issue 62

Fortean Mysteries SIG recent history issue 62 Newsletter of the Fortean Mysteries SIG of American Mensa

only 200,000 millicents per 3 issues Published irregularly since Undecember 1658 AC

Series like the T-is Aronson series, mentioned in last issue, can be used to form other non-integral numbers, each of which codes an infinite amount of information.

By applying modulo 10 to the series and making each resulting number a digit in a

Let's call it the S-ain'tly number, so the others above are the T-isly and I-isly

Using the Lucas series, of which the Fibonacci series is a particular example, we

applying the rule L(n + 2) = L(n + 1) + L(n) in modulo 10. The repeating number,

0.055..., call it L5, the fifth Lucasly-formed number, is closely related to two

others, L50 = 100L5-5 = 0.505... and L55 = 10L5 = 0.550.... Similarly L26 = 0.2684... = 10L68 - 2 = 100L84 - 26 = 1000L42 - 268. From the Golden series we get L13, the Goldenly-formed number = 0.134718976392... which is related to 12

others. L2 = 0.02246 - 06628088640448... and is related to 20 others and L1, the

Fibonaccily-formed number, 0.112358314594707741517853819099875279651670336954932572910... is related to the other 60.

The Deficiently-formed number = 0.804... (from numbers whose factors sum to less than

The Evenly-formed number = 0.2468024680... (from 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, ..., 2n)

The Evenly-evenly-formed number = 0.4826048260... (from Evenly-even numbers, powers of two, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, ..., 2^n)

The Evenly-oddly-formed number = 0.6048260482... (from odd numbers doubled, 6, 10, 14, 18, 22, 26, ..., 2(2n-1))

The Hexagonally-formed number = 0.16585610... (from 1, 6, 15,28, 45, 66, 91, 120, ..., n(2n-1))

The Luckily-formed number = 0.1379351513739137935... (from S. M. Ulam's lucky numbers, left after eliminating all evens, then every third odd, then every

seventh of what's left, etc., 1, 3, 7, 9, 13, 15, 21, 25, 31, 33, 37, 43, 49, 51, 63, 67, 69, 73, 75, ...)

The Oblongly-formed number = 0.235678012347890... (from 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20...)

The Oddly-formed number = .1357913579... (from 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, ..., 2n-1)

The Pentagonally-formed number = 0.1522510... (from 1, 5, 12, 22, 35, 51, 70...,

The Persistently-formed numbers = 0.7000... (from 142,857 or [107/7], called the Sacred number; 5,882,352,941,176,470 or [10^17/17]; 526,315,789,473,684,210 or [10^19/19], called the Persistent number in Believe It Or Not (1929) by Robert Ripley; 4,347,826,086,956,521,739,130 or [10^23/23]; ..., [10^p/p], numbers whose digits change only in position, not order or

The Primely-formed number = 0.1357137939171... (from 1, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, ..., p)

The Squarely-formed number = 0.14965694101496... (from 1, 4, 9, 16, ..., n2)

The Superperfectly-formed number = 0.2426... (from 2, 4, 12, 16,..., whose factors sum to more than perfectly themselves)

The Triangularly-formed number = 0.136051865... (from 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, 21, 28, 36,

The Vinogradovly-formed number = 0.9135791357... (from 9, 11,13, 15, 17, ..., the

The Weirdly-formed number = 0.13728655693... (from 1, 3, 7, 12, 18, 26, 35, 45, 56, 69, 83, ...,

[We've written Douglas R. Hofstadter, author of GEB, of these and past "mathemagic" in past Mpossibilities, as well as the following new number names:]

(1) acupuncture or chen-ts'u, a practice used in China for about 4000 years. The article talks much about ch'i but calls the term untranslatable and played down in modern China. The needles used in acupuncture supposedly redirect the flow of this lifeforce(?) in the body.

An associated technique, new to us, is "moxibustion", the burning of herbs (particular to the ailment) over the acupuncture point or the ear's relationship

(2) Adamski was a name made famous among ufologists by George in the 1950s. When Zigmund died mysteriously in summer 1980 and Alan Godfrey had a close

encounter that Fall near where his body was found (and the stories garbled) it became associated with "the biggest UFO story ever". The article doesn't clear up the mystery, but does offer other possibilities such as UAP (Unidentified

(3) Alchemy involves protochemistry, rejuvination, mysticism, nuclear physics, secrecy, fraud. Each one could be the subject of a book itself.

saffron-colored powder. Twenty years later Johann Freidrich Schweitzer (Helvetius) turned lead into gold, identified as such by no less than Spinoza.

Although both Franz Tausend and Dunikovski did produce gold from quartz it wasn't enough to save them from being convicted of fraud (in 1931 and 1936). After

taking in 400,000 marks and 2,000,000 francs they served four and two years respectively.

(3) The Alien contacts can be subclassified into type A (outside), B (indoors, usually bedroom), C (in vehicle, most abduction stories) D (nonphysical contact). There's quite a continuum from lights to UFOs to humanoids, monsters, phantoms. It

notes that aliens in contact stories are less strange than science fictional or fairy tale beings.

Other articles deal with (4) American kangaroos, lake serpents and serpent mounds. On other mysterious animals, MAs, found during 'roo flaps it says, "Charles

phenomenon. He also suggested, darkly, that it might be an attempt to divert attention from one mystery to another, especially, when the first is near solution."

(5) On the serpent mounds, the most interesting to us is the one we've visited on the Brush Creek in Adams County, Ohio, called here "the most famous of the ancient

Indian earthworks of North America". Does it represent an eclipse, a constellation, the earth spirit, the war between serpent and sun worshippers? Did Robert W. Harner experience an evil, elemental presence and see its energy vortex there in

(6) The book lists no lake or river serpents in Ohio, but does mention 90 others in

North America, almost all in mountain-fed bodies of water: Angeoa (Dubawnt Lake), Aturki (Willamette River, Ore.), Champ (Lake Champlain), Igopogo (Simcoe Lake, Ont.), Manipogo (Lake Manitoba), Ogopogo or Ogie (Lake Okanagan, B.C.), Onijore (upper New York), Ponik (Lake Pohenegamook, Quebec).

"There's always a sense of humility when the data come in," said Galileo's chief project scientist, Torrance Johnson. Jupiter's atmosphere proved more like the Sun's than astronomers had expected, with more hydrogen, few organic chemicals and no water. Water had been indicated by the Voyager and Shoemaker-Levy 9 data. Galileo found it denser, windier and with a hidden radiation belt. The belt's at

least ten times as strong as Earth's. At the last measurement it was up to the pressure 750 feet deep in our water oceans (20 times surface normal) with 335 mph winds and a temperature of 300 degrees Fahenheit.

"We don't know," says Harald Fischer of University of Kiel, Germany, "Where these high-energy particles come from." Meanwhile Richard Young, Ames Research Center, can only speculate: "Jupiter's winds appear to originate in the heat from the deep interior."

Four years ago an object orbiting beyond Pluto, 44 times as far from the Sun as Earth, was discovered by Jane Luu and David Jewitt of the University of Hawaii. Officially called 1992QB1 they nicknamed the little planet "Smiley". They have now discovered 20 more large objects out there and other another 8.

"The things that astronomers are learning about the Kuiper belt are beyond what we had dreamt," Luu says. "What we thought of as a planet is probably just the

Since 1993 five other objects have been discovered which cross the outer planets'

orbits like Chiron (discovered 1977) and red Pholus. They're now called Centaurs, part planet, part frozen comet.

51 Pegasi B, 70 Virginis B and 47 Ursa Majoris B are the first planets discovered

orbiting other stars. Michel Mayor and Didier Qureloz, Geneva Obsevatory, announced the first last October. Then in January Geoff Marcy, San Francisco

State, and Paul Butler, University of California at Berkeley, announced the other

two. Only the third one of the three is not surprizing in some way. "It's the first planet that kind of looks like it would fit into our solar system," Butler says. Still it's 3.5 times Jupiter's mass and only twice Earth's distance from its star.

have liquid water. It's temperature is "just right" at a lukewarm 185 degree Fahrenheit. Mayor says, "The theorists are just now beginning to recognize that they need to invoke much more physics that had not been anticipated. It's time to pull back and realize that we've been too cocky."

It took me a while to track down but we've now learned much about the unusual physics, pataphysics, which means "beyond metaphysics", coming from the French

'Pataphysique, a pun on "patte … physique", and the Greek (e)p(i met)a ta physika, first used in Ubu Roi (1896) by Alfred Jarry, (translated 1951).

systematic toying with the arrangement of things and their significance until the

improbable hypothesis can be seen as real, the examination of the laws governing

It does this obscurely with puns, word play, allusions, hierogamies, with co-existing and contrasting impulses shifting frequently but without sinister overtones, but with comic-seriousness. Such circuitous use of language is symbolized by the spiral

It was later exemplified in Jarry's 1899 work translated by Roger Shattuck as "How to Construct a Time Machine" in 1965, and the 1911 one, translated as Exploits and Opinions of Doctor Faustroll, Pataphysician. It is perpetuated by the

Unlike surrealism it is not metaphysical, but rather meta-metaphysical, linguistically experimental, and connected to science "fictions", such as alien visitants and wild talents.

Unidentified by Jerome Clark and Loren Coleman, which says "aliens do not exist

any more than fairies do." It is handy to have continuity in the continuum that includes flying discs, telepathy, PK, RSPK, monsters and religious experiences, but we didn't see which tends toward Positive and which to Negative. Is their "planetary polt" good or evil? Neither? Both?