Friday, March 8, 2013

Researchers may have found a fabled sunstone

This photo taken in Alderney, one of the Channel Islands, shows the Alderney Crystal, a piece of calcite. Researchers say the rough, whitish crystal recovered from the wreckage of a 16th-century English warship may be a sunstone, a special kind of mineral believed by some to have helped medieval seafarers navigate the high seas.