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Politics : Did the Great Experiment Fail? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (861)	2/15/2014 7:12:49 PM
From: DMaA	Respond to of 926

One of my early memories is my dad telling me the story of the 3 billy goats gruff. To make a long story short, Papa gruff dealt with the troll by putting his head down and bucking him off the bridge. Lesson learned.

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (861)	2/15/2014 9:05:47 PM
From: average joe	Respond to of 926

We’ve found a ‘Viking sunstone’ in the remains on a 16th-century shipwreck: scientists 13/03/07 4:48 PM ET Alkivar/Wikipedia/Public DomainAn image of a different Islandic Spar similar to the "sunstone" discovered. The spar double refracts light, which theoretically could allow Vikings to figure out the direction of the sun, even after it had set. Researchers believe they may have in their possession a fabled Viking “sunstone” — an fabled device which let the ancient mariners navigate the ocean. The honed crystal was found in a wreck in the English Channel 30 years ago, but was only recently tested by a team of scientists at the University of Rennes in France. This came after earlier research that suggested sunstones were in fact Icelandic Spars, a unique form of transparent calcite which can double refract light. It was with that discovery that the team realized the small spar found in the wreck could have been the mythic navigation tool. History wades into scripted drama — and pillaging — with Vikings The scientists tested the cigarette-pack-sized crystal to show that it can be rotated to pinpoint where the two beams of light moving through it diverge, which in turn can be used to locate the sun even on cloudy days. “A precision of a few degrees could be reached” even when the sun was below the horizon, Dr. Guy Ropars, one of the scientists working on the project, told The Daily Telegraph. This matches up with Viking legend, which spoke of a “sunstone,” or “sólarsteinn,” that could be held up to indicate the direction of the sun, even in clouds. The researchers told the Telegraph that the stone could have been used to navigate many of the very foggy routes that the Vikings took and even taken them to North America before the invention of the magnetic compass. The scientists even told the BBC that the stones may have been used for centuries after the discovery of the compass because it would have been more reliable than the early versions of the magnetic device. The fact that no sunstones had been found up to this point, The Independentreports, may have been because of the process of cremating the dead could have shattered the fragile crystals. news.nationalpost.com