Scientia Press

With minor updates, from Kenneth J. Dillon, Intriguing Anomalies: An Introduction to Scientific Detective Work. Notes, bibliography, and images can be found in the original. For a brief overview, see “Ten Key Points about Medicinal Bracelets“.  For Dillon’s most recent work, see his The Knowable Past (Washington, D.C.:  Scientia Press, 2018).

Chapter 4

The Science of Medicinal Bracelets

The vision inspiring the study of medicinal bracelets is of an attractive, simple, easy-to-use, safe, naturally effective kind of medicine, one you can wear on your wrist. Medicinal bracelets also have much to teach us regarding the deeper patterns of physiology and nutrition. Continue reading »

A new theory of the origin of the terrestrial planets—that Jupiter’s gravity pulled them inward from the outer solar system—solves longstanding scientific riddles and offers a rich agenda for further investigation.

The origin and distribution of water on the terrestrial planets make a good place to start investigating this theory. Radiation pressure and the solar wind pushed water molecules out beyond the “snow line” around 4.5 AU, so how did Earth come to have a relatively significant amount of water?

Continue reading »

1. Biophotonic Therapy is the use of light to activate the healing properties of the blood. BT is photomedicine and has a well-characterized clinical profile. A dozen books and some 400 articles in the German, Russian, and English-language medical literature describe Biophotonic Therapy. Other common names for BT are Ultraviolet Blood Irradiation and Photoluminescence Therapy.
2. In BT’s extracorporeal form, ultraviolet and visible light are used to treat a small amount of blood, which is then reinfused.
3. In BT’s intravenous form, a low-intensity laser (generally at 632.8 nm) shines through a waveguide inside a needle into the blood. BT can also be administered sublingually. Continue reading »

Sea-based approaches to the disposal of nuclear waste make it hard for terrorists, rebels, or criminals to steal for use in radiological weapons or in nuclear bombs. The world’s oceans have a vastly greater dilutive capacity than any single land site in the event of unintended leaks (though by the same token the effects of a leak could travel farther). And seawater itself contains a variety of radionuclides, so treating it as a domain in which there is no natural radioactivity runs counter to fact. Meanwhile, without a great deal of additional investment and endless political arguments, land-based geological storage sites will not have the capacity to store all the waste that will be generated in future decades.

The most important rationale, though, is that siting, constructing, and operating land-based long-term storage sites constitute major, difficult technological and political problems.  It is wrongheaded and irresponsible to assume that many relatively poor, unstable, and technologically lagging countries with nuclear reactors will deal successfully with these challenges.  Too many things can go wrong, with disastrous outcomes.

So a shared international solution to the problems of the long-term storage of nuclear waste should represent a high priority.  And investigating sea-based solutions makes eminent sense because they are peculiarly suited to international cooperation.

Four sea-based approaches recommend themselves. Continue reading »

Asteroid impact at Chicxulub, Yucatan clearly played a role in the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs 66,000,000 years ago, though scientists point to the serious disruptions that had begun hundreds of thousands of years before with the basalt flows of the Deccan Traps.1 Giant basalt lava flows that poisoned the atmosphere and oceans played a role in four or perhaps all five major extinctions. But other enormous basalt flows have not caused extinctions, nor did they cause the tsunamis associated with various extinctions.2  Researchers have suggested many other mechanisms, but there’s no consensus at all.

Lurking in the background, however, is a quite plausible cause, one that would have possessed the power to set off the volcanic activity, air pollution, mass wasting, sea level shifts, loss of oxygen in oceans, climate changes, and other phenomena associated with the extinctions.

The Martian Theory Continue reading »

There are two sides to every story. Judges rightly admonish juries to check out both sides before coming to a conclusion. Our entire system of adversarial justice is built on this principle. But under surveillance by FBI in the 2001 anthrax mailings case, U.S. Army scientist Bruce Ivins committed suicide. So only one side got to tell its version of the story.