423 results found.
... 1985 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects All Things Appear To Those Who Accelerate We have said some nasty things about WIMPS (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles). But perhaps the existence of WIMPS is only a matter of one's private trajectory in the cosmos! Recently, theorists fiddling with the possible consequences of quantum mechanics came up with some shockers: 1. An accelerating observer can detect particles that a stationary observer will swear do not exist; 2. An accelerating reflecting surface (theoretically) creates a flux of particles that stream away from its surface; and 3. An accelerating mirror can carry away negative energy! After cogitating on such discoveries, Paul Davies wondered, "Might it even be that the apparently solid matter of the Universe around us is only the consequence of our particular motion?" Par-ticles of matter, in this theoretical scheme, would be only chimeras of our individual motions. (Davies, Paul; "Do Particles Really Exist?" New Scientist, p. 40, May 2, 1985.) Comment. Omar Khayyam practically predicted this curious state of affairs when he wrote: "We are no other than a moving row/Of magic shadow-shapes that come and go." From Science Frontiers #41, SEP-OCT 1985 . 1985-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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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 The message of aluminum-26 "Our solar system may be inside the cloud of debris from a star that exploded 10,000 to 1,000,000 years ago. This startling conclusion was reached by Donald Clayton of Rice University after studying observations of the amount of aluminum-26 (26Al) in the interstellar medium." Instruments on satellites (gamma-ray spectrometers) have detected so much aluminum-26 that radical hypotheses seem required. The problem is that aluminum26 is radioactive with a half-life of only about 1 million years -- a very short time astronomically speaking. The aluminum-26 cannot be primordial solar-system stuff; it cannot even be 10 million years old. It had to be created somewhere nearby recently. The best aluminum-26 factory conceived so far is a nova in our vicinity. (Anonymous; "Are We inside a Supernova Remnant?" Sky and Telescope, 69:13, 1985.) Comment. A nova close enough to engulf the earth with its debris must have had a profound effect on the earth and its cargo of life -- perhaps on Saturn's rings, too. See next item . From Science Frontiers #39, MAY-JUN 1985 . 1985-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 41: Sep-Oct 1985 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects An Animal That Photosynthesizes At a recent meeting of the American Society for Photobiology, chemist Pill-Soon Song, of Texas Tech University, reported the discovery of a blue-green, trumpet-shaped protozoan that employs photosynthesis to sustain itself. Called Stentor coeruleus, this protozoan is only 0.2 mm long and swims backward by rotating its cilia. According to the article, this is the first instance of a photosynthesizing animal. (Anonymous; "Animal That Lives on Light," San Francisco Chronicle, June 28, 1985, p. 2. Cr. J. Covey) Comment. Nothing was said about whether the protozoan also ate food in the conventional manner. If verified, this is not a trivial discovery. Of course, some plants eat meat, but animals seem to have found sunlight too weak to utilize for mobility and other energy-rich processes and activities. From Science Frontiers #41, SEP-OCT 1985 . 1985-2000 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 Space Spume The celestial pot seems to have boiled over "in the beginning." New surveys of the galaxies suggest that they are mostly located on the surfaces of bubbles, not as we thought for so long distributed uniformly throughout the cosmos, the expanding debris of the Big Bang. If further surveys confirm a bubbly universe, the "conventional explanations for the evolution of large-scale structure in which gravity played a dominant role may have to be modified or abandoned." To explain the bubbles, a new scenario has Big Bang #1 creating a population of uniformly distributed, extremely massive stars, which eventually burned out and exploded in a crescendo of supernovas. One stellar detonation stimulating adjacent giant stars to explode in a chain reaction. The bubble-like shock waves expanding outward from these explosions stimulated the condensations of the stars we now see in the heavens. Naturally, these stars and galaxies are concentrated on the surfaces of the shock wave bubbles. (Anonymous; "New 3-D Map Shows the Cosmos with a 'Bubble Bath' Appearance," Baltimore Sun, January 5, 1986.) Comment. The space bubbles are mapped using redshifts as measurements of distance. As all-too-frequently asserted in this book, some redshifts may not be distance yardsticks, in which case these theoretical bubbles would burst. As the structures of the cosmos and the subatomic worlds become more and more foreign to everyday experience ...
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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 Fractals, fractals everywhere Anyone who follows the popular scientific literature knows that fractals are now "in." Commonly employed to "explain" patterns in nature, fractals are, from a simplistic viewpoint, mathematical ways to predict the development of a growing structure, be it a crystalline mass, a plant, or the universe-as-a -whole. Yes, the universe-as-a -whole, the clouds of stars and clusters of galaxies, may be mimicked by cellular automata (i .e ., fractals). Imagine the universe as a cubical lattice, and start in one corner, adding one layer of cubes after another. Galaxy distribution could be simulated by using a rule telling us which of the added cubical cells had galaxies in them and which did not. "The rule actually used supposes that the question whether each point in a newly added layer will (or will not) be occupied by a galaxy is mostly determined by the occupancy of the five nearest neighbors in the previous layer, but for good measure, there is a random variable to introduce an element of white noise to the system. To make the process a little more interesting, the determination whether a new site is occupied depends on whether a number characteristic of that site, and calculated by simple arithmetic from the corresponding number for the five nearest neighbors in the preceeding layer, exceeds an arbitrarily chosen number." Comparing this ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 53: Sep-Oct 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Has the second law been repealed?" From the largest to the smallest scales, the universe is evolving. Matter, in the form of galaxies, is undergoing a colossal expansion. Gas, condensed into stars, is radiating thermonuclear energy out across an infall of matter, drawn by gravity. The simplest of chemical reactions and the most complex of biological activities are occurring on the surface of the earth in a state far from equilibrium; they are heated by the sun and cooled by the vacuum of space. This pervasive cosmic imbalance is the driving force in producing an environment conducive to the formation of structure and complexity." This sweeping statement seems to apply to the entire universe. The Second Law of Thermodynamics, however, insists that, on the average, for the entire universe, the above paragraph cannot be true. The article introduced by this unqualified assertion about the evolution of the universe is really about self-organizing chemical reactions. We classify it under biology because the authors imply that some biological phenomena are self-organizing. The famous Belousov-Zhabotinskii reaction is used as the prime example of chemical self-organization. First, one takes a shallow dish filled with a solution of bromate ions in a highly acidic medium. Here's what happens: "A dish, thinly spread with a lightly colored liquid, sits quietly for a moment after its preparation. The liquid is then suddenly swept by a spontaneous ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 55: Jan-Feb 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects An Astronomical Paradox Just a few years ago, most astronomers would have predicted that, as they examined larger and larger volumes of the universe, they would find more and more homogeneity. The Big Bang Theory predicts this; and it is seconded by the isotropy of the microwave background radiation. The mapping of the universe, however, has actually turned up all manner of galactic clusters, superclusters, and great skeins of superclusters strung across the heavens. Instead of a puree of matter, there is more and more structure the farther we peer into space. R.B . Tully, at the University of Ha waii, now charts a billion-light-year structure that he calls the Pisces-Cetus complex. This aggregation of galaxies includes us (the Milky Way), our Local Supercluster, and many neighboring superclusters. In actuality, the PiscesCetus complex is not a continuous structure. Rather, it is defined by a plane -- one containing a host of superclusters as well as voids. The problem posed for theorists is that they can suggest no way in which such a far flung manifestation of order could have evolved in the time available since the Big Bang. (Waldrop, M. Mitchell; "The Large-Scale Structure of the Universe Gets Larger-- Maybe," Science, 238:804, 1987.) From Science Frontiers #55, JAN-FEB 1988 . 1988-2000 William R ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 60: Nov-Dec 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects How Genius Gets Nipped In The Bud At once amusing and tragic, the article bearing the above title treats the reader to the musings of a university researcher who has a brilliant new idea -- or so it seems to him. At first he is ready to rush to the literature and check out the idea's originality and feasibility. But wait, this groundwork will take considerable time, and the idea may turn out to be old hat. Is it all worth the risk? Will the university support research on this new untried idea? This would be unlikely since funds are thin, the idea is not part of the overall research plan, and worse yet, an enemy sits on the research fund committee. Getting external funds is impossible unless one can show that your university has enough confidence in the idea to support it financially. A way out is to publish the idea at a conference in hopes of raising interest and money. Hold it, the referees will ask why a few obvious points have not been checked out in the lab. "Suddenly you realize that there is a far more serious problem. The current scientific system is based on the assumption that there is no such thing as a radically new idea. Each new paper is required to climb on the back of a plethora of earlier published papers, and does little more than add another layer of gloss to the cited references. Genuinely new ideas no ...
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... far removed from our ideas of what a normal galaxy should look like. There could be more of these things that haven't been discovered yet.'" (Anonymous; "Massive, Dark Galaxy Found in Void," Astronomy, 15:75, September 1987.) The same discovery is dealt with, in a more technical way, in Nature. A revealing paragraph from the Nature article follows: "Although Malin 1 could be a unique case there is in fact a significant body of circumstantial evidence to suggest otherwise. Our present knowledge of the galaxy population is so biased by a single insidious selection effect that it is entirely possible that Malin 1 is just the first example of a class of such low-surface-brightness giant galaxies that forms a significant constituent of the universe." The "selection effect" mentioned is a consequence of the very bright sky that confronts astronomers. Astronomical interest and instrumentation have focussed on those astronomical objects that are bright. In truth, the universe may be full of "icebergs and crouching giants." (Disney, Michael, and Phillipps, Steven; "Icebergs and Crouching Giants," Nature, 329:203, 1987.) Comment. Since astronomers have built their models of galaxies, galactic distribution, and the evolution of the universe on an unrepresentative portion of the actual cosmos, we may be in for some major changes in our overall view of the universe and its beginning -- if it actually had one. From Science Frontiers #54, NOV-DEC 1987 . 1987-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Directed Mutation Dear reader, things have a way of working out serially. For several months, we have had in our possession a paper from Nature, by J. Cairns, of Harvard, plus some passionate correspondence stimulated by the paper. Now that the circle-forming sheep have provided a good introduction, we will jump into the fray, too. Basically Cairns (in Nature) and B. H. Hall (in Genetics ) say that organisms can respond to environmental stresses by reorganizing their genes in a purposeful way. Such "directed mutation" shifts the course of evolution in a nonrandom way. Such a conclusion was like waving a red flag in front of the evolutionists. R. May, at the University of Oxford, complained, "The work is so flawed, I am reluctant to comment." On the other side, a University of Maryland geneticust, S. Benson, comments, "Many people have had such observations, but they have problems getting them published." Our template in this discussion is an article by A.S . Moffat in American Scientist. She says, "The stakes in this dispute are high, indeed. If directed mutations are real, the explanations of evolutionary biology that depend on random events must be thrown out. This would have broad implications. For example, directed mutation would shatter the belief that organisms are related to some ancestor if they share traits. Instead, they may simply share exposure to the same environmental cues. Also, different ...
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... Relativity, is a vital part of the general scientific outlook. How shaky is the Big Bang? L.M . Krauss of Yale, admits that all cosmological theories are "tenuous." He adds: "There are a lot of fundamental assumptions we base our model on that may be wrong." A leading Big-Bang basher in H. Arp, of whom we have written frequently in SF. We will therefore not pursue his sort of bashing any further here. It is sufficient to say that Arp's doubts about the red-shift/distance relationship continue to receive support through observations of the heavens and in the lab. The other Big-Bang basher featured in Scientific American is H. Alfven, a Nobel-Prize winner in physics. Alfven postulates a universe dominated by electromagnetic forces, which he believes to be more important in shaping the cosmos than gravitation. His electromagnetic theory disallows any universe smaller than 1/10 the diameter of our present universe, thus excluding the Big Bang's point origin. Electromagnetic forces can account for all types of galaxies without resorting to the infamous "missing mass." Alfven can even account for the cosmic microwave background. Furthermore, Alfven's theories are supported by observations of solar-system plasma and magnetic fields. NASA's T.E . Eastman allows: "There is a revolution brewing in applying this knowledge to astrophysics." (Horgan, John; "Big-Bang Bashers," Scientific American, 257:22, September 1987.) Reference. Many more doubts about the ...
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... experiments in which subjects have been called upon to estimate the direction of the point of origin of a journey. This note extends such work by describing an experiment which showed that blindfolded humans, deprived of environmental cues, also have an ability to estimate accurately the direction of their place of residence within a town, even when driven around that town in such a way as to render them unable to identify where they are. The experiment throws into question the explanation usually offered for the existence of an innate sense of direction, namely, its value to the species, in an evolutionary sense, in facilitating a return to the starting point of exploratory journeys." A fascinating facet of this experiment does not appear in the above Summary . All of the subjects in the study first assembled at the University of New England (in Armidale, NSW, Australia) and were there blindfolded and driven in a circuitous route 19.4 kilometers long to a spot 5.2 kilometers from the University. The sun had set and audible cues were suppressed. Very frew of the 35 subjects could guess the direction of the University, the spot from which the journey began. Thus, this experiment does not really support that which is said to be "well established" in the Summary . On the other hand, the subjects were uncannily accurate in "guessing" the directions of their homes -- a fact duly reported in the Summary . What kind of sense could be involved in such a capability? (Walmsley, D.J ., and Epps, W.R .; " ...
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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 Cold Fusion And Anomalies "I think the physicists have suddenly discovered electrochemistry," said A.J . Bard, from the University of Texas. Ironically, the "cold fusion" experiments making headlines these days are small, simple, and cheap. In contrast, the "hot fusion" physicists have spent some 30 billion dollars since 1951 on huge, complex machines. We don't yet know the specific thoughts and observations that led the Utah electrochemists to cold fusion, but we hope they were anomalous observations of some sort, such as the detection of unexpected neutrons from electrochemical experiments. If such turns out to be the case, the role of anomalies in scientific research will be underscored. Be that as it may, a genie has been uncorked. Both cold fusion and the re-cent excitement over high-temperature superconductivity demonstrate that a largely unexplored universe exists in the electrochemistry of the solid state. Favorite theories lie in shambles; faces are very red; the most elite of our scientific institutions were caught with blinders on! Beyond these amusements, the practical import for energy production is enormous, and who know what else will eventuate? But what about science itself? First, cold fusion will doubtless generate a brand new crop of anomalies which we are only able to guess at now. Pertinent to our effort to catalog anomalies, it is possible that cold fusion may be occurring deep in the earth giving rise ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 56: Mar-Apr 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The new holism -- but is it whole enough?In the short space of two weeks, the New Scientist printed two articles that confront the obvious complexity of nature. Not only is this complexity persistent under the attack of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, but it seems to actually increase with time. Do formative or guiding principles exist that science does not take into account? The two articles have very different answers. The creative cosmos. "Most people accept without question that the physical world is coherent and harmonious. Yet according to the traditional scientific picture, the Universe is just a random collection of particles with blind forces acting upon them. There is, then a deep mystery as to how a seemingly directionless assembly of passive entities conspire to produce the elaborate structure and complex organisation found in nature." The author of this introductory paragraph, P. Davies, asks, as we all do, "What is the origin of this creative power?" In groping for an answer, he presents first a common example of "blind" organization: the hexagonal convection cells in a pan of heated water. Using for a stepping stone the cooperative action of atoms in a laser, he leaps to the development of an embryo from a single strand of DNA! All such systems are "open"; that is, energy can flow in and out. They are also nonlinear, which means that chaotic, unpredictable action ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 55: Jan-Feb 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects The Ubiquity Of Sea Serpents Public interest is usually focussed (by the media) upon the supposed monsters in Loch Ness, Lake Champlain, the Chesapeake Bay, etc. Actually, an immense body of sea serpent reports also exists. B. Heuvelmans collected many of these in his 1965 classic In the Wake of the Sea-Serpents. P.H . LeBlond, a professor at the University of British Columbia, is extending Heuvelman's work, concentrating on the thousand miles of Pacific Coast between Alaska and Oregon. Since 1812, there have been 53 sightings of sea serpents or other unidentified animals along this narrow strip of ocean. Some of these are very impressive. Take this one for example: "In January 1984 a mechanical engineer named J.N . Thompson from Bellingham, Washington, was fishing for Chinook salmon from his kayak on the Spanish Banks about three-quarters of a mile off Vancouver, British Columbia, when an animal surface between 100 and 200 feet away. It appeared to be about 18-20 feet long and about two feet wide, with a 'whitish-tan throat and lower front' body. It had stubby horns like those of a giraffe, large (' twelve to fifteen inches long') floppy ears, and a 'somewhat pointed black snout.' The creature appeared to Thompson to be 'uniquely streamlined for aquatic life,' and to swim 'very efficiently and ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 60: Nov-Dec 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Mystery Glow On The Sea Floor "Marine scientists have discovered two thermal vents on the seabed that glow in the dark. A group of researchers, led by oceanographers from the University of Washington, detected faint light during an expedition to the Juan de Fuca Ridge. The ridge and the vents, 300 km off the coast of British Columbia, follow an underwater fault formed by the junction of the Juan de Fuca and the Pacific tectonic plates...John Delaney, leader of the expedition, described the glow as a 'flame-like light' that seems to emanate from the super-heated water emerging from the thermal vents, 2200 meters below the surface...'The source of the light is still unclear,' said Joe Cann, a geologist from the University of Newcastle in Britain. The scientists suspect that the water itself is glowing." The water temperature is so high -- 350 C -- that bioluminescence is unlikely. The presence of the glow does, however, imply that photosynthesis is still possible in these sunless depths. Life forms do congregate around these vents. A curious shrimp found in the area where the glow was noted is eyeless but does possess photoreceptors on its back! (Dayton, Sylvia; "The Underwater Light Fantastic," New Scientist, p. 32, August 25, 1988. Also: Anonymous; "Mystery Glow Emanates from Ocean Bottom," Albuquerque Tribune ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 56: Mar-Apr 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Wandering Molluscs "How could a mollusc which lived all its adult life cemented fast to the seabed in shallow water occur thousands of kilometers apart in the Arabian Gulf and the Caribbean? Almost identical forms of the extinct bivalve Torreites sanchezi have been found in rocks from the Caribbean and the Gulf. Peter Skelton of the Open University and Paul Wright of the University of Bristol suggest that the larval stage of the bivalve must have 'island hopped.'" The two researchers rule out convergent evolution and note that the two seas were never any closer together. They suppose that in Cretaceous times there was an equatorial current that swept the larval forms long distances. (Anonymous; "Wandering Molluscs," New Scientist, p. 33, October 15, 1987.) Comment. The same situation prevails for other species, such as some of the amphipods and the unique life forms dependent on seafloor vents. From Science Frontiers #56, MAR-APR 1988 . 1988-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 58: Jul-Aug 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Bacteria One dictionary's definition: "Widely distributed group of microscopic, one-celled vegetable organisms..." As a matter of fact, the nearly universal image of a bacterium is that of a simple, single-cell organism. But: "That view is now being challenged. Investigators are finding that in many ways an individual bacterium is more analogous to a component cell of a multicellular organism than it is to a free-living, autonomous organism. Bacteria form complex communities, hunt prey in groups and secrete chemical trails for the directed movement of thousands of individuals." J.A . Shapiro, author of the preceding quote, attributes the simplistic picture of bacteria to medical bacteriology, in which disease-causing bacteria are classically identified by isolating single cells, growing cultures from them, and then showing that they cause the disease in question. In the microscopic real world, bacteria virtually always live in colonies, which possess collective properties quite different and much more impressive than those of the single-cell-in-a -dish! That old human urge for reductionism has led us astray again. Shapiro seeks to remove the blinders of reductionism in a wonderful article in the June, 1988, issue of Scientific Amer can . We have room here to mention only the Myxobacteria, many of which never exist as single cells in nature. Even those that do are "social" in the sense that ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 52: Jul-Aug 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Small Icy Comets And Cosmic Gaia L.A . Frank and his associates at the University of Iowa have speculated that the earth is continuously and copiously bombarded by small, icy comets. Not just a few now and then, but a steady rain so intense that over geological time some major geological consequences must ensue. (See SF#44.) Some observers commented that surely these scientists have thrown away their careers by suggesting something so ridiculous. But the data are there -- in the form of dark spots on satellite images of the earth's dayglow -- and late results continue to support this far-out interpretation, ridiculous or not. "The mass of these objects is estimated at about 108 gm each, and the total flux is about 107 small comets per year. If this flux is representative of the average flux over geologic time, then the water influx is sufficient to fill the Earth's oceans. The fluxes of these objects are also large for all the planets outside the orbit of Earth. Considerations of thermal stability imply that the fluxes of comets that impact Venus are considerably less. The outer giant planets may be significantly heated relative to solar insolation by the small-comet impacts. For example, the total energy input due both to solar insolation and comet impacts may be similar for Uranus and Neptune. Thus it is possible that the temperatures of these two planets are similar, even though ...
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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 Shake No Quake January 30, 1987. Much of southern California was beset by a shaking phenomenon that stimulated scores of tele phone calls to newspapers, universities, and government facilities. The shaken areas included Long Beach, Pasadena, the San Gabriel Valley, Buena Park, San Pedro, Fullerton, and Newport Beach. Caltech's Seismological Laboratory, at Pasadena, insisted that no seismic activity had been detected. The FAA rulled out sonic booms; the Navy said its ships were not engaged in target practice, and the National Weather Service exonerated weather phenomena. No one seems to know what happened. (Tessel, Harry; "Southland Rattled, But This Mysterious Shake Is No Quake," Long Beach Press-Telegram , January 31, 1987. Cr. L. Farish) From Science Frontiers #51, MAY-JUN 1987 . 1987-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 61: Jan-Feb 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects 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. 51: May-Jun 1987 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Forests Frozen In Time Axel Heiberg Island in the Canadian Arctic is only 700 miles south of the present North Pole. Little grows there today, but there is on these icy shores the remnant of a forest that flourished 45 million years ago, according to conventional geological dating of the strata. A University of Saskatchewan scientist, J. Bassinger, has been studying the 15-20 layers of stumps, some with diameters of 3 feet, and logs up to 30 feet long. Even rather blackish leaves survive in the soil. This once lush forest boasted trees like dawn redwoods and water firs; being analogous to Florida's Cypress Swamp in the Everglades. So excellent is the preservation of the forest that its wood cuts as if it were recent lumber and burns readily. (Howse, John; "Forestry Frozen in Time," Maclean's Magazine, p. 55, September 8, 1986. Cr. B. Ickes) Comment. Question 1: Even if the earth was warmer 45 million years ago, could a tropical-type forest survive the nearly six months of total darkness at Axel Heiberg Island? Question 2: Can wood be preserved so well for so long? In the postulated warmer climate, there must have been many chemical and biological agents to promote rotting. Also relevant is the discovery, reported below, that wood that floats and burns with ease has been found in Antarctica. This Antarctic ...
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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. 56: Mar-Apr 1988 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Cometary scars on the moon?More information has surfaced on the enigmatic lunar swirl markings (Category ALE5 in our catalog: The Moon and the Planets. These whitish blotches are not only visually incongruous, being obviously different from the debris spla shes around craters, but they also exhibit curious magnetic properties. J.F . Bell and B.R . Hawke, of the University of Hawaii, have acquired near-infrared spectra of the swirl designated Reiner Gamma. They report that the composition of the swirl material does not match the crater ejecta; and, also, that a previously undetected reddish halo surrounds the swirl. Best guess at present: The swirls are the scars of comets -- probably less than 100 million years old. (Anonymous; "Cometary Scars on the Moon," Sky and Telescope, 75:11, 1988.) Comment. Does nearby earth also bear cometary scars? Some think that the 1908 Tunguska Event was a cometary impact. (See ETC2 in our catalog: Caro lina Bays, Mima Mounds .) Also see the the item below under GEOLOGY about comets and the earth's oceans. Reference. Both catalog volumes mentioned above are described here . From Science Frontiers #56, MAR-APR 1988 . 1988-2000 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. 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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... . 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. 62: Mar-Apr 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Researches In Reincarnation I. Stevenson, at the University of Virginia, has long studied claims of reincarnation. The method employed (and there are precious few alternatives) focuses on children who claim to have lived before and can provide verifiable details about their past lives. If the details check out, one can at least claim that reincarnation is a possible interpretation of the data. Usually, however, before a researcher can get to the scene of the phenomenon, the parents of the deceased have been found and the way has been left open for much exaggeration. In his present contribution, Stevenson reports three cases in Sri Lanka where the recollections of the supposedly reincarnated children have been written down in detail and the family of the deceased has not been located. Here is one of his cases: "The Case of Iranga . The child was born in a village of Sri Lanka near but not on the west coast, in 1981. When she was about 3 years old she spoke about a previous life at a place called Elpitiya. Among other details, Iranga mentioned that her father sold bananas, there had been two wells at her house, one well had been destroyed by rain, her mother came from a place called Matugama, she was a middle sister of her family, and the house where the family lived had red walls and a kitchen with a thatched roof. Her statements led to the identification of a family in ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 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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... 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 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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... 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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... 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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... 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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... . 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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... 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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... 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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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 67: Jan-Feb 1990 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Astronomers up against the "great wall"" For more than a decade now, astronomers have been haunted by a sense that the universe is controlled by forces they don't understand. And now comes a striking confirmation: 'The Great Wall.'" The Great Wall is the largest known structure in the universe at present, having superceded sundry superclusters and clusters of superclusters. The Wall is a "thin" (15 million-light-year) sheet of galaxies 500 million light years long by 200 wide; and it may extend even farther. It is emplaced some 200-300 million light years from earth. It helps outline contiguaous parts of vast "bubbles" of nearly empty space. Both the Wall and the adjacent voids are just too large for current theories to deal with. All popular theories have great difficulties in accounting for such large inhomogeneities. To illustrate an important observable -- the 2.7 K cosmic background radiation -- which is usually described as the afterglow of the Big Bang, ar gues for a very smooth, uniform distribution of galaxies. Great Walls are definitely anomalous. M.J . Geller, codiscoverer of the Great Wall with J.P . Huchra, remarked: "My view is that there is something fundamentally wrong in our approach to understanding such large-scale structure -- some key piece of the puzzle that we're missing." (Waldrop, ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 69: May-Jun 1990 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Megawalls Across The Cosmos "The universe is crossed by at least 13 vast 'walls' of galaxies, separated by about 420 million light years, according to a team of British and American researchers. The walls seem to be spaced in a very regular way that current theories of the origin of the universe cannot explain." "Walls" of galaxies emerge when galaxy separation distance is plotted against the number of galaxies possessing specific separation distances. (128 million parsecs = 420 million light years). The astronomers have collected observations of galaxy redshifts along a linear "borehole" through the universe 7 billion light years long centered on the earth. If the redshifts are assumed to be measures of distance (as mainstream thinking demands), one gets the clumping effect seen in the accompanying illustration. (Henbest, Nigel; "Galaxies Form 'Megawalls' across Space," New Scientist, p. 37, March 19, 1990.) Comment. Not mentioned in the above article are the papers by W.G . Tifft on quantized redshifts. (See SF#50, for example.) It will be interesting to learn if "boreholes" pointed in other directions will encounter the same megawalls. If they do, the earth will be enclosed by shells of galaxies, much as some elliptical galaxies are surrounded by shells of stars. Wouldn't it be hilarious if the earth were at the center of these concentric ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 75: May-Jun 1991 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Of iron whiskers and particles that increase mass with age!Two pillars of the Big Bang hypothesis are: (1 ) Redshifts of galaxies support the notion of an expanding universe; and (2 ) The background microwave radiation can be interpreted as the dying embers of the Big Bang itself. Proponents of the Big Bang feel secure atop these pillars. But should they? A few Big-Bang skeptics, who have survived considerable establishment pressure, see growing cracks in those pillars. J. Narlikar identified two such cracks and, best of all, offered exciting remedies: (1 ) The redshift relationship, which works well with galaxies, falls apart when applied to quasars (see graphs); and (2 ) The background microwave radiation is much too smooth to come from the lumpy universe we observe. Narlikar opines as follows: Plot of red shift versus galaxy faintness supports the proposition that red shift is proportional to distance The same plot for quasars produces a scatter of points, suggesting that here red shifts have nothing to do with distance. "Given these problems, it is not a sound strategy to put all of our cosmic eggs in one big-bang basket. Rather, we should explore other possibilities. Thirty years ago, there was a more open debate on alternative theories, which made valuable contributions to our undersanding of cosmology. For a healthy growth of the subject, the big bang hypothesis needs competition from other ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 65: Sep-Oct 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Breaking the 12,000-bp barrier Many times in SF we have reported evidence for humans occupying the Americas prior to 12,000 BP, in some cases long prior. The American archeological establishment has been very skeptical about such claims, but now the 12,000BP barrier seems to be collapsing. The turning point may have occurred at a recent meeting at the University of Maine's Center for the Study of the First Americans. The skeptics were bombarded by radiocarbon dates, tools, hearths, and bones from the Monte Verde site in Chile. Some previouslyunbelieving archeologists are now ready to admit dates around 13,000 BP for Monte Verde. (Lewin, Roger; "Skepticism Fades over Pre-Clovis Man," Science, 244:1140, 1989.) Comment. It was only in 1987 that R. Lewin wrote an article for Science entitled: "The First Americans are Getting Younger." Quite a turnaround!! (See SF#55.) Even so, the above Science article did not even mention some other presentations at the Maine conference. But the New York Times did. "At a conference here this week at the University of Maine, Niede Guidon, an archeologist at the Institute of Advanced Social Science Studies in Paris, startled scientists by reporting new results that she said showed the Brazilian rock shelters were occupied by humans at least as long ago as 45,000 years. ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 66: Nov-Dec 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Down With The Big Bang We might have concocted the above title, but we didn't ! Rather, J. Maddox, the Editor of Nature, raised that red flag. To make things even worse, he subtitled his editorial: "Apart from being philosophically unacceptable, the Big Bang is an oversimple view of how the Universe began, and it is unlikely to survive the decade ahead." His philosophical objcections to the Big Bang are powerful: "For one thing, the implication is that there was an instant at which time literally began and, so, by extension, an instant before which there was no time. That in turn implies that even if the origin of the Universe may be successfully supposed to lie in the Big Bang, the origin of the Big Bang itself is not susceptible to discussion." The Big Bang, Maddox says, is no more scientific than Biblical creation! The scientific objections involve space, time, the curvature of space. The Big Bang further fails at explaining quasars and the hidden mass of the Universe. Maddox doubts that the Big Bang will survive the new data to be provided by the Hubble telescope. (Maddox, John; "Down with the Big Bang," Nature, 340: 425, 1989.) From Science Frontiers #66, NOV-DEC 1989 . 1989-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... too terrible to contemplate, for astrophysicists have not taken up the challenge. They may be forced to take the phenomenon more seriously, because two new reports of redshift bunching have surfaced. First, B. Guthrie and W, Napier, at Edinburgh's Royal Observatory, have checked Tifft's "bunching" claim using accurately known red shifts of some nearby galaxies. They found a periodicity of 37.5 kilometers/second -- no matter in which direction the galaxies lay. (Gribbin, John; "' Bunched' Red Shifts Question Cosmology," New Scientist, p. 10, December 21/28, 1991.) The work of Guthrie and Napier is elaborated upon in the next item. Sec ond, B. Koo and R. Krone, at the University of Chicago, using optical red-shift measurements, discovered that, in one direction at least , "the clusters of galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars, seemed to be concentrated in evenly spaced layers." (Browne, Malcolm W.; "In Chile, GalaxyWatching Robot Seeks Measure of Universe," New York Times, December 17, 1991. Cr. P. Gunkel.) Comment. Explanations for the unexpected bunching vary and are highly controversial: There are systematic defects in the radiotelescopes and/or the observational techniques. But, as just reported by Koo and Krone, the phenomenon is also seen with optical instruments. The red shifts are not entirely due to the Doppler Effect and the recessional velocities of galaxies. If this is so, the dimensions ...
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... newly added section in Nature bearing the heading Hypothesis . Hypothesis "is intended as an occasional vehicle for scientific papers that fail to win the full-throated approval of the referees to whom they have been sent, but which are nevertheless judged to be of sufficient importance to command the attention of readers..." Certainly, this is a commendable development. But not surprisingly, the first paper is an at-tack on the Big Bang. Most of the authors of this first article are familiar to readers of Science Frontiers: H. Arp (Not all redshifts are measures of receding velocity.); G. Burbidge (Quasars are not as far away as they seem.); and F. Hoyle (The multidisciplinary iconoclast who helped de velop the Steady State theory of the universe.) None of these scientists has recanted, even in face of not-so-subtle pressures to conform. The first paper in Hypothesis. Arp et al summarize in two sentences: "We discuss evidence to show that the generally accepted view of the Big Bang model for the origin of the Universe is unsatisfactory. We suggest an alternative model that satisfies the constraints better." Most of the paper sets out observational evidence for the authors' main themes, as stated parenthetically above following their names. Space is also devoted to the contention that the vaunted "proofs" of the Big Bang are really not. Since these themes have appeared repeatedly in Science Frontiers, we will bypass details here. The paper concludes with suggestions for an alternative to the Big Bang, which is based ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 66: Nov-Dec 1989 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Cold Fusion Died Only In The Media When so many scientists ridiculed cold fusion, the media backed off. One reads virtually nothing on the subject today, despite some encourageing developments. In a panel discussion at the University of Utah, J. Bockris stated that Japan has organized a fusion institute where more than 80 scientists are "rapidly moving forward to develop cold fusion." Bockris himself has achieved positive cold-fusion results in his lab at Texas A&M . Another panel member, R. Huggins from Stanford, who has also replicated Utah's cold fusion results, remarked that several other U.S . labs have achieved excess power levels of 10-30 watts/cc. (Anonymous; Access to Energy , p. 4, October, 1989. Cr. P.F . Young) Despite positive results like those mentioned above, a recent report in Nature, by scientists at Cal Tech and the University of California, states emphatically that they can find no excess heat, neutrons, gamma rays, tritium, or helium in their cold-fusion experiments. (Lewis, N.S .; "Searches for Low-Temperature Nuclear Fusion of Deuterium in Palladium," Nature, 340:525, 1989.) From Science Frontiers #66, NOV-DEC 1989 . 1989-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 76: Jul-Aug 1991 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Cold fusion: new experiments and theories Cold-fusion research continues in many labs, particularly outside the US, where minds seem more open. At a recent meeting in the Soviet Union, 45 coldfusion papers revealed intense foreign activity. The Soviets are spending 15 million rubles for further research. In Japan, a Japanese-American team has even set up an experiment a half-mile underground to cut out stray radiation. (R2) However, the US is doing something despite the ridicule from the popular and scientific media. B.F . Bush and J.J . Lagowski of the University of Texas in Austin and M.H . Miles and G.S . Ostrom of the Naval Weapons Center in China Lake, Calif., say the helium levels they measured correlate roughly with the amount of heat generated in the fusion reaction. .. .. . Those who believe in cold fusion are quite excited. "It's a world-turning experiment, a lollapalooza," says John O'M . Bockris, a physical chemist who has researched cold fusion at Texas A&M University in College Station. (R1) According to Dr. Mallove of M.I .T ., another provocative set of experiments are those at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico where Dr. Howard Menlove has repeatedly detected bursts of neutrons, subatomic particles that are a fusion byproduct. (R2) ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 27 - 15 May 2017 - URL: /sf076/sf076p14.htm
