The 1,600-Year-Old Goblet and How Romans Were Nanotechnology Pioneers

Researchers have finally found out why the jade-green cup (showed bellow) appears red when lit from behind.
The colorful secret of a 1,600-year-old Roman chalice at the British Museum is the key to a super­sensitive new technology that might help diagnose human disease or pinpoint biohazards at security checkpoints.

«The Romans may have first come across the colorful potential of nanoparticles by accident, but they seem to have perfected it.»

The glass chalice, known as the Lycurgus Cup because it bears a scene involving King Lycurgus of Thrace, appears jade green when lit from the front but blood-red when lit from behind—a property that puzzled scientists for decades after the museum acquired the cup in the 1950s. The mystery wasn’t solved until 1990, when researchers in England scrutinized broken fragments under a microscope and discovered that the Roman artisans were nanotechnology pioneers: They’d impregnated the glass with particles of silver and gold, ground down until they were as small as 50 nanometers in diameter, less than one-thousandth the size of a grain of table salt. The exact mixture of the precious metals suggests the Romans knew what they were doing, «an amazing feat», says one of the researchers, archaeologist Ian Freestone of University College London.

The ancient nanotech works something like this: When hit with light, electrons belonging to the metal flecks vibrate in ways that alter the color depending on the observer’s position. Gang Logan Liu, an engineer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who has long focused on using nanotechnology to diagnose disease, and his colleagues realized that this effect offered untapped potential. «The Romans knew how to make and use nanoparticles for beautiful art», Liu says. «We wanted to see if this could have scientific applications».

When various fluids filled the cup, Liu suspected, they would change how the vibrating electrons in the glass interacted, and thus the color. (Today’s home pregnancy tests exploit a separate nano-based phenomenon to turn a white line pink).

Since the researchers couldn’t put liquid into the precious artifact itself, they instead imprinted billions of tiny wells onto a plastic plate about the size of a postage stamp and sprayed the wells with gold or silver nanoparticles, essentially creating an array with billions of ultra-miniature Lycurgus Cups. When water, oil, sugar solutions and salt solutions were poured into the wells, they displayed a range of easy-to-distinguish colors—light green for water and red for oil, for example. The proto­type was 100 times more sensitive to altered levels of salt in solution than current commercial sensors using similar techniques. It may one day make its way into handheld devices for detecting pathogens in samples of saliva or urine, or for thwarting terrorists trying to carry dangerous liquids onto airplanes.

The original fourth-century C.E. Lycurgus Cup, probably taken out only for special occasions, depicts King Lycurgus ensnared in a tangle of grapevines, presumably for evil acts committed against Dionysus, the Greek god of wine. If inventors manage to develop a new detection tool from this ancient technology, it’ll be Lycurgus’ turn to do the ensnaring.

Source:  http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/This-1600-Year-Old-Goblet-Shows-that-the-Romans-Were-Nanotechnology-Pioneers-220563661.html

So, you think Humanities are not important...?

The Cave of Altamira: First Prehistoric Cave Paintings

The Cave of Altamira is located near the town of Santillana del Mar in Cantabria, Spain. The cave was declared World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1985 and it is famous for its Upper Paleolithic cave paintings featuring drawings and poly-chrome rock paintings of wild mammals and human hands.

The site's special relevance comes from the fact that it was the first cave in which prehistoric cave paintings were discovered. When the discovery was first made public in 1880, it led to a bitter public controversy between experts, which continued into the early 20th century, as many of them did not believe prehistoric man had the intellectual capacity to produce any kind of artistic expression. The acknowledgement of the authenticity of the paintings, which finally came in 1902, changed forever the perception of prehistoric human beings.

Marcelino de Sautuola

In 1879, amateur archaeologist Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola discovered the cave drawings. The cave was excavated by Sautuola and the archaeologist Juan Vilanova y Piera from the University of Madrid, resulting in a much acclaimed publication in 1880 which interpreted the paintings as Paleolithic in origin.

The French specialists, led by Gabriel de Mortillet and Emile Cartailhac, were particularly adamant in rejecting the hypothesis of Sautuola and Piera, causing their findings being loudly ridiculed at the 1880 Prehistorical Congress in Lisbon, due to the supreme artistic quality, and the exceptional state of conservation of the paintings, Sautuola was even accused of forgery and fraud. A fellow countryman maintained that the paintings had been produced by a contemporary artist on Sautuola's orders.

It was not until 1902, when several other findings of prehistoric paintings had served to render the hypothesis of the extreme antiquity of the Altamira paintings less offensive, that the scientific society retracted their opposition to the Spaniards. That year, Emile Cartailhac emphatically admitted his mistake in the famous article, "Mea culpa d'un sceptique", published in the journal L'Anthropologie. Sautuola, having died 14 years earlier, did not live to enjoy his rehabilitation and his triumph against the skeptics.

In 2012, further uranium-thorium dating research was published, supporting an older age for portions of the art, including one claviform image at 35,600 years old.

Further information: http://museodealtamira.mcu.es/

3D Animation-reconstruction: The Greek City of Syracuse

Biggest Roman find since 1920's (The Hadrian's Arts Centre)

Archaeologists who have completed the excavation of a 900-seat arts centre under one of Rome’s busiest roundabouts are calling it the most important Roman discovery in 80 years. 

 

Archaeologists who have completed the excavation of a 900-seat arts centre under one of Rome’s busiest roundabouts are calling it the most important Roman discovery in 80 years. The centre, built by the emperor Hadrian in 123, offered three massive halls where Roman nobles flocked to hear poetry, speeches and philosophy tracts while reclining on terraced marble seating.

With the dig now completed, the terracing and the hulking brick walls of the complex, as well as stretches of the elegant grey and yellow marble flooring, are newly visible at bottom of a 5.5 metre (18ft) hole in Piazza Venezia, where police officers wearing white gloves direct chaotic traffic like orchestra conductors and where Mussolini harangued thousands of followers from his balcony.

“Hadrian’s auditorium is the biggest find in Rome since the Forum was uncovered in the 1920s” said Rossella Rea, the archaeologist running the dig.

The excavations, which are now due to open to the public, are next to a taxi rank and squeezed between a baroque church and the Vittoriano, an imposing monument to Italy’s defunct monarchy, which is nicknamed the Typewriter by locals.

The complex was only unearthed thanks to excavations to build a new underground railway line which will cross the heart of Rome. “We don’t have funds for these kind of digs so this has come to light thanks to the new line,” said Rea. Archaeologists keeping a careful eye on what gets dug up have proved to be a mixed blessing for railway engineers, who have had to scrap plans for two stations in the heart of the centre of Rome when it was discovered their exits to the surface cut straight through Roman remains.

 

With the discovery of Hadrian’s complex at Piazza Venezia, the line risked losing its last stop in the centre and being forced to run into the heart of Rome from the suburbs and straight out the other side without stopping. But Rea said the station and the ruins could coexist. “I believe we can run one of the exits from the station along the original corridor of the complex where Romans entered the halls,” she said. The site sheds new light on Hadrian’s love of poetry – he wrote his own verse in Latin and Greek – and his taste for bold architecture – an 11-metre-high (36ft) arched ceiling once towered over the poets in the central hall.

Today the performing space is riddled with pits dug for fires, revealing how after three centuries of celebrating the arts, the halls fell into disrepair with the collapse of the Roman empire and were used for smelting ingots.

At the centre of the main hall, like a prop from a disaster movie, is a massive, nine-by-five-metre chunk of the monumental roof which came crashing down during an earthquake in 848 after standing for seven centuries. Following the quake, the halls were gradually covered over until a hospital built on top in the 16th century dug down for cellar space. “We found pots lobbed down a well after the patients using them died” said Rea. “We could date them because the designs on the glaze were the same we see on implements in Caravaggio paintings"

Sources: 

http://www.heritagedaily.com/2012/12/hadrians-hall-archaeologists-finish-excavation-of-roman-arts-centre/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/27/hadrian-auditorium-ancient-roman-arts-center_n_2370106.html

1,000,000,000,000 Frames/Second Photography - Ramesh Raskar on TED

...the future of Photography?

 

Archaeologists found Mona Lisa model's remains

Archeologists are uncovering the remains of what they believe is the model behind Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa". Source: AdelaideNow

IT'S the face that launched a thousand imitations. Now, archaeologists are convinced they've found the body of the real Mona Lisa.

Buried in a crypt beneath a convent in Florence, Italy, archaeologists believe they have uncovered the skeleton belonging to the model who posed for Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece in 1504.

The wife of a rich silk merchant, Lisa Gheradini, is generally accepted by historians to be the woman with the mysterious smile.

Lisa Gheradini, whose married name was Giocondo, became a nun after her husband's death. She was buried in the grounds of the Convent of Saint Ursula where she died in 1542, aged 63.

The burial site of Lisa Gherardini, wife of the wealthy Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo, the model who inspired Leonardo da Vinci's painting "The Mona Lisa". Picture: AFP / CLAUDIO GIOVANNINI Source: AFP

Archaeologists had to dig through thick concrete laid as part of an effort to turn the convent into barracks for soldiers.

But they quickly unearthed a female-sized human skull, along with fragments of vertebrae and ribs.

It was right where ancient maps and documents had led them to believe Lisa's body had been placed: a crypt reached via a gate and staircase.

Archaeologists work on the excavation of a grave inside the medieval Convent of Saint Ursula in Florence. Picture: AFP / CLAUDIO GIOVANNINI Source: AFP

The dig was suspended after the archaeologists ran out of funds, but work began again last month.

They have since unearthed a large part of a human skeleton.

However, archeologist Silvano Vinceti, who is in charge of the dig, said it was not certain if the bones belonged to the same individual.

An archaeologist works on the excavation of a grave inside the medieval Convent of Saint Ursula in Florence. Picture: AFP / CLAUDIO GIOVANNINI Source: AFP

DNA will be extracted from the bones and compared with the remains of Lisa's children, who were buried nearby.

Once her identity is verified, archeologists will use reconstruction techniques on the skull to see how it compares to the face on da Vinci's idyllic painting.

Professor Vincenti claimed last year that hidden initials could be found in the eyes of the Mona Lisa when examined under a high-powered microscope.

A human skeleton is seen at the excavation of a grave inside the medieval Convent of Saint Ursula in Florence. Archaeologists are searching the burial site for Lisa Gherardini, wife of the wealthy Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo, the model who inspired Leonardo da Vinci's painting "The Mona Lisa". AFP / CLAUDIO GIOVANNINI Source: AFP

Source: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/world/archeologists-uncover-mona-lisa-models-remains/story-fnddckzi-1226428689373

Does Reality Exists? (The Allegory of the Cave)

Note: Watch this Carl Sagan's Cosmos episode next http://areainsolita.blogspot.com/2009/03/4th-dimension.html