The Anomaly Pages

UNFAMILIAR CLASS OF LIFE STUDIED; MAY COMPRISE 30% OF EARTH'S BIOMASS DOPPELGANGER BUCKYBALLS PROVE POSSIBILITY OF PANSPERMIA BURGERS AND BAD BRAINS KILL OR CURE NASA STILL SEARCHING FOR MARTIANS A HELL OF A BLIZZARD VINLAND MAP MORE VERIFIABLE NASA SHAFTED BY FLICKERS LOTS OF BOOZE 10 EYES AND IT SEES BASICALLY ONE THING 100,000 COMETS COMING THIS WAY--EVENTUALLY THE SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE CAPTURED WITH BABY OIL LIGHTNING LIKE GIANT JELLYFISH DON'T WATCH THE SKIES. YOU MIGHT GET AN EYEFUL BOOK REVIEW--FORBIDDEN ARCHEOLOGY: THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF THE HUMAN RACE by Michael A. Cremo and Richard L. Thompson UNFAMILIAR CLASS OF LIFE STUDIED; MAY COMPRISE 30% OF EARTH'S BIOMASS According to articles in the August 23, 1996 and September 23, 1996 Washington Posts, and Department of Energy (DOE) reports, there is a microbe, called Methanococcus jannaschii, that exists on the floor of the ocean, lives only in 185 degree Fahrenheit water, and needs pressures of approximately 3,700 pounds per square inch. Even though the 500 or more species of Archaea, of which this now-decoded microbe is but one, are thought to comprise at least 30--perhaps 50--percent of Earth's life mass, they tend not to exist in the same places as humans. The Antarctic Ocean is home to many of them. The August 23, 1996 issue of the journal Science published the results of the work of a team of researchers from The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR), Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Illinois at Urbana. J. Craig Venter, of TIGR in Rockville, Maryland, spoke of how the lifeform differs from those previously known. "Two-thirds of the genes in this organism are new to science and biology," said Venter, the paper's senior author, proving the microbe to be from a class separate from the main two life branches: bacteria and eukaryotes--the latter encompassing protozoa and algae, fungi, animals and plants. In 1977, Carl Woese and Ralph S. Wolfe of the University of Illinois at Urbana had proposed Archaea--then thought to be a bacteria subgroup--as the third branch of life. Their contention was not then accepted. But now that Archaea species have been found at the hot and cold places where no other life can exist, Woese's and Wolfe's conclusion is taken more seriously. Studying the M. jannaschii has proven a challenge. Woese and colleagues had steel vats made which could hold the lifeform at a high pressure and temperature--and could vent away hazardous methane gas. (A thermal vent called a "white smoker" off California was where it was isolated originally in 1982.) The organism may prove profitable, which has made research funding from the Office of Health and Environmental Research (OHER) of the DOE, under contract DE-FC0295ER61962.A001, easier to obtain. M. jannaschii can digest and concentrate heavy metals. Its byproduct, methane, can be used as a fuel, a promising quality in a world where fossil fuels are limited. Organisms of its class can probably be harnessed to create new sources of nonpolluting and renewable natural gas, and some can be used to clean up sites of hazardous waste, because some of them can withstand incredibly high radiation. Unlike many of the other forms of life, M. jannaschii does not need to eat organic carbon, and it lives away from even indirect rays of the sun. There are theories that species of Archaea were the first lifeforms to exist on Earth, and may well be the type of life that could exist elsewhere in the universe. Some could have survived on the Earth of 3 billion years ago, and a number even thrive in the same acidity as concentrated sulfuric acid. It is probable that NASA will be searching for their like on Mars. In the meantime, the study of Archaea, according to Venter, as quoted in the September 3, 1996 Washington Post, "represents the scientific equivalent of opening a new porthole on Earth and discovering a wholly new view of the universe." It is sure to be a profitable undertaking. The August 23, 1996 San Francisco Chronicle related that Human Genomic Sciences, Inc., a biotechnology company, finances the nonprofit The Institute for Genomic Research, and thus has exclusive rights to the patents and exploitations of the institute's results. DOPPELGANGER Scientists put something into two places at once. It was rather small: a beryllium ion. Curt Suplee, summing up their achievement for "Science Notebook" in the May 27, 1996 Washington Post, wrote "For the first time, Schrodinger's cat was out of the bag." Erwin Schrodinger wrote of a hypothetical situation that pointed up a perplexity in modern physics. He posited that one could put a cat in a covered box it would share with an atom that had a 50-percent chance of decaying at any given instant. If this atom decayed it would activate a switch that would release poison and snuff the cat. But without the act of observation--that is, opening the box--a person would never know whether said feline was alive or dead (a 50% probability in either case). Thus the animal was both alive and dead at the same instant--in theory at least. The May 24, 1996 issue of Science showed the results of a related test. National Institute of Standards and Technology scientists, in Boulder, Colorado, got and supercooled a beryllium atom. It had only one outer electron instead of the customary two. Laser energy was utilized "to place it halfway between two 'spin' states." Normally, each of these would have the same probability of happening, and be "superimposed." But the scientists then used the laser beams to make each state of spin go the opposite direction. Amazingly, these states separated, going into two disparate places wider by dozens of times than the atom. BUCKYBALLS PROVE POSSIBILITY OF PANSPERMIA Even though it seemed unlikely that they could have had survived the collision, the buckyballs had not disintegrated. And their existence indicated that life may indeed have been "seeded" on this planet by objects from elsewhere, i.e. by panspermia. Arrangements of carbon atoms in a shape resembling a geodesic dome constitute buckyballs--named after R. Buckminster Fuller, the architectural designer of such domes. An April 14, 1996 AUFORA News Update revealed that on April 12, 1996, a report was released by United States scientists which provided support for the panspermia theory. It dealt with a site not far from Sudbury, Ontario, created by an impact from something the size of Mt. Everest. The 1.85 billion-year-old, 60-by-27 kilometer crater was searched for buckyballs. By then analyzing helium isotopes from within these forms, scientists ascertained the objects were not from Earth. Until now, the general run of thought was that carbon-based molecules could not survive such a collision. However, Robert Poreda--one of the writers of the scientific report--said, "If a meteorite or comet can deliver intact carbon molecules to the Earth's surface, it is likely that other organic compounds can survive the impact." And thus, celestial objects may have provided the planet with what it would have lacked otherwise--and helped create life. BURGERS AND BAD BRAINS In Britain, Peter Behan, a top neurologist, claimed that a 15-year-old young woman came down with "mad cow disease" because of her propensity for devouring hamburgers. He described how she was very ill with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), the human analog to bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), which was first found in British cattle during 1986. Both illnesses lethally rot the brain. In late April 1996, the girl was being treated in a Scottish hospital. Authorities of hospitals in southern England had earlier said that they had found another three potential cases in humans. While the Scottish hospital claimed that only an autopsy could provide a solid diagnosis, Behan said that in the case of the aforementioned teenager, a new U.S. test had been utilized. During March 1996, many countries had banned British beef because of the possible link between CJD and BSE--a contention based until recently on circumstantial evidence, plus the damage caused by a deformed version of the protein molecule PrP in both diseases. Ten cases of CJD had been diagnosed in Britain from February 1994 to October 1995. Recent research may possibly explain the link. An article by David C. Krakauer, Paolo Zanotto, and University of Oxford colleagues, published in the April 25, 1996 Nature, examined PrP in 33 animals. The PrPs of humans, apes and cattle have the same variations at amino acids number 143 and 155. These similarities may well account for the sharing of the diseases across species lines. KILL OR CURE The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) has so far been deadly for all too many of those who have acquired it. But research now shows that the very qualities which make it lethal may be used in future life-saving gene therapies. The use of viruses--as vehicles for supplying or replacing genes--has so far been limited by the fact that they can only be deployed when a cell is dividing. But HIV viruses and similar retroviruses can be employed at other times. The Salk-Whitehead group, composed of scientists of California's Salk Institute and Massachusetts' Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, has been altering HIV. In the group's process, the components vital to replication are deactivated while instructions for two proteins, which assist HIV in slipping its genes into the chromosomes of a host cell, are retained. This has worked on human cancer cells and microphages. However, Inder Verma, of the Salk Institute, primary author of a research article published in the journal Science on April 12, 1996, related how it would be wise, for human experimentation, to come up with vectors from different but comparable viruses. In the future, diseases like hemophilia and cystic fibrosis could probably be better treated through gene therapy. NASA STILL SEARCHING FOR MARTIANS Dr. Jack Farmer, of NASA's Ames Research Center, commented to a January 1996 Ciba Foundation-organized international meeting in London about possible problems connected with the fossil evidences of previous life that are to be searched for on Mars during upcoming Mars missions. They may have links to Earth. In 1911, a dog in Egypt was killed by a piece of the "Red Planet," assumedly the byproduct of a cometary impact on Mars which splashed material here. It is possible that life could have been transferred either way as well. Nevertheless, the NASA missions will have to be concerned with any gathered samples which might have viable spores, microbes or bacteria--and could contaminate the Earth. Dr. Farmer spoke at the meeting of such "important ethical concerns." Life may well have manifested on a warmer and moister Mars some three to four billion years ago. However, if Martian life still exists, it may be as hardy as hyperthermophiles, microbes which consume rocks and water and which live deep beneath north Alaska. Richland's Pacific Northwest Laboratory, which found them, has been studying these lifeforms, which can survive in Marslike conditions between 85 degrees Centigrade and 113 degrees Centigrade. A HELL OF A BLIZZARD The January 1996 blizzard that blanketed the East Coast actually indicated that the world is getting warmer, noted Jessica Mathews in an article for the Washington Post, which was reprinted in other newspapers circa January 18, 1996. She commented on how warm air better retains moisture, and how ground-based liquid evaporates more quickly. These lead to a greater amount of precipitation, and the accompanying "more vigorous global hydrological cycle" is a symptom of a climate influenced by the greenhouse effect. In December 1995, 120 governments agreed that "the balance of evidence...suggests a discernible influence on global climate." Now that the hazard has been discerned, can it be acted on in time? VINLAND MAP MORE VERIFIABLE Maybe the Gutenberg Bible is a fake too, or perhaps the Vinland map is real. If so, Norse explorers discovered North America long before Columbus, having apparently touched base at Newfoundland, known as Vinland Insula. In 1965, the Vinland map was celebrated as the most exciting of the 20th century's cartographic findings, but a decade later scientific research revealed that its ink contained a titanium-bearing pigment. This indicated that its ink was a 20th century ingredient inconsistent with a map claimed to date from 1440, long before Columbus's 1492 voyage. Later research has been at odds with the resultant hoax theory. California physicists, including Dr. Thomas Cahill of the University of California at Davis, put a proton beam through the map during a 1980s experiment. X-rays were generated which revealed only minute quantities of titanium. Because of this, Dr. Cahill called for a reevaluation of the map. According to the February 26, 1996 The Times, out of the United Kingdom, at a February symposium at Yale University, Cahill produced more evidence on the map's behalf. He told of performing the same sort of proton beam test on verifiable volumes of the map's period--including a Gutenberg Bible. All had more titanium as part of their makeup than did the Vinland Map. NASA SHAFTED BY FLICKERS In early June 1995, the June 8 launch of the space shuttle Discovery was delayed by NASA after 135 holes were discovered in the foam insulation╤courtesy of 12-inch-long woodpeckers known as yellow-shafted flickers. The insulation they damaged keeps ice from forming on the big, external fuel tank that holds cold, liquid forms of oxygen and hydrogen. As of June 3, the birds had pecked away areas measuring up to a diameter of 4 inches. On June 2, NASA officials announced that the planned shuttle mission would be delayed at least until July 1995. The Associated Press recounted that "used plastic owl decoys, horns and tape-recorded hoots to scare off" the woodpeckers had been tried. None of them worked. Repair efforts were hampered because not all the damage could be reached while the shuttle was on the launch pad. So the 184-foot-long spacecraft was taken back to the hangar. LOTS OF BOOZE The pure alcohol has been discovered by scientists in large quantities, Four hundred trillion trillion pints of foaming beverage could be made with the amount discovered in a hydrogen cloud not far--in interstellar terms--fromthe Aquila constellation. But since the site is 10,000 light years from Earth, don't look for a drop in the price of beer any time soon. Physicists Eric Herbst and Frank De Lucia, both of Ohio State University, contributed a study of the radio frequencies of ethanol alcohol to April 1995's Journal of Physical and Chemical Reference Data. This gave the University of Manchester's Tom Millar the clue to a mystery which had puzzled the team of British astronomers of which he was part. They had been puzzled by 70 of the 350 spectral lines given off by the molecules of a cloud they were studying. The Herbst-De Lucia piece helped them solve the mystery, leading to findings which apparently confirmed the presence of gaseous ethyl alcohol in hydrogen clouds. Herbst stated, "It seems the ethanol molecule is found in relatively high concentrations in regions where stars are forming." Endless alcohol--what a gas! 10 EYES AND IT SEES BASICALLY ONE THING The horseshoe crab has 10 light-sensing organs, designed primarily for a very limited use. So found Robert Barlow, a Syracuse University professor of neuroscience and bioengineering, when working with colleagues on a computer set-up that recreated a crab's visual network. His associates included Frederick Dodge, also of Syracuse, and Maureen Powers of Vanderbilt University, as well as students Christopher Passaglia, Darrell Porcello and Erick Herzog. They all used a "massively parallel" supercomputer to mimic the visual set-up of one of the world's simpler animals, which gives one an idea how complicated even the least complex lifeforms are. The equations that described the activities of the crustacean's retinal cells came from long-term research. And thus they confirmed the one thing horseshoe crabs are especially adapted to see: other horseshoe crabs. Barlow's earlier research had showed that horseshoe crabs are very good at using their eyes in order to find mates. The present set-up proved that the crab's network is designed to make the most important shapes pop out of the background. 100,000 COMETS COMING THIS WAY--EVENTUALLY Close encounters between our sun and other stars will be more frequent in some 20 million years, according to a piece in March 1994's Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society. The largest star, during its passage, may well loosen comet nuclei from the Oort Cloud, thought to surround the solar system, and send as many as 100,000 comets our direction. At least five other stars may pass within between 4.22 and 3.12 light years from the sun, according to the work of Robert Matthews, a visiting fellow at the University of Aston in Birmingham. While some comets may already be heading our way, they are not expected here for another 20 million years. Time enough, we think, to prepare ourselves for possible doom. THE SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE CAPTURED WITH BABY OIL Over two years of work and 180 tons of baby oil went into an effort to catch something very light. Interestingly, the research, conducted by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, may have indicated the presence of something very heavy: the missing 90 percent of the entire cosmos. If further research confirms the findings, the "signature" that was captured in the oil may help account for some of the invisible "dark matter" that provides enough gravity to help form the enormous structures found in the universe. Neutrinos, which lack an electrical charge, have long been suspected to be this "matter." They come in three "flavors" (electron neutrinos, muon neutrinos and tau neutrinos) which are able to alter during their travels as they go in and out of phase. They barely interact with ordinary matter; only one in every ten billion of them actually hits an atom when passing through the planet Earth. The new experiments, however, show that, contrary to earlier theory, they probably have a small mass (.5 to 5 electron volts). William Louis, a physicist at Los Alamos, explicates what this means. He states that "even half an electron volt is a lot of mass" considering that these "are the dominant particles in number in the universe." The Los Alamos experiment was designed to generate an antimuon neutrino, which would oscillate into another form. To facilitate this, a beam of protons was fired into a one foot long water container (with a diameter also of one foot). According to theory, after three feet the resultant pions hit a three-cubic foot block of copper. One of the particles which resulted, a heavy electron-like muon, broke down into electron neutrinos, low-energy electrons and antimuon neutrinos. If the latter had any mass, it, through oscillation, became an antielectron neutrino. It was this which hit the 28 foot by 12 foot tank of baby oil (which also contained a few grams of a chemical that amplified such light as was created by any collision). The tank was lined with 1,220 phototubes to detect this light, which they did. Other laboratories have designed experiments to evaluate Los Alamos's preliminary findings. Both Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York and Fermilab in Illinois have proposed elaborate experiments, the apparatus of which would cover many miles, to confirm or deny them. However, the present results only may account for 10 to 20 percent of the missing mass, still leaving many questions unanswered. Source: Curt Suplee, "Oscillating Particle May Illuminate Universe's Dark Matter," The Washington Post, 2/6/95 LIGHTNING LIKE GIANT JELLYFISH An electrical anomaly, previously thought dubious, has been captured on video by NASA researchers. Gigantic upward-shooting flashes of light, that come from the top of storm clouds, were captured on video during summer floods caused by a July 8, 1993 thunderstorm over Nebraska, Kansas and Iowa. According to Eugene Wescott and Davis Sentman, both of NASA, the lights were estimated as being 25 miles tall and 6 miles wide. "They appear brightest where they top out; typically about 40 miles high," said Wescott, adding, ╥so you have the jellyfish body at the top with tentacles trailing down." A low-light-level camera in a NASA DC-8, operated by a team from the Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska, recorded 19 brief flashes. Amateurs have been reporting the phenomena since 1886, but scientists have not until recently taken these accounts seriously. The present photographs, taken at 1/30 of a second, have proved the anomaly. Wescott noted that airborne team members missed it when aloft, but spotted it when studying their video footage. The intensity of the flashes is similar to an aurora. Now the scientists are trying to figure out its chemical effects on the upper atmosphere, including possible dangers to the ozone layer from electricity which is dimmer, more diffuse and broader than normal lightning. Source: New Scientist, 10/16/93; Striking News from Polyphaser, February 1994 DON'T WATCH THE SKIES. YOU MIGHT GET AN EYEFUL "Blue ice" was falling on Lake, Cook and DuPage counties in the suburbs of Chicago during early 1993. The blue-green substance was analyzed, and the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency concluded that the gunk was not, as often expected, human waste dumped from aircraft. The main suspects this go- round: geese. Whose droppings certainly dropped a ways. Source: USA Today, 1/18/93 Book Review FORBIDDEN ARCHEOLOGY: THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF THE HUMAN RACE by Michael A. Cremo and Richard L. Thompson Bhaktivedanta Institute, San Diego, California, 1993, 994 pp, hardcover, $39.95. Available from Strange Bookshop Reviewed by Douglas Chapman In this book, religion-inspired bashing of mainstream science and something resembling fortean inquiry meet--but not in anything quite like the Christian version of Creation Science. The guiding forces here are Hindu. At the behest of His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the authors endeavor to disprove the usually accepted theories of man's evolution. With exhaustive--and exhausting--thoroughness, they comb the history of science for anomalous evidence discarded by the leading paradigms, past and present. Their vested interest is to show that modern humans were historically present much longer than assumed--and that they coexisted with the animals deemed to have been their ancestors. This is in line with the long cycles of Indian cosmology. The sketchiness of the fossil record has always been a stumbling block in the proving of biological lines of descent. Additionally, methods of dating artifacts are not precise enough. Michael A. Cremo and Richard L. Thompson contend that much evidence is dismissed mainly because it does not relate to scientific opinions of its time. In this regard, they bring to light many forgotten disputes over the recent centuries, and speak of the "knowledge filter." Among the subjects covered in this fashion is "intentionally modified bone." They describe such toolmaking on bones from Miocene, Pliocene, and Early Pleistocene formations, long before the craft has been conceived to exist. More startlingly, a piece of wood, sawn at its right end, was found in Cromer Forest Bed in England--and dated as circa middle to early Pleistocene. Conspiracy researchers will have a good time with this book, as it deals with endeavors to discredit and/or otherwise destroy efforts not in line with the established. When no other methods work on them, nonconforming scientists are sometimes accused of cheating. E. Boman in 1921 tried to disprove the authenticity of an animal fossil with an arrow point in it: "In the Museo de La Plata, I have made an experiment of a similar nature, relative to a specimen discovered in the Chapadmalalan of Miramar--the femur of toxodon which has embedded in its trochanter the point of an arrow made of quartzite." In this experiment, he imbedded a similar point in a like bone, and the secretary of the museum could not tell the difference. Boman tried to show that the arrow was put in the bone after it had become a fossil, plus also attempted what appears to be character assassination: "Nevertheless, the manner in which the discoveries were made, and above all, the continuous involvement of a person such as [Lorenzo] Parodi [a museum collector], necessarily give rise to suspicions." In this way, Boman lessened consideration of "the existence of humans in South America during the Tertiary Epoch." There are many ways to cast doubt: on the site, the excavation techniques, the people involved, the interpretations, etc. And thus, heretical scientists find themselves in career trouble. Even when the people in a case are credible, one way of casting doubt on an anomalous object is by speculating whether the deposit from which it came was made of loose materials which recemented or resetted. Turning the tables, so to speak, the book endeavors to cast doubts upon widely accepted objects, including Franz Weidenrich's reconstruction of Pithecanthropus robustus (Java man), which is deemed here to have incorporated a spurious ape palate. Forbidden Archeology's overall position is "that anatomically modern humans have coexisted with other primates for tens of millions of years." So it is only natural that the authors look into present cryptozoological concerns that modern humans still coexist with apelike wildmen. Reports and evidences of such creatures as Yetis, Sasquatches, Almas, and even the wildmen of China fill a long chapter. Appendixes colorfully cover some very perplexing objects that fit well outside most theories. Perhaps the weirdest is a "Partial shoe sole in Triassic rock from Nevada..." as per a photo caption, "dated at 213-248 million years...." Consulted shoemakers recognized a hand-welted sole. The book contains a useful and extensive bibliography. The usefulness of Forbidden Archeology to forteans will be extensive, whether or not they agree with the author's contentions of a history for man related to Hindu beliefs. A later volume from Cremo and Thompson (and another co-author), Origins, reveals the authors' intentions to promote the concept of "inverse evolution" in which the common ancestor of mankind and similar creatures is a superior being, and some steps of the evolutionary process occur outside the Earth. In the present book, the motivating Vedic ideas are briefly alluded to. Assumedly, the intention of all this is to create doubt about the established order in one book, and in the next to build up reader acceptance of the Vedic world view. That Forbidden Archeology is propaganda may not matter to forteans. It is so jam-packed with rarities of many varieties (reports, clippings, unconventional opinion, etc.) that it will be a much-consulted addition to their libraries. Cremo's and Thompson's railings against various entrenched institutions of science will be quite familiar, even if they are, as the writer of the introduction, Pierce J. Flynn, Ph.D., puts it, from a "parallax view." STRANGEmagazineWEB HOME STRANGEmagazineWEB