustained fundamental pitch, which can be likened to the drone of a bagpipe. The second, superimposed on the low drone, is a succession of flute-like sounds that resonates high above the drone. It is the second component that can be controlled so as to mirror natural sounds. The result is like nothing Mozart or Verdi conceived. But it is an art form valued in Tuva and a talent rather remarkable from a biologist's perspective. One should compare the vocal ...
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... of an extraterrestrial impact -- meteorite or comet. The iridium leads to the heart of the LDG problem: Where did this immense amount of widely dispersed glass shards come from? Was it really created during the searing, sand-melting impact of a cosmic projectile? This is how today's catastrophists would have it? At least three "minor" problems bedevil the accepted impact theory. The surface of the Great Sand Sea shows no sign of a giant crater. Neither do microwave probes deep into the sand by satellite radar. LDG seems too pure to be derived from a messy cosmic collision. Known impact craters, such as that at Wabar in Saudi Arabia, are littered with bits of iron and other meteorite debris. Not so at the LDG sites. LDG is concentrated in two areas. One is oval-shaped; the other is a circular ring 6 kilometers wide and 21 kilometers in diameter. The ring's wide center is devoid of LDG. Could there have been a "soft" projectile impact; that is the detonation of a meteorite, perhaps 30 meters in diameter, 10 kilometers or so above the Great Sand Sea? The searing blast of hot air might have melted the sand beneath. Such a craterless impact is thought to have occurred in the 1908 Tunguska Event in Siberia. Another theory has a meteorite glancing off the desert surface leaving a glassy crust and a shallow crater that was soon filled in. But there are two known areas of LDG. Were there two cosmic projectiles in tandem? As of 1999, the origin of the beautiful ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 122: Mar-Apr 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A Genetic Disconnect Bandings on chromosome 9 from humans (H ), chimpanzees (C ), gorillas (G ), orang-utans (O ) If human and chimpanzee nuclear DNAs differ by only 1.5 %, why are the two species so profoundly different in anatomy and behavior? The obvious external differences are body hair, the use of language, the method of locomotion, and of course culture. Less well known is the fact that humans are more susceptible to diseases like as cancer and AIDS. Apparently, superficial comparisons of DNAs slough over genetic details that result in major differences in the living animals. Some of the genetic differences between humans and chimps seem to belie that miniscule 1.5 % difference everyone bandies about. To illustrate, humans have only 46 chromosomes, while the great apes all have 48. The 1.5 % figure doesn't hint at this significant difference. Next, take a look at chromosome #9 in humans and the great apes. Chromosome bandings are different enough to raise further suspicions about the 1.5 % figure. (Gibbons, Ann; "Which of Our Genes Make Us Human?" Science, 281:1432, 1998.) Comments. It is easy to see how gross comparisons of DNA might miss important details. The popular "DNA-hybridization" method simply mixes together strands of DNA from the two species being compared. These are allowed ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 123: May-Jun 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Phantoms Of The Brain In his review of a book with the above title (by V.S . Ramachandran and S. Blakeslee), D. Papineau repeats three irresistible anecdotes from the book. The people involved had either lost limbs or were partially paralyzed, so these three tales are at once sad, bizarre, and amusing. The first two anecdotes involve amputees experiencing the phantom-limb phenomenon. The accepted explanation of this phenomenon is that the irritated stump of an amputee sends nerve messages that deceive the brain into signaling that the limb is there after all. Ramachandran, a neurologist, has shown that this theory is incorrect. Instead, he asserts, when the area of the brain assigned to the lost limb no longer receives sensory input from the area, it begins to react to sensory input arriving at adjoining areas in the brain. In other words, the idle area "overhears" nearby signals that are being processed and acts upon them in error. This view explains why by simply stroking a man who had lost an arm, Ramachandran discovered two virtual hands in the man's face and shoulder. A touch on the man's cheek brought the response, "You're touching my thumb." The second anecdote is explained by the fact that the area in the sensory cortex assigned to the genitals is located next to that for the feet. Genital stimulation of people who have lost a foot ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 123: May-Jun 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Sophisticated Chemistry In Ancient Egypt The ancient Egyptians applied cosmetics copiously to themselves. Upper-class women (perhaps men, too) favored green, white, and black makeup. These cosmetic powders, dating from 2,000 B.C ., have been exceptionally well preserved in their original vials made of alabaster, ceramic, and wood. A team of French chemists led by P. Walter was not surprised when their analyses of these powders found crushed galena and cerussite (two ores of lead). However, they nearly dropped their test tubes when they also found chemical compounds that are extremely rare in nature; specifically, laurionite (PbOHCl) and phosgenite (Pb2 Cl2 CO3 ). In fact, these compounds are so rare naturally that the Egyptian powders must be artificial. P. Walter et al wrote: "Taken together, these results indicate that laurionite and phosgenite must have been synthesized in Ancient Egypt using wet chemistry. The Egyptians manufactured artificial leadbased compounds, and added them to the cosmetic product. The underlying chemical reactions are simple, but the whole process, including many repetitive operations, must have been quite difficult to achieve." It had been recognized earlier that the Egyptian chemists had used fire-based technology 500 years earlier (2 ,500 B.C .) to manufacture blue pigment. Wet chemistry represented another forward technological step. (Walter, P., et al; "Making Make- ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 123: May-Jun 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Copper Pseudomorphs There are two places in the world where large masses of native (almost pure) copper are common: the Lake Superior region, particularly Isle Royale, and Corocoro, Bolivia. The largest "nugget" of nearly pure copper comes from Lake Superior and weighs almost 46 tons! But the Corocoro mines are rich in another way; copper "pseudomorphs." In copper pseudomorphs, copper ions insidiously invade crystals of other minerals and assume their shapes. Copper pseudomorphs of aragonite, a form of CaCO3 , are common. Aragonite sometimes occurs as short, tabular, hexagonal prisms, as shown in the sketch. Under the water table, in a copper-rich area, copper ions in solution "attack" aragonite crystals. First, they oust and replace the outer layers of CaCO3 , gilding the aragonite crystal with a thin layer of pure copper. Then, they work inwardly and eventually usurp the whole crystal and take on its shape. Even stranger are those hexagonal crystals that are pure aragonite in the top half and pure copper in the bottom half. Mineralogists speculate that these formed along the edge of the water table. (Hyrsl, Jaroslav, and Petrov, Alfred; "Pseudomorphs from Bolivia," Rocks and Minerals , 73:110, November/December 1998.) From Science Frontiers #123, MAY-JUN 1999 . 1999-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 125: Sep-Oct 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects More Nominative Determinism Following in the trail of Feedback's page in the New Scientist, we herewith offer two more cases of nominative determinism or ND. This phenomenon, as readers of SF are well aware, occurs when a person's last name is related to his or her occupation. A solid example of ND is seen in the name of the Director of U.S . Programs for the Rodale Institute. The Institute, it turns out, is studying carbon and nitrogen balances in organically managed cropping systems. Nitrates originating in such agriculture contaminate the ground water and often end up in drinking water. The EPA has determined that nitrates in drinking water can be harmful; thus this study. Who directs the study? Dr. Laurie Drinkwater! (Anonymous; "Organics Reduce Groundwater Pollution," Acres U.S .A . , p. 11, May 1999. Cr. L. Cortner.) And to whom does the journal Marine Observer turn when expert opinion is required on marine phenomena, including fish identification? Dr. Peter Herring! From Science Frontiers #125, SEP-OCT 1999 . 1999-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 127: Jan-Feb 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Nuclear bombs will not save the earth!Not too long ago, geologists adamantly denied that there were any large meteor craters pockmarking our planet. Now, they find 100-kilometer craters on a regular basis. And scientists are casting worried looks at those near-earth asteroids, knowing that one day one will be on a collision course. Not to worry, say the modern-day Technocrats, we will launch nucleararmed rockets that will nudge such cosmic threats into harmless trajectories. These Pollyannas are presumptious. They assume that asteroids are hard, cohesive objects that will be shoved aside by a few megatons of explosive energy. There are two things wrong with this idea, and these reveal how radically our ideas about the nature of asteroids have changed in just 10 years. First, most astronomers will now agree that asteroids are orbiting rubble piles rather than monolithic objects. For example, the near-earth asteroid Mathilde, 53 kilometers in diameter, has a density of only 1.3 grams/cubic centimeter. Its porosity must be greater than 50%. It is not a hard, coherent object. Instead of a bullet, it is more like a cloud of shotgun pellets. It would be hard to divert all this debris with a nuclear blast. To make matters worse, asteroids like Mathilde are stickier than a cloud of buckshot. This fact is deduced from photos of asteroids showing many to be marked by huge craters ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 127: Jan-Feb 2000 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Some Magic Squares Are More Magical Than Others It is rather suprising that magic squares exist at all. Why should we be able to arrange 0 and the first 143 integers into a 12 x 12 square such that all columns, rows, and diagonals add up to 858? Believe it or not, there are actually more than two billion 12 x 12 magic squares! However, the particular 12 x 12 square reproduced here is more magical than most. First off, it is "pandiagonal." This means that broken diagonals, such as those like 61-12-118+ 85-3 -120-25-131 82-58-140-23 also add up to 858. Second, this square is classified as "most-perfect" because the numbers in each and every 2 x 2 square add up to 286. How could a magic square be more perfect than this? (Stewart, Ian; "Most-Perfect Magic Squares," Scientific American, 281:122, November 1999.) Comment. We ask, with tongue-in-cheek: "Aren't we lucky to have such an interesting number system?" From Science Frontiers #127, JAN-FEB 2000 . 1997 William R. Corliss ...
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... Norwegian businessman to buy the site, clean up the debris of centuries, and found a museum. One of the "black" pyramids has now been restored, but some experts are still unconvinced. However, recent excavations under one pyramid have yielded artifacts identified with the pre-Spanish inhabitants of Tenerife. Meanwhile, Heyerdahl has been checking out a rumored pyramid on Sicily. Could Heyerdahl be right when he claims there were age-old cultural links between Mesopotamia, Egypt, Mexico, the Canaries, and even the Pacific Islands? (Mead, Robin; "Riddle of the Black Pyramids," London Times, December 19, 1998. Cr. A.C .A . Silk) Comment. The pre-Spanish inhabitants of the Canaries were the Guanches, who are noted for two other interesting things: (1 ) A very high frequency of the olecranon perforation of the upper arm bone; and (2 ) The use of a language of whistles, which they use to communicate over long distances. The olecranon perforation of the humerus is usually frequent among the Guanches, the pre-Spanish inhanitants of the Canary Islands. (From Ancient Man). From Science Frontiers #122, MAR-APR 1999 . 1999-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... primarily for pilgrims making ritual treks to the great ceremonial complex in the canyon. Did the Indians east of the Rockies construct special roads for ritual processions? We do know of the Mohawk Trail, the Virginia Warriors Trail, and other utilitarian roads through the wilderness. And before the settlers plowed them up, there were travel-worn trails six feet deep in the earth of Iowa. Now, we learn that, indeed, the Hopewell Culture may have built a long road mainly for ritual processions. It is called the Great Hopewell Road, and it is thought to connect the Hopewell centers at Newark and Chillicothe -- a distance of 60 miles through the heart of Ohio. In 1862, the first 6 miles of this controversial road, marked by parallel earthen banks, were surveyed by two brothers, C. and J. Salisbury. They noted that the road extended much farther in the direction of Chillicothe. B. Lepper, a present-day champion of the Great Hopewell Road, claims that there are still traces of the road remaining at four additional places along the 60-mile line connecting Newark and Chillicothe. Skeptics do not question that the sophisticated Hopewell Culture (circa 200 B.C . to 400 A.D .) was capable of constructing such a road, nor do they contest the 1862 survey covering the first 6 miles. They doubt the existence of the last 54 miles. (Hicks, Ronald; "The Great Hopewell Mystery," Archaeology, 52:76, November/December 1999.) From Science Frontiers #127, JAN- ...
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... , many carvings in Indian temples depict maize, which originated in the New World. A similar situation prevails for the sunflower and a many-seeded New World fruit called "annonas." Sunflowers and maize are also prodigious seed producers, suggesting that these three plants were valued as fertility symbols and may not have been consumed as food. The pre-Columbian Pacific was a twoway conduit for plants and even a few animals. For example, the Old World contributed black-boned chickens, cotton, and coconuts to the New World. As for China, Johannessen has gathered evidence for early Chinadestined Pacific crossings of maize, sunflowers, a squash, chili peppers, sweet potatoes, the yambean, and grain amaranths. Most startling, though, has been the discovery of New World peanuts at two Neolithic sites in eastern China. The associated dates are astounding: 2,400 BC and 4,400 BC. Who was sailing the wide Pacific while the Egyptian pyramids and Stonehenge were under construction? Supporting the fossil peanuts is a written Chinese record of 300 AD describing a plant that buries its flowers in the soil and makes seeds that rattle when dry. Peanuts are very unusual that they flower above ground and then burrow into the ground to form nuts -- a characteristic one must see to believe and a story hard to fabricate. (Johannessen, Carl L.; "American Crop Plants in Asia before A.D . 1500," Pre Columbiana , 1:9 , 1998.) From Science Frontiers #125, SEP-OCT 1999 . 1999-2000 William R ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 123: May-Jun 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Heads Down!S. Breiner wields a magnetometer when he searches for Olmec artifacts. This instrument allows him to detect buried objects, and he has made some surprising discoveries. The Olmecs flourished circa 1,500-400 B.C . in Mexican states of Vera Cruz, Oaxaca, and surrounding areas. This enigmatic culture is probably best known for the giant stone heads they carved out of hard rock. These massive heads, 8-15 feet high, seem to display African features. Breiner has found two of the 17 known heads. The most interesting one weighed 10 tons and was buried 18 feet deep! Why would a thriving culture bury the product of so much intensive labor? (Robinson, Dave; NEARA Transit, 11:12, Spring equinox 1999. Item attributed to New York Times, May 26, 1998.) Comment. The burial of the Olmec head might have had ritual significance, like the ritual smashing of pottery or the sacrificing of animals. Be this as it may, we wish to connect the Olmec heads with the large stone spheres found in Costa Rica, just a few hundred miles down the Pacific Coast. The Costa Rican spheres are also beautifully and laboriously crafted from hard rock. Many are several feet in diameter. The curious part is that many of them were also buried in the jungle soil like the Olmec heads. They were exhumed only when banana plantations were established. ...
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... the Back of the Young Common Cuckoo BBB AVIAN BEHAVIOR BBB1 Avian Intelligence BBB2 Complexity and Sophistication of Avian Mental Processes BBB3 Enigmas of Instinct BBB4 Anomalous Altruism: Hard to Find BBB5 The Aesthetic Sense in Birds BBB6 Calculated Deception: Birds That Cry "Wolf" BBB7 Avian Play BBB8 Anomalous Aerial Tumbling and Erratic Flight BBB9 Leks: Why Did They Evolve? BBB10 Cooperative Displays on Leks BBB11 Enigmatic Dancing, Flying, Singing BBB12 Anting BBB13 "Hangers"; Upside-Down Birds BBB14 Curious Automatisms BBB15 Handedness (" Footedness") in Birds BBB16 Unusual Aerial Transportation Techniques BBB17 Unusual Forms of Terrestrial Locomotion BBB18 Unusual Hunting Strategies BBB19 Cooperative Hunting BBB20 Prey-Handling Puzzles BBB21 Avian Prey and Food: Some Misconceptions BBB22 Unusual Sexual Behavior BBB23 Avian "Sperm Wars': Cloaca Pecking BBB24 Unusual Mating Systems BBB25 Two Species with a Common Nest BBB26 Determination of Clutch Size BBB27 Exotic Objects and Eggs in Nests BBB28 Unusual Methods of Heating and Cooling Eggs BBB29 Brood Parasitism: How Did It Begin BBB30 Disparities between Parasite Host Adaptations BBB31 Tolerance of Parasite Chicks BBB32 Tolerance of Parasite Eggs Even When They Are Recognized as a Threat BBB33 Murder for Purposes Other Than Food and Brood Reduction BBB34 Infanticide BBB35 Siblicide BBB36 Information Processing in Migratory Behavior BBB37 Uncommon Groupings of Birds BBB38 Flock Synchrony BBB39 Flight Formations BBB40 Avian "Courts" and "Funerals" BBB41 Avian Graveyards BBB42 Huddling and Stacking BBB43 Bird Battles BBB44 Miscellaneous Curiosities of Avian Behavior BBC CHEMICAL PHENOMENA BBC1 Palatable Eggs More Vulnerable to Predation BBC2 Conspicuous Plumage Advertises Unpalatability BBC3 Why Did Stinking Birds Evolve? BBC4 Poisonous Birds and Poison Dart Frogs: Convergent Evolution? BBC5 Are Ratites ...
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... Planets ABS3 Multiple Primaries in the Solar System ABS4 Supposed Quantization of Planetary Orbital Periods ABS5 Solar System Mass Laws ABS6 The Quantized Nature of Orbital Systems AC COMETS ACB ORBITAL ANOMALIES OF COMETS ACB1 The Appearance of Comets in Cycles ACB2 Nonrandom Direction-of-Approach of Comets to the Sun ACB3 New Comets Have Almost Critical Velocity ACB4 Sun-Grazing Comets: The Kreutz Group ACB5 Changing Cometary Periods ACB6 Jupiter's Family of Comets ACB7 Low-Eccentricity Cometary Orbits ACB8 The Scarcity of Hyperbolic Orbits ACB9 Cometary Groups ACB10 Orbits of New Comets Diverge from Common Point ACB11 Excess of Retrograde Long Period Comets ACB12 Uranus-Neptune Region Favored as Comet Source ACB13 Cometary Perturbations Suggestive of Planet X ACB14 Rapid Attrition of the Oort Cloud by Molecular Clouds ACB15 Dynamical Improbability of the Oort Cloud ACO OBSERVATIONAL ANOMALIES OF COMETS ACO1 Two-Dimensional Comet Tails ACO2 Cometary Activity Far from Solar Influence ACO3 Comets without Nuclei ACO4 Absence of Meteorites from Comet-Related Showers ACO5 Contraction of Cometary Comas as the Sun is Approached ACO6 Unexplained Abundance of Short-Period Comets ACO7 Persistence of Long-Period Comets Despite Attrition from Molecular Clouds ACO8 Seriality of Cometary Apparitions ACO9 Multiple Tails and Antitails ACO10 Ejection of Spherical Halos ACO11 Correlation of Terrestrial Auroras and the Phenomena of Distant Comets ACO12 Blinking Comets ACO13 The Anomalous Disappearance of Comets ACO14 Anomalous Brightening of Short-Period Comets ACO15 Comet Reflectivities Are Similar to Those of Asteroids ACO16 Some Cometary Light Curves Resemble Those of Asteroids ACO17 New Comets Exhibit Different Brightening Behavior Than Old Comets ACO18 Anomalous Splitting of Comets ACO19 Tail-Wagging Comets ACO20 Cometary Outbursts ACO21 Comet Attrition Rates Imply Youth ACO22 No Ices in Cometary ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 126: Nov-Dec 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Ancient Stage Design In past issues of SF we have reported on the acoustical properties of rock-art sites (SF#83 and SF#123) and megalithic chambers (SF#102). This ancient recognition and use of the properties of sound to impress gatherings of people is rather remarkable for 4,000-5000 years ago. But we must be even more appreciative of megalithic-age talents when we discover that they also wedded visual effects with acoustical engineering when staging rituals and ceremonies. In effect, they were pioneering the design of auditoriums and church interiors. This marriage of architecture and sound was studied at two megalithic sites by A. Watson and D. Keating. Since we have previously attended to the acoustics of stone chambers, we will bypass their work on the huge chambered cairn called Camster Round and focus on the recumbent stone circle (RSC) called Easter Aquorthies near Aberdeen, Scotland. That RSCs are not ordinary stone circles is seen in this quotation from the paper by Watson and Keating. "Recumbent stone circles possess a number of characteristic features that have primarily been interpreted in visual or aesthetic terms. For example, their standing stones tend to be graded in height towards the southwest, creating a visual focus for the the large recumbent block itself, which lies between the two tallest stones. The recumbent at Easter Aquorthies is elaborated by two stones which project from its inner face to form an alcove. ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 125: Sep-Oct 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Two Down-Falls "Falls" are a Fortean staple, particularly showers of fish and frogs. But the sky produces other exotic materials, such and blocks of ice and (ugh!) raw sewage. July 26, 1998. Rue, Switzerland. "On Sunday July 26, 1998, at around 9h 45m Central European DaylightSaving Time (7h 45m UT), a Rue farming couple were in front of their house when they heard a whistling sound "like a big rocket on August 1" (Swiss national holiday). They just had time to see a block of ice the size of a "football" pass in front of their field of vision and crash into the tarred path near to their farm. The block broke up into thousands of pieces and the witness recuperated [sic] the largest which was "the size of a skittle." The ice was "very hard" and "snow-colored." "The witness estimated the weight of the ice block at 7-8 kg and the piece he was able to recuperate at 6-7 kg. Unfortunately, he did not think of conserving the block in the freezer, and let it melt near his house after having shown it to his neighbor, who had also heard the noise." Swiss aviation officials claimed they could not identify any aircraft that might have been responsible "because of incertitude over the time of the incident" ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 125: Sep-Oct 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Two Non-Falls Sometimes things that are predicted to fall or respond dutifully to gravity's dictates do not. No house-size snowballs. Back in 1985, L. Frank saw dark spots on satellite images of the earth's atmosphere. He interpreted them as huge splotches of water created by incoming cometary snowballs. (SF#112, 114, 118, and earlier) Although some other data supported Frank's theory, many scientists scoffed. After some mildly acrimonious debate, a consensus decided that the spots on the satellite photos were merely instrument artifacts. Any lingering doubts as to Frank's house-size snowballs or "icy minicomets" impacting our atmosphere have been dispelled by a radar search by S. Knowles and his colleagues at the Naval Research Laboratory. Using the Naval Space Surveillance System's powerful radar, their scans of the upper atmosphere detected nothing resembling giant snowballs. According to Frank's estimates of the flux of incoming minicomets, the radar should have seen 800-5 ,000 of them. If Frank responds, we'll let you know. This may be the end of this decade-long debate. (Anonymous; "No Snow Show," New Scientist, p. 25, June 12, 1999.) Where water and vehicles run uphill. "Chinese scientists are baffled by a slope in north-western Gansu province where water runs up the incline rather ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 123: May-Jun 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Puzzling Shadows August 3, 1997. Dooey, West Donegal, Ireland. The observer, A. Evans, was on a north-south beach. "It was a glorious day with some broken cloud over the land but none out to sea. Over the period between 3.00 and 6.00pm, a total of five jets passed overhead, all leaving vapour trails. Two showed a very interesting phenomenon, because while the vapour trails extended eastwards, the trails were continued westwards in front of the planes as dark lines which stretched all the way to the horizon. It was as if the plane was running on an aerial railway. I think it significant that only two of the planes showed this phenomenon as I suspect it was heightdependent. At this time the sun was high and shining from the south-southwest." J.O . Mattsson, Lund University, surmised that the black streaks in front of aircraft were shadows of the condensation trails behind the two planes. The shadows were cast forward ahead of the planes upon the hazy, though cloudless, atmosphere above the ocean. (Evans, Alun; "Condensation Trail Shadows," Weather, 53:371, 1998.) Comment. Since the sun was high in the sky, it is difficult to visualize how a the vapor-trail shadow could be cast directly ahead of the aircraft. Hummm! We suppose that the vapor trails acted like ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 123: May-Jun 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Throwing Sand In The Gears Of Molecular Clocks African Eve Gets a Lot Older. It is widely accepted as fact that all women are de-scended from an African "Eve" who lived between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago. This conclusion was based upon mtDNA (mitochondrial DNA) studies that assume that mtDNA is inherited only from mothers. This assumption has been repeated so often that few ever question it. However, two recent studies seem to show that some paternal mtDNA actually does get into eggs and recombines with maternal mtDNA. This unexpected invasion makes the mtDNA clock run more slowly. So, African Eve, if she ever existed, is probably twice as old as originally thought. (Day, Michael; "All about Eve...," New Scientist, p. 4, March 13, 1999.) Maybe There Were Two Eves! Not only has African Eve aged precipitously but there may have been a non-African Eve, too. J. Hey and E. Harris, at Rutgers, have presented data suggesting that the famous African Eve was the mother of only modern sub-Saharan Africans. Everyone else seems to have descended from an entirely different Eve. These data, if confirmed, demolish the African Eve theory and support the often-reviled multiregional theory of humans origins. (Pennisi, Elizabeth; "Genetic Study Shakes Up Out of Africa Theory," Science, ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 126: Nov-Dec 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Knismesis And Gargalesis This item is not as serious as its pretentious title. Everyone has experienced both of these ominous-sounding physiological conditions. One can inflict knismesis upon one's self, but gargalesis requires someone else or perhaps a human-like robot (android) to perform the act. All right, so knismesis and gargalesis are really only the two recognized kinds of tickling; but the latter form stimulates several interesting physiological conundrums. First, let's separate the two conditions. Knismesis is very light stimulation of the skin, say by a feather. It rarely produces laughter and can be induced autonomously, by someone else, by a crawling insect, or even by mild electricity. Gargalesis cannot be selfinduced. It consists of heavier pressures applied to specific parts of the body, especially the ribs and arm pits. But the finger probing usually has to be done by someone else. Gargalesis is often very unpleasant but is nevertheless likely to be accompanied by smiles and laughter. In fact, gargalesis can be so disturbing that medieval torturers supposedly tickled some of their victims to death! (A variant of Chinese water torture?) Ticklish areas on the human body. Tickling becomes anomalous only with gargalesis. The questions are: Why does this kind of tickling elicit laughter when it is so unpleasant? Why cannot one tickle one's self this way? At least most people can't . Why does gargalesis exist ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 124: Jul-Aug 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Late Survival Of The Kilopilopitsofy And Kidoky Cryptozoological articles are rare in the mainstream science literature, but a 1999 number of the American Anthropologist has surprised us with an investigation of two mystery mammals on Madagascar. In 1995, D.A . Burney and Ramilisonia interviewed elderly natives about their knowledge of the Kilopilopitsofy and Kidoky. Both of these animals are mentioned in the historical accounts and folklore of Madagascar between the mid-1600s and late 1800s. The testimonies collected by Burney and Ramilisonia enabled them to provide tentative indentifications of these two mystery animals, both of which may still survive today. The Kilopilopitsofy "A striking feature of the accounts of this mysterious animal is the consistency of the details. All the accounts we have collected stress that the animal is nocturnal, grunts noisily, and flees to water when disturbed. Likewise, there is general agreement that it is cow-sized, hornless, dark in color, and has a large mouth with big teeth." These data agree with the old descriptions of the mangarsahoc (1661), the tsy-aomby-aomby (1882), and the Ombyrano (1912). One animal fits all of these accounts: the dwarf hippopotamus ( Hippo potamus lemerlie , supposedly extinct for over 1,000 years. The Kidoky "This animal's description is decidedly lemur-like. It was compared to the sifaka by all the interviewees who described it, although all insisted that it ...
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... the skin in large sheets, after the fashion of reptiles. This curious exfoliation often occurs on a rather precise annual schedule." Bizarre though this phenomenon is, we have cataloged several cases in BHO15. A 1908 issue of the New York Times has yielded still another instance. "For the twenty-eighth time in the last fifty-three years, William U. Cake, a linoleum printer, of 25 Cleveland Avenue [Trenton], is shedding his skin as a snake does. Instead of periodical casting aside of the cuticle, Cake is likely to shed his skin at any time. "Cake has been afflicted with this skin-shedding malady since childhood. First, he is taken with a chill, then the skin dries up, cracks, and peels off entirely within two weeks. During this period he suffers agony because of itching. But as soon as the skin has been shed, Cake is all right again. He has several children, but none of them has manifested any symptoms of skin shedding. .. .. . "The longest interval that Cake remembers in which the malady did not manifest itself was nine years, but his skin generally comes off once in two years." (Anonymous; "Sheds His Skin Like a Snake," New York Times, July 30, 1908. Cr. M. Piechota.) Skin shed from the hands of S.O . Buskirk, another "skin-shedder". (From BHO15 in Humans II). From Science Frontiers #122, MAR-APR 1999 . 1999- ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 126: Nov-Dec 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Icy Comets, Oceans, Life Our thought, expressed in SF#125, that the icy-comet controversy might be winding down was premature. P. Huyghe, coauthor with L. Frank of The Big Splash, responded to SF#125 with three recent articles. Two reply to major criticisms of the icy-comet theory; the third gives geological and geophysical reasons why there must have been icy comets or some other substantial influx of water and carbon to the earth's surface down the geological eons. No instrumental artifacts. The basis for the 1985 claim of L. Frank et al that small, icy comets continually bombard the earth's upper atmosphere came from photos taken far above the earth from the Dynamics Explorer 1. Large, transient "holes" appeared in the atmosphere. These were attributed to vapor clouds created by small, icy comets. (SF#44) Critics claimed that these "holes" were no more than instrumental errors. L.A . Frank and J.B . Sigwarth have investigated this possibility and have rejected it. (Frank, J.A ., and Sigwarth, J.B .; "Atmospheric Holes: Instrumental and Geophysical Effects," Journal of Geo physical Research, 104:115, 1999. Cr. P. Huyghe) Navy radar search used incorrect cross sections. A more recent attack on the icy comets came from S. Knowles et al ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 126: Nov-Dec 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects It's All In The Seeing The August and September issues of Sky & Telescope contain articles that attempt to discredit long histories of observations of Transient Lunar Phenomena (TLPs) and the many, many anomalous coronas seen during total solar eclipses. Both classes of phenomena are written off as either observer misperceptions or idiosyncracies of the earth's atmosphere. Of course, such treatment of strange phenomena is not new, nor is it undesirable, for we do want to confront reality whatever it might be. However, the two "wipes" in Sky & Telescope do seem a bit arrogant, especially when famous scientists do not hesitate to employ ghostly ephemera to support theories favored by the establishment. Strange eclipses. Down the years, many fantastic solar coronas have been sketched during the few minutes of totality. Long coronal petals and errant streamers, often asymmetrically arrayed, are common in the Nineteenth Century astronony journals. Scientists have no problems with these. It is the highly geometrical coronas that are hard-to-account-for. The reported colored coronas, too, seem unlikely. Red, blue, and green hues are definitely frowned upon. Coronas should be brilliant white, perhaps yellowish. S.J . O'Meara, a contributing editor of S&T , thinks many of the older and wilder drawings of coronas can be pinned on observer enthusiasm and active imagination. Modern photographs of coronas provide a much more conservative ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 126: Nov-Dec 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Vegetable Connection Within the human brain, probably quite close to the number module, there must be a "vegetable module"; that is, a few brain cells that recognize and process information about vegetables. Furthermore, there must be cross-talk between the vegetable and number modules. This is obvious from the following query posted in New Scientist. "Why is it that when you repeatedly ask someone addition problems that all add up to six (such as two plus four, one plus five) for a number of minutes and then ask them to think of a vegetable, 90 per cent of people will say "carrot"? "The person you are asking must have no knowledge of what you are asking them or why. The questions should be asked rapidly, encouraging the person answering to answer them quickly with little thought." (Versteegen, Adam; "Carrot Brains," New Scientist, p. 97, Jule 24, 1999.) From Science Frontiers #126, NOV-DEC 1999 . 1999-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 124: Jul-Aug 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Measuring Spirituality!" The connection between matter and spirit has been debated for millennia. The central mystery is that certain material objects (human beings) contrive to be conscious and to possess a spiritual dimension. This implies that matter itself has some rudimentary spiritual character." From this opening paragraph, D. Jones advances his thesis by assuming that the spiritual world occupies the same space as the material world. The two "worlds," though are usually only very weakly coupled. However, during the 12-billionyear history of the universe they have had ample time to come into thermodynamic equilibrium. In other words the average temperatures of the material and spiritual worlds are equal; i.e ., 3 K, the same as the microwave background. It is, of course, this low average temperature of the spiritual world that accounts for the chill felt when a spiritual entity (ghost) enters a room and is coupled to the material world. Continuing on this tack, Jones now plans to measure whether holy relics and other material objects with high spiritual value cool faster than non-spiritual objects. He also hopes to work with biological materials, specifically the human brain, which is the seat of consciousness and spiritual thought. Human brains, particularly those of holy men, should be tightly coupled to the cold spiritual world. These human brains should cool much faster than, say, a sirloin steak. Speculating even further ...
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... The most powerful explosion ever ever observed -- a deep space eruption detected in January -- released in just seconds a burst of energy equal to billions of years of light from thousands of suns. Researchers say in studies to be published today that the explosion, called a gamma-ray burst, occurred 9 billion light years from earth. What caused the explosion is a mystery." (Anonymous; "Blast's Light May Have Been Greater Than Rest of Universe," Baltimore Sun, March 26, 1999.) "Every day, the sun blows billions of tons of ionized gas, electrons and protons into space -- the "solar wind." Sometimes, especially near the solar maximum, this wind is punctuated by squalls and storms of dangerous highenergy particles." Two giant solar storms erupted in 1972. Luckily, they were sandwiched between Apollo 16 and Apollo 17 missions to the moon. If the astronauts had been caught on the lunar surface during one of these storms, they would probably have died. (Roylance, Frank D.; "Sun Puts Chill on Space Missions," Baltimore Sun, Apil 1, 1999.) From Science Frontiers #123, MAY-JUN 1999 . 1999-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 126: Nov-Dec 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Towering Shafts Of Light Ice crystals in the atmosphere can dazzle us with bright haloes, sundogs, and similar optical phenomena -- as long as the sun or moon are shining. Sometimes, though, human light sources will create remarkable displays using the same ice crystals. The first of the two examples below is notable for its extreme height; the second provides the accepted explanation. August 24, 1998. South China Sea. Aboard the m.v . Oriental Bay , Hong Kong to Singapore. "Four shafts of narrow vertical light were observed reflected in the sky. Upon consulting the chart it was revealed that they were 'reflections' of the four flares of the Kakap Natuna oil terminal, which at this point was 75 n mile away. "As indicated in the sketch, the shafts of light were visible above a lower layer of stratocumulus cloud, and, when measured by sextant, their upper tips were calculated to be nearly 13 km high. The shafts appeared to be reflected in a thin layer of cirrostratus and, as the vessel approached to 60 n mile from the terminal, the glow from the flares was also visible on the horizon." (Peterson, J.L .; "Optical Phenomenon," Marine Observer, 69:110, 1999.) Tall light pillars rise over the South China Sea February 4, 1999. Toyama Bay, Japan. The caption quoted below is located beneath ...
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... of precisely executed stone spheres found in the jungles of Costa Rica. Nature herself, however, is often an expert craftswoman. Some concretions are beautifically spherical, so are some spheres fashioned in volcanic calderas. In Utah, though, southeast of Cleveland, in a formation called the Molen Reef, there are literally millions of stone spheres of more mysterious origin. E. Hansen described these in a recent issue of the Ancient American. "The spheres range in size from as small as a baseball to over 10 feet in diameter. The bigger ones are more perfectly round than smaller examples. After a lifetime of trying to form a theory of how these were formed, I can only throw up my hands in surrender! They are clearly formed as mud on a lake bottom, because when two touch, one will indent the other, or both will be equally distorted. The mud simply hardened over time into sandstone." (Hansen, Evan; "Stone Spheres of the American West," Ancient American, no. 29, p. 31, 1999.) Comment. Smaller lithified "mudballs" (usually under 1-foot diameter) have been reported from many geological formations worldwide. (See ESA2-X3 in Neglected Geological Anomalies.) The Costa Rican human-fashioned stone spheres are cataloged in MSO2 in our just-published Ancient Infrastructure. Large, calcareous, spherical concretions create a "rock city" in Kansas. (From: Neglected Geological Anomalies). From Science Frontiers #127, JAN-FEB 2000 . 1997 William R. Corliss ...
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... fact." It is, therefore, a tempting target for anomalists. Fortunately, there are some maverick geologists who are willing and able to draw up a list of arguments against the "fact" of Continental Drift. Australian P. James is one such brave soul. Here follows the abstract from one of his papers. "Anomalies in the three basic concepts of mobile plate tectonics -- sea-floor spreading, transform faults, subduction -- are analysed. The process is then extended to subsidiary aspects; sediments on a moving basement, continental evidence, mechanisms and measurements. In summation, the criticisms present a formidable and damaging document against the total framework of mobilism, both in its general concepts and it its detailed interpretations." From James' lengthy paper, we select just two anomalies that he has identified in the Atlantic where North America and Europe are supposedly drifting apart. First, repeated direct measurements of the drifting seem to be a wash; that is, there is no drift to speak of. The expansion of the Atlantic basin seems to be only 5-13 mm/year (just 20% of the predicted rate), and this is partially offset by apparent contractions within the North American land mass! Second, St. Peter & Paul Rocks, on the Equator just west of the Atlantic Ridge, are supposed to be riding west on the spreading sea floor. Being close to the ridge, they should be 15-30 million years old. (The closer islands are to the Ridge, the younger they should be, if they are ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 126: Nov-Dec 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects It's All In The Believing Returning to the subject of solar eclipses, it seems that in the past eclipse phenomena have been employed to promote an appealing theory even when the observations were of poor quality. Scientists have been known to "spin" data like politicians! A classic case of scientific "spin" occurred in connection with the total solar eclipse of 1919. British astronomer A. Eddington had mounted expeditions to Sobral, Brazil, and the island of Principe off the west coast of Africa. He had telescopes set up at these two locations to measure the bending of starlight by the sun, as predicted by Einstein's Theory of Relativity. In 1919, Relativity was not yet the cornerstone in the Temple of Science that it is today. Eddington "believed" in Relativity and wished to make it more acceptable. Eclipse photos showing the shifting of star images by the gravitational influence of the eclipsed sun might do the job. On the day of the eclipse, Principe was bedevilled by clouds, and only 2 photographic plates were deemed marginally acceptable. At Sobral, 18 poor plates and 8 better plates were obtained. The problem was that the 18 poor plates yielded a deflection of starlight much smaller than predicted by Relativity, while the 8 better plates produced a much higher value. By adding the 2 plates from Principe to the mix, Eddington managed to come up with a number close to that required by the ...
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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 Rock-fall Air Blasts It is well known that snow avalanches act like pistons and push blasts of air at hurricane speeds ahead of the deluge of snow. An unusual rock fall at Yosemite created a similar air blast with severe consequences. July 10, 1996. Yosemite National Park, California. We reported this remarkable event in SF#111 for its far-flung seismic waves, which jostled seismographs at Berkeley and Reno over 200 kilometers distant. Actually, there were two rock falls 14 seconds apart. The "rocks" fell from a 665-meter cliff at Happy Isles in the eastern part of Yosemite Valley. No pebbles these; with volumes of 23,000 and 38,000 cubic meters. Although the impact area of the rock falls was not particularly large, the falls generated an air blast and an abrasive sandy cloud that devastated a larger area downslope of the impact sites toward the Happy Isles Nature Center. Immediately downslope of the impacts, the air blast had velocities exceeding 110 m/s [about 245 mph] and toppled or snapped about 1000 trees. Even at distances of 0.5 km from impact, wind velociies snapped or toppled large trees, causing one fatality and several serious injuries beyond the Happy Isles Nature Center. A dense sandy cloud trailed the air blast and abraded fallen trunks and trees left standing. (Wieczorek, Gerald F. et al; "Unusual July 10, 1996, ...
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... every make of car he saw on the road. (Anonymous; "Boy Has Genius Figured Out at 3," London Times, March 1, 1999. Cr. A.C .A . Silk) Comment. Kerr is certainly precocious and in him we see the glimmerings of capabilities we may all have but cannot tap. Unlike so many "savants" and "calculating prodigies," Kerr is not deficient in "normal" human skills. He is just unusually smart. He has partially penetrated a sort of barrier that seems to prevent most of us from drawing from a reservoir of remarkable mental capabilities. In savants and calculating prodigies, this barrier is ruptured and these talents flow readily to the fore -- but usually at the cost of some "normal" talents. Two Australian scientists, A. Snyder and J. Mitchel, have studied the "savant syndrome" and have presented their findings in the Proceedings of the Royal Society (B266:587, 1999). The gist of their paper was reported by R. Highfield in the Chicago Sun-Times . "These savants are often autistic, a developmental disorder that leaves them with little ability to empathize with others. However, some possess astonishing skills. "He [Snyder] believes the ability to tap raw information -- the mind's secret arithmetic -- is possessed by mathematical savants. They can multiply, divide, factor and identify prime numbers of six and more digits in seconds, or identify the number of objects they can see at a single glance -- 111 matches scattered ...
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... an unbiased series of bits such that a large sample will average 50% 1s and 50% 0s. PEAR normally uses this machine in psychokinesis experiments in which an individual mentally attempts to skew the statistically expected 50:50 outcome. But that's a different story. Here, the thought is that the PEAR random number generator is also a "consciousness detector." Since FGE seems to involve a group's collective consciousness, perhaps this random number generator will respond with a skewed train of 1s and 0s -- even when the group in unaware of its presence. Rowe reports that eleven group experiments have been carried out in which FGE seemed to be present according to participants. During these periods of group resonance, often hours long, the random number generator produced results that were two, sometime three standard deviations from the mean. Rowe concluded that FGE is a real and robust phenomenon that can be measured. It is "an extra sense above the five common senses." (Rowe, William D.; "Physical Measurement of Episodes of Focused Group Energy," Journal of Scientific Exploration, 12:569, 1998.) *Keifer, Charles F., and Senge, Peter M.; "Metonic Organizations: Experiments in Organizational Innovation," in Visionary Leadership , Framingham, 1982. As quoted in the above reference. Comments. If it is real, the implications of FGE are enormous. Any physical measurement or computer calculation can be skewed by FGE, perhaps not intentionally! Understandably, mainstream scientists cannot accept FGE or psychokinesis, for they undermine ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 124: Jul-Aug 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Preadaptive Evolution "Preadaptive evolution" is a remarkable concept. Basically, it asserts that in some -- possibly many -- mutations, a useful response to an evolutionary challenge is "naturally" accompanied by useful responses to challenges that have not yet been posed to the life form in question. This prescience verges on the miraculous to the uninitiated, but mainstream biologists seem content to write the phenomenon off as merely good fortune -- like hitting two jackpots in a row on the same slot machine. A good example of preadaptation occurs when bacteria are cultured in the presence of an antibiotic. Within a few weeks, they have evolved a resistance to that particular antibiotic. This well-known phenomenon is easily explained by evolution. However, often the newly evolved (or "adapted") bacteria are also resistant to several other antibiotics that work by different mechanisms. All of the multiple gene changes needed for the several different defense mechanisms are controlled by a single site on the same chromosome. (Levy, Stuart B.; The Antibiotic Paradox , New York, 1992, p. 99. Cr. A. Mebane.) Comments. How can bacteria prepare defenses against antibiotics they have not been exposed to? Luck, prescience, or some unrecognized mechanism? In his Ever Since Darwin , S.J . Gould acknowledges that "preadaptation implies prescience although in actuality it means just the opposite! His explanation of "preadaptation ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 124: Jul-Aug 1999 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Ancient Bones On Santa Rosa Just off the coast of Southern California, lies Santa Rosa, one of the Channel Islands. There, recently, two female thigh bones have been dug out of a gully at Arlington Canyon. Radiocarbon-dated at 13,000 years, they are 1,400 years older than the benchmark Clovis sites. The significance of the Santa Rosa bones is explained in the following quotation. "The new discovery is likely to be controversial in part because many scientists say that the old skeletons found in the past few years around the western United States do not resemble modern Native Americans. Detailed examinations of the skulls reveal slender faces, narrower brain cavities, high foreheads and slightly protruding chins that are more typical of Caucasoid peoples. "Some of them bear striking resemblance to a very ancient race called the Ainu, a maritime people who were the forerunners of the Polynesians and long ago occupied Japan and China." (Polakovic, Gary; "Channel Island Woman's Bones May Rewrite History," Los Angeles Times, April 11, 1999. Cr. E. Roy. Abbreviated version in the Houston Chronicle, April 12, 1999. Cr. D. Phelps.) Comments. It should be noted that Santa Rosa is also known for ancient "fire areas" (" hearths"?) where dwarf mammoths were roasted over 13,000 years ago. (See Ancient Man for details. ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 20: Mar-Apr 1982 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology A Recently Discovered "book" of Petroglyphs Astronomy A Big Void in Space Or A Defective Yardstick? Something Hot Beneath Small Saturn-satellite Surfaces A Couple Venusian Curiosities Biology Heads Or Tails? A Tale of Two Ecosystems -- or Maybe Many More Missing Links: the Big Ones Still Elude Us Puzzling Group Behavior of Sharks Geology Gravity Anomaly Ripples Centered in Canada Subterranean Petroleum Factories? Geophysics A Most Peculiar Cloud Arch Whirling Crescents Move with Ship Psychology The Mystery of Spontaneous Visions ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 21: May-Jun 1982 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Anomalous Sky Flash December 28, 1980. In the South At antic. "At approximately 2245 GMT on a moonless night the entire ship and immediate surrounding area were illuminated by what can be best described as a great camera flash. The flash was bluish-white and a small bolt of lightning appeared to be centered just above the vessel's samson posts. No noise was heard and the flash lasted only a second. The sky was clear at the time and stars of all magnitudes were clearly visible. The only clouds that could be seen were two or three small cumulus clouds; one of these was above the vessel and the others were moving towards us from the south, our course being l42 (T ) and the wind being S'E , force 3. The cloud above the vessel was at a height of about 600 feet." (Rutherford, N.W .C .; "Unidentified Phenomena," Marine Observer, 51:186, 1981.) Comment. This was obviously not ordi nary lightning, but the small cloud and small bolt of lightning indicate some sort of anomalous electrical discharge. The literature contains many other reports of bright sky flashes that cannot be attributed to meteors, heat lightning, or other sources. Reference. Entry GLA14 in Lightning, Auroras contains additional examples of all-sky flashes. This Catalog volume is described here . From Science Frontiers #21, MAY- ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 32: Mar-Apr 1984 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Two Remarkable Inscribed Stones Astronomy Thou Canst Not Stir A Flower, Without Troubling of A Star Natural Laser Beacons A Mysterious Object Biology Subtle is the Virus An Ocean Full of Viruses An Even Larger Ocean of Life Spores Still Viable After 7,000 Years Animals As Nutrient Carriers Geology Terranes Continue to Pile Up Grand Canyon Shamed Again When the Earth Shifted Gears The Oklo Phenomenon and Evolution Earth's Magnetic Field Jerks Osmium Isotopes Support Meteoric Impact Geophysics Incredible Phosphorescent Display on the China Sea Ball Lightning Splits and Recombines Inside Soviet Airliner Booms Startle Arkansas Psychology Mental Deflection of Cascading Spheres What Makes A Calculating Prodigy? False Pregnancies in Males Unclassified The 'Great Silence'; Or Why Aren't Aliens Landing on the White House Lawn? ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 33: May-Jun 1984 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology The Inca's Use of Bismuth An Ordovician Hammer? The Azilian Pebbles Astronomy A Real Death Star The Moon's Moonlets Comet Puffs A Smoke Ring Bad Spin Split Biology The Failure of Two-dimensional Life Rubberneckia Killer Fungi Cast Sticky Nets Prisoners of the Boundary Layer California Sea Serpent Flap Mokele-mbembe Geology Horsing Around with Evolution Mima Mounds in the Kenya Highlands A Russian Paluxy Geophysics Experiments on Brown Mountain Light Flashes Overhead Mystery Cloud of AD 536 Wormy Ball Lightning Crab Fall At Brighton Psychology Imaging Cancer Away Chemistry & Physics High G-values in Mines Falling Masses Swerve South ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 24: Nov-Dec 1982 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Africa Not Man's Origin! Early Chinese Voyages to Australia The Calico Site Revisited Astronomy Mysterious "thing" in Orbit Around Saturn The Spin We're In Islands of Hope for Life Eternal A Hint of Extraterrestrial Oceans Biology Why Cancer? Mice Transmit Human Gene Sequences to Their Progeny Biological Regeneration: Two Anomalies Geology Seismic Ghost Slithers Under California Powerful Earth Current Enters North America From the Pacific The Polyna Mystery Geophysics Balls of Fire Enter Room Through Metal Screens Massive Freak Wave Psychology The Cinema of the Mind ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 47: Sep-Oct 1986 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Explaining the Nazca Lines Humans in the Americas 32,000 Years Ago? Astronomy Lumps, Clumps, and Jumps Clump of Antimatter 1986: "Tired Light" Revived Again Biology Something Big Down There! Brain Architecture: Beyond Genes Heretical Evolutionary Theory The Chromosome Gap How the Cheetah Lost its Stotts Earth's Womb Geology Oil & Gas From the Earth's Core Oceans From Outer Space? Continental Graveyard? Two Points of Great Impact Geophysics A True Fish Story Booming Dunes Another Luminous Aerial Bubble Psychology Magnetic Theory of Dowsing Chemistry & Physics Unpredictable Things ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 38: Mar-Apr 1985 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Who Built the East Bay Walls? Ancient Engineering Feat Antarctica Revisited, Hapgood Acknowledged Astronomy Quasar, Quasar, Burning Bright; What Shifts Your Spectral Light? Unidentified Object Young Interplanetary Dust Neptune's Incomplete Ring Biology Whales and Dolphins Trapped Magnetically Listening with the Feet Life in the Dark Bad Year for Water Monsters Geology Galloping Glaciers Geophysics: The Sick Man of Science Geophysics Ball Lightning and Blue Flashes Green Cloud with Light Rays Still Another Mystery Cloud The Sounds That Shouldn't Have Been Expanding Phosphorescent Rings Two Snowflake Anomalies Psychology Hypnosis and Memory The Subtle Placebo ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 42: Nov-Dec 1985 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Left-handers have larger interbrain connections The two halves of the human brain are connected by a bundle of nerve fibers called the corpus callosum. The corpus callosum is thought to help integrate the activities of the right and left brains which, for reasons unknown, seem to specialize in different kinds of mental operations. Studies of the corpus callosum reveal that it is about 11% larger in left-handers than in right-handers. In terms of interconnecting nerve fibers this comes to 25,000,000 more for the left-handers. Just what sort of information flows along these myriad pathways is not known, although we do know that left-handers have greater bihemispheric representation of cognitive functions; i.e ., the brain functions are not so specialized in each half of the brain. But why should left-handers and right-handers be different at all? Are they born with unequal corpus callosa? Or are these nerve highways equal are birth and atrophy in right-handers ? (Witelson, Sandra F.; "The Brain Connection: The Corpus Callosum is Larger in Left-Handers, " Science, 229:665, 1985. ) From Science Frontiers #42, NOV-DEC 1985 . 1985-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 59: Sep-Oct 1988 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Stele with Unknown Glyphs Found Near Vera Cruz All Roads Lead to Chaco Canyon How and When the Americas Were Peopled Astronomy "? " ! ? Nereid: Grotesque Shape Or Two-faced? Memoirs of A Dissident Scientist Biology Nothing Reacts with Something? Periodic Extinctions and Explosions in Terrestrial Life Aids: Another Great Deceiver Geology Going for Gold Is There Truth in the Grains? Did An Asteroid Impact Trigger the Ice Ages? The New Archaeoperyx Fossil Geophysics Fish and Winkle Showers Lightningless Thunder? Psychology The Enigma of Multiple Personality Observations of Luminous Phenomena Around the Human Body ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 71: Sep-Oct 1990 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Florida's circular canals GREAT ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS IN AMAZONIA? RIDICULOUS! The sweet track Another anomaly bites the dust Astronomy Modern technology gets Two hot spots on mercury Astronomers cope with both Biology NATURE COMMUNICATES IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS Those amazing insects The bombardier beetle pulse-jet Duesberg revisited Geology Pennsylvanian time-scale problems OF TIME AND THE CORAL - AND OTHER THINGS, TOO Paleomagnetic pitfalls What's another dipole or two? Wyoming: a periodic spring WYOMING: IS OLD FAITHFUL A STRANGE ATTRACTOR? Geophysics Ball lightning studies LUNAR ECLIPSES AND RADIO PROPAGATION General Novel forms of matter ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 68: Mar-Apr 1990 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Michigan's prehistoric garden beds Now it's greece! Astronomy Wanted: a bona fide black hole Quiet sun: violent earth Biology Ants like amps Two-faced indians trick tigers Recent survival of the elephant in the americas Game of life favors right-handers New life for martian life Magnetic bacteria in the soil and who knows where else? Periodical invasions of aliens Geology Impact delivery of early oceans Geophysics The english hums: radar or buried pipelines? Double image of cresent moon Crop circle craze continues Psychology Higher sight Dreams that do what they're told Physics Science waits for - almost begs for - refutation General Conformity strikes again ...
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