How magnetic nanoparticles will help preserve a 500-year-old shipwreck

Enlarge (credit: Corr et al. 2018) In 1545, freshly refitted to carry a greater number of heavy cannon, the warship Mary Rose sailed into battle against a French fleet north of the Isle of Wight. The debate over what happened next is still heated, but the most accepted version is that the added weight of […]

How a 500-year-old engineering innovation led to selfies

In 1433, artist Jan van Eyck invented an entirely new genre of painting while sitting quietly in his studio in Bruges. He did it with the help of a scientific breakthrough which allowed German engineers to create some of the world’s first high-quality mirrors. The new German mirrors were made by coating glass with an […]