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

The Tunguska Event: Example of Imminent Danger to Humankind

The Tunguska event was an enormously powerful explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, on June 30, 1908. The explosion, having the epicentre: 60.886°N, 101.894°E; is believed to have been caused by the air burst of a small asteroid or comet at an altitude of 5 to 10 kilometres (3 to 6 miles) above Earth's surface.

Different studies have yielded widely varying estimates of the object's size, on the order of 60m (200ft) to 190m (620ft). It is the largest impact event on or near Earth in recorded history.

The number of scholarly publications on the problem of the Tunguska explosion since 1908 may be estimated at about 1,000 (mainly in Russian). Many scientists have participated in Tunguska studies, the best-known of them being Leonid Kulik, Yevgeny Krinov, Kirill Florensky, Nikolai Vladimirovich Vasiliev, and Wilhelm Fast.

In 2013, a team of researchers led by Victor Kvasnytsya of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine published analysis results of micro-samples from a peat bog near the blast epicenter showing fragments possibly of meteoric origin.

The Tunguska explosion knocked down an estimated of 80 million trees over an area covering 2,150 square kilometres (830 sq. mi.) and it is estimated that the shock wave from the blast would have measured 5.0 on the Richter scale, explosion capable of destroying a large metropolitan area. This catastrophic possibility, helped to spark the discussion on the importance of creating asteroid deflection strategies.

The Antikythera Mechanism: History and Explanation (Ancient Astronomical Clock)

The Antikythera mechanism is an ancient analog computer designed to calculate astronomical positions. It was recovered in 1900–1901 from a shipwreck in the region of Antikythera, Greece, nonetheless its significance and complexity were not understood until a century later.

Jacques Cousteau visited the wreck site in 1978, but although he found new dating evidence, he did not find any additional remains of the Antikythera mechanism, the construction has been dated to the early 1st century BCE.
Technological artifacts approaching its complexity and workmanship did not appear again until the 14th century CE, when mechanical astronomical clocks began to be built in Western Europe.

The Antikythera mechanism is kept at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. It is now displayed at the temporary exhibition about the Antikythera Shipwreck, accompanied by reconstructions made by Ioannis Theofanidis, Derek de Solla Price, Michael Wright, the Thessaloniki University and Dionysios Kriaris. Other reconstructions are on display at the American Computer Museum in Bozeman - Montana, at the Children's Museum of Manhattan in New York and at the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris.

Yonaguni: The Underwater Mysterious Ruins

The Yonaguni Monument is a massive underwater rock formation off the coast of Yonaguni, the southernmost of the Ryukyu Islands, in Japan. There is a debate about whether the site is completely natural, is a natural site that has been modified, or is a human-made artifact. For these reasons, the site is also known in Japanese as the Yonaguni (Island) Submarine Ruins.

The flat parallel faces, sharp edges, and mostly right angles of the formation have led many people, including many of the underwater photographers and divers who have visited the site and some scholars, to the opinion that those features are human-made. These people include Gary and Cecilia Hagland and Tom Holden, who went on underwater expeditions to study and photograph the site. These features include a trench that has two internal 90° angles as well as the twin megaliths that appear to have been placed there. These megaliths have straight edges and square corners. However, sea currents have been known to move large rocks on a regular basis. Some of those who see the formations as being largely natural claim that they may have been modified by human hands. The semi-regular terraces of the Monument have been compared to other examples of megalithic architecture, such as the rock-hewn terraces seen at Sacsayhuaman. The formations have also been compared to the Okinawa Tomb, a rock-hewn structure of uncertain age.

The Astonishing Fibonacci Sequence

In mathematics, the Fibonacci numbers or Fibonacci series or Fibonacci sequence are the numbers in the following integer sequence: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, ...

By definition, the first two numbers in the Fibonacci sequence are 0 and 1, and each subsequent number is the sum of the previous two.

The Fibonacci sequence is named after Leonardo Fibonacci. His 1202 book Liber Abaci introduced the sequence to Western European mathematics, although the sequence had been described earlier in Indian mathematics.

Ancient Egyptian Statue Mysteriously Rotates - Manchester Museum

The Manchester Museum is getting a lot of press this week. It released a time-lapse footage of an ancient Egyptian statue slowly rotating in its sealed case. The statue, of an official named Neb-senu, dates back to around 1,800 BC, and was given to the museum 80 years ago. In all those decades, this is the first time that anyone has seen it spin. 

The Mystery of the "Swiss Watch" found in a Sealed Ming Dinasty Tomb

Archaeologists are stumped after finding a 100-year-old Swiss watch in an ancient tomb that was sealed more than 400 years ago. They believed they were the first to visit the Ming dynasty grave in Shangsi, southern China, since its occupant's funeral, but inside they uncovered a miniature watch in the shape of a ring marked "Swiss" that is thought to be just a century old.

The mysterious timepiece was encrusted in mud and rock and had stopped at 10:06 am. Watches were not around at the time of the Ming Dynasty and Switzerland did not even exist as a country, an expert pointed out.

The archaeologists were filming a documentary with two journalists when they made the puzzling discovery. "When we tried to remove the soil wrapped around the coffin, suddenly a piece of rock dropped off and hit the ground with metallic sound" said Jiang Yanyu, former curator of the Guangxi Museum. "We picked up the object, and found it was a ring. After removing the covering soil and examining it further, we were shocked to see it was a watch" he added.

The Ming Dynasty or The Empire of the Great Ming was the ruling dynasty in China from 1368 to 1644.

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1096959/Mystery-century-old-Swiss-watch-discovered-ancient-tomb-sealed-400-years.html

Göbekli Tepe: The 12,000 Years Old Unexplained Structure

Göbekli Tepe Turkish: [ɡøbe̞kli te̞pɛ] ("Potbelly Hill") is an early Neolithic sanctuary located at the top of a mountain ridge in the Southeastern Anatolia Region of Turkey, northeast of the town of Şanlıurfa. It includes massive stones carved about 11,000 years ago by people who had not yet developed metal tools or even pottery.

The "tell" (hill) has a height of 15m (49ft) and is about 300m (984ft) in diameter. It is approximately 760m (2,493ft) above sea level. It was first noted in a survey conducted by Istanbul University and the University of Chicago in 1964. The survey recognized that the rise could not entirely be a natural feature, but postulated that a Byzantine cemetery lay beneath. The survey noted a large number of flints and the presence of limestone slabs thought to be grave markers. The hill had long been under agricultural cultivation and generations of local inhabitants had frequently moved rocks and placed them in clearance piles, possibly destroying much archaeological evidence in the process.

Klaus Schmidt, chief archaeologist of Göbekli Tepe, is of the view that religion and the mobilization of labor behind the building of religious centers like Göbekli Tepe were the chief factors driving the development of civilization and the transition from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic ages.

The Unreachable Secret Tomb of China's 1st Emperor

An army of clay warriors guards the tomb of China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, who died in 210 BC. The tomb is still under excavation near Xi'an, China. CREDIT: Clara Moskowitz/LiveScience

Buried deep under a hill in central China, surrounded by an underground moat of poisonous mercury, lies an entombed emperor who's been undisturbed for more than two millennia.

The tomb holds the secrets of China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, who died on Sept. 10, 210 B.C., after conquering six warring states to create the first unified nation of China.

The answers to a number of historical mysteries may lie buried inside that tomb, but whether modern people will ever see inside this mausoleum depends not just on the Chinese government, but on science.

 

"The big hill, where the emperor is buried — nobody's been in there," said archaeologist Kristin Romey, curatorial consultant for the Terracotta Warrior exhibition at New York City’s Discovery Times Square. "Partly it's out of respect for the elders, but they also realize that nobody in the world right now has the technology to properly go in and excavate it.".

The warring states:

Qin Shi Huang (pronounced "chin shuh hwang") was born in 259 B.C., first son to the king of Qin, one of six independent kingdoms inside modern China. These kingdoms had been warring for more than 200 years, but through a combination of military strength, strategy and natural disasters, Qin Shi Huang conquered them all, proclaiming himself not just a king, but also an emperor — the first of China.

Scholars still debate the details of how this occurred, and what unique tactics allowed the Qin emperor to achieve what no one had managed before.

When he died, Qin Shi Huang was buried in the most opulent tomb complex ever constructed in China, a sprawling, city-size collection of underground caverns containing everything the emperor would need for the afterlife. The ancient Chinese, along with many cultures including ancient Egyptians, believed that items and even people buried with a person could be taken with him to the afterlife.

But instead of burying his armies, concubines, administrators and servants with him, the Qin emperor came up with an alternative: clay reproductions.

Shocking discovery:

In 1974, a group of farmers digging wells near Xi'an in China, stumbled upon one of the most shocking archaeological discoveries of all time. The life-size terracotta solider they dug out of the ground turned out to be just one of an army of thousands, each utterly unique, with individual clothing, hair and facial features.

For almost four decades, archaeologists have been excavating the site. So far, they've uncovered about 2,000 clay soldiers, but experts estimate there are more than 8,000 in total.

"They're going to be digging there for centuries," Romey predicted.

Still, scientists have yet to touch the central tomb, which holds a palace containing the body of Qin Shi Huang.

"It's really smart what the Chinese government is doing," said Romey. "When we went into [Egyptian King] Tut's tomb, think about all the information we lost just based on the excavation techniques of the 1930s. There's so much additional that we could have learned, but the techniques back then weren’t what we have now.". "Even though we may think we have great archaeological excavation techniques right now," she said, "who knows, a century down the road if we open this tomb, what they're going to say?"

Even though they number in the thousands, each terracotta soldier has painstakingly detailed armor, facial features, hair and clothing.
CREDIT: Clara Moskowitz/LiveScience

To open the tomb?

The decision whether to explore the tomb anytime soon, or ever, is up to the government of China. That decision will likely be influenced by the pace of technological progress.

"In archaeological conservation, every year you have major new developments," Romey said. "When we began excavating [the soldiers] in the '70s, the minute they were exposed to air and sunlight, the pigment just flaked off. Now they’ve figured out a new technique where they can actually preserve the paint as they excavate."

Perhaps, if science advances enough, that excavation wouldn't cause serious damage to the burial site, and the tomb will finally be opened.

"I wouldn’t be surprised if you had some sort of robotic visual survey going in there at some point," Romey said.

And despite their desire to protect the treasures of antiquity, archaeologists are itching with curiosity to find out what's inside Qin Shi Huang's central tomb.

Rivers of mercury:

Ancient writings say the emperor created an entire underground kingdom and palace, complete with a ceiling mimicking the night sky, set with pearls as stars. Pits full of terracotta concubines have never been discovered, though experts predict they exist somewhere in the complex.

And Qin Shi Huang's tomb is also thought to be encircled with rivers of liquid mercury, which the ancient Chinese believed could bestow immortality.

"It's kind of ironic" Romey said. "This is probably how he died, by ingesting mercury. He was taking all these mercury pills because he wanted to live forever and it killed him by the age of 39."

That moat of mercury also presents another reason why archaeologists are loath to explore the tomb just yet — doing so would likely be very dangerous, according to soil samples around the tomb, which indicate extremely high levels of mercury contamination.

In the end, scientists and historians must always weigh their desire to know more with the damage such inquiry would cause.

"Archaeology, ultimately, is a destructive science" Romey said. "You have to destroy stuff in order to learn about it."

Source:  http://www.livescience.com/22454-ancient-chinese-tomb-terracotta-warriors.html

The Man who got lost in the Catacombs of Paris

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

The Mystery Of Oak Island Money Pit (Updated)

There has been wide-ranging speculation among enthusiasts as to who originally dug the pit and what it might contain. Later accounts say that oak platforms were discovered every 10feet (3.0m), but the earliest accounts simply say that "marks" of some type were found at these places. They also say there were "tool marks" or pick scrapes on the walls of the money pit and that the dirt was noticeably loose and not as hard packed as the surrounding soil. One expedition said they found the flood tunnel at 90 feet, and that it was lined with flat stones. However, Robert Dunfield (a trained geologist) wrote that he carefully examined the walls of the re-excavated pit and was unable to locate any evidence of this tunnel, but all the questions have not being answered and the place is still immersed in mysteries.

Strange Spiral On The Skies Of Norway on December 9, 2009

The Norwegian spiral anomaly of 2009 appeared in the night sky over Norway on 9 December 2009. It was visible and photographed from northern Norway and Sweden. The spiral consisted of a blue beam of light with a greyish spiral emanating from one end of it.

The light could be seen from the region of Trøndelag to the south and to the north, as well as from Northern Sweden. According to sources it lasted for 2 or 3 minutes, describing it as a light that came from behind a mountain, stopping in mid-air and starting to spiral outwards.

A similar, though less spectacular event had also occurred in Norway the month before, both events had the expected visual features of failed flights of Russian SLBM RSM-56 Bulava missiles. The Russian Defense Ministry acknowledged shortly after that such event took place on December 9th.

Jason Martell: Ancient Technology

Jason Martell is an alien investigator who is very well known in the paranormal circles, appearing on shows on the Discovery Channel and History Channel, along with the web and radio shows, talking about UFOs, the Sumerian Culture and ancient technology artifacts.

Egypt: Mystery of the temple of Seti

Take a look at the following photographs…

What did you see? An helicopter? An airplane? Some strange vehicle?

• If yes: you will be thinking about Photoshop (as I did), but no, these hieroglyphs are really carved on stone. The explanations for this (the skeptical explanations we must say…) are that these figures came as the result of modern creative people, or that the hieroglyphs were made above old ones and with the passing of time these figures were created (…an amazing coincidence! we must say). Well, simply nobody knows, because no one has published yet, a convincing explanation for it.

• If no: you have no imagination

Lendas do Algarve – 1ra Parte

Acho que uma das coisas mais interessantes de se fazer quando visitamos uma região ou uma cultura, é entrarmos em contacto com os seus mitos e lendas, possivelmente por sempre ter visto a Antropologia como uma ciência fascinante ou por ter aquela curiosidade natural que nós leva a interessar-nos pelo desconhecido.

Hoje vamos até ao Cerro da Cabeça, em Moncarapacho, onde existe uma lenda ligada a um grande tesouro.

O cerro da cabeça é provavelmente um dos sítios do Algarve que engloba o maior numero de historias por metro quadrado, existe a crença de que neste lugar se encontra uma passagem secreta que comunica com o castelo de Tavira e que esta terá sido usada pelos mouros quando o conquistador D. Paio Peres Correia tomara o castelo em Junho de 1239. Diz-se que estes mouros que fugiram para a montanha, terão ficado lá encantados, destinados a permanecerem naquele lugar até a eternidade.

Contos populares ou não, o que é certo é que existem muitos relatos de habitantes da zona, que afirmam terem sido surpreendidos por estes seres misteriosos durante horas da noite.

Conta uma antiga lenda, que se alguém der treze voltas ao Cerro da cabeça durante a meia-noite, uma graciosa moura vestida de branco irá aparecer e levará a pessoa até o lugar onde se esconde um grande tesouro. Não se sabe ao certo se já alguém se tentou tal proeza, mas se o leitor decide experimentar, não se esqueça de voltar a este blog para contar-nos o relato dessa experiência.

Para ver:
O filme "Floripes" de Miguel Gonçalves Mendes

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_cHq2qRR08 )

Uma visita ao enigmático Chalé de João Lúcio

No passado dia 15 de Março, fui convidado a participar num evento cultural a decorrer no Chalé de João Lúcio, um lugar do qual já tinha ouvido muitos relatos, mas que ainda não tinha tido a oportunidade de visitar.
A minha primeira impressão foi de assombro ao ver uma estrutura deste género emergir por entre às árvores da zona, é visível a necessidade de uma operação de restauro, mas este facto não lhe tira o esplendor de outrora.

Ubicada em terras cheias de lendas, a actual sede da Ecoteca de Olhão foi mandada construir a inícios do século XX (1916) pelo célebre poeta olhanense João Lúcio Pousão Pereira após a morte trágica do seu filho, buscando assim um lugar que lhe proporcionasse isolamento espiritual.
Rico em simbolismo, a estrutura do chalé está composta por três pisos e quatro escadarias, cada uma delas alinhada no sentido dos pontos cardinais (Norte, Sul, Este e Oeste) representando os quatro elementos (Ar, Fogo, Terra e Agua) nas figuras de Peixe, Serpente, Violino e Guitarra.

Um aspecto curioso da história é que o poeta João Lúcio nunca viria habitar o chalé, isto por consequência de uma pneumonia que lhe tirou a vida no ano de 1918, mas mesmo assim ainda há quem diga, que em noites de sueste, se pôr-mos muita atenção, poderemos confirmar que João Lúcio… afinal mora lá…

Agradecimentos: À Ecoteca de Olhão (http://www.ecotecadeolhao.blogspot.com/) pela magnífica visita.

O Fenómeno dos Mitos Urbanos

Considerado por alguns “Folclore moderno”, os mitos urbanos são na maioria das vezes, histórias contadas com o intuito de alertar para uma determinada situação.

As suas origens são quase sempre desconhecidas, havendo por vezes um interessante processo de aculturação e de adaptação ao tempo, tornando as histórias quase universais.

Um outro traço interessante é a evolução dos meios de difusão. O que no início começou muito provavelmente por ser através da oralidade, nos últimos tempos estes mitos têm tido uma forte presença nos Media (séries, filmes, documentários, internet), passando esta última a ser considerada actualmente como a principal fonte de difusão.

Entre algum dos Mitos Urbanos mais conhecidos temos:

• A menina da curva 
• O passageiro desaparecido
• As consequências nefastas do jogo do copo
• O cadáver da avó
• A aliança esquecida
• Entre outros

Fenómeno interessante, como já foi referido, é a existência de lendas idênticas em diversas partes do globo e não obstante contadas pelos habitantes como reais e oriundas daquela zona.