Two times Tokyo?

Because Japanese legislators have been watching waaaay to much Evangelion, they're considering building a second Tokyo, in case the first one is destroyed. By Angels.

It's not that crazy an idea to be honest, during WW1 France built a second Paris to confuse German bombers, and China is building a number of towns reminiscent of traditional Germany and Austria.

According to World Architecture News, "the new city, code named IRTBBC, or Integrated Resort, Tourism, Business and Backup City, will stand in for the capital in the event of it being hit by a disabling earthquake. A possible location has already been earmarked 300 miles to the west of Tokyo on the 1236 acre site of the largely superseded Itami Airport."

The legislative backers of the proposal want 14 million Yen (approximately AU$175,087) to research as to whether this 'emergency city' will actually work. The city is proposed to house 50,000 residents, 200,000 daytime workers, an emergency seat of government, casinos, and the tallest tower in the world (at approximately 2,139 feet).

Although considering practically every disaster movie is set in either New York or Tokyo, this may be a good investment.

via inhabitat

The secret to Viking Navigation is a crystal!

Ancient Vikings were very good mariners. They crossed wide seas with none of the navigational equipment we have today, instead relying on their knowledge of the sun and the stars. But a question that has always plagued archaeologists, is how did they accomplish this on the Atlantic, which can often be a pretty soggy, foggy, and altogether nasty place?

According to Viking legend, they used a 'sunstone,' a magical device that allowed their navigators to read the celestial positions even in deep fog. And now, archaeologists think they've found what it was.

Researchers at the University of Rennes in France have put together all the evidence they've found, and have wound up with something quite plausible. While not magical, the device was a transparent calcite crystal, known as an 'Iceland Spar,' that ancient navigators would've used to depolarise light - meaning that the crystal was able to split light along two different axes.

In practice, that means that a sailor simply had to put a dot on top of the crystal, and then look at it from below. The incoming light would hit the dot, and create the illusion that it was duplicated. This optical effect was apparently all ye olde sailors needed to be able to locate the sun, even when it wasn't even visible. 

In case you didn't get that, (I sure didn't), lead researcher Guy Ropars has a less technical version:

"Then you rotate the crystal until the two points have exactly the same intensity or darkness. At that angle, the upward-facing surface indicates the direction of the Sun. A precision of a few degrees can be reached even under dark twilight conditions...Vikings would have been able to determine with precision the direction of the hidden Sun." 

These precursors to the compass were also used later on, being considered more reliable than the newer compass due to the fact that the presence of metal didn't affect it.

I'm still saying it's magic.

via i09, with the original report here.