* Astronomy

Blobrana · L

RE: Sunstones

Blobrana · L

Icelandic rocks could have steered Vikings

Vikings used rocks from Iceland to navigate the high seas, suggests a new study.
In Norse legends, sunstones are said to have guided seafarers to North America.
Now an international team of scientists report in the journal the Proceedings of the Royal Society A that the Icelandic spars behave like mythical sunstones and polarise light.
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Blobrana · L

Did Vikings navigate by polarised light?

A Viking legend tells of a glowing 'sunstone' that, when held up to the sky, revealed the position of the Sun even on a cloudy day. It sounds like magic, but scientists measuring the properties of light in the sky say that polarising crystals - which function in the same way as the mythical sunstone - could have helped ancient sailors to cross the northern Atlantic. A review of their evidence is published today in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.
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