Vikings used Sunstone SatNav to rape and pillage America...who knew? by piratenews

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Vikings used Sunstone SatNav to rape and pillage America...who knew?

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POSTED BY: PIRATENEWS
UPDATED: Sunday, November 6, 2011 03:11
SHORT URL: http://bit.ly/rBF0OF
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Thursday, November 3, 2011 7:13 AM

John Lee, conspiracy therapist at Hollywood award-winner History Channel-mocked SNL-spoofed PirateNew.org wooHOO!!!!!!

Sunstone satnav: How Vikings used mysterious crystal to guide them to America

Norse warriors located sun through clouds with Iceland spar crystal

Ancient legends of Viking mariners using mysterious sunstones to reveal the position of the sun on a cloudy day may well be true, according to a new study.

Before the invention of the compass, Norse adventurers travelled thousands of kilometres across the oceans toward Greenland and most likely as far as North America centuries ahead of Christopher Columbus.

Evidence shows that these fearless seamen navigated by reading the position of the sun and stars along with an intimate knowledge of landmarks, currents and waves.But how they could voyage such distances across seas at northern latitudes while hampered by light obscuring clouds and fog remained a mystery.

While experts have long argued that Vikings knew how to use blocks of light-fracturing crystal to locate the sun through dense clouds, archeologists have never found solid proof.

Doubts also remained as to exactly what kind of material it might be.

An international team of researchers led by Guy Ropars of the University of Rennes in Brittany, says they have the answer.

Vikings, they argue, used transparent calcite crystal - also known as Iceland spar - to fix the true bearing of the Sun to within a single degree of accuracy.

The naturally occurring stone has the capacity to 'depolarise' light, filtering and fracturing it along different axes, the researchers explained.

The recent discovery of an Iceland spar aboard an Elizabethan ship sunk in 1592 - tested by the researchers - bolsters the theory that ancient mariners were aware of the crystal's potential as an aid to navigation.

Even in the era of the compass, crews might have kept such stone on hand as a backup, the study speculates.

'We have verified that even only one of the cannons excavated from the ship is able to perturb a magnetic compass orientation by 90 degrees,' the researchers wrote.

'So, to avoid navigation errors when the Sun is hidden, the use of an optical compass could be crucial even at this epoch, more than four centuries after the Viking time.'

The study appeared in Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical and Physical Sciences, a peer-reviewed journal published by Britain's de facto academy of science, the Royal Society.

www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2056479/Vikings-used-mysteriou
s-sunstone-sat-nav-sail-America.html

"Give us your tired, your poor, your pillaging asses"

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Thursday, November 3, 2011 10:35 AM

RIONAEIRE

Beir bua agus beannacht

That's really cool!!!!!!!!! Thanks for posting it PN!

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

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Friday, November 4, 2011 5:24 AM

KIRKULES

The Vikings were hardly the barbarians we've been lead to believe they were. Having no written language meant that their enemies wrote all the recorded history of the Vikings, so after getting their asses handed to them on the battlefield they didn’t have much good to say about their mysterious seagoing adversaries. In some ways the Vikings were more civilized than Europeans of the time. Vikings bathed once a week in a time when Europeans only bathed twice a year. Europeans probably would have bathed more often if they weren’t afraid of being mistaken for Jews or Muslims that were known to bath regularly. You can amagine what the state church might have done to them just for looking to clean.

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Sunday, November 6, 2011 3:11 AM

DREAMTROVE

Snorri Sturluson? The Kalevala?

The oldest surviving tales of vikings are told by vikings and their descendants. They glorify war, sure, and to some extent they, having become christians, viewed their former selves as somewhat heathen and savage.

I suspect anyone would bathe given the opportunity, but in medieval europe there were two real discouraging factors: temperature, and lack of any clean water. It takes a little bit of engineering to make sure that the outflow water is not contaminating the inflow water, a problem lots of town and cities that they sacked also had.

I'm sure to the latter day batheholic vikings, their ancestors seemed unwashed

But on that front, it's hard to see why thy ever left home in search of conquest (NSFW)
http://www.photoforum.ru/photo/81412/index.en.html

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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