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(Telegraph) Interesting "Magical Sunstone", the predecessor to GPS, found in shipwreck salvage   (telegraph.co.uk) divider line 34
More: Interesting, GPS, shipwrecks, Christopher Columbus  
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4192 clicks; posted to Geek » on 02 Nov 2011 at 8:52 PM   |  Favorite    |   share:  Share on Twitter share via Email Share on Facebook   more»   |    Get this fabulous T-Shirt and impress the methane out of your friends! shirt it!



34 Comments   (+0 »)
   
 
Ambitwistor
2011-11-02 09:02:06 PM
media.gamewiki.com
 
loonatic112358
2011-11-02 09:02:34 PM
I read that as Shipstone and was briefly excited
 
The6502Man
2011-11-02 09:17:00 PM
Unless they uncover the charts, I say it's just a pretty rock found on a ship.
 
child_god
2011-11-02 09:17:43 PM
Ambitwistor: [media.gamewiki.com image 256x223]

Curse you!

/played it again this summer
 
jaytkay
2011-11-02 09:19:49 PM
 
Brontes
2011-11-02 09:21:34 PM
Ambitwistor: [media.gamewiki.com image 256x223]

Best. RPG. EVER!

Good on you!
 
cptjeff [TotalFark]
2011-11-02 09:38:58 PM
jaytkay: "...archaeologists have yet to find a sunstone among Viking shipwrecks or settlements...." (new window)

Per TFA:

An Iceland spar, which is transparent and made of calcite, was found in the wreck of an Elizabethan ship discovered thirty years ago off the coast of Alderney in the Channel Islands after it sank in 1592 just four years after the defeat of the Spanish Armada.

So they haven't found one on a viking ship specifically, but they have found one on a contemporary vessel from a nearby nation.

Okay then.
 
Ambitwistor
2011-11-02 09:39:55 PM
child_god: /played it again this summer

I'm playing it again now ...
 
jaytkay
2011-11-02 10:18:33 PM
cptjeff: So they haven't found one on a viking ship specifically, but they have found one on a contemporary vessel from a nearby nation.

Okay then.

Vikings were about 500 years dead in 1592, they weren't contemporary.
 
thesubliminalman
2011-11-02 10:25:17 PM
Wonderful soupstone?
 
cptjeff [TotalFark]
2011-11-02 10:32:43 PM
jaytkay: cptjeff: So they haven't found one on a viking ship specifically, but they have found one on a contemporary vessel from a nearby nation.

Okay then.

Vikings were about 500 years dead in 1592, they weren't contemporary.

Doh!

You're right, of course. Don't know why I was thinking that.
 
czetie
2011-11-02 10:34:46 PM
The6502Man: Unless they uncover the charts, I say it's just a pretty rock found on a ship.

Vikings really didn't go in for navigation charts.

The facts that (a) a stone with these properties was described in the sagas, and the description was known long before any example was found, plus (b) Icelandic spar is known to have the necessary properties, plus (c) finding an Icelandic spar on a shipwreck, albeit one significantly later than the Viking era are enough to put this in the Plausible column, I would say.

To feel really confident about it, we'd need to find one in the context of Viking shipping or shipbuilding.
 
jaytkay
2011-11-02 10:37:22 PM
cptjeff: Doh!

You're right, of course. Don't know why I was thinking that.

And I totally missed the fact that that they actually found calcite in a shipwreck, so I say we're even.

Cheers!
 
doglover [TotalFark]
2011-11-02 10:42:58 PM
jaytkay: cptjeff: So they haven't found one on a viking ship specifically, but they have found one on a contemporary vessel from a nearby nation.

Okay then.

Vikings were about 500 years dead in 1592, they weren't contemporary.

But it's not like the Vikings just vanished. They didn't die, their nations did. They're still around today in blood and culture. Their armor is known, their language is known, their culture is known, their religion is known, and feldspar from previously viking areas appears to have the properties of the "magic" sunstone of legend.

Just because something has been replaced today doesn't mean it was replaced in the 1500s. A sunstone would have been useful to Elizibeth's ships, too.

Hell, a lot of things are STILL useful. I'd much rather have a nice scarmax than one of those worthless Spiderco flip things. Seriously afraid I'll cut myself with those tiny little blades when it folds back on my hand. And for prying things open? Forgetaboudit.
 
jaytkay
2011-11-02 11:09:55 PM
doglover: Just because something has been replaced today doesn't mean it was replaced in the 1500s. A sunstone would have been useful to Elizibeth's ships, too.

But I think that if sunstones were used in the 1500s in England, it would be mentioned in books.
 
Gneisskate
2011-11-02 11:36:45 PM
The problem with calcite is that is is water-soluble in certain conditions. It's pretty likely that any chunk of calcite that went down with a ship wouldn't be there for all that long, unless the water is already saturated with carbonate. Preservation would be the rarity, not dissolution.

/geologist
 
child_god
2011-11-02 11:42:37 PM
Ambitwistor: child_god: /played it again this summer

I'm playing it again now ...

Did you ever see the ending that showed the programmers? You have to beat Lavos the first time you meet it. Only way I could do that, not on the New+ game but from scratch, was by using a game genie code to give my party Virgil Helmets for status protection. It's kind of funny.
 
gozar_the_destroyer
2011-11-02 11:54:21 PM
At least they won't find the World Stone.
 
KarmicDisaster
2011-11-02 11:59:35 PM
Gneisskate: The problem with calcite is that is is water-soluble in certain conditions. It's pretty likely that any chunk of calcite that went down with a ship wouldn't be there for all that long, unless the water is already saturated with carbonate. Preservation would be the rarity, not dissolution.

/geologist

Yeah, that is what I was thinking, they probably dissolved if they existed. I have a nice big calcite crystal that does the double line trick nicely, going to see how that works with the Sun tomorrow. They would not have needed any charts to get general directions, knowing the approximate time of day, where the Sun would rise and set and how high that time of year, would be enough to get general directions to at least keep heading in the right direction and not get turned around in a fog.
 
RoxtarRyan
2011-11-03 12:01:44 AM
Ambitwistor: [media.gamewiki.com image 256x223]

Came for the CT reference, leaving pissed that I still have no power after almost a week and can't play it on the Wii.
 
ciderczar
2011-11-03 12:19:52 AM
jaytkay: cptjeff: So they haven't found one on a viking ship specifically, but they have found one on a contemporary vessel from a nearby nation.

Okay then.

Vikings were about 500 years dead in 1592, they weren't contemporary.

Outside Greenland, where they kept on truckin' (albeit not that well) until the 15th century, though that's still earlier than the Elizabethan ship.
 
Isildur
2011-11-03 12:25:40 AM
child_god: Ambitwistor: child_god: /played it again this summer

I'm playing it again now ...

Did you ever see the ending that showed the programmers? You have to beat Lavos the first time you meet it. Only way I could do that, not on the New+ game but from scratch, was by using a game genie code to give my party Virgil Helmets for status protection. It's kind of funny.

I think you mean the Vigil Hat.
 
Rent Party
2011-11-03 03:11:05 AM
Predecessor to GPS...

www.ion.org
 
LewDux
2011-11-03 05:48:37 AM
"The ancient race"?
 
Hardy-r-r
2011-11-03 05:52:34 AM
i280.photobucket.com
 
czetie
2011-11-03 07:28:42 AM
ciderczar: Outside Greenland, where they kept on truckin' (albeit not that well) until the 15th century, though that's still earlier than the Elizabethan ship.

Those were Norse and the descendants of Vikings, but they weren't Vikings.

The word "Viking" is more about a culture and a way of life than ethnicity, and it's generally accepted that the Viking age came to a close around the second half of the 11th Century.
 
moanerific
2011-11-03 08:15:57 AM
"The ancient race are believed to have to discovered North America hundreds of years before Christopher Columbus. "


Vikings were a separate 'race'? Also "believed to have discovered"??? Umm..they did it's a fact.
 
Dansker
2011-11-03 09:13:30 AM
doglover: But it's not like the Vikings just vanished. They didn't die, their nations did.

Their nations didn't die either.
The world changed and evolved, and the viking nations gradually changed with it, adapted to a new polical and military landscape, stopped going viking, and got more involved in peaceful* international commerce. Eventually they got bogged down in internal squabbles over Baltic trading routes and who should rule Scandinavia, and spend the better part of the last millenium in almost constant warfare with eachother, and, in Denmark's case, with most of their other European neighbors.
 
doglover [TotalFark]
2011-11-03 09:56:26 AM
jaytkay: doglover: Just because something has been replaced today doesn't mean it was replaced in the 1500s. A sunstone would have been useful to Elizibeth's ships, too.

But I think that if sunstones were used in the 1500s in England, it would be mentioned in books.

By then they didn't need them.

When I have sex, I don't need a cock ring or a riding crop. But I like to have them on hand for when I'm feeling spunky. When you're sailing Elizabethan frigates hither and yon you don't need your sunstone, but there might just be a day when you'll want to break it out and really just ream the hell outta them charts.
 
LockeOak
2011-11-03 10:02:37 AM
Gneisskate: The problem with calcite is that is is water-soluble in certain conditions. It's pretty likely that any chunk of calcite that went down with a ship wouldn't be there for all that long, unless the water is already saturated with carbonate. Preservation would be the rarity, not dissolution.

/geologist

Would depend on the depth, wouldn't it? Top 1000m is typically above calcium carbonate saturation, but saturation drops pretty quickly below that.
 
Dansker
2011-11-03 10:39:54 AM
LockeOak: Gneisskate: The problem with calcite is that is is water-soluble in certain conditions. It's pretty likely that any chunk of calcite that went down with a ship wouldn't be there for all that long, unless the water is already saturated with carbonate. Preservation would be the rarity, not dissolution.

/geologist

Would depend on the depth, wouldn't it? Top 1000m is typically above calcium carbonate saturation, but saturation drops pretty quickly below that.

The average depth of the North Sea is about 100 meters, and you have to go outside the European continental shelf to find depths of more than 1000 m. Most of the ships from the Viking age, that have been found, were discovered in shallow water, near the coast, in former harbours etc.
 
Humorous-Name
2011-11-03 02:12:54 PM
Hardy-r-r: [i280.photobucket.com image 140x113]

I love you.

/A single word, more ancient than the Clans themselves;
//Higaara
///Our Home
 
Ethnic Vegetable
2011-11-03 03:46:09 PM
Ambitwistor: [media.gamewiki.com image 256x223]

came for this, saw it first, SO HAPPY
 
TheMysticS
2011-11-03 05:47:39 PM
Gneisskate: The problem with calcite is that is is water-soluble in certain conditions. It's pretty likely that any chunk of calcite that went down with a ship wouldn't be there for all that long, unless the water is already saturated with carbonate. Preservation would be the rarity, not dissolution.

/geologist

Well, using your expertise, do you think they're on to something?
Or is it a piece of fanciful lore from the vikings?
I don't know of other stones that could produce the same effect, but alas, I am but a lowly rockhound, and have a very limited knowledge base.

Whaddayathink?
 
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