I'm puzzled by this. Why hasn't there been, over the last fifty years, a huge amount of research into EM staining techniques and which materials were best under which circumstances? Edison supposedly tried 3000 different materials for light bulb filaments before settling on charred cotton thread. Why hasn't something similar been done in this area?
Or perhaps it _has_ been done and that's why nearly everyone uses uranyl acetate? And perhaps coffee was tried decades ago and found to be generally inferior?
Wow you know it’s a fun party when the first result needs to specify it’s _not_ radioactive
Oh I see - Uranyl Acetate is radioactive and this replaces it. Fun!
This seems like a friendly chemical too -
“ The chemical properties of Osmium Tetroxide are such that use and handling of the chemical is often considered daunting. Although its volatility and toxicity certainly makes it a dangerous chemical, but when following the proper procedure and taking the necessary precautions, Osmium Tetroxide can be used to its full potential with limited risk to the user.
This is more toxic than glutaraldehyde and has a higher vapour pressure. Particular care must be taken to avoid breathing the vapour or allowing it to affect the eyes. ”
Uranyl acetate for staining is typically depleted and unless you have regulatory issues I don't think the radiation is a big concern, especially when you compare to the very serious toxicity of OsO4 (vapors can react with your eyes and blind you).
Interesting and makes sense! I know nothing but what I read from the stain description haha. OsO4 seems incredibly nasty. So do a few other of the stains!
The Wikipedia article about the coauthor Mark Hempsell says:
“Hempsell got public audience as author of the book "A Sumerian Observation of the Köfels' Impact Event", with Alan Bond proposes a theory not accepted by the scientific community…”
The link posted in this thread by user arto calls the theory “pseudoscience”:
“Despite this new evidence, curiously in 2008 the impact hypothesis was revived by some pseudoscientists in connection to supposed observations of a meteorite by the Sumerians…”
Now it seems very suspicious that the article claims that the tablet is from 3123 BC, when it was excavated from the palace of Ashurbanipal (650 BC).
Ah, oh well. Was an interesting story. But I mainly shared this to remind myself of this incredible star map, or whatever it really is... Seems not easy to find bona fide information on it, maybe because it's untranslated/decoded except for this Kofels' story, which indeed appears to be out of the bounds of likelihood by 4000 years.
The tablet has been translated for the better part of a century. The problem is that many of the popular depictions of it don't give it's museum number or any other (correct) identifying information, often erroneously referring to it as a "Sumerian" object.
If you search for the museum number K. 8538 you'll find quite a bit (some still bad). That said, this article is wildly off-base.
Thanks for the landslide info! Good to have the proper knowledge. Shame there's no reliable stuff about the tablet. Maybe it hasn't been translated by a sane, competent professional
>> “[The tablet] is a copy of the night notebook of a Sumerian astronomer as he records the events in the sky before dawn on the 29 June 3123 BC”
I'm pretty sure clay tables, that had to be fired to preserve them, did not function as "notebooks". Scribes probably used either unbaked clay or wax tablets to take notes, and they would erase and overwrite them constantly like etch-a-sketch.
drivle, then
1km impactor my ass
a german landslide and a mesopotamian clay disk, 5000 years ago, uhuhuh, ya NO!
that needs a very very very high level of documentation to even dare hold up your hand
do you know about the acedemic/beurocratic practice of "shelving" ?, I am quite certain that it applies to whover "publishied" the original.
Yeah, my bad for sharing. I mainly did it for the pictures because it looks spectacular, and just read through the story quickly, looked like book published by Bristol University? But as per references from other comments here, the landslide was ~9400 BP, so a bit earlier than the 5500 BP date proposed in TFA
The picture of the disk is exceptionaly evoctave of the whole mesoptaimian culture/civilisation we can sense but cant quite reasemble as a whole,due in part to the other warning sign from the article, in the period reference to archaeology, which often involved dynamite.
Before I posted the comment I had tried looking at it in reverse video, very similar to your night mode. It was a little better, but not enough for me.
Update: it looks fine on my desktop computer. It's only illegible on my phone. Maybe use a heavier font?
That's also how it seemed after the Iraq invasion and the removal of Saddam Hussein. “Once we get rid of the bad guy at the top, everything in Iraq will get better.”
It didn't turn out well. I hope this one turns out better.
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