BACKSCATTER:
1997
Letters to the Editors
I still favor a large burp of gas from the sea bottom as the cause of the incident (and also Scheffey's encounter). However, Meyer's guess that hydrates may have been the source of the gas doesn't fit. According to (methane) hydrate experts, hydrates can only form in very cold, deep water. Such water does exist beyond the shelf, and indeed hydrates are found there in quantity. But, that is too distant from Daytona Beach to have caused such a "local" wave. No, the burps are coming from gas pockets below the sea floor. I am convinced that such burps are not too uncommon in central Florida. Earlier this year, a person in the Ocala vicinity had his car damaged while parked at his home by a 55-pound chunk of calcite that had been mysteriously hurled through the air. That sounded to me like another gas "blowout," but I have been unable to track down the person to get more details. I feel quite certain that a short walking search in the direction that the projectile came from would reveal a hole in the ground where the stone originated.
Your article mentions the 1954 Lake Michigan rogue wave. Interestingly, both Lakes Michigan and Superior are reported to have "pockmarks" on their floors. I consider sea-bottom pockmarks to be almost undeniable evidence that gas burps are occurring, even though geologists can't seem to believe it and hence come up with all sorts of highly-contrived generating mechanisms.
Dick Spalding
Sandia National Laboratories
Albuquerque, NM
I'd like to respond to Martin Kottmeyer's letter in your second issue (Backscatter, pp. 148-149). He raised a question about my article, "Cargo of the Gods." The cargo cults long ago reached the state that Kottmeyer describes, in which "the image of cargo aliens...gave way to aliens as a menace and later as deceivers." They still can't figure out why the white man won't share his cargo with them. White men are their equivalent of our little gray abductors. Our ways are incomprehensible to them, as are the aliens' ways to us. Yet we all keep coming back for more.
Paul Rydeen
I'm embarassed by an error (not your fault!) on page 136, line 3 from the bottom, of my article, which reads, "...in which the encephalographic patterns (brain X-rays)..." Anybody (I thought) ought to know that an encephalogram or EEG is not a brain X-ray. The editor at Advances, where this paper was first published, stuck "brain X-ray" in parentheses without even telling me. I was horrified when I saw this. But I didn't think to alert you to it. Can you print a correction?"
Larry Dossey
Santa Fe, NM
4. On Unexplained Findings, a Reader Asks for Your Help:
I hope you might be able to help me locate information on two unexplained findings
that I have read about in past years.
1. There is a pillar(column) around 50 feet tall in the center square of a city in
India (I don't know the name) that is made of iron metal and, I believe, it is a
blend of different elements.What makes this column so unique is the fact that it
is VERY old, no known history about it and, the technology employed to cast and turn
the column is strictly 20th century. Any imput?
2. A few years ago I read a short article about small statues or idols (5-7in.) that
were found wrapped in the roots of an old tree stump in Upper Michigan. The stump
was reported to be approx. 700-1000 years old. The statues seemed to resemble art
work of Babalyon or Syria circa 3000BC. Any imput?
Frank B. DeSana
Reply here
TLR
California