423 results found.
... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 61: Jan-Feb 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Gaia At Work Under The Hudson "Oxygen-starved bacteria working in sediment beneath the Hudson River are transforming toxic PCB compounds into less dangerous forms, raising hopes of a significant easing of a major PCB cleanup problem nationwide," researchers said yesterday. "The resulting types of PCBs do not accumulate in living tissue, a government scientist said." Researchers at the University of Michigan stated that it appeared that these bacteria had evolved specifically to attack PCBs. (Anonymous; "Hudson Bacteria Transform PCBs into Safer Forms," Baltimore Sun, November 4, 1988.) Comment. Thus does Gaia act so as to protect humanity from its own mistakes! From Science Frontiers #61, JAN-FEB 1989 . 1989-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 52: Jul-Aug 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Dowsing Skeptics Converted A while back, New Scientist ran an article on the "dowsing sense." Two letters prompted by the article were from scientifically trained people who originally were very skeptical about dowsing. The first letter from P.L . Younger, a university hydrogeologist, first mentioned that most dowsers are convinced that they are hunting underground streams of water. In actuality, he says, most underground water flow is intergranular and laminar. There are no underground streams to find! Then, he continued: "Having said all this, while conducting hydrogeological fieldwork in Colorado, I was involved in 'dowsing' the exact location of buried metal pipes using two L-shaped metal rods, which were balanced on the fingers (not clutched at all). Surface and subsurface pipes gave clear deflection of the rods. I was led to conclude that the rods operated as a crude magnetometer." B.W . Skelcher originally did not believe that any variation in the magnetic field or any other natural force would cause a hand-held stick to move. But: "One day, on the undeveloped plot of land adjacent to my abode, I spied a 'nutter' pacing to and fro with hazel in hand. When the fellow assured me that he was seriously checking the site for hidden water mains, power cables, and so on, I expressed my grave doubts. At this he handed me the twigs and ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 54: Nov-Dec 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Plants are not color blind!" Scientists have long known from laboratory experiments that various colors of light can affect stem size, root structure and other aspects of plant growth. But they have remained largely in the dark about the potential practical benefits of the phenomenon. "Using colored mulch to bathe plants in reflected light of certain hues, the South Carolina group (Clemson University) has begun to explore what colors plants prefer in agricultural growing conditions. Last year, for example, the group found that tomatoes grown with red mulch -- made with plastic sheets painted red -- had 20% higher yields than those with black mulch. Preliminary results this year show that potatoes and bell peppers grow best with white mulch...." (Anonymous; "Plants' Colors," Wall Street Journal, September 16, 1987. Cr. J. Covey.) Comment. Many questions arise here, but we'll take only three: (1 ) How do plants sense colors? (2 ) How do different colors mediate growth differently? (3 ) Is all this explicable in terms of evolution? From Science Frontiers #54, NOV-DEC 1987 . 1987-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 51: May-Jun 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Giant Fish Reported In China "In August, 1985, both AP and UPI wired dispatches from Beijing, People's Republic of China, reporting the discovery of enormous red fish in a remote lake in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of northwestern China. The report, originating with the Xin-hua News Agency, quoted Professor Xiang Ligai, of the biology department of Xinjiang University, as stating: 'The mystery of monsters in Lake Hanas has been solved.' The fish, he stated, were a giant species of salmon reaching a size of over 30 feet." The ISC Newsletter originally declined to relay the AP/UPI stories without confirmation by more responsible Chinese sources. Then, in April of 1986, the official Chinese Magazine China Reconstructs, presented a short article on the subject, which included additional information. For example, large nets have been destroyed and horses going down to the lake to drink have disappeared! (Anonymous; "Giant Fish Reported in China," ISC Newsletter, 5:7 , Autumn 1986. ISC = International Society of Cryptozoology.) From Science Frontiers #51, MAY-JUN 1987 . 1987-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 52: Jul-Aug 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects New Vertebrate Depth Record S. Eckert, of the University of Georgia, has reported that a leatherback turtle fitted with a recording device dove to 1200 meters. This exceeds the previous record for air-breathing vertebrates (sperm whales). Leatherbacks also hold other records, being the largest of living turtles (over 600 kilograms) and the most widely distributed reptile in the world. They are also capable of maintaining their body temperatures sub stantially above the ambient water temperature, although no one has as yet claimed that they are warm-blooded. (Mrosovsky, N.; "Leatherback Turtle Off Scale," Nature, 327:286, 1987.) From Science Frontiers #52, JUL-AUG 1987 . 1987-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 62: Mar-Apr 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Researches In Reincarnation I. Stevenson, at the University of Virginia, has long studied claims of reincarnation. The method employed (and there are precious few alternatives) focuses on children who claim to have lived before and can provide verifiable details about their past lives. If the details check out, one can at least claim that reincarnation is a possible interpretation of the data. Usually, however, before a researcher can get to the scene of the phenomenon, the parents of the deceased have been found and the way has been left open for much exaggeration. In his present contribution, Stevenson reports three cases in Sri Lanka where the recollections of the supposedly reincarnated children have been written down in detail and the family of the deceased has not been located. Here is one of his cases: "The Case of Iranga . The child was born in a village of Sri Lanka near but not on the west coast, in 1981. When she was about 3 years old she spoke about a previous life at a place called Elpitiya. Among other details, Iranga mentioned that her father sold bananas, there had been two wells at her house, one well had been destroyed by rain, her mother came from a place called Matugama, she was a middle sister of her family, and the house where the family lived had red walls and a kitchen with a thatched roof. Her statements led to the identification of a family in ...
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... . Pearson. He ventures that our ponderous moon (much larger than the moons of Mars) was the key to the melting of the earth's core via tidal friction. With a fluid core, the earth developed a strong magnetic field (much stronger than those of the other inner planets) through dynamo action. This field protected nascent life from space radiation -- and here we are! (Hecht, Jeff; "Lunar Link with Life on Planets," New Scientist, p. 40, January 21, 1988.) Comment. Current scientific opinion declares that the moon was captured by the earth -- a rather rare astronomical event. The capture of a very large moon would be even rarer. From this shaky chain of thoughts, we conclude that life in the universe must be exceedingly scarce. However, such long chains of inferences are usually found to be far off the mark. From Science Frontiers #56, MAR-APR 1988 . 1988-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 63: May-Jun 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Taking The Radon Cure "An internationally respected radon researcher has uncovered some surprising and perplexing evidence. High levels of radon exposure are known to cause lung cancer. Studies of people exposed to such levels in mines demonstrate that conclusively. Then it follows, most peo-ple have thought, that the best level is zero, and any increase should produce an increasing rate of lung cancer. But controversial studies show that this may not be so. "In one study Dr. Bernard Cohen of the University of Pittsburgh compared average lung-cancer rates in many counties with the average radon rates found in the respective counties. It's an ambitious study - 39,000 measurements in 415 counties. "The results: In counties where lung cancer in women would have been expected to be up 25 percent from the radon levels, the incidences of cancer were actually down 30 percent. There are others. Finland has average indoor-radon levels of 2.5 picocuries per liter - 2.5 times higher than the world average. Yet the female lung-cancer rate in Finland is only 70 percent that of other industrialized countries." (Gilmore, C.P .; "Radon: Cancer Killer?" Popular Science, p. 8, May 1989. Cr. R.W Schiller) From Science Frontiers #63, MAY-JUN 1989 . 1989-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 50: Mar-Apr 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects On The Trail Of The Fifth Force Well publicized lately has been the modern reanalysis of the old Eotvos balance experiments. Some think they show the presence of that famous "fifth force" which is supposed, according to some theories, to modify Newton's Law of Gravitation, and become measurable at distances of about 100 to 1000 meters. The Eotvos results may also be explicable in terms of laboratory air currents. But the fifth force may be showing up in geophysical experiments. "One of the most comprehensive geophysical experiments so far has been conducted by Frank Stacey at University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and his colleagues. Working in two metal mines, the researchers have measured a gravitational constant that is 0.7 percent greater than that measured in the laboratory -- suggesting the presence of a fifth force." (Weisburd, Stefi; "Geophysics on the Fifth Force's Trail," Science News, 131: 6, 1987.) From Science Frontiers #50, MAR-APR 1987 . 1987-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... system as religion!) are those who see a long human history at Calico. B. Bower writes: "Two periods of human occupation have been dated at Calico. From about 15,000 to 20,000 years ago the area was inhabited by what [R .D .] Simpson suggests was a huntinggathering people with more sophisticated tools, including stones flaked on both sides. In deeper layers estimated to be at least 200,000 years old are the simpler flakes of people, she says, who probably gathered plants and other foods." Much farther north, along the Yukon's Old Crow River, nearly 10,000 horse-and mammoth-bone artifacts have been picked up and dug out of the river banks. W.N . Irving, from the University of Toronto, claims that the last five seasons of archeological research have uncovered a 'bone industry' of extremely great age -- 100,000 years or more. (Bower, Bruce; "Flakes, Breaks, and the First Americans," Science News, 131:172, 1987.) Comment. It seems significant that French archeologists explored the Brazilian site and Canadians, the Old Crow site. American archeologists, with a few exceptions here and there, scoff at the whole business. Reference. The handbook Ancient Man goes into early American archeology in great depth. For ordering information, visit: here . Composite section of the Old Crow site. Notice the complexity of the stratigraphy. (Adapted from R. E. Morlan's paper in Early Man in America ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 50: Mar-Apr 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Do you hear what i hear?No wonder music critics often disagree, they do not necessarily hear the same thing, even when sitting side by side in the same concert hall! "The discovery, made by psychologist Diana Deutsch of the University of California at San Diego, concerns pairs of tones that are a half octave apart. When one tone of a pair, followed by a second, is played, some listeners hear the second tone as higher in pitch than the first. Other people, hearing the same tones, insist that the second tone appears to be lower in pitch." Other differences in perception also exist in the world of music. (Peterson, I.; "Do You Hear What I Hear?" Science News, 130:391, 1986.) From Science Frontiers #50, MAR-APR 1987 . 1987-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Terrestrial maria?Those dark patches that constitute the face of the man-in-the-moon are really huge outpourings of lava. Once considered real seas, they are called "maria." Maria like those on the moon also exist on the earth. This is a surprise because terrestrial maria were never mentioned in my college geology courses. But, in those days, the one-mile-wide Meteor Crater, in Arizona, was the largest accepted consequence of celestial bombardment. Deccan basalt flows (also called the Deccan traps) in Western India, shown before the formation of the Carlsberg Ridge and teh splitting off of the the Seychelles. D. Alt and colleagues, at the University of Montana, have identified four large basalt plateaus that might be terrestrial maria: "Notable examples of large lava plateaus that resemble lunar maria include, among others, the Deccan Plateau of India, the Columbia Plateau of western North America, the Parana Plateau of South America, and the Tungusska Basin of Siberia. All consist mostly of basalt lava flows; those on continents include minor quantities of rhyolite, and variable amounts of sediment. All seem to have appeared suddenly, within plates. No consistent context of plate interactions explains them. We suggest that large lava plateaus are indeed terrestrial maria." Alt et al go on to show that these lava plateaus seem to have initiated continental rifts and hotspot tracks where none existed before. A reasonable inference is that these plateaus are the consequence of ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 63: May-Jun 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A New Look At The Bat Creek Inscription The Bat Creek Stone. Which side is up has been a problem! The January 1989 issue of the Tennessee Anthropologist contains a long article on the Bat Creek Stone by J.H . McCullock, of Ohio State University. We rely here upon a summary written by R. Strong. "The Bat Creek Stone has generated so much controversy, yet it was excavated in an undisturbed burial mound in 1889 under the direction of Cyrus Thomas, Project Director of the Bureau of American Ethnology's Mound Survey, a part of the Smithsonian Institution. There could be no question of forgery because it was found under the head of one of the nine skeletons that were excavated. Pieces of wood presumed to be the remains of wooden earspools were preserved in the Smithsonian's collections as were a pair of brass C-shaped bracelets. Thomas immediately declared the nine characters on the stone to be Cherokee and the burial assumed to be post-contact - what else could the bracelets be but trade items or native copper?" That would seem to be the end of the story, but some language students failed to see any resemblance between the Bat Creek Inscription and the written Cherokee language. Further, C. Gordon, admittedly a proponent of early Phoenician contact with the New World, declared that the Bat Creek characters were Paleo-Hebrew, a family of languages that includes Phoenician. Then ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 63: May-Jun 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Life Currents In Space A few of the hundreds of meteorites picked up in the Antarctic wastes have chemical properties consistent with a Martian origin. Calculations, too, support the notion that a large meteoric impact could propel bits of the Martian surface into space where, statistically speaking, a tiny fraction would be captured by the earth's gravitational field. Some of these would fall to earth; others would remain in orbit. Now, the reverse scenario has been investigated numerically. S.A . Phinney and colleagues at the University of Arizona have calculated what would happen to small chunks of the earth's crust if a large meteor impact excavated a 60milewide crater. "Phinney's group used a computer to calculate where 1,000 particles would go if ejected from Earth in random directions, moving about 2.5 kilometers per second faster than the minimum speed necessary to escape. Of the 1,000 hypothetical particles, 291 hit Venus and 165 returned to Earth; 20 went to Mercury, 17 to Mars, 14 to Jupiter and 1 to Saturn. Another 492 left the solar system completely, primarily due to gravitational close encounters with either Jupiter or Mercury that 'slingshot' them on their way." (Eberhart, Jonathan; "Have Earth Rocks Gone to Mars?" Science News, 135:191, 1989.) Comment. One implication from the preceding analysis is that terrestrial bacteria and spores could well ...
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... . A good analogy is the bioluminescent wake of ship in tropical waters. The density waves in a galaxy maintain the spiral pattern with new stars, while the old stars die out (in much less time than it takes for them to orbit the hub) as they orbit out of the spiral pattern. Postulating density waves just raises more questions, as is often the case in science. What causes the density waves? Theory says that the density waves should damp out in under a billion years, yet we see spiral galaxies over a wide range of ages. (Comins, Neil, and Marscall, Laurence; "How Do Spiral Galaxies Spiral?" Astronomy, 15:7 , December 1987.) Comment. The scientifically outrageous resolution of the winding dilemma is to assert that the universe is so young that the spiral patterns have not yet been dispersed. Interestingly enough, Saturn's rings may turn out to be very young, too! Reference. The anomalous rotation of matter in galaxies is covered in more detail in AWB5 in our catalog: Stars, Galaxies, Cosmos. For further information on this book, visit: here . From Science Frontiers #55, JAN-FEB 1988 . 1988-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... think the real communication is much quicker and more dramatic than that," he said. "These trees know within a few seconds what is happening. This is an automatic response." "Wagner has measured the speed of W-waves at about 3 feet per second through the air. "They travel much too slowly for electrical waves," he said. "They seem to be an altogether different entity. That's what makes them so intriguing. They don't seem to be electromagnetic waves at all." (Anonymous; "Physicist Says Blip Proves Trees Talk," Seattle Sun Times , February 12, 1989. Cr. R.L . Simmons) Comment. In addition to the above discovery, Wagner, who holds a PhD in physics from the University of Tennessee, has detected electrical standing waves in trees. The voltage measured by electrodes implanted in trees goes up and down as one goes higher and higher up the trees. Wagner's work has been published in Northwest Science , but we have not yet seen it. Incidentally, electricity does seem to affect plant growth, as described in our handbook: Incredible Life . For a description of this book, visit: here . From Science Frontiers #63, MAY-JUN 1989 . 1989-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 64: Jul-Aug 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Earth As A Cold Fusion Reactor In SF#63, we mentioned the possibility that the helium-3 emanating from the earth might indicate that cold fusion was occurring deep down. In a recent issue of the New Scientist, a short unsigned article reveals that this "excess" helium-3 was an impetus for the cold fusion research at Brigham Young University. In fact, P. Palmer, a geo-physicist at Brigham Young, suggested the possibility as long as three years ago! We have not seen Palmer's speculation in print, but the stimulating effect of anomalies on scientific research is reassuring, whatever the final outcome of the cold fusion wars. The same New Scientist article supports the above speculation as follows: "Calculations show that more than enough deuterium finds its way into the upper mantle by this route (seawater in subduction zones) to account for the heat emitted by the Earth's core, although the heat obviously comes from other sources as well. The rate of fusion of deuterium nuclei required to produce the observed rations of helium-3 to helium-4 in rocks, diamonds and metals is similar to that observed by Jones in his experiments with electrolytes. Tritium can also be a product of the fusion of deuterium. Jones and his group say that the tritium detected in the gases from volcanoes is further evidence of cold fusion." Jones has also wondered whether Jupiter's excess ...
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... verify this claim when this data set was subjected to appropriate, objective analyses is the motivation for this article which is intended to caution creationists against a wholesale, uncritical acceptance of the Norman and Setterfield hypothesis. At the present time, it appears that general decay of the speed of light hypothesis is not warranted by the data upon which the hypothesis rests." (Aardsma, Gerald E.; "Has the Speed of Light Decayed?" ICR Impact Series no. 179, May 1988. Comment. Thus, American creationists concur with what Australian scientists have already concluded. (Bridgstock, Martin; "Creation Physics," Search , 17:141, 1986. Cr. R. Molnar.) Reference. Historical measurements of the speed of light are recorded in our handbook: Mysterious Universe. To order, visit: here . Measurements of the velocity of light (c ) versus year, as plotted by Aardsma. VErtical lines are error bars. From Science Frontiers #58, JUL-AUG 1988 . 1988-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Sinus and Meridiani Sinus to the northern deserts, where they faded. A most interesting canal was Deuteronilus-Protonilus -- originating in Niliacus Lacus which ran both east and west until I lost sight of it near the limb -- we counted at least six oases on this one, strung out like beads on a string." (Gordon, Rodger; "Martian Canals: Is Lowell Vindicated?" Sky and Telescope, 75:348, 1988.) Comment. Yes, some of the canals that Lowell and others drew are still there -- not physically perhaps -- but possibly as anomalies of perception and/or camera/telescope aberrations. Reference. The Martian "canal" story is covered in detail in AMO1 in our catalog The Moon and the Planets and handbook Mysterious Universe. To order these books, visit: here . A Mercator Projection of Mars drawn by Lowell, showing the major canals as he saw them. The black dots are oases (From: The Moon and the Planets). From Science Frontiers #57, MAY-JUN 1988 . 1988-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 48: Nov-Dec 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Deflationary Universe One of our major astronomical targets in Science Frontiers has been the cosmological redshift; that is, the assumption that an object's redshift is entirely a Doppler effect and, when coupled to the expanding universe concept, is proportional to distance. Well, we don't have any more contradicting data (of which there is plenty), but we do have: (1 ) A new theory which shows how noncosmological redshifts can occur; and (2 ) Laboratory demonstrations of "spectral noninvariance" that show how a non-Doppler component can be added to light's redshift. The physicist behind this new research is E. Wolf, at the University of Rochester. His theoretical work was re-ported in the March 3l, 1986, issue of Physical Review Letters. There he showed how quasars and so-called "superluminary" astronomical sources might emit light with a spectrum that evolves as it travels through space. Scientists have always assumed that once light left its source its spectrum remained unchanged. But Wolf shows how spectral changes are "sort of coded into the light due to correlations in the source." Meanwhile, two of Wolf's colleagues have backed up his theory in the lab. The consequences of Wolf's work would in effect shrink the universe, because objects would not be as far away as we now calculate from their redshifts. The size of the universe might contract ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 40: Jul-Aug 1985 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Genetic code not universal!Most current textbooks pronounce that the genetic code is not only universal to life but that it must. Alterations in the code, the reasoning goes, would garble genetic messages. Such dogma, however, is based on another dogma, which states that all life on earth derives from a single ancestral line in which the genetic code is fixed and has always been fixed -- a "frozen" accident hit upon "by chance" on the primitive earth. Recently, though, small deviations from the code have turned up in ciliated protozoons and mycoplasmas, much to everyone's surprise. (Scott, Andrew; "Genetic Code Is Not So Universal," New Scientist, p. 2l, April 11, 1985.) Comment. No major deviations from the standard genetic code have been found; but then no one has really looked, because everyone knew the code was universal. It would be quite a shock if terrestrial life were found to have several genetic foundations and as many schemes of evolution. From Science Frontiers #40, JUL-AUG 1985 . 1985-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 47: Sep-Oct 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Lumps, clumps, and jumps "Astronomers have already discovered lumps, motion and structure never suspected in a universe once considered smooth and expanding uniformly in all directions. Two researchers now say the universe is even lumpier, has faster relative motion and shows larger structures than previously believed." N. Bahcall and R. Soneira have been studying the structures and motions of superclusters of galaxies. Each supercluster consists of clusters of clusters of galaxies and contains upwards of hundreds of billions of stars. (Obvious-ly, these are not inconsequential entities!) By analyzing the redshifts of galaxies, Bahcall and Soneira have found that the universe is much more dynamic and inhomogeneous than expected. (1 ) The clusters of galaxies are larger and more extensive. Superclusters can be 500 million light years across -- about 1% of the known universe (2 ) Relative motions within the clusters are as high as 2,000 kilometers per second more than one can account for using gravitational attraction alone. (Kleist; T.; "Lumps, Clumps and Jumps in the Universe," Science News, 130:7 , 1986.) Comment. Before swallowing whole such grand sketches of the cosmos, one should always examine the assumptions. Here, redshifts are assumed to be measures of velocity, which if an expanding universe is assumed, can be converted into distances. Local Group of galaxies, including the Milky Way. and nearby superclusters ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 50: Mar-Apr 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Mysterious Bright Arcs May Be The Largest Objects In The Universe Several brilliant bluish arcs, some 300,000 light years long, were unexpectedly discovered during a survey of galactic clusters. R. Lynds, of Kitt Peak National Observatory, estimates that the arcs are as luminous as 100 billion suns. The nice circularity of the arcs is perplexing; and it is stated that nothing like them has been reported before. The arcs might be incandescent gas, but many astronomers opt instead for swaths of bright young stars. Spectroscopic tests will decide this point. It has been difficult to conceive of an origin for the arcs. Are they blast waves or the results of tidal action between galaxies? No one knows, for all suggestions seem flawed. Something out there not only manipulates stupendous amounts of mass and energy but also does it with a draftsman's compass. (Anderson, Ian; "Astronomers Spot the Biggest Objects in the Universe," New Scientist, p. 23, January 15, 1987.) Comment. In the interest of accuracy, it should be noted that some superclusters of galaxies are larger than the arcs. Also, some similar phenomena are described in our Catalog volume Stars, Galaxies, Cosmos, viz., the stacked, interleaved arcs of stars around elliptical galaxies (AWO5) and ring galaxies without significant nuclei (AWO6). To order the catalog volume just mentioned, visit: here . A ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 47: Sep-Oct 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects 1986: "TIRED LIGHT" REVIVED AGAIN Back in 1929, F. Zwicky proposed that the redshifts astronomers observed in the spectra of celestial objects might not be due to universal expansion but rather to "tired light." In other words, the wavelengths of the photons entering our telescopes are redshifted because they have lost energy through interactions with matter en route to earth. The "tired light" theory was eclipsed by the esthetically appealing concepts of the Big Bang and Expanding Universe. But not everyone has forgotten Zwicky's tired light. P. LaViolette has: ". .. compared the tired light cosmology to the standard model of an expanding universe on four different observational tests and has found that on each one the tired-light hypothesis was superior. The differences between the rival cosmologies are most apparent at large redshifts, however, and it is in this region that observations are most difficult to make." (Anonymous; "New Study Questions Expanding Universe," Astronomy, 14:64, August 1986.) Gratuitous comment. In all three of the foregoing items, observations are challenging fundamental astronomical hypotheses: the Big Bang, the Expanding Universe, redshifts as cosmological yardstocks, etc. With more and more such data accumulating all the time, the strains in the key girders of astronomical thought are beginning to show. Of course, most astronomers will vehemently deny this assertion. Those who care to read the biological ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 46: Jul-Aug 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Cosmic Currents A survey of 390 elliptical galaxies have identified an unexpected streaming effect superimposed on the (postulated) general outward expansion of the universe. A team of seven astronomers first measured the velocities of the elliptical galaxies relative to the earth. Next they subtracted out the velocities of universal expansion and, lastly, the velocity of the earth relative to the 3 K cosmic background radiation. These subtractions enable us to determine how the 390 elliptical galaxies move relative to the cosmic background radiation -- which is about the best fixed reference frame we can come up with. For roughly 50 million parsecs in all directions from earth, the clusters and superclusters of galaxies are streaming through the cosmos in a group. What's more, they lie in and move parallel to a fairly well-defined plane. Just what this coordinated motion means in terms of the origin and evolution of the universe is anyone's guess. There doesn't seem to be anything in the Big Bang theory that would explain these cosmic currents. Something set all these galaxies in motion -- but what? (Waldrop, M. Mitchell; "The Currents of Space," Science, 232:26, 1986.) A giant elliptical galaxy containing many billions of stars. Hundreds of these immense assemblages are moving collectively though the cosmos. From Science Frontiers #46, JUL-AUG 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 48: Nov-Dec 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Cosmic Chemistry Of Life C. Ponnamperuma, at the University of Maryland, speculates that the genetic code employed by earth life may, in fact, reflect a universal chemistry. His lab data "suggest that the formation and linking of life's building blocks -- amino acids and nucleotides -- may have been all but inevitable, given the starting chemistry of earth's 'primordial soup.'" Going even further Ponnamperuma believes that "if there is life elsewhere in the universe, chemically speaking it would be very similar to what we have on earth." (Raloff, J.; "Is There a Cosmic Chemistry of Life?" Science News, 130:182, 1986.) From Science Frontiers #48, NOV-DEC 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 47: Sep-Oct 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Clump Of Antimatter The clumpiness of the universe described above assumed ordinary matter. Perhaps there are inhomogeneities on a different, more basic level -- matter vs. antimatter. According to one popular theory, the universe began with equal amounts of matter and antimatter. If so, where did all the antimatter go? We assume we observe a universe that is virtually 100% matter. Of course, we cannot really tell for certain because an antimatter galaxy would appear to us just like a galaxy composed of ordinary matter. The only clues revealing substantial pockets of antimatter would be the annihilation radiation produced where matter and antimatter regions rubbed against one another. The two types of matter always annihilate one another in bursts of very distinctive radiation. Well, there seems to be at least one region of antimatter near the center of our galaxy. The HEOS3 satellite and ballon-borne instruments have pinpointed a source of 511 kev gamma rays that can come only from a spot where electrons and positrons are mutually annihilating each other. (The positrons are antimat-ter analogs of electrons.) This region of mutual destruction is about 1013 kilometers across. Is it a pocket of antimatter left over after the Big Bang that a sea of surrounding matter is finally wiping out, or is it newly created antimatter in the vicinity of a black hole? No one knows. The mystery has deepened with the discovery that the intensity of the annihilation radiation varies with ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 39: May-Jun 1985 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Hold everything: it may be a nonproblem Newtonian gravitation may not have to be tampered with, as described above. Galaxies may not need "missing mass" to stabilize them after all. B. Byrd and M. Valtonen estimate that many clusters of galaxies are really flying apart. "Clusters of galaxies can eject members by a gravitational slingshot process, with one galaxy after another being accelerated through the dense centre of the cluster and fired out into the Universe at large. If this happens, the ejected galaxies are moving at more than the escape velocity from the system, so estimates of the total mass in the system based on the assumption that all the galaxies are in bound orbits will be incorrect" (Anonymous; "Expanding Clusters Confuse Astronomers," New Scientist, p. 13, March 2l, 1985.) Comment. In previous entries, we have seen jets of stars being squirted into space, immense shells of stars being ejected by elliptical galaxies, and other cosmic sowings of astronomical systems. Now, entire galactic clusters are being thrown around the universe. This hard-ly seems a universe that is "running down," as the Laws of Thermodynamics would have us believe. Somebody or something is stirring the pot -- a pot in which biological systems and perhaps super-biological systems are ingredients in the stew. From Science Frontiers #39, MAY-JUN 1985 . 1985-2000 William R ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 48: Nov-Dec 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Archaeopteryx a dead end?" Just as the 150-million-year-old Archaeopteryx fossil is being reinstated as the earliest known bird after considerable controversy, along come two crowsize skeletons that are not only 75 million years older than Archaeopteryx but also more birdlike, according to the paleontologists who discovered them. The Washington, D.C .- based National Geographic Society, which funded the work, announced this week that Sankar Chatterjee and his colleagues at Texas Tech University in Lubbock found the 225-million-year-old fossils near Post, Tex." (Weisburd, S.; "Oldest Bird and Longest Dinosaur," Science News, 130:103, 1986.) Chatterjee has named the new fossil Protoavis. "Protoavis seems certain to reopen the long-running controversy on the evolution of birds. In particular whether the common ancestor of birds and dinosaurs was itself a dinosaur. Protoavis, from the late Triassic, appears at the time of the earliest dinosaurs, and if the identification is upheld it seems likely that it will be used to argue against the view of John Ostrom of Yale University that birds are descended from the dinosaurs. It also tends to confirm what many paleontologists have long suspected, that Archaeopteryx is not on the direct line to modern birds. It is in some ways more reptilian than Protoavis, and the period between the late Jurassic Archaeopteryx and the world-wide radiation of birds in ...
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... metamorphic facies, which are rich in zeolites, clays and heavy metal sulphides, would provide catalytic surfaces, pores and molecular sieves in which RNA molecules could be assembled and contained. If the RNA could then replicate with the aid of ribozymes and without proteins, the chance of creating life becomes not impossible but merely wildly unlikely." The article concludes with a statement that self-replicating molecules synthesized in hydrothermal systems would be pre-adapted to "life" in the open ocean if they "learned" to surround themselves with bags of lipids. (Bag of lipids = a membrane.) (Nisbet, E.G .; "RNA and Hot-Water Springs," Nature, 322:206, 1986.) It just so happens that D.W . Deamer, University of California, Davis, has now found that the 4.5 -billion-year-old Murchison meteorite from Australia contains lipid-like organic chemicals that can self-assemble into membrane-like films. His paper was presented before the International Society for the Study of Origins of Life. (Raloff, J.; "Clues to Life's Cellular Origins," Science News, 130:71, 1986.) Comment. Strange that the earth should be "tailor-made" for biochemical operations and that outer space teems with meteorites transporting other ingredients of life-synthesis. That the earth's crust and deep soil are conducive to life is apparent in recent work done sponsored by DuPont and the Department of Energy. This effort has found that life is abundant ...
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... this dilemma. They postulate a large population of WIMPS (Weakly Interactive Massive Particles) orbiting the sun's core, but still well beneath the sun's visible surface. The WIMPS help convey heat out of the core, thereby cooling it to temperatures significantly less than those predicted by the astrophysicists. A cooler core emits fewer neutrinos, bringing theory into line with reality. And just what are these WIMPS? One suggestion is that they are photinos, a particle suggested (but not proved) by recent experiments at CERN (SF#37) (Thomsen, D.E .; "Weak Sun Blamed on WIMPS," Science News, 128:23, 1985.) Comment. WIMPS represent just the kind of particle that Dewey Larson railed against in his book: The Universe of Motion. He maintains that astronomers have to engage in such ridiculous theoretical gymnastics and invention only because they have picked the wrong energy-generating mechanism for stars and refuse to give it up! Larson's theory, on the other hand, solves this and many other astronomical problems, but at the initial cost of a radical change in one's conception of the universe. From Science Frontiers #41, SEP-OCT 1985 . 1985-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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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 A Large Quasar Inhomogeneity In The Sky "In an area roughly 20 x 70 on the sky, there exists an excess of bright, high-redshift quasars. Quasars with this distribution of apparent magnitude and redshift have a negligible chance of being drawn from the population of quasars present in other areas of the sky. At a mean redshift distance corresponding to their average z = 2, these quasars would represent an unprecedented inhomogeneity over enormous volumes of space in the universe." It is difficult for astronomers to accept such a large "bubble" in the cosmos, because the Big Bang Theory basically produces a "smooth" universe. The author of this paper, H. Arp, comments that the size of the inhomogeneity could be shrunk considerably if redshifts were not taken as measures of distance. (Arp, Halton; "A Large Quasar Inhomogeneity in the Sky," Astrophysical Journal, 277:L27, 1984.) From Science Frontiers #42, NOV-DEC 1985 . 1985-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... that could lead to some real "answers." First, we have a case of genetic material being transferred from a fish to a bacterium. The case at hand is the light-producing bacterium that provides the ponyfish with its luminous organ. In this symbiotic arrangement, the fish somehow passes genetic instructions to its retinue of bacteria. (Lewin, Roger; "Fish to Bacterium Gene Transfer," Science, 227:1020, 1985.) Comment. Perhaps symbiotic relationships are fine-tuned by the mutual exchange of information! Second, the role of viruses in transferring genetic material across species barriers is at last getting some serious attention. (Remember how Fred Hoyle was snickered at for promoting this idea in his books?) D. Erwin and J. Valentine, of the University of California, are now pointing out how a whole colony of "hopeful monsters" might be created en masse by an attack of viruses carrying new genetic blueprints. (And remember how Richard Goldschmidt got the same treatment as Fred Hoyle for suggesting "hopeful monsters" decades ago? (Anonymous; "Gene-Swapping Breaks Barriers in Evolutionary Theory," New Scientist, p. 19, February 1985. Also see: National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings, 81:5482, 1984.) Comment. We don't want to get carried away, but it just may be that all life forms are interconnected informationwise by viruses, diseases, symbiotic relationships, and similar "channels." Gaia-wise, there could just be a single superorganism in the universe that is exploring ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 47: Sep-Oct 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Oceans from outer space?Back in SF#44, we related how L.A . Frank, at the University of Iowa, had detected dark spots on satellite images of the earth's dayglow. Frank thought that the spots might be due to clouds of water vapor released as small, icy comets hit the atmosphere. P. Huyghe has recently written more about Frank's discovery, his theory, and its reception by the scientific community. "These comets are not occasional visitors, he [Frank] says, like the one that comes by every 76 years and -- lucky for us -- never actually drops in. No, these are very small, cometlike objects that enter our atmosphere at a rate of 20 per minute, he says. These comets, which he believes must contain about 100 tons of water apiece, vaporize on impact with the atmosphere and fall as rain or snow. Now that may seem like one sizeable cold shower, but on a yearly basis he says it's actually only a tiny fraction of the annual preciptation. Then again, over a span of 4.5 billion years, which is about how old the earth is, that's enough water, he says -- trumpets blaring -- to create the oceans." Naturally, such a theory is very disturbing because it runs counter to the widely accepted idea that the oceans were created by the ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 50: Mar-Apr 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Feathered Flights Of Fancy Some more salvos have been fired in an endlessly fascinating controversy (at least it is that to us). First, F. Hoyle and C. Wickramasinghe, hardly strangers to these columns, have published Archaeopteryx, The Primordial Bird: A Case of Fossil Forgery. The book elaborates their theory that the Archaeopteryx fossils, much ballyhooed as "proofs" of evolution, are outright forgeries. Second, T. Kemp, a zoologist on the staff of the University Museum, has returned the fire with a mean-minded review. He states that Hoyle and Wickramasinghe "exhibit a staggering ignorance about the nature of fossils and fossilization processes." Kemp concludes his review with an admission that the possibility of forgery should indeed be investigated. "But it should be done by those who actually understand fossils, fossilization and fossil preparation, not by a couple of people who exhibit nothing more than a gargantuan conceit that they are clever enough to solve other people's problems for them when they do not even begin to recognize the nature and complexity of the problems." (Kemp, Tom; "Feather Flights of Fancy," Nature, 324:185, 1986.) Finally, Hoyle and Wickramasinghe reply in a letter to Nature that L.M . Spetner and his colleagues in Israel have analyzed samples of the Archaeopteryx fossil with a scanning electron microscope and X-ray spectroscopy. Results: the rock ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 43: Jan-Feb 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A JAPANESE PRESENCE IN ANCIENT MEXICO?A. von Wuthenau, a specialist in Precolumbian art, at the University of the Americas in Mexico City, has long been a champion of ancient contacts between the New World and Africa, the Orient, and the Mediterranean region. For example, his book Unexpected Faces in Ancient America contains hundreds of photographs of Precolumbian figurines and other artwork showing facial features typical of the Old World and Asia. His latest find consists of a terra cotta model of an ancient sailing ship manned by figurines of ten oarsmen, all with striking Japanese features. The model boat is one foot long; the oarsmen, two inches high. It was discovered at a burial site in the Guerrero region of Mexico. Von Wuthenau has tentatively dated the boat as 2,500 years old (Anonymous; "Sailors in a Model of an Ancient Ship Found in Mexico Have Asian Features," Boston Sunday Globe, November 10, 1985. Cr. J. Whittall.) A sketch of one of the giant Olmec stone heads from von Wuthenau's book. He believes this particular head, La Venta III, displays Asiatic features. Others seem African. From Science Frontiers #43, JAN-FEB 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... No. 44: Mar-Apr 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The moon, the stars, and human behavior We humans have an inherited penchant for observing the heavens and wondering if the stars can affect our daily lives. Secular humanists hate astrology with a passion because, like Cassius in Julius Caesar, they believe we are masters of our own destinies. Nevertheless, astrol-ogy columns are still prominent in most newspapers. In the scientific press, however, we have to score a big plus for the anti-astrologers. First, Nature has just published a detailed analysis of the predictive power of astrology, and astrology has come up very short. The Nature study is by S. Carlson, a physicist at the University of California at Berkeley. At the end of seven data-packed pages Carlson concludes: "We are now in a position to argue a surprisingly strong case against natal astrology as practised by reputable astrologers. Great pains were taken to insure that the experiment was unbiased and to make sure that astrology was given every reasonable chance to succeed. It failed. Despite the fact that we worked with some of the best astrologers in the country, recommended by the advising astrologers for their expertise in astrology and their ability to use CPI (California Personality Inventory), despite the fact that every reasonable suggestion made by the advising astrologers was worked into the experiment, despite the fact that the astrologers approved the design and predicted 50 per cent as the 'minimum' effect they would expect to see, ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 38: Mar-Apr 1985 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Subtle Placebo A most interesting series of placebo experiments have been carried out by J.D . Levine and N.C . Gordon, of the University of California at San Francisco. The subjects were all dental patients who were tested when their surgical anesthesia was wearing off. The substances administered were: (1 ) a placebo; (2 ) morphine; and (3 ) naloxone, a substance that blocks the opiates produced in the brain. The doses were administered: (1 ) openly, when the experimenter knew which substance was being given; (2 ) by a person hidden from both experimenter and patient; and (3 ) by a machine. Two findings are particularly revealing. First, pain always increased after naloxone was administered, implying that the opiates blocked by naloxone are probably the same as those released by placebos. More significant, however, was the fact that both the open and hidden administrations of the placebo reduced pain while the machine-applied placebo resulted in more pain. In other words, when either the experimenter or the hidden administrator knew that the placebo was being given, the placebo worked. Levine and Gordon supposed that there must have been subtle clues, detected subconsciously by the patients, that the hidden person was administering the placebo. (Anonymous; "The Subtle Strength of Placebos," Science News, 127:25, 1985.) Comment. If no subtle clues existed, ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 41: Sep-Oct 1985 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Galaxy Redshifts Come In Clumps "Red shifts in the light from distant galaxies seem to favor certain values, at intervals corresponding to a spacing of 72 kilometres per second, if the red shifts are interpreted as indicating the recession velocities of the galaxies. According to the latest evidence, this provides a yardstick against which we can measure the absolute motion of the Sun through space. This rather startling indication that the red shifts of galaxies are quantised, rather like the atomic spectral lines by which the red shifts themselves are measured, has a pedigree that goes back more than 10 years. Since 1972, W.G . Tifft, of the University of Arizona, has been producing evidence for the red shift quantisation from analyses of various catalogues of galaxy red shifts and, as his collection of data has mounted, the idea, unpalatable though it seemed at first, has become steadily more respectable. It has not taken the astronomical world by storm, and even Tifft has no definite idea why the red shifts should be grouped like this. But it is no longer possible to dismiss the evidence out of hand." Actually, Tifft has speculated that galaxy redshifts might represent an intrinsic property of galaxies, which takes on quantized values, like the energy states of an atom! (Gribbin, John; "Galaxy Red Shifts Come in Clumps," New Scientist, p. 20, June 20, 1985.) Comment. We ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 40: Jul-Aug 1985 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Neptune's arcs: embryonic moons?The publicity given to the 1984 observations of possible discontinuous rings around Neptune (SF#38) have brought to light two other enigmatic observations. The 1981 sighting of a "third satellite" of Neptune have now been interpreted as still another discontinuous ring at a different radius. A third discontinuous ring seems to be indicated by the reanalysis of some 1968 occultation data. Astronomer Bill Hibbard, at the University of Arizona, speculates that the three separate arcs of material orbiting Neptune are "trying to decide whether to become a satellite." (Hecht, Jeff, and Henbest, Nigel; "Neptune's Arcs -- A Satellite in Formation?" New Scientist, p. 19, Apil 25, 1985.) Comment. If the debris around Neptune is just now accreting into satellites and Saturn's rings really do have youthful features (SF#39), one has to consider some disquieting possibilities: (1 ) Saturn and Neptune have been recently "disturbed," or (2 ) The entire solar system is not as old as the conventional scenario demands. From Science Frontiers #40, JUL-AUG 1985 . 1985-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Radio-telescope measurements of the compact radio source, churning away in the center of our Galaxy, reveal that it is only 20 AU in diameter at radio wavelengths of l.35 centimeters. This is roughly the size of the solar system inside Saturn's orbit. This tiny radio source is so energetic that there seems no escaping the conclusion that it is a blackhole. No other astronomical object is capable of generating so much energy in so small a volume. Since other galaxies also seem to harbor small, but very powerful radio sources in their centers, astronomers wouldn't be too surprised if all galaxies had black-hole cores. Quasars, in fact, might be galaxies with spectacularly active centers. Would these unseeable black holes be the notorious "missing mass" in the universe? Not likely. The mass of the purported black hole in our Galaxy is only about several million solar masses-- not even close to what is needed. (Maddox, John; "Black Hole at the Galactic Centre," Nature, 315:93, 1985.) Comment. Actually, it would be rather amusing if the problem of the missing mass, which we cannot see, were solved by black holes, which we cannot see either! Reference. Black holes and other cosmological entities are discussed in our Catalog: Stars, Galaxies, Cosmos. to order the book, visit: here . From Science Frontiers #40, JUL-AUG 1985 . 1985-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects An 11-minute binary 4U1820-30 is an X-ray binary star located in the heart of the globular cluster NGC 6624. Its claim to fame is a very short period of rotation -- only 685 seconds. In just a shade over 11 minutes, a neutron star orbits a white dwarf, according to present thinking. The orbit diameter is only 1/7 the radius of our sun, which implies the stars themselves are also small. 4U1820-30 is the shortest-period binary ever found -- so short that astronomers are looking for other explanations. Another curious fact mentioned in this item is that X-ray binaries are much more common in globular clusters than elsewhere in the universe. What is so different about globular clusters? (King, A.R ., and Watson, M.G .; "The Shortest Period Binary Star," Nature, 323:105, 1986.) From Science Frontiers #48, NOV-DEC 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Something unseen is tugging on galaxies and the stars that comprise them. This is a sad situation, according to Moto Milgrom, an Israeli astrophysicist. Maybe there is nothing hidden and Newton's Law of Gravitation is wrong. After all, it was derived solely on the basis of solar-system observations. On a larger scale, it might be incorrect. Milgrom offers a startling alternative: for accelerations greater than a , let Newton's Law be; below that value, let the square of the acceleration be proportional to the mass of the attracting body and the inverse square of the distance. This done and presto the need for missing mass disappears. Even more remarkable is the fact that a particle with the acceleration a just reaches the speed of light over the age of the universe. (Milgrom, Moto; "Newtonian Gravity Falls Down," New Scientist, p. 45, March 7, 1985.) Comment. It would be more than passing strange for cosmic laws to suddenly shift gears so radically at a specific value of acceleration. Reference. The "missing mass" problem is covered in depth in AWB5 and other entries in Stars, Galaxies, Cosmos. For more on this Catalog volume, visit: here . From Science Frontiers #39, MAY-JUN 1985 . 1985-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Frontiers ONLINE No. 50: Mar-Apr 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Monarchs slighted -- sorry!Contrary to the report in SF#49, at least one tagged monarch butterfly has been found among the wintering colonies in Mexico. In early 1976, a tagged individual from Chaska, Minnesota, was indeed found among a huge cluster in Mexico. Also, a few butterflies tagged in the northern states have turned up in Texas, well on their way to Mexico. (Urquhart, Fred A.; "Found at Last: The Monarch's Winter Home," National Geographic Magazine, August 1976. Cr. B. Ickes) Comment. So, it seems that A.M . Wenner, the University of California researcher, will have to correct his records and perhaps modify his theory. From Science Frontiers #50, MAR-APR 1987 . 1987-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... he found that galaxies in the same clusters possessed redshifts that were related to the shapes of the galaxies. The obvious inference was that the redshifts were at least partly dependent upon the galaxy itself rather than entirely upon the galaxy's speed of recession (or distance) from the earth. Then, he found more suggestions of quantization. The redshifts of pairs of galaxies differed by quantized amounts (see figure). More evidence exists for galactic quantization, but this should give the reader a feeling for the conceptual disaster waiting on the wings of astronomy. Can galaxies, like atoms and mole cules, posses quantized states? And do the findings of Tifft and Cocke undermine the redshift-distance relationship? The answer might be YES; and then all of astronomy and our entire view of the universe and its history would have to be reformulated. (Tifft, William G., and Cocke, W. John; "Quantized Galaxy Redshifts," Sky and Telescope, 73:19, 1987.) Redshift differences for double galaxies. Instead of following the expected distribution (dotted line), they tend to fall into bins separated by 72-km/sec. From Science Frontiers #50, MAR-APR 1987 . 1987-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... for earth? Recent calculations by Hans Bethe have brought sighs of relief to all astrophysicists. Without going into all of the details, Bethe finds that the interactions of the electron-neutrinos emitted by solar thermonuclear reactions with atoms constituting the solar mass change a substantial fraction of them into muonneutrinos. Since our terrestrial neutrino detectors register only electron-neutrinos, we may really be seeing only a fraction of the total number of neutrinos being emitted by the sun. If Bethe's calculations turn out to be correct, he may have eliminated a Class1 anomaly. But at a price! It seems that his calculations also predict a mass of only 0.008 electron-volts for the muon-neutrino. This is much too small for neutrinos to account for the "missing mass" of the universe -- something cosmologists had devoutly hoped for. (Maddox, John; "Hans Bethe on Solar Neutrinos," Nature, 320:677, 1986.) From Science Frontiers #46, JUL-AUG 1986 . 1986-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Sourcebook Subjects Monarch Migration An Illusion "The epic autumn migration of the eastern monarch butterfly to wintering grounds in Mexico, where millions cluster on trees in semi-dormancy to await spring, has become known as one of the standard 'wonders of nature' in the decade since the Mexican winter clusters were found." There are, however, some flies in this ointment: Monarchs tagged in the north have never been found in the Mexican clusters. Fall-fattened monarchs can store only enough energy for a flight of about 200 miles -- far too short, unless they refuel along the way (no one knows if they do or not); and The monarchs seen in Mexico are almost always in pristine condition and show no wing wear or tattering. A.M . Wenner, University of California at Santa Barbara, thinks that the "appearance" of mass migration reported frequently from many locales may just be due to a curious fall habit of the monarchs. It seems that widely scattered individuals begin to fly into the wind, and the wind concentrates and channels them to local roosts where they spend the winter. In other words, there is no long distance migration at all. (Rensberger, Boyce; Washington Post, September 15, 1986. Cr. J. Judge) From Science Frontiers #49, JAN-FEB 1987 . 1987-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Cosmological Atlantis Current cosmological theory states that immediately after the Big Bang, the only elements existing in any significant quantities were hydrogen and helium. Yet, we observe stars today with various amounts of the heavier elements. How did the present stars, which are divided into Populations I and II, ever acquire their heavier elements? By thermonuclear synthesis, of course. The primordial hydrogen and helium condensed into primitive stars, now labelled Population III, where the first heavier elements were synthesized. The "ashes" of the Population-III stars provided the makings of the later stars with their heavier elements. However, no matter how hard astronomers have looked, no Population-III stars seem to be left anywhere -- not even far out in the universe, which we see in terms of light billions of years old. A vital "transititional form" is missing in astronomy's fossil record! (Maran, Stephen P.; "Stellar Old- Timers," Natural History, 96:80, February 1987.) From Science Frontiers #50, MAR-APR 1987 . 1987-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 44: Mar-Apr 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Atmospheric Footprints Of Icy Meteors Serendipity triumphs again. From a dayglow experiment aboard NASA's satellite DE-1 (Dynamic Explorer-1 ) comes an unexpected discovery of considerable potential importance. Looking down on the earth, the DE-1 records the light emitted by atmospheric oxygen at altitudes of about 200-300 kilometers -- this is the so-called "dayglow." The experimenters, L. Frank, J. Sigwarth, and J. Craven, all at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, have found that their dayglow images are speckled with transitory dark spots. "According to Sigwarth, each hole expands like a drop of dye spreading out in a glass of water; within about 30 seconds the dayglow intensity drops by about 95 percent over an area of about 3,000 square kilometers. Then, over the next 3.5 minutes, the dayglow intensity increases toward its normal value as the hole grows to an area of about 25,000 km2 ." The Iowa group thinks that the holes or spots are created by meteors hitting the upper atmosphere because the spots follow the same time distribution as meteors. For example, they are more frequent during the well-known meteor showers. The theory is that the dark spots are formed when ice associated with the meteors is turned into water vapor, which reacts with the atmospheric oxygen producing the dayglow, in effect removing temporarily part of the light ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 45: May-Jun 1986 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Lost City Of Nan Madol Nan Madol has never been "lost" as the title of this item implies, but this fantastic complex of 92 artificial islets sees few tourists. Located on Pohnpei (formerly spelled "Ponape") in Micronesia, Nan Madol lacks the well-publicized glamour of the Pyramids and Chichen Itza. If Nan Madol is not glamourous, it is certainly incongruous. Who would expect such huge stone structures to rise in the middle of nowhere? William Ayres, a University of Oregon anthropologist sponsored by the National Geographic Society, has been a recent researcher at Nan Madol. In an interview, Ayres described Nan Madol in these terms: "To withstand time and the sea, the artificial platforms were built in a staggeringly laborious process. Multiton basalt columns, formed by volcanic activity, were stacked horizontally, log-cabin style, to form outer walls. The inside was then filled with coral rubble to form a dry surface several feet above high-tide level. Radiocarbon testing finds signs of human habitation at Nan Madol as early as A.D . 500, and the megalithic construction was completed by about 1500." Besides incongruity and a certain bizarreness, Nan Madol does pose several problems: How were the huge, very heavy prismatic columns of basalt quarried and transported? Why was Nan Madol built at all? Why about 1400 AD did the inhabitants stop building their massive ocean-going canoes and ...
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