Not just a crack in the wall

Ancient Egyptian tomb builders weren’t just brilliant architects-they were geologists with a strategy in mind. Today, a 42-year-old method of tracking down water in the desert has revealed a way to find and protect these conceiled burial sites. Fracture traces in the ground are an indication of near-vertical rock fractures underneath, often suggesting a potential water source as rainwater seeps into the rock fractures and can be harvested in wells. The number of tombs built under fracture traces suggests that tomb builders knew these areas were easier to dig into, and established tombs around these areas. However, they didn’t account for the water damage that now threatens to destroy the tombs. Geologists are considering the use of fracture traces in locating undiscovered tombs and protecting them from irreparable damage.

Source: Penn State news service

-Sandy Huen

Now you see it…

Scientists have created a functional “invisibility cloak” only months after reporting that invisibility devices are possible. The small device, dubbed “metamaterial,” consists of fibreglass and copper bands arranged in a circle. It works by bending microwaves around a protected zone at its centre. It then reorients the rays so that they return to their original paths, thereby appearing to have passed through the device, and whatever is in the protected zone. As such, a microwave detector placed downstream cannot sense the presence of the device, and the shadow of the object in the protected area is greatly reduced.

Though invisibility sounds great, don’t expect to own a magical cape any time soon-microwaves encompass a very small range on the spectrum of frequencies possible on earth. Cloaking at visible-light frequencies is not yet feasible.

Source: Science

-Mayce Al-Sukhni

Speaking of colour

No matter what your language, researchers at Ohio State University have discovered that people around the world tend to classify colours into eight categories: red, green, yellow-or-orange, blue, purples, brown, pink and ‘grue’ (green-or-blue). The team used data from the World Colour Survey, a collection of colour names supplied by 2,616 people for 320 different colours (encompassing around 110 cultures). Although many of the more traditional societies had fewer colour names, many terms seemed to correspond to colours which English-speaking cultures also discriminate. The researchers observed that many of these simple terms are combinations of close colour categories like green-or-blue and yellow-or-orange. Colour boundaries that define a category seemed to vary between different cultures, but researchers found a “rock solid boundary” across all cultures for what English speakers might refer to as “warm” and “cool” colours.

Source: Ohio State University research news service

-Abigail Slinger