423 results found.
... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 111: May-Jun 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Is perfect pitch favored by natural selection?People with perfect pitch can identify, play, and/or sing a particular musical note without first hearing a reference note. (SF#99 and SF#102) Even if a string of notes is played randomly, they can instantaneously name them. Although musical training while young fosters perfect pitch, the talent also runs in families. A study of 500 musicians, with and without perfect pitch, by N. Freimer at the University of California, revealed that half of those claiming perfect pitch knew family members of like talent. Only 5% of those without perfect pitch made this claim. (Ref. 1) At the North Shore University Hospital, Manhasset, NY, P.K . Gregersen and M. de Andrade were able to locate 126 perfect-pitchers. In this select group, 5.5 % had parents with perfect pitch, and 26% had siblings thus gifted. Among musicians lacking perfect pitch, the figures were 1.1 % and 1.3 %, respectively. (Ref. 2) An unexpected (to us, anyway) correlation of perfect pitch and synethesia (SF#68) was made by Freimer's group. Some perfect-pitchers swear they can "see" musical notes, and even "smell" and "taste" them! (Ref. 1) References Ref. 1. Day, Michael; ...
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... even if they appear to show no pattern. But if the machine has an internal clock readable by the programmer, he can determine the machine's choice depending upon the time required for some complex calculation, which will vary according to such factors as minute voltage variations and the aging of the machine's components. For example, the CDC 3600, on which I learned to program in 1975, had an accessible microsecond clock, and my program to calculate the first five perfect numbers* required about 15 minutes of run time; the last few digits of the exact number of microseconds required to run this program each time varied quite unpredictably. In other words, it was a random number, except perhaps from the standpoint of philosophical determinism, which claims that every event in the entire universe has been determined from the beginning." (Everit, Richard G.; personal communication, November 2, 1996) *A perfect number is equal to the sum of its divisors. The first two are 6 and 28; the others being difficult to find with just pencil and paper! Comment. Computer unpredictability? There's something human in those chips! Of course, K. Capek knew this would be the case with any complex machine, as he predicted in his 1921 drama R.U .R . (Rossum's Universal Robots). From Science Frontiers #109, JAN-FEB 1997 . 1997-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... deep-sea vents. We will call them "geochemical creatures" to separate them from the "photosynthetic creatures" we are more familiar with. But, in principle at least, there could also be "Carnot creatures", whose metabolisms depend upon temperature differences like almost all human-built engines. Some bizarre animal, such as a meter-long tube worm, could plant one end on a hot rock surface and dangle the other in cold seawater to reject waste heat from its Carnot engine. Since thermodynamic-cycle efficiencies can approach 60% compared with only 10% for photosynthesis, evolution would have been remiss if it had not tried to evolve "Carnot creatures." For, as D. Jones comments below, Carnot creatures would be adaptable to many more habitats in the universe than photosynthetic creatures, which must have a sun with a very specific electromagnetic spectrum. "Many worlds, from distant 'brown dwarf' stars to the satellites of giant planets, may have internal heating but no effective 'Sun'. If Carnot life is possible, it may well have evolved in such dark and distant places -- making life abundant throughout the Universe. Indeed, our distant descendants may be able to harness Carnot biochemistry to sustain themselves on geothermal or residual browndwarf warmth when the Sun finally grows dim." (Jones, David; "The Dark Is Light Enough," Nature, 385:301, 1997.) Comments. To our knowledge, those who search for extraterrestrial life do not consider the possibility of Carnot creatures and wouldn't recognize them if ...
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... All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Malleable Memories The ease with which psychologists can plant false memories in the minds of their subjects -- even savvy college students -- casts clouds over several anomalous phenomena, such as UFO abductions, ball lightning, and sea-monster sightings. Even scientists can be deluded into believing they have seen things in their laboratories. (Remember Blondlot's experiments with N-rays and the several physicists who confirmed his results?) Not that psychologists go around intentionally implanting memories of dubious phenomena. All it takes are suggestion, expectation, and/or paradigm-passion. At a 1997 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, several psychologists told of their "malleable-memory" experiments. H.L . Roediger III, Washington University, asked students: ". .. to look at a list of 15 words that included 'bed,' 'dream,' 'blanket,' 'doze,' and 'pillow.' Just over half said afterward that the word 'sleep' had been on the list, even though it wasn't ." E. Loftus, University of Washington, first asked a group of parents to describe some events that their children -- all now adults -- had experienced. Then, she went to the children and: ". .. walked them through a series of real incidents [mentioned by their parents] and then threw in a fake one: As a young child, they had been lost in a shopping mall and were frightened and cried until ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 112: Jul-Aug 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A TWISTED COSMOS?An astronomer really risks his or her reputation if he or she suggests that the universe has a preferred direction. A core belief in cosmology maintains that no point or direction in the cosmos is in any way "special." So, B. Nodland and J.P . Ralston stirred up a hornets' nest this past spring when they published a paper that began with this paragraph: "Polarized electromagnetic radiation propagating across the Universe has its plane of polarization rotated by the Faraday effect. We report findings of an additional rotation, remaining after Faraday rotation is extracted, which may represent evidence for cosmological anisotropy on a vast scale." (Ref. 1) Most inflammatory was their claim that the plane of polarization of the radio waves rotated more along a particular direction [axis?]; specifically, along a line connecting the constellations Aquila and Sextans. (Ref. 2) Only a few days after the NodlandRalston paper was published, it was blasted in Science. The major complaint was that their data were old and incomplete, since they derived mainly from observations made prior to 1980. (Ref. 3) Indeed, a similar study using more recent measurements but fewer radiation sources seems to refute the NodlandRalston claim of a preferred direction in the cosmos. (Ref. 4) Nodland and Ralston disagree with the charges and the implications of the other study. It will be a while before this ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 112: Jul-Aug 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Icy minicomets caught by a satellite camera?A geophysicist really risks his or her reputation if he or she suggests that the earth is bombarded each by 20 house-size, icy minicomets. Well, L. Frank, University of Iowa, did just that in 1986. He was duly pilloried for his trouble. But, at the 1997 spring meeting of the American Geophysical Union, Frank presented new data to back up his previous assertions. The most startling of his new evidence came from a camera aboard a NASA satellite. Time-lapse photos imaged two objects streaking into the atmosphere over Poland and Germany. Frank identified these as clouds of water molecules from disrupted icy minicomets. The clouds had expanded from the house-size minicomets to clouds 3550 miles wide, weighing 20-40 tons. Frank thinks the minicomets come from a cloud of such objects orbiting the sun from earth out to Jupiter and beyond. Why don't they evaporate in the sunlight and near-vacuum of outer space? Perhaps, thought Frank, they are protected by a thin coating of carbon. (Roylance, Frank D.; "Space Snowballs Theory Gains Credence," Baltimore Sun, May 29, 1997. Also: Monastersky, R.; "Is Earth Pelted by Space Snowballs?" Science News, 151:332, 1997. Thanks to all who sent in clippings. There are too many to mention here. Frank' ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 119: Sep-Oct 1998 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Anthropology unbound Basalt synthesis invented over 3,000 years ago! Astronomy The end of the old-model universe Einstein in free fall Biology Murder in the nest The black death and ccr5-delta 32 Mapping with a song Cassowary, 1; automobile, 0 Geology Really ancient oil -- and abundant life Mounds of mystery Geophysics Some green flashes are yellow Auroral maps! Waterfall phenomena Physics Curious effects department ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 113: Sep-Oct 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Acoustical Pipes In Beaked Whales?Because they are relatively rare, the comings and goings of beaked whales remain largely unrecorded. These mammals are effectively toothless for predatory purposes. In fact, some marine biologists speculate that they secure their slippery prey by suddenly vacuuming them up by actuating a pumplike tongue. (AR#2 ) But how do the beaked whales find their prey in the first place? With their sonar, of course. But these superbly streamlined animals lack the huge external ears of the sonar-using bats. How do they detect the weak echoes bouncing off fleeing fish? P. Zioupos and J. Currey, at the University of York, have drawn attention to the rostrum bone that forms the beaklike upper jaw of Blaineville's beaked whale. At 2.7 grams/cubic centimeter, this bone is 50% denser than the average mammalian bone. "The bone also turned out to have unique chemical properties. It contains 35 per cent calcium by weight -- 13 per cent more than the highest value known previously. Using microscopes, the team showed that the bone is riddled with tiny tunnels. containing highly concentrated minerals." The channelled nature of this bone make it very brittle, making it unlikely that it is used as a ram in mating bouts. Zioupos and Currey propose that this uniquely structured bone is really an acoustical pipe for the beaked whales' sonar signals. (Barnett, Adrian ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 114: Nov-Dec 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects About As Anomalous As Mounds Can Get The title refers to a circle of 11 earthen mounds located new Monroe, Louisiana; the Watson Break site. Local residents have known about the mounds for years, but archeologists weren't attracted to them until clear-cutting of the trees in the 1970s made the size and novelty of Watson Break all too obvious. Just how anomalous is Watson Break? Archeologist V. Steponaitis, from the University of North Carolina, opined: "It's rare that archaeologists ever find something that so totally changes our picture of what happened in the past, as is true for this case." On what does Steponaitis base such a powerful statement? Watson Break is dated at 5,0005,400 BP (Before Present), some three millennia before the well-known Moundbuilders started piling up earthen structures from the Mississippi Valley to New York State. In other words, the site is anomalously early. Indications are that Watson Break was built by hunter-gatherers, but no one really knows much about them; there's an aura of mystery here. Watson Break consists of 11 mounds -- some as high as a two-story house -- connected by a peculiar circular ridge 280 meters in diameter. The back-breaking labor required to collect and pile up all this dirt is incompatible with the life style of mobile bands of hunter-gatherers. The purpose of the ...
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... pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects An Arkansas Tsunami Deposit?Yes, Arkansas is hundreds of kilometers from any ocean. Could a tsunami ever reach Little Rock, or even 120 kilometers northeast of Little Rock where, atop a 76-meter (250-foot) hill are perched giant blocks of sandstone. These blocks range up to 7.6 meters (25 feet) in size and weigh many tons. No native rocks in the area match them. The Ice Age glaciers never reached Arkansas, so they can't be glacial erratics. Where did they come from? One clue is the presence of glauconite in the sandstone. Glauconite is common in marine rocks, so suspicion points toward the Gulf of Mexico. Geologist G. Patterson, University of Memphis, thinks that the huge chunks of sandstone came from coastal Louisiana and were carried some 650 kilometers (400 miles) inland by the giant tsunami raised by the asteroid or comet that smashed into the Yucatan to close out the Cretaceous. That, of course, was when the dinosaurs were forced into oblivion. But could the tsunami really have transported such huge rocks 650 kilometers? (Falk, Dan; "Washed Up," New Scientist, p. 26, November 7, 1998.) Comments. Tsunami debris from the end-Cretaceous impact has been found along the Gulf Coast and on some Caribbean islands. In northeastern Mexico, geologists have found a debris layer 3-meters thick that is also of the right age. This layer contains tektites, glass spheres, ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 108: Nov-Dec 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Those selfish genes may also be intelligent!R. Dawkins has proposed that we humans and other organisms are merely lumbering life-support systems for our genes. In this view, genomes are the masters, controlling our evolution and behavior to ensure their own survival and multiplication. In short, our genes are "selfish." J. Shapiro, at the University of Chicago, has gone a step further and ascribed still another human attribute to genomes. "Genomes function as true intelligent systems, which can be readjusted when conditions require. We still lack testable theories to explain how this can be done. ( Genetica , 84:4 , 1991)" Perhaps we see evidence of this "intelligence" of genes when bacteria and other microorganisms rapidly accommodate to environmental challenges, as in the application of new antibiotics. In this context, read below about the fast-evolving cichlid fishes of Lake Victoria. These fish must have macho genes! From Science Frontiers #108, NOV-DEC 1996 . 1996-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 108: Nov-Dec 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects More Evidence Of Precolumbian Contacts From Asia The following news item appeared in the NEARA Transit: "Dr. George Carter excitedly reported news of a possible breakthrough in Asian/pre-Columbian contact. Dr. H.M . Xu is a Chinese scholar teaching linguistics at the Central Oklahoma State University at Enid, OK. There is a small publication reporting Dr. Xu's ability to read some Chinese characters plainly visible on several ceremonial jade adzes from La Venta, Mexico. The dates would be about 1100 B.C ., relating well to the beginning of the Olmecs." (Anonymous; NEARA Transit, 8:7 , no. 2, September 1996) NEARA = New England Antiquities Research Association. Comment. This is a first-class anomaly because mainstream archeologists wince visibly at the mention of ancient Chinese visits to the New World. Hopefully, details will be forthcoming. Reference. Our Handbook Ancient Man contains much more information on precolumbian contacts. To order this book, see here . From Science Frontiers #108, NOV-DEC 1996 . 1996-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... 9300-year-old caucasian skeleton in north america?The town of Kennewick, Washington, has lent its name to this ferociously controversial skeleton. It all began when the local sheriff asked anthropologist J. Chatters to take a look at a partially buried skeleton found on the shore of the Columbia River. (Ref. 1) "From head to toe, the bones were largely intact. The skeleton was that of a man, middle-aged at death, with Caucasian features, judging by skull measurements. Imbedded in the pelvis was a spearhead made of rock." Chatters initially thought he had merely a "pioneer" who had met an untimely death in the Wild West! "The real stunner came last month [June 1996], after bone samples were sent to the University of California at Riverside for radiocarbon dating. The conclusion: the skeleton of the 'pioneer' is 9,300 years old." (Ref. 2) Actually, the skeleton may well be that of a "pioneer" but one who came from the direction of the setting sun instead of the rising sun. Of course, it is perfectly all right for Asians to have crossed the Bering Strait into North America over 9,000 years ago, but a Caucasian raises scientific and emotional problems. "If Kennewick Man were actually Caucasian, it would be a startling discovery. So far, all of the oldest North American skeletons have been of Asian descent, although features on a few skulls have been controversially interpreted as Caucasoid. Another possibility is that the first Americans -- ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 110: Mar-Apr 1997 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Circles of contention A NAZCA ZODIAC? Cracks in the kaimanawa-wall story? Astronomy The crstalline universe Martian life: act ii Biology Nannobacteria: life on a different scale Is oliver a "humanzee"? Cichlids punctuate equilibrium Sparrows at play Geology Did a methane burp down twa800? A METEOR IMPACT OR EARTH SLUMP? Geophysics Unusual circulating cloud object Unidentified light Psychology "PLANETARY VISIONS" DURING NDEs Mathenatics http://www.aros.net/angio/pistuff/piquer Alphamagic squares ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 110: Mar-Apr 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects http://www.aros.net/angio/pistuff/piquery At this Web site you can enter your Social Security Number (or telephone number, etc.) and discover if it appears among the first 1.25 million digits of pi. Perhaps when God was designing the Universe and was contemplating what the value of pi should be, he put your number somewhere in this transcendental number! (Anonymous; New Scientist, p. 64, January 4, 1997.) Comment. Of course, pi has as many digits as you care to compute (at least we think it does!) If your number is not among the first 1.25 million digits, it will certainly appear somewhere later. It's just that you are not first in line! From Science Frontiers #110, MAR-APR 1997 . 1997-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Something Strange Is Going On!Where? "Everywhere, of course," is the answer of any anomalist worth his or her salt. Especially, though, something strange in going on with prime numbers. In an homage to the revered mathematician P. Erdos, who died September 20, 1996, D. Mackenzie mentioned a theory Erdos published in 1940 with M. Kac. This theory states that a plot of the number of prime factors of very large numbers forms a bell curve -- almost as if these numbers were "choosing" their prime factors at random. Alluding to a assertion Einstein is said to have made, Erdos commented: "God may not play dice with the universe, but something strange is going on with the prime numbers." (Mackenzie, Dana; "Homage to an Itinerant Master," Science, 275:759, 1997.) Cross reference. The distribution of prime numbers is more than strange, see the plot in SF#42/332. What do prime numbers have to do with the real world? Are math and natural science really separate, unlinked disciplines? Pythagoras, 2,500 years ago, decided that: "All is number." He may be right. A strange connection seems to exist between prime numbers and quantum physics. On one side of the chasm that supposedly separates math from physics, we have the prime numbers and the Riemann zeta function, which provides information on how prime numbers are distributed ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 111: May-Jun 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects An Anasazi Ley Line?A popular archeological pastime in Britain is "ley hunting" or the search for alignments of ancient sites. The underlying premise is that the peoples who constructed Stonehenge, Avebury, and other megalithic sites had a penchant for aligning them, even when they were separated by many miles. Exactly why anyone would wish to go to such trouble escapes the modern mind. American archeologists generally eschew ley hunting, but S. Lekson, from the University of Colorado, was surprised to find that three important Anasazi sites in the Southwest are actually aligned with high precision along Longitude 107 57'. The three sites are: Aztec Ruins and Chaco Canyon (New Mexico) and Casas Grandes (Mexico). Even though the first and last are separated by about 450 miles, all sites are within 1 kilometer (5 /8 of a mile) of the north-south line. Lekson maintains that an alignment this precise cannot have happened by chance. How could the Anasazi have achieved such an accurate alignment over such rugged terrain? It would not be easy even with modern transits. (Cohen, Philip; "One Dynasty to Rule Them All," New Scientist, p. 17, December 14, 1996.) Comment. It is interesting but perhaps not relevant that the Olmecs, predecessors of the Anasazi farther to the south, may have possessed the magnetic compass. See: Carlson, John B. ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 107: Sep-Oct 1996 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Who built the kaimanawa wall? The irish in iceland Astronomy An old galaxy in a young part of the universe Precocious structure in the cosmos "NOT WITH A BANG BUT A WHIMPER" Biology Organ music High social order in a new order Subversive cancer cells Rock-based life Geology Antarctica's lake vostok revisited Geophysics More sparks on the beach Horizon-to-horizon bioluminescent bubbling band Tear of the gods? Psychology Did mozart use the golden section? The perils of dhmo Ten myths of science ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 118: Jul-Aug 1998 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Tactile Ventriloquism An eerie psychological experiment has been invented by M. Bitvinick at the University of Pittsburgh. The subject rests his or her arm and hand on a table but is prevented from seeing them by a screen. A realistic rubber arm and hand are placed next to the real arm and hand but on the other side of the screen and in full view of the subject. The experimenter strokes each hand in synchrony with small paintbrushes. Result: The subject thinks that the rubber hand is his or her own and belongs to his or her body. The experimenter strokes only the rubber hand. Result: The subject claims his or her hand has become numb. Botvinick terms this transfer of tactile sensations "tactile ventriloquism." (Anonymous; "There's the Rub," Discover, 19:21, June 1998.) Comment. Not reported: (5 ) Only the real hand is stroked. Of course, the subject would see that the rubber hand, which is now thought to be his or her own, is not being stroked. Nevertheless, what would be the result, especially after a long session of synchronous stroking? What connection, if any, is there with phantom-limb phenomena? From Science Frontiers #118, JUL-AUG 1998 . 1998-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 107: Sep-Oct 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Precocious Structure In The Cosmos Allied to the problem of old galaxies in young regions of the cosmos is the appearance of substantial amounts of structure early in the history of the universe. The new Keck 10-meter telescope in Hawaii has revealed giant "walls" of youthful galaxies rather than the more uniform distribution expected right after the Big Bang. There is just too much order much too early. (Glanz, James; "Precocious Structures Found," Science, 272:1590, 1996 From Science Frontiers #107, SEP-OCT 1996 . 1996-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... nearly twice the age of the great pyramids of Egypt, has been discovered. The rectangular stone ziggurat under the sea off the coast of Japan could be the first evidence of a previously unknown Stone Age civilization, say archeologists." Wow! Is this true? This so-called "structure" is 600 feet long and 90 feet high. Said to be about 10,000 years old, it obviously predates the edifices of the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians. The "structure" is now under about 75 feet of ocean near a small island named Yonaguni southwest of Okinawa. During the Ice Ages, it would have been exposed, just like the Bering Land Bridge to the north. Of course, the crucial question is: Is it really artificial? R. Schoch, the Boston University geologist who vouches that the Sphinx is also about 10,000 years old (SF#79), described the "structure" as a series of huge steps about 1 meter high. Schoch is impressed by the regularity of the steps, but does not discount a natural origin. A photo taken by divers does reveal a remarkably regular, stepped surface, but nature can be very methodical on occasion. Adding to the artificiality of the "structure" is the claim that a "road" encloses it. (Barot, Trushar; "Divers Find World's Oldest Building," London Times, April 26, 1998. Cr. A.C .A . Silk & D. Phelps) Comments. If this submerged "structure" is really man-made, it ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 112: Jul-Aug 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects You May Become What You Eat When we scarf down a hamburger, we ingest bovine DNA. The textbooks say that this alien DNA is destroyed during digestion. Otherwise, it might "somehow" be incorporated into our own DNA, leading in time to our acquisition of some bovine characteristics! You'll recall that cannibals thought to acquire the virtues of their slain enemies by grabbing a bite or two! But this all sounds pretty farfetched, doesn't it? Maybe not. When W. Doerfler and R. Schubbert, at the University of Cologne, fed the bacterial virus M13 to a mouse, snippets of the M13's genes turned up in cells taken from the mouse's intestines, spleen, liver, and white blood cells. Most of the alien DNA was eventually rejected, but some was probably retained. In any event, alien DNA in food seems to make its way to and survive for a time in the cells of the eater. (Cohen, Philip; "Can DNA in Food Find Its Way into Cells?" New Scientist, p. 14, January 4, 1997.) Comment. We are only half-kidding when we ask if food consumption could affect the evolution of a species. After all, our cells already harbor mitochondria, which are generally admitted to have originally been free bacteria that were "consumed" by animal cells. The process even has a name ...
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... Solar System has been moving through a rather empty region of interstellar space between the spiral arms of the Milky Way. But a few thousand years ago, it entered a diffuse shell of material expanding outward from an active star-forming region called the Scorpius-Centaurus Association. Such 'super-bubble' shells of gas and dust result from the formation of massive stars, or the explosion of those stars as they become supernovas, and contain gas and dust clouds of varying densities." The density of matter in this solarsystem-engulfing shell could well shroud our planetary system with dust and gas a million times more dense than that we now encounter. If this happens, the sun's rays would slowly dim and life forms dependent on photosynthesis would expire. P. Frisk, a University of Chicago astronomer, forecasts a "bumpy ride" for earth dwellers during the next 50,000 years; but we think Eliot's "whimper" is more expressive of what might happen. (Jayawardhana, Ray; "Earth Menaced by Superbubble," New Scientist, p. 15, June 22, 1996) Comments. A possible precursor of things to come was the enigmatic "Siberian Darkness" of September 18, 1938. (See our Report #7 , xeroxed classics series. Also: Chapter GWD in Tornados, Dark Days, etc.) Science fiction writers have not neglected the "whimper-death" idea: F. Hoyle's The Black Cloud and H.G . Wells' In the Days of the Comet . From Science Frontiers #107 ...
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... is dated between 43,000 and 82,000 years old and is the oldest-known, deliberately manufactured musical instrument ever found. (Folger, Tim, and Menon, Shanti; "Strong Bones, and Thus Dim-Witted? Or Much Like Us?" Discover, 18:32, January 1997.) Really stale chewing gum! The journal Nature recently printed the photograph of a tooth-marked wad of chewing gum said to be 6,500 years old. This particular wad came from a Swedish bog, but similar wads have been found all over Northern Europe. Not having access to South American chicle, ancient confectioners made the gum from birch bark. Birch bark was also the source of the tar primitive humans used for gluing and waterproofing. E. Aveling, University of Bradford, has concocted a fresh batch of birchbark gum for a taste test. (No one volunteered to try the "old" stuff!) She reported that it is neither pleasant nor unpleasant, but neither are modern-day Moxie and Vegamite. The tooth impressions on the ancient gum wads prove that they were chewed mainly by children and teenagers -- probably to annoy their parents. (Battersby, Stephen; "Plus C'est le Meme Chews," Nature, 385:679. 1997.) Comment. So far there is no evidence to prove that the ancient gum-makers had progressed to the more sophisticated level of bubble-gum manufacture. A not-too-appetizing wad of ancient birch-bark chewing gum. (From Nature). From ...
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... ,000year barrier now seems to have been officially breached. The Monte Verde dates imply either: The Bering land bridge, thousands of miles to the north, was crossed a few millennia before 12,500 BP, or The Monte Verde people arrived by some other route, perhaps by ship! (Wilford, John Noble; "Human Presence in Americas Is Pushed Back a Millennium," New York Times, February 11, 1997. Cr. M. Colpitts. Also: Meltzer, David J.; "Monte Verde and the Pleistocene Peopling of the Americas," Science, 276:754, 1997.) Comment. Two delicious ironies emerge from this archeological turning point: The "We knew it all along" phase of the paradigm shift has appeared. K. Butzer, University of Texas, said that Monte Verde has been "uncontroversial" for some time. But it was only in 1990 that the "Clovis Police" insisted that the 12,000-year barrier be moved back to 11,500 years. (SF#72/22) T. Dillehay, champion of the antiquity of Monte Verde, is one of the main critics of N. Guidon's dating of Brazil's Pedra Furada site at 50,000 years. (SF#108) Yet, Dillehay's team is finding dates that seem to be over 33,000 years just 70 meters from the Monte Verde 12,500-year dig. From Science Frontiers #112, JUL-AUG 1997 . 1997-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 112: Jul-Aug 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects From The Depths Of The Amazon Trawls lowered between 9 and 45 meters into the Amazon's muddy waters have brought up many bizarre fish never seen before. J. Lundberg and his team from the University of Arizona found two species of electric fish that subsist entirely on the tails of other electric fish. Some of the catfish are armorplated; others are transparent; another catfish is only 8 millimeters (1 /3 inch) long. Most interesting to taxonomists will be two separate species of electric fish that can be told apart only by the different patterns of electrical discharges they generate! What will trawls capture in the Rio Negro which is about 100 meters deep in one place? (Bille, Matthew A.; "Recent Discoveries: Fishing in South America," Exotic Zo ology , 4:1 , March/April 1997. Publication address: 3405 Windjammer Dr., Colorado Springs, CO 80920.) From Science Frontiers #112, JUL-AUG 1997 . 1997-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... have claimed they have been visited by spirits, gods, angels, or extraterrestrial entities. C.M . Cook and M.A . Persinger associate these visitations with the phenomenon of "sensed presence" or the awareness of an extrapersonal, incorporeal entity. Cook and Persinger assert first that the so-called "sense of self" is a construct of the brain's left hemisphere -- the side usually associated with language. Second, they hypothesize that a "sensed presence" (spirit, god, etc.) is really only a fleeting right-brain homologue of the left-brain "sense of self," something like a transient shortcircuit between brain hemispheres that probably travels along that interconnecting conduit called the "corpus callosum." Repairing to their laboratory at the Laurentian University, Cook and Persinger asked subjects to press a button when they felt a "mystical presence." Unbeknownst to the subjects, they were occasionally exposed to weak magnetic fields. More often than chance would allow, mystical presences (button pushes) correlated with applications of magnetic fields. (Cook, C.M ., and Persinger, M.A .; "Experimental Induction of the "Sensed Presence" in Normal Subjects and an Exceptional Subject," Perceptual and Motor Skills, 85:683, 1997.) Comments. It is difficult to decide whether sensing an unseen presence is fundamentally different from the sense of being stared at by a real person! The implication of the above experiments is that magnetic fields can induce "mystical presences." Magnetic fields are everywhere; certainly ...
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... which a person's occupation was described or suggested by his or her surname. A classic example is seen in a paper on incontinence published in the British Journal of Urology by J.W . Splatt and D. Weedon! Does a person's name exert a psychological force of the choice of a career? We have seen no formal studies of nominative determinism, but we have just discovered a closely allied phenomenon that has been scientifically investigated. We call it "monogrammic determinism.' An individual's monogram does not seem to be associated with his or her occupation but rather with longevity. People with monograms such as ACE, WOW, or GOD tend to live longer than those with monograms like PIG, RAT, DUD, or ILL. The study was conducted at the University of San Diego, where 27 years of California death certificates were examined. Only men were chosen because their initials did not change with marriage. They were divided into three groups: (1 ) those with "good" monograms; (2 ) those with "bad" monograms; and (3 ) a control group with "neutral" monograms. Those men bearing "good" monograms lived 4.48 years longer than those in the control group; those with "bad" monograms, 2.8 years less. Manifestly, being called DUD or PIG all your life can shorten it. Being addressed as ACE or GOD can give one a psychological boost that prolongs life. (Anonymous; "Do Initials Help Some Live Longer?" San Mateo Times, March 28, ...
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... that pets can somehow sense when their absent owners have begun the trip homeward. An Austrian television company decided to take up Sheldrake's gauntlet. Their experimental subjects were P. Smart and her terrier Jaytee, both of Ramsbottom, England. Two film crews were dispatched to Ramsbottom; one to follow and film Smart, and the other, Jaytee's activities while Smart was away. Sure enough, at the moment Sharp and the shadowing TV crew decided to return, after an absence of a few hours, Jaytee ran to the porch and waited there until his mistress returned. Naturally, this proof of Jaytee's "strong and reliable" psychic ability received much attention in the media. Then, in 1995, Sheldrake invited R. Wiseman and M. Smith, at the University of Hertfordshire, to independently verify Jaytee's talent. After all, Austrian television companies have little scientific standing. Wiseman and Smith conducted four experiments in all based on a protocol designed to satisfy the inevitable scientific critics. For example, "success" had to be carefully defined, because Jaytee frequently ran out to the porch when other people, dogs, and cars went by the house, and sometimes for no obvious reason at all. In addition, Wiseman and Smith had to be sure that Jaytee was not just responding to Smart's routine, and that there were no sensory cues from Smart (visual, acoustic, or smell) or from the observers left behind to monitor Jaytee who might know when Smart was expected to return. There were several other precautions including random ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 113: Sep-Oct 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A VANISHED PLANET?Almost every week, it seems, a new Texas-sized object is discovered in the outer solar system. In the inner solar system, however, some astronomers are finding "holes" where planets seem to have been ejected by unknown forces. D. Christodoulou, Louisiana State University, found one such "hole" serendipitously. He was studying how the sun and the planets might have condensed from the (hypothesized) cloud of primordial gas and dust. Factoring in gravity, rotation, and magnetic fields, he found the cloud condensing in concentric rings at just the right locations for protoMercury, proto-Venus, and proto-earth. The fourth ring, however, did not correspond to any existing planet, and the position of proto-Mars was off the mark. But the asteroids and outer planets fell rather neatly into place. The implication of these calculations is that some turmoil in the early inner solar system cast out one planet and dislocated Mars. (Hecht, Jeff; "Did Extra Planet Vanish into Outer Space?" New Scientist, p. 18, June 14, 1997.) Comment. These are sour notes in the "music of the spheres," but don't be overly concerned; these are just calculations based upon many assumptions. Calculated positions of rings of condensed dust and gas compared to actual planet locations. From Science Frontiers #113, SEP-OCT ...
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... Rarely, green flashes are observed just as the tip of the setting sun disappears below the horizon. Most of these flashes have a perfectly good explanation. The earth's atmosphere acts like a prism and disperses the light of the sun into a spectrum, and the last portion of this spectrum that one usually sees is green. Conditions have to be just right, though. A flat horizon and a layer of warm air are important. But even when conditions seem perfect, the green flash does not always appear, and all one sees is the red tip of the sun sinking out of sight. Even if the patient observer is rewarded by a green flash, he may really have been deceived, for there are "false" green flashes. A. Young, San Diego State University, reported at a recent meeting of the American Astronomical Society on a peculiar type of optical illusion that can afflict observers of the setting sun. It seems that the intense red light of the sun near the horizon can bleach the red-sensitive receptors in the retina so that an intent observer becomes temporarily color blind to red. When this happens, the observer sees the yellow part of the dispersed solar spectrum as being green (yellow minus red = green). The true green flash may never have appeared at all. (Seife, Charles; "Don't Let Your Eyes Deceive You," New Scientist, p. 5, June 5, 1998.) Comments. You are right! Blue lies beyond green in the spectrum. Much rarer than green flashes are blue ...
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... ." May 25, 1997. Near Loco, Oklahoma. In what might be called a "video replay" of the above phenomenon, L. Lamphere caught a similar fast-moving "object" near a tornado-spawning storm. He and his team had a digital video camera trained on the storm and were taking time-lapse still photos. Lamphere reported: "The ceiling was maybe 900 feet. We were about four or five miles from the storm, which was tracking southeast. The object was well-defined and well-lit, but was obscured briefly by scud clouds. It dipped and bobbled in its trajectory before it flew into a storm known to contain hail the size of baseballs and then reemerged, apparently undamged. "Scientists at the Astrophysics Department at the University of Oklahoma believe the object was solid and may have been traveling between 9,000 and 20,000 mph." (Anonymous; "Image on Storm Video Raises Questions," Dallas Morning News, June 21, 1997. AP item. Cr. D. Phelps.) Comment. Just one high-speed "object" might be dismissed as, say, a photographic artifact. But, when two are caught by cameras imaging violent meteorological events, we must conclude that something unusual is going on. From Science Frontiers #113, SEP-OCT 1997 . 1997-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... light does not travel far. Sound, however, does; and sound is reflected from objects just as light is. This is of course the basis of underwater sonar, in which a sound source replaces the sun or a diver's floodlight. But even without an active sound source, the ocean is full of sound. Waves, rain, and the sounds made by marine animals create a background of noise that "illuminates" objects, not directly, but from the environment in general. Using only this enveloping background sound, it is possible to create acoustical images of objects. "Vision" of this sort is equivalent to "facial vision" in blind humans, who can hear objects using the environmental sound reflected from them. J. Potter and his colleagues at the National University of Singapore have constructed an array of underwater microphones that detects "slices" of the acoustical environment around it. When processed by a computer, images of objects emerge by virtue of the background noise reflected from them. This group has also estimated the ability of dolphins to detect and process background noise. They suggest that dolphins should be able to "see" objects at least 25 feet away without even using their active sonar; that is, their clicks. This passive acoustical imaging would be a useful evolutionary development because dolphin clicks warn some prey and allow them to escape. (Anonymous; "Cacophony of the Deep," Discover, 19:19, May 1998.) Comments. Some insects can detect the sonar cries of pursuing bats and take evasive action. Perhaps some fish ...
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... good-sized rocks at the ends of long tracks they have made when some force has propelled them across the flat playa surface. What has moved these rocks, some of which weigh 700 pounds? The current consensus holds that wind is the motive force, but that it is inadequate to move the rocks directly. Instead, the wind acts upon sheets of ice in which the rocks are frozen. As these sheets of ice are moved across the playa, the keels of the frozen-in rocks leave those curious trails that have intrigued Forteans for many decades. (SF#109) Playa sliders have also been found at Magdalenasmeer Playa in South Africa, and in Nevada and Tunisia. In a recent issue of Geology Today, C.C . Reeves, Jr., Texas Tech University, adds to the list a playa at Double Lakes, Texas. Of special interest at Double Lakes is not the rocks and other debris blown across the playa but a discarded hotwater tank. It, too, is a playa slider. It first left a trail a few hundred meters long when it was frozen in an ice sheet spigot down, with the spigot furrow quite obvious. The ice sheet then melted, and the tank was blown over spigot-up. Another ice sheet formed, and the tank was off across the playa again. This time the keel of the tank excavated a furrow as wide as the tank's length, 91 centimeters, several centimeters deep, and 122 meters long. Reeves contends that this is the world's largest playaslider furrow! ( ...
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... ) Much earlier, in 1881, Hahn, an eminent German geologist, asserted that he had examined thin sections cut from chondrites and found fossils of sponges, corals, and crinoids. In fact, the extraterrestrial coral that Hahn found even received the scientific name Hahnia meteoritica ! In the end, though, Hahn's meteoric life forms met the same fate as the "organized elements" of Nagy et al. (Ref. 2) Ref. 1. Urey, Harold C.; "Biological Materials in Meteorites: A Review," Science, 151:157, 1966. Ref. 2. Bingham, Francis; "The Discovery of Organic Remains in Meteoritic Stones," Popular Science Monthly , 20:83, 1881. Both references can be found in our Handbook Mysterious Universe. For information on this book, visit here . Some of the "Organized elements" found in carbonaceous chondrites in the early 1960s. They turned out to be terrestrial contaminants (Ref. 1). From Science Frontiers #108, NOV-DEC 1996 . 1996-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... Work Although some people swear to the efficacy of homeopathy's "remedies," skeptics have been fond of pointing out that these fluids are so dilute that no molecules of the active ingredients are likely to remain. Believers respond that the fluid remedies somehow retain the "essence" of the active ingredient. In effect, they maintain that water has a "memory." No wonder mainstream scientists scoff at homeopathy. But wait, perhaps water can have a memory! A Cal Tech chemist has put extremely dilute solutions under his electron microscope and found that some contain strange "ice" crystals, even though room temperature and pressure prevail. Called "IE crystals," they are produced through the action of ions. They are stable even at higher temperatures. Subsequently, an immunologist at the University of California at Los Angeles discovered that the IE crystals can stimulate parts of the immune system. Water containing these strange forms of ice show a hundred times more bioactivity than plain water. (Anonymous; "Homeopathy and IE Crystals," Spectrum , p. 18, November/ December 1998. Cr. E. Fegert) Comment. Of course, we want to see independent confirmations of the Cal Tech and UCLA work, but we hope they will be objective rather than the usual knee-jerk reactions to homeopathy. See SF#59 and SF#69 for past confrontations over homeopathy. From Science Frontiers #121, JAN-FEB 1999 . 1999-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... . A soft-ware instruction becomes the equivalent of a biological gene. Software instructions can be changed to achieve certain hardware goals just as genes can be rearranged to modify an organism. Furthermore, human operators can specify a hardware goal to the chip and let it evolve on its own, something it can do in microseconds rather than millions of years. This is not a frivilous subject. D. Fogel, chief scientist at Natural Selection, Inc., in La Jolla, California, asserts: "Eventually, we will need to know how to design hardware when we have no idea how to do it." A few demonstration devices have already been built, and in them we see something worthy of note for Science Frontiers. One such device, built by A. Thompson, University of Sussex, was tasked to identify specific audio notes by certain voltage signals. Given 100 logic gates, the device needed only 32 to achieve the result. The surprise was that some of these working gates were not even connected to others by normal wiring. Thompson admitted that he had no idea how the device worked. Something completely unexpected had evolved. Perhaps, thought Thompson, some of the circuits are coupled electromagnetically rather than by wires. Human engineers would never have tried this stratagem; it is not even in their computer-design repertoire. (Taubes, Gary; "Computer Design Meets Darwin," Science, 277:1931, 1997.) Comments. Evolvable hardware, like God and Nature, works in mysterious ways! As the above type of hardware evolves, it ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 117: May-June 1998 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology Hard facts at cahokia Aliens, mystery races, or aborigines? Astronomy The flat face of mars The accelerating universe Biology The unread biotic message Terrestrial life is ambidextrous Kinky sex among the invertebrates Light makes bright Geology Two catastrophe scenarios Geophysics Flash auroras Foo fighters recalled Rare north atlantic light wheel Psychology Ability to detect covert observation Experimental induction of the "sensed presence" Chemistry & Physics More disorder here produces order there Logic & Math The evolution of computers ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 111: May-Jun 1997 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Why Some Sands Sing, Squeak, and Boom Singing sands and booming dunes have aroused the curiosity of explorers and beachgoers for over a century. Sand Mountain, in Nevada, is noted for its energetic thunderings. (SF#47/214) Manchester, Massachusetts, has its "singing beach." (ESP14 in Anomalies in Geology) But, common as these "sonorous" sands are, the exact mechanism of sound production remains a mystery. D.E Goldsack and colleagues, at Laurentian University, Canada, have reported some advances in our understanding of this classical anomaly. The group discovered that they could make ordinary sand musical by repeated grinding, polishing, and removal of fines. Given sufficient processing, ordinary sand that is merely "noisy" when shaken can be made to "sing." Singing sand has a unique infrared signature: a broad band stretching from 3,700 to 2,800 cm-1 . This is probably due to clusters of water molecules in an amorphous silica layer on the surfaces of the sand grains. Taking a clue from the infrared spectrum, Goldsack et al shook commercially available silica gel in a bottle and heard the familiar tones of singing sand! Their conclusion is that for sand to sing the particles must be coated with naturally (or artificially) created silica gel. (Goldsack, Douglas E., et al; "Natural and Artificial 'Singing' Sands," ...
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... . Here are two of the unusual seismic events presented there. July 10, 1996. Yosemite National Park. "At 6:52 pm PDT Wednesday, July 10, 1996, a large block of granite, with an estimated mass of 80,000 to 184,000 tons, detached from the cliff between Washburn Point and Glacier Point, in Yosemite Valley. The rock mass subsequently launched from the cliff and free-fell ballistically an estimated 550 m before impacting approximately 30 meters from the base of the cliff in the Happy Isles area of the valley floor in Yosemite National Park...This rock fall was well recorded by 3 UC Berkeley (BDSN) and Caltech (TERRAscope) broadband seismographic stations and 15 shortperiod seismographic stations (operated by the USGS in Menlo Park and the University of Nevada, Reno). In fact, it is the largest vertical rock free-fall ever recorded seismically and it registered on seismographs up to 200 km distant." (Uhrhammer, R.A .; "Seismic Analysis of the Yosemite Rock Fall of July 10, 1996," Eos, 77:508, 1996.) December 9, 1995. Southern Ecuador. "On the afternoon of December 9, 1995, a bolide exploded in the atmosphere over the Andes in southern Ecuador. Many people in nearby towns witnessed the event. They reported seeing a streaking meteor, which terminated in a loud and brilliant explosion. In some locales, the flash was noticeable even through cloud cover. The burst of light was observed by satellite optical sensors used to detect atmospheric nuclear ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 100: Jul-Aug 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects When Different Universes Rub Together Over the past few years, more than one theorist has proposed that our universe coexists with at least one, perhaps many, other universes. Said universes are constituted of particles possessing properties so different from own own that we cannot normally discern the reality of these other "existences." In other words, astronomers cannot visually see the stars of these "shadow universes, nor do our detectors of electricity and magnetism acknowledge them. Normally, the subatomic "shadow" particles do not interact with our own particles either. Then, why even bother to contemplate shadow universes? Well, physicists say that none of their laws prohibits the existence of these other universes, and that's reason enough to search for a "looking-glass" entrance of some sort. Just suppose that the particles of one of these shadow universes do possess mass (or whatever shadow physicists call it). Some speculate that this shadow mass could be the "missing mass" that cosmologists have been looking for and can't find. Cosmologists need something palpable out there to explain the puzzling dynamics of galaxies and other phenomena. Some physicists in our universe have conceived of a situation where our universe may "rub together" with a shadow universe. [Honestly!] During such less-than-cataclysmic encounters, some of the electric charge on our-world particles could be "scraped off" and transferred to shadow ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 97: Jan-Feb 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Did the universe have a beginning?" Abstract. The big bang theory postulates that the entire universe originated in a cosmic explosion about 15 billion years ago. Such an idea had no serious constituency until Edwin Hubble discovered the redshift of galaxy light in the 1920s, which seemed to imply an expanding universe. However, our ability to test cosmological theories has vastly improved with modern telescopes covering all wavelengths, some of them in orbit. Despite widespread acceptance of the big bang theory as a working model for interpreting new findings, not a single important prediction of the theory has yet been confirmed, and substantial evidence has accumulated against it. Here, we examine the evidence for the most fundamental postulate of the big bang, the expansion of the universe. We conclude that the evidence does not support the theory, and that it is time to stop patching up the theory to keep it viable, and to consider fundamentally new working models for the origin and nature of the universe in better agreement with the observations." This paper's author, T. Van Flandern, dismisses quickly two pillars of the Big Bang; i.e ., its supposed predictions of the cosmic microwave background and the abundances of light elements in the universe: "The big bang made no quantitative prediction that the "background" radiation would have a temperature of 3 degrees Kelvin (in fact its initial prediction was 30 degrees Kelvin); whereas Eddington ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 97: Jan-Feb 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects How can some stars be older than the universe itself?The answer is, of course, if the astronomers' clocks keep bad time. On one hand, stellar age theory assures us that stars in the globular clusters that pervade the universe were born about 15 billion years ago. On the other hand, new measurements of the distance to the Virgo cluster of galaxies are equally adamant that these objects are much closer than thought -- so close that, assuming the standard Big Bang model and the resultant expanding universe, the age of the universe may be as small as 8 billion years! In other words, the universe is younger than some of the stars in it; an obvious and painful dilemma for astronomy. How will this conflict between the two dominant astronomical paradigms play out? Many are betting that the Big Bang theory will require a major over-haul. Or more, as suggested in the next item. (Jacoby, George H.; "The Universe in Crisis," Nature, 371:741, 1994. Travis, John; "Hubble War Moves to High Ground," Science, 266:539, 1994.) Comment. A clever resolution of the above age problem would be for the ancient globular cluster stars to be left-overs or interlopers from an older universe. The globular clusters are anomalous in several other ways. See: Stars, Galaxies, Cosmos. Ordering information here ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 102: Nov-Dec 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects 2,000,000,000 BC: THE EPOCH OF QUASARS Quasars are remarkable astronomical objects. Discovered only 30 years ago, they are the most luminous entities in the universe. Supposedly powered by a black hole, each quasar emits hundreds of times more energy than all the billions of stars in the Milky Way. Just how a quasar works is surmise. What we now know from two surveys by two different groups of astronomers is that most quasars have redshifts between 2 and 3. In the theoretical framework of the expanding universe, redshifts are proportional to recessional velocity, distance from the observer, and age. From the redshifts, it seems that the quasar epoch spanned the period 1.9 -3 .0 billion years, based on an age of 15 billion years for the universe. Assuming the accuracy of this scenario, cosmologists now have to explain why quasars were born and flourished in such a narrow time slot. Did something fundamental change in the universe between 1.9 and 3.0 billion years ago? (Kaiser, Jocelyn; "Epoch of Quasars," Science, 269:637, 1995. Wilford, John Noble; "New Survey of Sky Finds Most Quasars are Equally Ancient," New York Times, August 8, 1995, Cr. J. Covey) Comments. Anomalists cannot fail to remark that the above discussion hinges upon four concepts: black holes, an expanding universe, ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 103: Jan-Feb 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects I Hiss Therefore I Am E.R . Moliner, a neurologist, has written a curious yet provocative article for New Scientist. It is really a not-too-subtle attack on the Anthropic Principle, Darwinism, and science's insistence that the universe must be purposeless. He notes first that most proponents of the Anthropic Principle postulate that, in the beginning (whatever that was!), many different universes may have been created. The only one we observe is the one offering just the right combination of properties for evolving life and, especially, humankind. If this or that physical constant had been a tad different, humans would not have evolved. Even though humans obviously did evolve, it was all purposeless -- just the way atoms and molecules happened to combine. This outlook fits right in with Darwinism, for almost all Darwinists also see evolution as purposeless. It was blind chance that gave us the capabilities to build aircraft and tunnel into opposite sides of a mountain and meet in the middle. Moliner is highly skeptical that such amazing, "cooperative, adaptive" talents could have come about in an unbiased, purposeless universe. Suppose, he asks, vipers were philosophically minded. They might look at their marvelously complex fangs with the canals inside, a nearby poison gland, a poison storage reservoir with special ducts leading to the fangs, a fang-erection mechanism, a set of muscles to squeeze ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 98: Mar-Apr 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Can we explore hyperspace?Anyone who watches Star Trek knows that the universe has more than four dimensions (3 of space, 1 of time). Spaceships are always whisking off into hyperspace. But can we prove that more than three spatial dimensions exist? Shu-Yuan Chu, University of California at Riverside, has shown theoretically that in a five-dimensional world (4 of space, 1 of time) electric charge need not be conserved. This opens up an experimental avenue to test for an extra spatial dimension. For background, recall that physicists originally maintained that mass and energy had to be conserved separately. Then, Einstein came along to show that mass and energy could be interchanged, via E = mc2 , but that they had to be conserved together. In Shu-Yuan Chu's five-dimensional universe mass and charge can be interchanged, but their sum must be conserved. In other words, there exists an E = mc2 equivalent for mass and charge in five dimensions. We could look for this extra spatial dimension by looking for a particle that can be converted into another particle with the same mass+ charge, but made up of a different combination of mass and charge. If such reactions exist, we may be able to explore hyperspace in fact rather than in science fiction. (Gribbin, John; "Can Electric Charge Be Destroyed?" New Scientist, p. 16, October ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 99: May-Jun 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects When Scents Make No Sense A kestrel (sparrow hawk) with ultra-violet-sensitive eyes and an appetite for voles (below) A vole is hard to see in its grassy habitat, but it leaves behind an ultra-violet-dark urine trail for the kestrel (above). The universe of voles -- small, mouse-like rodents -- is one of odor. They communicate with one another and navigate through their world of grass and vegetation by laying down trails of scent-laden urine. The world of kestrels -- eaters of voles -- is one of sight. Now, voles are hard to see in the grass far below a hunting kestrel, but evolution has come to the aid of the kestrels by giving them the capability to see in the ultra-violet portion of the spectrum. Can it be only coincidence that the urine trails of the voles happen to absorb ultra-violet light strongly? Kestrels can see these trails as dark streaks in the grass below and zero in on their prey. Finnish scientists, led by E. Korpimaki at the University of Turku, have demonstrated the above ultraviolet connection by somehow acquiring enough vole urine to lay out artificial trails in voleless areas. Sure enough, hunting kestrels were attracted to the experimental site and searched and searched the artificial vole highways -- volelessly. (Aldous, Peter; "Vole's Urine Is Their Downfall," ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 103: Jan-Feb 1996 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects A Brief History Of Quantized Time The poet Stephen Spender once observed that time is "larger than our purpose." Perhaps he should have written "times", for the various portions of the universe we can see through our telescopes may be moving along different "time lines" -- on different schedules, so to speak. According to W.G . Tifft, we may have to replace our concept of one-dimensional time with three-dimensional time if we are to explain some pressing cosmological anomalies. Redshift differences of double galaxies. The horizontal axis is the redshift difference in kilometers/second. The vertical axis is the number of pairs having a given redshift difference. It all began about 1970 OTL (Our Time Line!), when Tifft showed that the redshifts of galaxies are quantized. To illustrate, the diagram indicates that the redshifts of binary galaxies tend strongly to cluster at 72 and 72/3 kilometers/ second. One would certainly not expect ponderous galaxies to orbit one another in a quantized fashion. It is almost as if binary galaxies emulate those dumbbell-shaped molecules that can spin around only at specific frequencies! Can the mechanics of the very large (galaxies) be quantized like the very small (atoms and molecules)? Tifft obviously thinks so: "Quantization, it seems, is a basic cosmological phenomenon. It must reflect some master plan." The Finnish physicist, A. ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 97: Jan-Feb 1995 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology The "inscribed wall" at chatata, tennessee Whence the 200,000 logs of chaco canyon? Astronomy How can some stars be older than the universe itself? Did the universe have a beginning? Solar-system puzzles Biology Fruit dupe Possible survival of giant sloths in south america The early (and persistent) insect catches the bird! Geology The earth's most common topographical feature: abyssal hills The 627-foot water slide between australia and india The age of fire and gravel Geophysics Football-sized snowflakes A LINE IN THE SEA Rubber duckies chase nike shoes across pacific Psychology A MAJOR STUDY OF DOWSING Mentally influencing the structure of water Does the past influence the future? ...
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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 100: Jul-Aug 1995 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Kobe quake jostles the geo- magnetic field Some luminous phenomena accompanying the January 17, 1995, Kobe earthquake were mentioned in SF#99. Geomagnetic perturbations were also recorded: "At Kyoto University's observatory in Mineyama, the terrestrial magnetism suddenly changed in a southeasterly direction by up to 0.6 nanotesla, for 30 seconds, as the quake began at 5:46 a.m . on Jan. 17. .. .. . "A similar geomagnetic variation was also observed at the university's observatory in Shigaraki, but the variation was in the opposite, north-westerly, direction." (Anonymous; "Changes in Geomagnetic Field Noted during Quake," Daily Yomiuri , March 30, 1995. Cr. N. Masuya) Comment. Such clear-cut, earthquake-associated geomagnetic perturbations are rare. For a short history of the controversy, see GQM1 in the catalog volume: Earthquakes, Tides, etc. (Details here .) Evidently, strong earth currents are created when rocks fracture and slip, but the precise mechanism remains obscure. From Science Frontiers #100, JUL-AUG 1995 . 1995-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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