Sunstone Unearthed From Sixteenth Century Shipwreck 114
sciencehabit writes "In 1592, a British ship sank near the island of Alderney in the English Channel carrying an odd piece of cargo: a small, angular crystal. Once it was brought back to land, a few European scientists began to suspect the mysterious object might be a calcite crystal, a powerful 'sunstone' referred to in Norse legends which they believe Vikings and other European seafarers used to navigate before the introduction of the magnetic compass. Now, after subjecting the object to a battery of mechanical and chemical tests, the team has determined that the Alderman crystal is indeed a calcite and, therefore, could have been the ship's optical compass. Today, similar calcite crystals are used by astronomers to analyze the atmospheres of exoplanets—perhaps setting the stage for a whole new age of exploration."
In a perfect world (Score:5, Funny)
I hope when it was unearthed the finder said something like "By Odin's Beard! Tis the SUNSTONE that was foretold in the prophecy!"
At least that's what I would have done. 3
Re:In a perfect world (Score:5, Funny)
Blurgh, Blurgh. Blurgh, blurgh... Bubble, bubble, bubble.... shhhhhheeeeeerssshk... Blurgh, blurgh. Blurgh, blurgh.... Bubble bubble bubble
Re:In a perfect world (Score:5, Interesting)
That sounds like Vogon, anybody got a babelfish?
This interested the hell out of me, I'd never heard of it before. Wikipedia says it was used to find the sun on a cloudy day, which would indeed be very useful to navigators with no compasses.
It also said it's Oregon's official gemstone. No sun or magnets in Oregon?
THIS is why I love slashdot! Who knew? Not me!
Re:In a perfect world (Score:5, Interesting)
This interested the hell out of me, I'd never heard of it before. Wikipedia says it was used to find the sun on a cloudy day, which would indeed be very useful to navigators with no compasses.
I find the timing of this story rather interesting, because the History Channel's newest special miniseries Vikings just started up this past Sunday. In it, the main character reveals to his brother a sunstone that a wanderer had given him. He then proceeds to find the sun through the clouds for his brother, who did not believe that the stone would work.
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I find the timing of this story rather interesting, because the History Channel's newest special miniseries Vikings...
I was about to say the same thing!
Oddly, it's the second reference from that series that I ran into today. The other is the Shield Maidens. I just hit a part in the book, "The Mongoliad: Book One" that mentions them. I had never heard of them before the series or the book. (yeah, it's not quite as coincidental timing-wise, since the book was released well before the series, but it was a surprising coincidence to me nonetheless)
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Wikipedia says they can find the sun's azimuth even when the sun is below the horizon!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunstone
The name derives from sunstones believed to have been used for navigation in the Middle Ages because their optical properties allow the azimuth of the sun to be detected even when the sun is below the horizon, with an accuracy within a degree or so.[1][2]
Does this mean at night?
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It means before sunrise and after sunset, but not too long either way. Refraction by the atmosphere.
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The way this works is that the atmosphere polarizes the light from the sun, and that can be detected before the sun rises or after it sets. On an overcast day, the polarization can be detected as well, giving a way to determine the azimuth of the sun even when it can't be seen by eye.
Calcite is birefriigant, meaning that rays of different polarization pass through a single crystal with rhombic cleavage plans in two paths, which you can see. I would assume that two crystals attached by with different orie
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Twilight.
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Might be worth noting that the operation of the stone in the show is fairly different from the description on wikipedia. In the show they basically hold it up to the clouds and see the sun through it. In Wikipedia they describe having to adjust the angle the stone is held at to detect circles in the sky and use that to locate the sun. Whether they are equivalent descriptions I cannot say. When they demonstrated the stone on the show I guessed it was calcite and had something to do with the polarization
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Monarch Butterflies can do the same thing, they navigate by the position of the sun, but can locate it even on a cloudy day.
Another amazing fact about monarch butterflies, their migratory pattern lasts 3 generations, so no single butterfly knows, or has ever done the whole trip.
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"That sounds like Vogon, anybody got a babelfish?"
Believe me if it is Vogon (poetry) you don't want to hear the translation.
Anyway I wonder how long it will be before someone digs one up around here.
(I live less than 50 miles from Alexandria, MN)
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If you think Vogon is bad, you should hear that one British kid...
I wonder how long it will be before someone digs one up around here.
It isn't that they're rare, it's that we found evidence that the stories of this "magic" stone were true.
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A MØØse once bit my sister.
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He probably got Odin's beard confused with Durin's beard.
Re:In a perfect world (Score:5, Funny)
The second sentence should begin with a capital 'Thorn' but some reason the /. posting system does not like that symbol and zaps it.
You have unearthed the fabled "ASCII only website" a beast of legend! It is said that ancient people communicated this way long before Unicode was invented.
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Like you I looked it up on Wikipedia and was confused. The Sunstone [wikipedia.org] article said it was feldspar, not calcite as in the post. Then I dug deeper and the Sunstone (medieval) [wikipedia.org] article says the original sunstone used for navigation was calcite like Iceland spar. I don't know if the feldspar version could be used for navigation or not.
BTW, we don't need the sunstones (feldspar version) here in Oregon, we just have a supply for those that do.
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No, you ninny, everyone know you use a Sun stone to evolve [bulbagarden.net] to evolve their pokemon! ;p
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You beat me to it....
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So... no thermo luminescence; no little fuzzy things begging for estefee?
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needs more 'verily'.
Prime example of scientific tunnel-vision? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Prime example of scientific tunnel-vision? (Score:5, Informative)
No kidding. 1) it has a hardness of 3 on Mohs hardness scale, 2) it fizzes in acid, 3) it has 3 perfect non-90-degree (rhombohedral) mineral cleavages, etc. Five minutes? More like under one minute. Even the photo is enough to tell that's very probably calcite.
On the other hand, maybe they needed non-destructive tests, which would make it slightly trickier (hence 5 minutes).
Re:Prime example of scientific tunnel-vision? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, according to the abstract, they were trying to determine what happened to the crystal while it sat on the seafloor. Alteration from 400+ years of contact with seawater (plus sand abrasion) changed the physical and optical properties somewhat.
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Re:Prime example of scientific tunnel-vision? (Score:5, Informative)
As it happens, I'm a geologist. There's a difference between alteration and erosion. What the article refers to is the exchange of calcium and magnesium between the crystal and seawater (ratios of Ca and Mg move towards equilibrium with the ocean chemistry). That kind of substitution does change your unit cell a bit; which will alter the properties slightly. It would still be calcite (which is ridiculously easy to identify, as you say); just not quite the same calcite it was before it was dunked.
Reading the summary, it sounds like the calcite had been altered to the point where it couldn't be used as a sunstone (cloudy and scratched). The tests were to determine if the crystal would have made a good sunstone prior to being soaked/abraded.
Re:Prime example of scientific tunnel-vision? (Score:5, Funny)
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By Odin's Beard! This is a meme I can get behind!
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the most readily distinguishable characteristic of calcite is that it's birefringent
That sounds like some particularly complicated sexual practice. I'm not going to spoil things by looking up what it actually means, as it will certainly be much, much duller.
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Plenty of minerals are birefringent, but calcite is notable because it is so strongly birefringent. Make up your own joke :-)
Anyway, if you think that's impressive, calcite also has 3 perfect cleavages.
Careful looking that one up.
Unearthed? (Score:3)
Re:Unearthed? (Score:4, Funny)
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Yes, but he does need to be in a foreign country to be hit that way
Negative. [washingtonpost.com]
lost knowledge? (Score:5, Interesting)
In a discussion I had with a friend the other day about how did Vikings navigate? Mostly poor weather (no star sightings) and very close to magnetic north pole (compass is useless), or they only traveled part of year when weather was not really bad. One story I heard is they used pressure as a means of navigation. Huh? don't ask me, that is what someone else said. But since that was 1000 years ago, that knowledge is lost so all we have is speculation. Interesting to consider What If... they continued further south and settled in sunny Florida?
In the book "From Vinland To Mars" published in 1970s it said many Scandinavian men were "landless sons" since first born son inherits the land, and there is not much farmable real estate in those areas. So these landless sons don't have much career opportunity except join the Viking Navy and plunder rest of Europe but there was also motivation to go west to find other places to settle.
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Same reason why people went west in the USA
The year 1000 was in the middle of another global warming cycle and there were too many people for some parts of the world. So they went out to conquer, rape and pillage other parts of the world.
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Re:lost knowledge? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think they went from Norway to Newfoundland. Instead they went Norway -> Orkneys -> Iceland -> Greenland -> Newfoundland. So while still an amazing achievement, it was more like one more hop, mostly west, so tracking the sun is useful for that. The vikings from Greenland that sailed down to L'Anse aux Meadows had already been sailing west from Greenland to trade with the natives (the Dorsets?) and just kept going further. L'Anse aux Meadows was a long way from Greenland and the Indians further south would have been tough to fight, given the population of Greenland was small. So you can see why they did not establish large settlements there. If word had gotten all the way back to Norway and the multiple hops were easier then perhaps more would have settled but it didn't look as attractive as it did for the rest of Europe 500 years later.
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That involved following/riding on whales, didn't it?
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That involved following/riding on whales, didn't it?
I thought they followed swallows carrying coconuts, or something?
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Even with the sunstone, I still wonder how it is actually used in navigation.
The sunstone obviously determines the direction of where the sun is located - which can basically be anywhere, particularly in summer in the arctic when the sun doesn't set. I know how to get my heading using the sun (unless it's too high above me, like around midday in summer as I'm a hair south of the Tropic of Cancer) and a watch - it basically relies on knowing where the sun is at that moment, and knowing the actual time.
So now
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I can't find an image for it now, but I have seen a primitive portable sundial disk. I have a modern version as a novelty.
If you know north, you can find the time and vice versa. Aha you say, how do you know the time? Well in a "primitive" society, people could develop a sense of what time in was. This could be refined by practicing with the sundisk on land.
In an earlier age, railway engineers were said to be able to guess the time to a few minutes and only checked their watches for the minute.
If this cryst
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You can estimate the time without a watch easy to 30 minutes accuracy. ... or east or west, depending on the time.
So knowing where the sun is gives you a good clue to where south is
I'm used to look at the sun and point out north to about 5 - 10 degrees accuracy instantly.
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Oh, idiot mods around again? Already 2 down mods? For what exactly if I may ask?
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While you are strictly speaking correct.
This is not what old school navigation was about. They only used the sun as compass ersatz.
And this crystals are useful to find the suns position even under fog or clouds.
See it this way: I want to sail strictly west. My latitude is irrelevant if I'm confident that I reach greenland as long as my course is good enough. Drifting to far south or to far north is my main concern ...
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It's easy to tell when noon is from a sundial. And if you know the date and the elevation of the noon sun, you can tell your latitude. And if you know your latitude and the date, you can tell what time and what direction sunrise and sunset are. And if you know a few times, you can use an hourglass or something to
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Sundials don't exactly work reliably on a boat.They are highly dependent on being in a fixed direction.
Also these crystals are typically for overcast days, where you can't see the sun.
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Re:lost knowledge? (Score:5, Informative)
Its worth noting that while we know the Vikings for their raiding and pillaging, they were in fact some of the most successful traders in Europe at the time. They were also very good and competent craftsmen.
What we get is the Evil Vikings (tm) version as related by the Christian Church, from when they were (gasp) Pagans and not subject to the rule of that church. Once they had been forced at sword-point to convert to Christianity they became more acceptable. Not that old Norse religion was anything to be particularly happy about mind you. My point is that the Vikings sailed their ships around Europe down into the Mediterranean, conquered Russia (the Rus were effectively Norseman), served as the Imperial Bodyguard for the Byzantine Empire etc. They didn't just destroy and pillage - and most of the other peoples in Europe did a lot of the same thing anyways.
The Sunstone is a neat idea if true though. I would have bet the Norse navigated mostly by the stars myself, and that they tended to stick to being within sight of land most of the time as most people did prior to the invention of modern navigation.
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Vikings have a reputation for being "evil" because they luted,raped and pillaged large areas of the British Isles. Sure they might have done other smart things, but that does not detract from the fact that they where nasty pieces of work.
Invoking Godwin's Law the Nazi's had lots of wonderful technological stuff as well. They where however still evil bastards.
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Vikings have a reputation for being "evil" because they luted,raped and pillaged large areas of the British Isles.
Thanks you for making my day there :) Luting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lute) should indeed be considered evil!
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Well, according to letters we have found from the time, the rape part might have been convinient lie. The danes were taller and blonder than the british, and they bathed regularly and braided their hair and beards. They settled part of Brittain in what became known as Danelaw, and was considered a nuisance because they could seduce even married women. They were later subject to a genocide and wiped out in Brittain.
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Well, according to letters we have found from the time, the rape part might have been convinient lie. The danes were taller and blonder than the british, and they bathed regularly and braided their hair and beards. They settled part of Brittain in what became known as Danelaw, and was considered a nuisance because they could seduce even married women
So, a bit like American GIs during WW2 in Britain?
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Not that old Norse religion was anything to be particularly happy about mind you.
but then their religion has exciting characters you can use for comic books, i.e. Thor.
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The vikings did not travel regulary so far north that a compass is useless.
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In a discussion I had with a friend the other day about how did Vikings navigate?
If you take a straight left from Scandinavia you'll either hit Britain (which you can plunder/settle) or if you're unlucky and miss it, you eventually get to Greenland then America.
It's really not that complicated.
Sadly, not that sunstone (Score:5, Interesting)
When I first saw the headline, I thought it was going to be a fossilized bioluminescent sunstone [wikispaces.com] from H [wikispaces.com]. Beam [wikipedia.org] Piper [gutenberg.org]'s Little [tvtropes.org] Fuzzy [wikipedia.org] series of science fiction stories.
Still, a fascinating read, albeit not one as exciting as if H. Beam Piper's fictional sunstones had been found to exist in real life.
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
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Dear Aryeh Goretsky
It looks like you're writing a letter.
Would you like help?
o Get help with writing the letter
o Just type the letter without help
[_] Don't show me this tip again
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My god! They weren't Vikings, they were Space Vikings! [wikipedia.org] That explains everything!
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It'll need 65 million years to regain its former luster after all that time down there.
Fortunately, that three-seater I double-parked outside can help...
Hmm... (Score:3)
Since there appears to be at least two markets for calcite crystals, Astronomers, and I would expect the re-enactment community, I wonder if there is a means of creating either the variety needed by astronomers, or people interested in re-enacting voyages of vikings or others.
I would suspect that creating them would be potentially less difficult than creating man-made diamonds, but I haven't checked.
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I've never heard of anyone in the re-enactment community trying to navigate with one... It would be rather dodgy at best.
But calcite isn't exactly rare, so there's no need to create it.
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The question about creating it is not about simply generating calcite, or calcium carbonate, but in generating usable sized high quality crystals. Much of the stuff I've encountered in nature that is large enough to hold has crystals that are growing in multiple directions, with none discreetly large enough to be useful for either use. I'm quite certain that there are larger crystals that would be workable, but I'm wondering if the cost to grow high quality crystals might be low enough to make this into a w
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According to Wikipedia, it's mined. The "stuff you've encountered" is going to be a vanishingly small sample...
Iceland Spar (Score:5, Informative)
I read about this a while ago, and it was fascinating. Appartently, the crystals polarized sunlight, even if it was through clouds and
Here are some links that may help:
The stone itself is calcite, Iceland Spar [wikipedia.org] or the more complex Cordierite [wikipedia.org], also known as iolite.
Here is one account of how it could have been used:
Viking Sunstone [polarization.com]
And here is another:
Viking Compass [nordskip.com]
Re:Iceland Spar (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Iceland Spar (Score:5, Funny)
also known as iolite
Which, as a man of world, you must know is the source of iocane powder. And because iocane comes from Australia, and Australia is entirely peopled with criminals, and criminals would try to fool wandering Vikings into thinking they could navigate with an iolite stone, we know we cannot trust this story they've put in front of us.
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Ah, my kingdom for a mod point! Well done.
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Thanks for the morning smile ...
Made my day already ...
Bees! (Score:2)
I've read that Bees also use polarized sunlight to navigate.
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I've read that Bees also use polarized sunlight to navigate.
This new learning amazes me, Sir Bedevere. Explain again how sheep's bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes.
Aah That's Clever! (Score:4, Interesting)
By the time you get to 1767 [google.com], we're definitely leaning more toward "technology" (Though I didn't see this particular one mentioned in said document.) The math and devices are pretty well understood and the methods are shared openly. I'm sure I could find earlier documents if I were inclined to dig around a bit. This one actually popped up on a search for... something else I was looking for. Needless to say, I immediately decided I wanted to be a member of the Order of the Commissioners of Longitude. If they let me in I promise I'll sit in the back and be very quiet...
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The ancients derived their 10 sphere
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There's some interesting history behind the Board of Longitude. It was formed in 1714 to judge prizes of up to £20,000 for a reliable method of determining longitude at sea (this was the scientific problem of the day, comparable to the modern search for a cure for cancer or theory of everything). In the early days, the board was flooded with crank proposals, and the commissioners' duties consisted of individually writing letters of rejection. When John 'Longitude' Harrison arrived in London in 1730 wi
AWRIGHT A SUNSTONE! (Score:4, Funny)
Now I can get my Sunkern to evolve!
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Don't tell Teraptus (Score:2)
Guard it closely...
The Mayan apocalypse, the sequester, and the zombie apocalypse all put together, are a walk in the park, compared to a dark wizard getting ahold of the Sunstone, and casting away the light...
Is it just me... (Score:1)
Interesting possibilities? (Score:1)
I spent about 20 years in the jewelry industry and I learned that calcite, at one time, was often mistaken for Diamonds. Calcite deposits are what gives Diamond Head in Hawaii it's name. The calcite was mistaken for Diamonds.
I wonder what the possibilities are that Polynesians used "Sun Stone" compasses to help find their way around the Pacific?
Coincidentally.. (Score:2)
Just a few days ago the new TV series "Vikings" started and they happened to feature a sunstone.. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2306299/ [imdb.com]
Well timed I'd say!
In case you missed it I'm sure it can be found at a certain viking torrent site.. ;) [which I don't condone of course]
I must be tired... (Score:2)
I misread that headline at first as:
Smartphone Unearthed From Sixteenth Century Shipwreck
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Any navigation device recovered from a sunken ship (Score:3)
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See people (Score:4, Insightful)