Legendary ‘sunstone’ in ship wreck?

Mar 07, 2013 |

Paris: An oblong crystal found in the wreck of a 16th-century English warship is a sunstone, a near-mythical navigational aid said to have been used by Viking mariners, researchers said on Wednesday.

The stone is made of Iceland spar, a transparent, naturally-occurring calcite crystal that polarises light and can get a bearing on the Sun, they said.
It was found in the remains of a ship that had been dispatched to France in 1592 by Queen Elizabeth I as a precaution against a second Spanish Armada but foundered off the island of Alderney, in the Channel.
British and French scientists have long argued that the find is a sunstone — a device that fractures the light, enabling seafarers to locate the Sun even when it is behind clouds or has dipped below the horizon.

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