The word "nanotechnology" has become extremely fashionable these days. The governments of all developed countries, including Russia, are adopting programs for the development of the nanoindustry. But what is it? Nano is a billionth of something, for example, a nanometer is a billionth of a meter.
Nanotechnology is the ability to create new materials with specified properties from the smallest elements - atoms. But it is not for nothing that it is said that everything new is well forgotten old. It turns out that our distant ancestors owned nanotechnology, creating such unusual products as the Lycurgus Cup. How they did it, science is not yet able to explain.
Artifact that changes color
The Lycurgus Cup is the only diatrette that has survived from ancient times - a product made in the form of a bell with double glass walls covered with a figured pattern. The top is decorated with a carved patterned mesh. The cup is 165 millimeters high and 132 millimeters in diameter. Scientists suggest that it was made in Alexandria or Rome in the 4th century. The Lycurgus Cup can be admired at the British Museum.
This artifact is famous primarily for its unusual properties. Under normal lighting, when the light comes from the front, the goblet is green, and when it is backlit, it turns red.
The artifact also changes color depending on what liquid is poured into it. For example, a goblet glows blue when water is poured into it, but becomes bright red when filled with oil.
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The plot about the dangers of alcohol
We will return to this secret later. First, let's try to find out why the diatret is called the Lycurgus Cup. The surface of the bowl is decorated with a beautiful high relief depicting the suffering of a bearded man entangled in vines.
Of all the known myths of Ancient Greece and Rome, the myth of the death of the Thracian king Lycurgus, who may have lived around 800 BC, fits this plot most of all.
According to legend, Lycurgus, an ardent opponent of Bacchus orgies, attacked the god of winemaking Dionysus, killed many of his maenad companions and expelled them all from their possessions. Recovering from such impudence, Dionysus sent one of the nymph-hyads named Ambrose to the king who had offended him. Appearing to Lycurgus in the form of a sultry beauty, the giada managed to charm him and persuaded him to drink wine.
The intoxicated king was seized by madness, he attacked his own mother and tried to rape her. Then he rushed to cut down the vineyard - and chopped his own son Dryant to pieces with an ax, mistaking him for a vine. Then the same fate befell his wife.
In the end, Lycurgus became an easy prey for Dionysus, Pan and the satyrs, who, taking the form of vines, entwined his body, whirled and tortured him half to death. Trying to free himself from these tenacious embraces, the king swung an ax - and chopped off his own leg. After that he bled out and died.
Historians believe that the theme of the high relief was not chosen by chance. It allegedly symbolized the victory that the Roman emperor Constantine won over the greedy and oppressive co-ruler Licinius in 324. And they draw this conclusion, most likely, proceeding from the assumption of experts that the cup was made in the IV century.
Note on this that the exact time of manufacture of products from inorganic materials is almost impossible to determine. It is possible that this diatret came to us from an era much more ancient than Antiquity. In addition, it is completely incomprehensible on the basis of what Licinius is identified with the man depicted on the cup. There are no logical prerequisites for this.
It is also not a fact that the high relief illustrates the myth of King Lycurgus. With the same success, one can assume that the parable of the danger of alcohol abuse is depicted here - a kind of warning to the feasting, so as not to lose their heads.
The place of manufacture is also supposedly determined on the basis that Alexandria and Rome were famous in ancient times as centers of glass-blowing craft. The cup has an amazingly beautiful lattice pattern that can add volume to the image. Such products in the late antique era were considered very expensive and were affordable only for the rich.
There is no consensus on the purpose of this cup either. Some believe that it was used by the priests in the Dionysian Mysteries. Another version says that the goblet served as a determinant of whether the drink contained poison. And some believe that the bowl determined the ripeness level of the grapes from which the wine was made.
Monument to an ancient civilization
Likewise, no one knows where the artifact came from. There is an assumption that it was found by black diggers in the tomb of a noble Roman. Then for several centuries he lay in the treasuries of the Roman Catholic Church.
In the 18th century, it was confiscated by French revolutionaries in need of funds. It is known that in 1800, to ensure safety, a rim of gilded bronze and the same stand decorated with grape leaves were attached to the bowl.
In 1845, Lionel de Rothschild acquired the Lycurgus Cup, and in 1857 it was seen in the banker's collection by the famous German art critic and historian Gustav Vaagen. Impressed by the purity of the cut and the properties of the glass, Vaagen begged Rothschild to display the artifact for several years. The banker eventually agreed, and in 1862 the goblet was on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
However, after that, it again became inaccessible to scientists for almost a century. Only in 1950 did a group of researchers persuade a descendant of the banker, Victor Rothschild, to give them access to the study of the relic. After that, it was finally revealed that the goblet was made not of a precious stone, but of dichroic glass (that is, with multilayered impurities of metallic oxides).
Under the influence of public opinion, in 1958 Rothschild agreed to sell the Lycurgus Cup for a symbolic 20 thousand pounds to the British Museum.
Finally, scientists were able to carefully study the artifact and unravel the secret of its unusual properties. But the answer was not given for a very long time. Only in 1990, with the help of an electron microscope, it was possible to find out that the whole point is in the special composition of the glass.
For a million particles of glass, the craftsmen added 330 particles of silver and 40 particles of gold. The size of these particles is surprising. They are about 50 nanometers in diameter - a thousand times smaller than a salt crystal. The resulting gold-silver colloid had the property of changing color depending on lighting.
The question arises: if the goblet was really made by the Alexandrians or the Romans, then how could they grind silver and gold to the level of nanoparticles? Where did the ancient masters get the equipment and technology that allowed them to work at the molecular level?
Some very creative pundits have put forward this hypothesis. Even before the creation of this masterpiece, ancient craftsmen sometimes added silver particles to molten glass. And gold could have got there by accident. For example, silver was not pure, but contained a gold impurity. Or particles of gold leaf from a previous order remained in the workshop, and they ended up in the alloy. This is how this amazing artifact turned out, perhaps the only one in the world.
The version sounds almost convincing, but … In order for a product to change color like a Lycurgus goblet, gold and silver must be crushed to nanoparticles, otherwise there will be no color effect. And such technologies in the IV century simply could not exist.
It remains to be assumed that the Lycurgus Cup is much older than previously thought. Perhaps it was created by the masters of a highly developed civilization that preceded ours and died as a result of a planetary cataclysm (remember the legend of Atlantis).
Co-author from Distant Times
Physicist and nanotechnology expert at the University of Illinois, Liu Gunn Logan, theorized that when liquid or light fills the goblet, it affects the electrons of the gold and silver atoms. Those begin to vibrate (faster or slower), which causes the color of the glass to change. To test this hypothesis, the researchers made a plastic plate with "holes", saturating it with gold and silver nanoparticles.
When water, oil, sugar and salt solutions fell into these "wells", the material began to change color in various ways. For example, the "well" turned red from oil and light green from water. But, for example, the original Lycurgus Cup is 100 times more sensitive to changes in the salt level in the solution than a manufactured plastic sensor …
Nevertheless, physicists from the University of Massachusetts (USA) decided to use the "principle of operation" of the Lycurgus Cup to create portable testers. They can detect pathogens in saliva and urine samples or identify hazardous fluids carried by terrorists on board an aircraft. Thus, the unknown creator of the Lycurgus Cup became a co-author of the revolutionary inventions of the 21st century.
Yuri Yekimov