Watching the World
Surprises from Jupiter
◆ When the Voyager 1 spacecraft flew by Jupiter in March, scientists received some surprises from the craft’s cameras. They learned that Jupiter has a ring around it as do Saturn and Uranus. The ring consists of dark, rocky debris estimated at less than 18 miles (29 kilometers) thick and 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers) wide. By way of comparison, Saturn’s highly visible rings are less than 10 miles (16 kilometers) thick but about 170,000 miles (270,000 kilometers) wide. The existence of Jupiter’s ring supports the 1849 theory of French astronomer Edouard Roche that rings, rather than moons, must exist within a distance of 2.45 times a planet’s radius. He calculated that gravitational forces exerted by the mother planet would tend to tear any orbiting satellite apart within this so-called “Roche limit.”
The spacecraft’s camera also filmed what the scientists call “the largest aurora ever seen by mankind” at Jupiter’s North Pole. They believe that forces similar to those causing the beautiful aurora borealis on earth are at work on Jupiter as well. But Jupiter’s aurora was said to be at least 18,000 miles (29,000 kilometers) long, more than twice the diameter of earth.
Numerous active volcanoes on Io, the innermost of Jupiter’s major moons, also surprised scientists. They had expected a cold, cratered moon similar to our own, but “it appears that the steam, falling ash and lava flows of global volcanoes are still shaping Io’s surface,” reports the New York Times. The erupting volcanoes are the first seen outside those on earth.
Churches Liable for Commercial Ventures
◆ The 4th District Court of Appeal in San Diego, California, recently ruled that the United Methodist Church can be held liable for damages caused by an affiliated secular enterprise. Elderly residents of retirement homes had sued the church for fraud when its affiliated Pacific Homes retirement network went bankrupt. Church lawyer Samuel Witwer declared that “there will be a chilling effect on religion in this country” over the ruling. However, the judge countered that such “chilling effect” should be considered “before becoming involved in commercial affairs.” He also said: “Nothing either our state or federal Supreme Court has said has even remotely implied that under the cloak of religion, persons may, with impunity, commit fraud upon the public.”
Swiss to Join U.N.?
◆ In keeping with her policy of strict neutrality, Switzerland joined neither the League of Nations nor the U.N., though acting as host for many of their conferences. However, the Swiss reportedly are now considering membership. “Queried about their tradition of neutrality,” says the New York Times, “Swiss officials noted that Austria and Sweden had managed to join the world body and remain neutral.”
“Killer Bees” Domesticated
◆ “The killer bee is no longer a killer,” Dr. Helmuth Wiese, president of Brazil’s beekeepers, recently declared. And Lionel Goncalves of the Medical School of Ribeirao Preto agrees that “you have more chance of being killed by a mad dog” than by the bees. Continued crossbreeding with Brazilian bees has gradually tempered the vicious personality of wild African bees that Brazil had imported in 1956 as prodigious honey-producers. Some estimate that before the bees’ “domestication,” they killed as many as 200 persons and numerous animals. North Americans had feared an onslaught of the vicious bees by 1985, when northward movement might bring the insects to Texas. By then, though, their altered temperament could make them welcome additions to the environment.
Earth’s Forgotten Fourth
◆ Is the world’s poverty problem gradually being overcome? Director General Edouard Saouma of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization recently answered that “poverty not only persists in all developing countries, but is actually increasing in most.” He told food officials from more than 100 countries: “It is a tragic anachronism that more than one billion people in the rural areas endure lives of absolute poverty and destitution. More than 450 million people suffer severe undernutrition.”
Dog Follows “Cat” up Tree
◆ The Star, of Johannesburg, South Africa, recently carried a report about a farmer in Namibia (South-West Africa) who had lost five sheep and several calves to a marauding leopard. Two of his dogs, which are part greyhound, chased after it. According to the farmer, when the big cat went up a tree for safety, one of the dogs went right up after it! “It is beyond me how the dog scaled the tree to tackle the leopard about six metres [20 feet] above the ground,” remarked the farmer. “The dog and the leopard fought fiercely and both tumbled out of the tree. Once they were on the ground the second dog helped the other finish off the beast.”
Space Disease?
◆ Soviet biologists have been studying the effects on the human body of lengthy stays in space. According to Oleg Gazenko, director of the Soviet Medical Biology Research Institute, “some microbes existing in everyone’s body have been found capable of changing in space flight conditions from harmless to disease-producing microbes.” Since the microbes were at first “harmless,” did they actually become “disease-producing,” or was it the altered circumstances of their human hosts that made them harmful? If the latter is the case, this may help to explain how, even though a loving God did not create disease, mankind’s fall to imperfection allows otherwise benign organisms to produce what we know as disease.
Giant New “Worms”
◆ Some 8,000 feet (2,400 meters) beneath the Pacific, in 10-foot (3-meter) tubes of their own making, dwell a previously unknown type of worm. The deep-diving submarine Alvin brought up a specimen for observation, and scientists say that it is so unusual in anatomy that it may be from an entirely new phylum, or basic division of the animal kingdom. It has no mouth or eyes, and a Smithsonian Institution curator says that parts of the worm’s nervous system “are without precedent in the whole animal kingdom.” The creature’s long dwelling tubes are apparently formed in layers by material it exudes. This substance is said to be so tough that it actually “dulls a razor blade.”
Best Vaccine Test Subjects
◆ The U.S. federal Communicable Disease Center needed test subjects for preliminary trials of a new serum-hepatitis vaccine at its Phoenix, Arizona, laboratory. Serum hepatitis “is transmitted via blood transfusions, infected hypodermic syringes, unclean dental instruments and sexual intercourse,” explains the Arizona Republic’s medical editor. Who would make the best test subjects? Dr. Wolf Szmuness, professor of epidemiology at Columbia University School of Public Health, answers: “Because male homosexuals represent the most highly promiscuous segment of the population, the disease is rampant among them. They realize this and the unpleasant consequences of the disease. They have therefore volunteered, through their organizations in Phoenix and New York, to act as test subjects.”
Starting Young
◆ “A 3-year-old girl, her pocket stuffed with stolen jewelry, and her 10-year-old sister were arrested inside a burglarized home,” according to a United Press International report from Denver, Colorado. “The girls apparently entered the home . . . by breaking a kitchen window, [police] officers said.”
Fraud by Church-run Child Charities
◆ Are church-run child-care agencies free of the greed and abuse that often characterize secular agencies? New York magazine answers that “audits, investigations, and analyses of [all] agencies’ reimbursement records on file with the [New York] Department of Social Services, Special Services for Children, show a system of pervasive mismanagement and greed.” The audits included agencies “associated with such prominent groups as Catholic Charities, the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, and the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies.” New York notes that “some of the worst child-care agencies have gone unaudited for seven or eight years.” Why? “Because of the political power of the religious agencies involved,” says the article.
Vitamin C and Cancer
◆ The chief surgeon of Torigai Hospital in Fukuoka, Japan, claims that vitamin C prolongs the lives of terminal cancer patients. Over a period of four years, he administered the vitamin to 99 cases judged hopeless, giving 1.5 grams daily to 44 persons and 29 grams to 55. “As of August 1978, the average length of life after the start of Vitamin C administration was 201 days in the second group but only 43 days in the first,” reports The Daily Yomiuri of Tokyo. According to the doctor, five of the high-dose group are still alive after three years. His results were said to correspond closely with those of Nobel Prize-winning chemist Linus Pauling, who administered vitamin C to a group of terminal cancer patients in Scotland a year ago. Pauling claims they survived four times as long as patients who did not receive the vitamin.
1,000-Year-Old Butter
◆ The Soviet Tass press agency reports that archaeologists have uncovered a large clay jar of butter claimed to be about 1,000 years old. The butter, found buried about nine feet (3 meters) deep in the ancient central Asian city of Aktobe, was said to have coloring and smell as good as when it was buried. Tass declared: “It’s a rare find and it will help to improve methods of long-term preservation of natural fats.”
Mighty Mites
◆ Over 40 buildings in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, have been badly damaged because of bedrock expansion under their foundations. How is such a thing possible? The problem is microscopic bacteria. “Thiobacillus ferrooxidans munch the pyrite found in shale and excrete sulfuric acid,” says Science News. “Sulfuric acid, in turn, reacts with lime in the rock to produce gypsum crystals,” which grow and exert “pressures as high as 10,000 pounds per square inch [700 kilograms per square centimeter] . . . causing the rock to heave and expand.”
Virginity ‘Contest’
◆ Ancient traditions of the Zulus, the dominant black tribe in South Africa, require that women remain chaste until they marry. However, as in so many other places, this standard is breaking down. Chief Vulindaba Ngcobo of the eastern province of Natal stated: “There is too much immorality, illegitimacy and prostitution among our young people and we must root it out.” This South African tribal chief offered a prize to whichever region under his jurisdiction could produce the most virgins. Toward this goal he introduced “virginity tests” in his territory. Many unmarried Zulu women have reportedly been examined by elderly women, and virgins have been “certified.” The chief stated: “The tests are compulsory and any girl who does not arrive at the testing hut must pay a fine of 40 rand [about $50, U.S.]. Any girl who fails the test must pay a fine of 10 rand if her seducer cannot be found. If they can trace the seducer, and he admits deflowering the girl, he must donate two head of cattle to the girl’s parents.”
Criminal at Eight
◆ Police officials in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, wonder whether a delinquent eight-year-old boy is already a “career criminal.” “I don’t know if [he] can be saved,” said a state official. The boy has been arrested eight times in less than five months, most recently twice in one week for car theft.