On tests in Daytona, United Autosports crew number 23, which included Alonso along with Lando Norris and Phil Hanson, regularly took positions at the rear of the prototype classification.
According to the results of preliminary qualification, the crew became 12th and the best among those who compete in the Ligier. But there are only three of them - the Alonso crew, the second car from United Autosports and another one announced by AFS / PR1 Mathiasen Motorsports. The main competitors of Ligier in the LMP2 class - customers of the ORECA designer - were several tenths faster in the course of tests and qualifications.
When it comes to Daytona's DPi prototypes - Nissan, Mazda, Acura or Cadillac - they were out of reach for Alonso's crew in sheer speed.
2. So the Ligier is a complete failure?
It is still impossible to speak so categorically. For United Autosports, a lot of these tests were new, and the Ligier JS P217 is a new prototype that made its debut just last year. United Autosports played in Daytona for a long time - the previous time was already in 2011. Therefore, it is not surprising that on tests the team was engaged in tests. The fact that the prototype is far from an ideal configuration is evidenced by the fact that already in the second test session the team tested a new aerodynamic package.
The team needed to understand not only the operation of the equipment, but also the Continental tires - in the past, United Autosports played mainly at Dunlop.
And one more thing - perhaps the Ligier still seems a little slower than everyone else, due to the fact that tracks with long straight lines and low downforce levels usually did not fit the JS P217.
3. What does Alonso himself think about this?
Alonso reacted with restraint to the modest results, although he himself noted that the car lacks speed. He announced this after preliminary qualification.
For three days of tests, Fernando drove 64 laps and after the races admitted to reporters that this was not enough for him.
4.What will Alonso face in the race?
The 24 Hours of Daytona Marathon will be the first endurance race of his career for the Spaniard. Perhaps the main and key technique that he will have to master is working in traffic and endless overtaking roundabouts. The importance of traffic was already discussed when Alonso was preparing for the Indy 500, but traffic in endurance races and traffic on the super speed oval IndyCar are two completely different things. You will have to learn again.
A certain difficulty for Fernando will be aerobatics at dusk and at night. In Daytona, of course, there are no completely dark areas, as in Le Mans, but the lighting there is still not the same as in the Formula 1 night races.
Another factor will be the ability to work in a team - Alonso has never had to share a team with other riders before. He used to rely only on himself, and now he has to adapt to an important aspect of endurance racing - trust in his crewmates. Tests alone are clearly not enough for this.
5. Do you have a chance to win?
Based on the test results, it is too early to draw such conclusions. Alonso said that if there was an opportunity to win, he would definitely grab it. In endurance racing, such an opportunity may appear even at the very last minute, but in the case of United Autosports, especially given the modest experience of the crew, there is not much chance.
But for Alonso, winning at Daytona is not the goal. The main task for him is to understand as best as possible in this category of races, complete the daily marathon and prepare for Le Mans. Fernando noted that if "Daytona" is successful, then his next goal will be "24 hours" on the Sarte ring. And there the tasks will definitely be the highest.
The GIF clearly shows how the resolution of Pluto images changed from 1930 to 2015
New Horizons may be considered one of the most ambitious NASA missions of recent times. The interplanetary station was launched in January 2006, and a year later it ended up near Jupiter. The gravitational maneuver around the giant planet allowed the device to accelerate, and as a result, in almost 8 years, New Horizons flew to Pluto, covering a distance 32 times greater than from the Earth to the Sun. The distance is really colossal, and information from the transmitting devices of the device arrives very slowly: about 1 kilobyte per second. According to the expectations of NASA specialists, all spectrographic, photographic, isometric data on Pluto and its satellites, which have accumulated on two onboard flash drives, will be transmitted for more than a year (about 470 days).
Its size is larger than expected
New Horizons snapshot with Pluto and its satellite Charon
Photo: NASA / JHUAPL / SWRI
Due to its atmosphere (albeit rather thin), scientists were unable to establish the exact size of Pluto. Adequate data were obtained only with a sufficient approach to the planet. New Horizons indicated its exact diameter - 2370 km (for comparison: this is less than the distance from Moscow to Omsk). But it turned out to be clearly larger than previously thought. The discovery immediately excited the supporters of the idea that Pluto should be recognized again as a full-fledged (and not dwarf, as it is now) planet.
Supporters of Pluto's recognition as a dwarf planet, in turn, argued that it is only one of many similar objects in the Kuiper belt (an area similar to the asteroid belt where material left after the formation of the solar system has accumulated) and not even the largest of them - Eris for that the moment was considered larger. Therefore, it is inappropriate to call it a planet in the full sense of the word, such as, for example, Mercury. But the emerging fact that Pluto is larger than Eris is unlikely to undermine the argumentation and provide an opportunity to appeal the status. Moreover, new dwarf planets are now and then in the Kuiper belt, and some may turn out to be larger than Pluto and Eris. In addition, Eris is still larger in mass than Pluto, since it is much denser.
The true color of its surface
Pluto and Charon, colored with color filters
Photo: NASA / APL / SWRI
Few realized that the photos of Pluto that went viral on social media did not reflect the realistic colors of the planet's landscapes. The colors in the images were specially enhanced with filters to show the difference in surface structure. This helped scientists understand chemical composition ice, and also estimate the age of geological objects. All of this could further show scientists how space weather affected surface dynamics.
What color is Pluto's surface actually? Back in 2002, when the Hubble Space Telescope took pictures of the distant planet, researchers suggested that it was reddish brown. After detectors installed on New Horizons gave more detailed color images, these guesses were confirmed. Possible explanations have also emerged: the reddish-brown color is most likely the result of a chemical process between methane molecules in Pluto's atmosphere and certain ultraviolet radiation emitted by the Sun and distant galaxies. The same phenomenon is observed on Saturn's moon Titan and Neptune's moon Triton.
Strange lack of craters
Pluto relief
Photo: NASA / JHUAPL / SWRI
Taking a closer look at the first images of the surface, researchers were especially surprised by the absence of craters on Pluto. It is known that most of the planets in the solar system are completely pitted with dents formed as a result of asteroid bombardments. Planets without craters (or with a minimal number of them) - Earth, Venus and Mars - are geologically active, so the resulting craters are covered with more and more layers of rock. Thus, scientists have suggested that the surface of Pluto cannot be older than 100 million years, which is a relatively short period by geological standards (the planet itself formed 4.5 billion years ago).
Possible geological activity
Ice mountains on Pluto's surface
Photo: NASA / JHUAPL / SWRI
Geological activity must be fed by something. But what could be fueling Pluto? On many planets (including the Earth) there is a slow process of decay of radioactive materials, which provide heat to the interior. But Pluto is too small to contain enough of these materials. Usually, small planets with active geology, such as, for example, Jupiter's moon Europa, heat up from the inside due to the phenomenon of tidal acceleration. The planet contracts and unclenches like a tennis ball, now approaching, then moving away from larger objects, because of this, its bowels are heated. But this is unlikely to happen with Pluto, since there are no large planets nearby that can affect it.
Alternative hypotheses suggest that Pluto may have an underground ocean that cools, releasing heat very, very slowly. Also, maybe the surface of the ice found on the planet is a kind of blanket that slows down the rate at which internal heat is lost.
All these questions are of particular interest, since the answers to them can be applied to many other planets.
The nature of the heart on Pluto
One of the funniest images playing around with a heart-shaped spot on Pluto
Photo: dorkly.com
New Horizons cameras made it possible to see a huge heart-shaped spot on Pluto. This romantic detail contributed to the viral spread of the snapshot across the networks. It was found that the heart spot was formed as a result of a powerful collision many millions of years ago. The giant depression is likely filled with frozen gases - nitrogen, methane and carbon dioxide.
Also, the researchers were very surprised by the vast mountain ranges of ice. The height of some peaks reaches 3 km, and this is another indication of possible geological activity.
Unusual atmosphere
Animation simulating a flight over the mountains of Pluto, which was created from photographs of New Horizons
The New Horizons spectrometer was able to capture nitrogen atoms that were part of Pluto's atmosphere. Moreover, they were at a distance exceeding seven radii dwarf planetis much further than the calculations show. No other elements could be found, from this it was concluded that Pluto has the cleanest nitrogen atmosphere of all the planets of the solar system.
The study of particles also led to the conclusion that their "escape" from the atmosphere is faster than expected. The outflow of part of the atmosphere was known earlier, the same process took place with the Earth billions of years ago. It is believed that getting rid of excess nitrogen contributed to the development of life on our planet.
Satellites
Photo of Charon, Pluto's largest moon
Photo: NASA / JHUAPL / SWRI
During the New Horizons flyby, data and detailed images of Pluto's five moons were collected, including Charon, the largest of them. Before that, objects were only dim points of light.
Charon, considered a faceless ball of ice, turned out to be a whole world with rocks, depressions, deep crevices (one of them is deeper than the Grand Canyon). Although the satellite has craters, there are also fewer than expected, which means there is also a chance of geological activity. The satellite has a large mysterious dark spot, which the researchers considered a complete surprise. This is probably a crater formed a long time ago, and for a long time it could fill with gases.
Snapshot of Nikta and Hydra
Photo: NASA / JHUAPL / SWRI
Curious details have become known about Nikta and Hydra - two more of the five satellites. Nikta, resembling a fruit gum 42 by 36 km in size, has a mysterious red spot (supposedly a crater), and Hydra is shaped like a giant gray mitten 55 by 40 km. Photos of the other two satellites, Kerber and Styx, will be received only by mid-October.
Paradoxically, paleontology is a young and rapidly developing science. Every year, fossil researchers make many discoveries and put forward new hypotheses. "Lenta.ru" invites you to recall the most interesting paleontological events of the past year.
How dinosaurs disappeared: new versions
Solving the causes of the extinction of dinosaurs is one of the most popular areas of paleontological research. Most experts agree that volcanoes and meteorites were to some extent involved in the total disappearance of the Mesozoic giants. But sometimes representatives of other sciences join paleontologists, and here the most interesting begins.
So, the Harvard theoretical physicist Lisa Randall (Lisa Randall) is sure that the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction that rid the world of dinosaurs. It seems somewhat eccentric to blame the killing of dinosaurs on this hypothetical cosmic substance, which does not interact with anything and is not recorded by any instruments, but the arguments of Randall and her colleagues deserve at least mentioning them.
According to physicists, our galaxy, known under the romantic name Milky Way, crosses a disk of dark matter. Invisible, it still causes gravitational disturbances in celestial mechanics, which leads, in particular, to various statistical outbursts, for example, a sharp increase in the probability of comets colliding with the Earth. Such a surge is indeed recorded every 35 million years, and one of them falls exactly at the end of the Cretaceous period. So the meteorite that killed the dinosaurs could indeed have been “launched” by dark matter.
Image: Lisa Randall, Matthew Reece, arXiv: 1403.0576
However, there are other versions as well. A group of British paleontologists from the Universities of Edinburgh, Birmingham, Oxford and London believe that they are giant lizards. If the same meteorite had fallen a little earlier or a little later, everything could have been different.
The fact is that 66 million years ago, at the time of the fall of the Chicxulub meteorite, the main contender for the role of a dinosaur killer, the terrestrial Mesozoic ecosystems were in a state of severe crisis. The lower floors of their trophic pyramids were knocked out, the species diversity of the fauna was steadily decreasing, and the conditions for a new burst of speciation were just emerging. However, a global catastrophe caused by a meteorite put an end to the usual course of things, and when the dust settled, mammals had to create new species. One way or another, thanks to chance or dark matter, our furry ancestors got a chance and realized it brilliantly.
Paleozoic love
Don't think that all paleontologists are focused solely on disaster and extinction. Among them there are also very positive people who study, for example, sex and sexual positions of the most ancient inhabitants of the Earth. And their research is capable of surprising no less than the cosmic perturbations that cost the lives of dinosaurs.
It turns out that one of the very first postures used by vertebrates for procreation was the famous missionary position. Dr. Kate Trinajstic of the Australian University of Curtin has found in the rocks of the Devonian period (and this is no less than 400 million years ago) fossilized appendages of armored fish that served as penises. Having reconstructed the passionate inhabitants of the Devonian in all details, the inquisitive researcher came to the conclusion that the most comfortable position for copulation of these fish was "belly to belly."
Image: John Long
However, even armored fish tried to diversify their marriage relationship. Therefore, representatives of another Devonian species - Microbrachius dicki - copulated shoulder to shoulder or, more precisely, fin to fin. Male microbrachii grew L-shaped appendages for themselves and carried their partners in, "hugging" with their front fins and docking with their genitals. Another Australian paleontologist, professor at Flinders University, John Long, managed to establish this.
Classic design
In general, the fossils of the Paleozoic living creatures that inhabited the Earth long before the dinosaurs, in the past year presented one surprise after another. What is worth, among other things, the discovery of a complex and practically modern cardiovascular system in the Cambrian arthropod Fuxianhuia protensa!
We, who have absorbed the evolutionary wisdom of school textbooks since childhood, still believe that the older, the simpler and more primitive earthly organisms were. Meanwhile ... “This animal looks quite simple, but its internal organization is carefully thought out. For example, several arteries go to the brain - a pattern very similar to modern crustaceans, ”says Professor Nicholas Strausfeld of the University of Arizona. In his opinion, the vascular system of Fuxianhuia is even more complex than that of many modern crustaceans. However, the seeming paradox is a scientist.
“Today, different groups of crustaceans have differently arranged vascular systems, but they all date back to what we see in Fuxianhuia. With the course of evolution, some body segments of these animals specialized in specific tasks, others lost their significance, and the elements of the vascular system in them became less complex, ”the Russian portal PaleoNews quotes Professor Strosfield.
But if it were only about the vascular system! It turns out that it was also no worse than the modern ones. This became clear thanks to the uniquely preserved fossils of the ancient Chinese marine predators, the anomalocaridid \u200b\u200bLyrarapax unguispinus, 500 million years old. Three of their fossil representatives were studied by the same American professor, who found that the predators of the Cambrian seas thought with exactly the same brain as modern velvet worms - onychophores.
Image: Nicholas Strausfeld
Image copyright OLI SCARFF / AFP Image caption The sky is attracting more and more attention of mankind, although it is in no hurry to reveal its secrets
2017 has slightly expanded the crack through which humanity observes the universe around the Earth.
We "visited" between the atmosphere of Saturn and its famous rings, saw close up the mesmerizing storms on Jupiter, observed strange asteroids, looked for aliens and thought a little about what to do if we did find them.
Air Force Ukraine offers a brief overview of the latest human achievements in the study of space and their own planet.
Cosmos live
The year in space began with the fact that on January 6, the first spacewalk took place on the International Space Station (ISS) - for repair work.
It was possible to track him in real time, including on the Air Force.
American astronauts Robert Shane Kimbrough and Peggy Whitson had to connect three new batteries, which they installed earlier using a remote-controlled manipulator.
In September, two NASA cosmonauts and one Russian astronaut aboard the Soyuz MS-04 manned transport spacecraft successfully returned to Earth from the station.
Later, three more returned, and recently a replenishment of astronauts from Japan, Russia and the United States was launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome.
Image copyright KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV / AFP Image caption Baikonur station: be careful, the rocket is leaving ...Traditionally, various cargoes were also sent to the ISS. In particular, with the help of the modernized Antares launch vehicle, which includes a stage developed in Ukraine.
"Ukrainian specialists fully ensured the implementation of all operations in their area of \u200b\u200bresponsibility," the State Space Agency of Ukraine reported in September.
New record
Some stay on the ISS longer than others. For example, American astronaut Peggy Whitson set a new record - she spent the most days in space.
Image copyright NASA"At 1:27 am ET, Peggy Whitson officially broke the 534 day in space record set by Jeff Williams," the ISS team wrote on Twitter.
Dr. Whitson was already the Astronaut with the highest number of spacewalks among women. She also became the first woman to lead a team on the International Space Station twice.
At 57, Peggy Whitson is also the oldest woman ever to fly into space.
Asteroids and ... aliens?
But no less stellar than for astronauts, the hour has come this year for asteroids.
Especially for "Oumuamua, which means" a messenger from afar arrives first "in Hawaiian.
First, it came from interstellar space - its speed and trajectory indicated that this celestial body originated in a planetary system around another star.
Image copyright ESO / M. KORNMESSER Image caption Meet - "OumuamuaSecondly, everyone was pretty surprised by its strange shape - it is one of the most elongated space objects known to science.
It is this circumstance that attracted the greatest attention of scientists. Breakthrough Listen, supported by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, decided to listen to the signals from Oumuamua.
Because ... "Researchers working on deep space travel have previously concluded that the shape of a cigar or needle is the most desirable structure for an interstellar spacecraft."
To be on the safe side, scientists even began to think, what will we do if aliens contact us?
- Aliens are calling us! What do we do?
Moreover, NASA has announced the vacancy of a "planetary protection" officer whose job is to protect the Earth from alien life forms.
- NASA Seeks "Planetary Defense" Specialist
In April, another asteroid, half a kilometer wide, caused a commotion. He flew at a record high speed - about 120 thousand kilometers per hour - and approached our planet at a distance of 1.8 million kilometers. It may seem that it is far away, but no other similar space body has come close to the Earth.
If he fell to the planet, he could completely destroy one of the continents.
And in October another guest flew past the Earth. Much smaller - about the size of a house, but also much closer - within the orbit of the moon and just above the altitude at which the communication satellites fly.
NASA, however, assured that nothing threatens humanity again, and this incident, on the contrary, will help them test the asteroid warning system.
Cassini
Another hero of this year was the Cassini probe. A tiny aircraft 7 meters long has been flying through space for 20 years to help people study one of largest planets Solar System - Saturn.
This, of course, is not New Horizons, which covered 50 billion kilometers in 10 years and sent detailed images of Pluto to earth, but Cassini and its developers also have something to be proud of.
Image copyright NASA / JPL-CALTECH Image caption Scientists were very interested in the space between the atmosphere of Saturn and its rings, and Cassini gave them the answersHe contacted and sent the first photos of Saturn on April 27, and then flew 22 more times between the planet's atmosphere and its outer rings.
"No one spacecraft I've never been so close to Saturn, "Mission Leader Dr. Earl Maze said.
For humanity, the mission allowed us to see Saturn and the rings surrounding it more closely than ever, but for Cassini it was a one-way trip.
The spacecraft ran out of fuel and NASA had no intention of allowing the probe to wander uncontrollably between Saturn and its moons.
- Cassini burned out in the atmosphere
On September 15, he was ordered to self-destruct, plunging into the atmosphere of the planet, where he burned up.
This, by the way, is a very common end for spacecraft.
- The last pier: where the decommissioned spacecraft are sent
Juno
Like Cassini, the Juno spacecraft weighing no more than 3.5 tons on a cosmic scale is just a crumb. However, he had to deal with the largest planet in our system - the gas giant Jupiter.
He began his space "odyssey" in 2011, and on July 5 last year successfully entered his experimental orbit and, according to the plan, will remain there until July 2018.
The uniqueness of "Juno" is that this probe first tried to look behind the cloud cover of Jupiter and study its core.
Image copyright NASA / JPL-CALTECH / SWRI / MSSS / BETSY ASHER HALL / GERVAS Image caption "Even seasoned explorers have taken their breath away from these images of swirling clouds," said Mike Janssen of NASA.NASA experts said that what they saw took their breath away.
They were especially struck by giant storms at the poles of the planet.
Scientists also decided that Europe is the # 1 candidate for extraterrestrial life: but not the one that is part of the world on Earth, but the one that is the satellite of Jupiter.
After two decades of achievement and disappointment, scientists are close to sending space missions that will study the ocean on an icy celestial body.
Twin galaxies
Image copyright NASAIn general, the search for at least some kind of confirmation that we are not alone in the endless Universe is becoming an increasingly large trend among astronomers.
Earlier in December, NASA and Google found an eighth planet orbiting the Kepler 90 star.
This makes its system the twin of our solar system. In addition, it is also the largest planetary system known to mankind outside of ours.
Astronomers began to find exoplanets - objects located in constant orbits of stars - since the beginning of the 20th century.
About 3,500 such celestial bodies have already been registered. Hey, who's there?
Continents and glaciers
Another planet under the watchful eye of scientists was ... Earth.
Our house continued to be viewed from all possible angles, angles and distances.
Among other things, scientists are interested in climate change, the process of melting glaciers and possible changes in land boundaries.
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What will Greenland look like without ice?NASA scientists have even created the world's first program capable of predicting which cities will be affected by melting ice at different sites.
"This program provides a picture of which glaciers, ice sheets and ice caps are of particular importance for each city," the researchers say.
At the same time, some stubbornly continued to question the notion that the earth is round:
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Is the earth round or not? Conference participants in the USA are convinced that noSuper moon and dark sun
The earth, for its part, was also constantly looking up.
Recently, sky lovers could see the "supermoon" again.
- Supermoon in different parts of the planet - photo
This is the name of the astronomical phenomenon that occurs when the full moon coincides with the perigee - the moment of the closest approach of the moon and the earth.
This does not happen very often, because the distance between the Moon and the Earth is constantly changing. The supermoon also depends on the rotation of the Earth itself around the Sun.
Image copyright AFP Image caption "Super Moon" could be seen in different parts of the worldNASA said the early December event was only the first part of the "supermoon trilogy", with more to be expected on January 1 and 31.
And this summer, the Americans admired the eclipse of the sun.
The huge shadow from the Moon, as it passed between the Earth and the Sun, swept across the country, from Oregon in the west to South Carolina in the east.
Image copyright AFP Image caption President Donald Trump and his wife Melania also watched the eclipseIt was the first total solar eclipse seen in most states in 38 years, and the first since 1918 to travel from coast to coast.
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Solar eclipse in 60 secondsTherefore, millions of people deliberately traveled to parts of the country that were completely covered by darkness.
And again about the aliens ...
By the end of the year, there is renewed hope for those who believe in the existence of UFOs.
It was removed in 2004, but the US Department of Defense released the record only in 2017.
Whether it was finally determined what kind of object it was is still unknown. One of the pilots told the American media that he thought the thing was "out of our world."
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US Department of Defense showed a video with a UFOA few days earlier, the American press reported that the Pentagon had spent millions of dollars on a secret program to investigate unidentified flying objects.
- The Pentagon had a secret UFO study program
The program, which began in 2007 and was reportedly closed in 2012, was only known to a small number of officials.
The program documents describe strange high-speed aircraft and objects that hover in the air.
But scientists are skeptical about such studies and note that incomprehensible events do not necessarily indicate the existence of alien life.
Pizza, sperm - what's next?
In 2017, humanity has relentlessly continued to send everything it can into space.
There are now more sites for this - for example, an American company launched a rocket into space for the first time from a private launch site in New Zealand.
This test launch was the first in this country. This is a big step in the emerging market, in particular to launch cheap, single-use rockets to transport small satellites and other cargo.
Several victories were again recorded by the restless Elon Musk's company SpaceX. Among other things, in May, it launched a satellite into orbit for the first time for the military.
- SpaceX first launched a satellite into orbit commissioned by the military
Also this year, SpaceX performed the first-ever successful re-launch of a Falcon 9 rocket into space. According to many experts, this marked the end of a certain stage in the history of space exploration.
Other interesting things also happened. For example, healthy mice were born from frozen semen stored on the ISS.
- Mice were born from frozen semen stored in space
Well, the "highlight" - NASA sent to space station Sets for making pizza. There the parcel was used for its intended purpose:
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How to order pizza delivery to space?Usually the Vikings are represented as cruel people, obsessed with a passion for profit. And few people know that there were women among the leaders of the warlike people. Or that these great sailors had contact with more than 50 cultures - from modern Afghanistan to Canada.
I get wet under the January drizzle in a crowd of people awaiting a raid by a Viking squad with a "leader." Despite a rainy evening, the town of Lerwick in the Shetland Islands is full of festive excitement. A father standing next to me with two small children notices the reddish smoke behind the town hall and, unable to contain his laughter, explains what is happening: “It looks like these guys set the whole building on fire!” Smiles flicker on the faces of those around them - they all gathered here to look at ... the fire, or rather, at the Viking ship engulfed in fire. The burning of the boat is the culmination of the up-helly-o holiday, a symbol of the ancient heritage of the Vikings.
Meanwhile, a detachment of "Vikings" led by the leader makes their way through the streets. The bright light of many torches is reflected in the glass windows and illuminates the faces of the audience. The crowd rustled approvingly, barely seeing the slender silhouette of the ship - the "soldiers" were dragging it along.
The first true Vikings landed on the rocky shores of Scotland 1200 years ago, easily breaking the resistance of the defenders of the land and taking it. For seven centuries the Scandinavians ruled over the Shetland Islands until they finally ceded them to the King of Scotland. Nowadays, no one speaks the Old Norse dialect in these parts, but the heritage of the Vikings locals are still proud. Each year they carefully prepare for an up-helly-o, reassembling a life-size replica of a Viking ship.
Meanwhile, a crowd of torchbearers, encouraged by the songs of the audience about the ancient masters of the seas, drags the ship into the fenced area. At the signal of the leader, they begin to shower the ship with torches, and it is quickly engulfed in flames. Another moment - and fire runs up the mast. Sheaves of sparks rush into the night sky. The gathered children are dancing merrily: everyone feels like participants in an incendiary performance.
Recent discoveries by scientists confirm that not only men were involved in military affairs. The sword depicted above was found in the burial of the female leader. Photo: Gabrielle Hildebrand, Stockholm History Museum.
The festivities continued until late at night, and I watched the general merriment. It is interesting how much the Viking culture still excites the minds of people. The brave medieval sailors and warriors have long since sunk into oblivion, but still live in the imaginary worlds of writers, filmmakers and comic books. Each of us can easily remember a lot about the "virtual Vikings": what lands they inhabited, how they fought and feasted, and even how they died. But do we know who they really were, how they perceived the world around them and what kind of life they led?
Modern scientific methods - such as space sensing, DNA and isotope analysis - have allowed scientists to obtain a lot of new data. In Estonia, archaeologists are carefully examining two burial ships with the remains of slain warriors, trying to understand the reasons for the fierce cruelty of the Vikings. In Sweden, the remains of a female warrior are being investigated, which are changing the idea of \u200b\u200bthe role of women in the Viking military hierarchy. In Russia, archaeologists and historians are studying one of the foundations of the economy of the local Vikings (Varangians) - the slave trade that flourished in their time. And it turns out that the world of this people was arranged much more complicated and interesting than previously thought. “The study of the Vikings is moving to new level“This is how Jimmy Moncrief, a historian at the Shetland Islands Heritage Foundation in Lerwick, describes the latest discoveries in this area.
In the middle of the VIII century, the Vikings left the shores of Scandinavia, and the thirst for new lands took them thousands of nautical miles from their native Baltic and North Seas - in the next 300 years they climbed much further than scientists had expected. Thanks to the best design of sailing ships in those days and excellent knowledge of maritime affairs, the Vikings visited the territory of 37 modern countries - from Afghanistan to Canada. In their campaigns, they met with representatives of dozens of cultures, they were busily trading, especially appreciating luxury items. They wore Asian caftans, dressed in silks, and stuffed their pockets with silver dirhams from the Middle East. The cities of York and Kiev under their rule flourished, they colonized large territories in Great Britain, Iceland and France, founded settlements in Greenland and even reached North America. No other European seafarer of that time dared to go that far. “Only the Scandinavians decided on this adventure,” argues archaeologist Neil Price from Uppsala University (Sweden). "That was the singularity of the Vikings."
The ruins of a Scandinavian "long dwelling" on the coast of the Shetland Islands are reminiscent of the glorious past of the Vikings. Having displaced the Picts from their land, the Scandinavians established their laws here for long 700 years, until it was their turn to cede the archipelago to the king of Scotland. Photo: Robert Clark
However, the well-being of the Scandinavians was not based on trade and travel around the world alone. The Vikings made constant raids on the coast of Western Europe, attacking suddenly and with extraordinary brutality. In northern France, they climbed up the Seine and other rivers, filling the holds of ships with trophies obtained along the way and spreading terror wherever they passed. They managed to get about 14 percent of the accumulated wealth of the Carolingian empire (who considered themselves the heirs of Rome) - in exchange for empty promises of a peaceful life. The Age of Vikings, according to Price, is not at all for the faint of heart. Historians ask themselves: what was the beginning of the pan-European massacre? How and why did the peaceful Scandinavian peasants become a real disaster for the whole continent?
The Viking raids began around 750, but the prerequisites for such a turn in history appeared almost three hundred years earlier. At that time, chaos reigned in Scandinavia, Price says. Its lands were divided by more than 30 kingdoms, each of which erected fortresses in the struggle for power and territory. At the same time on Earth there was natural disaster - a giant cloud of dust enveloped the planet, formed as a result of a series of cataclysms - from the eruption of a large volcano to the impact of several comets or large meteorites. As a result, sunlight dimmed in early 536, and the average summer temperature in the Northern Hemisphere dropped over the next 14 years. Cold snap and the darkness that covered the Earth brought death and devastation to Scandinavia, located at the northern limits of agriculture. For example, in the province of Uppland, located on the east coast of Sweden, three quarters of the villages were empty: the inhabitants died from wars and starvation.
The catastrophic climate changes seemed so terrible to people that they gave rise to one of the most terrible legends in the world - the prophecy of the end of the world, Ragnarok. According to legend, the death of the god Balder will be the harbinger of the end of the world, after which winter will come to earth for three years - Fimbulvetr: the sun will be darkened by clouds, and the weather will worsen so that it will become impossible to live. On the day of Ragnarok, gods and monsters will clash in mortal battle, and all living things will perish.
The events that began in 536, according to Price, were very reminiscent of the mythical winter of Fimbulvetr. However, the terrible prophecy did not come true until the end, and when summer finally returned to the northern regions, the population began to recover. However, the Scandinavian peoples have retained the aggressive features acquired during the years of bad weather. The leaders formed well-armed detachments, conquered the wasteland and settled in these lands. All this resembles the plot of "Game of Thrones": a real militarized society arose, elevating the values \u200b\u200bof wartime - fearlessness, courage and cunning - above all others. On the island of Gotland, where many intact tombs from those times have been found, “every second man was buried with a weapon,” says Jon Jungkvist, an archaeologist at Uppsala University.
The first raids were made by the Vikings to monasteries, which contained many valuables like this gold pendant. It was discovered in one of the Viking caches during excavations in Scotland. Photo: Robert Clark, courtesy of Historic Environment Scotland
In the course of the formation of this society, armed to the teeth, "new technologies" of the 7th century came to Scandinavia - sailing ships began to be mastered here. Skilled carpenters learned how to build graceful boats, under the sails of which troops of armed fighters could be delivered much farther than before. On ships, brave rulers and their loyal warriors easily crossed the Baltic and North Seas, discovering new lands for themselves, plundering cities and villages and turning civilians into slavery. Scandinavian men, whose chances of starting a family in their homeland were extremely small, could easily find a girlfriend on the hikes - convincing or simply forcing a woman to go with them.
The combination of all these factors - several centuries of conquest of lands and the founding of kingdoms, an abundance of young single warriors and the emergence of a new type of ships - led to the fact that a wave of Vikings rushed to the shores of the European continent, drowning foreign lands in blood, cruelty and fires.
Around 750, a Viking detachment landed on the sandy promontory of Saaremaa, off the coast of modern Estonia. Here, a hundred miles from their native forests near the city of Uppsala, the soldiers pulled two large ships ashore. Their faces and bodies were covered in blood - a fierce fight had just ended. In the holds, they brought four dozen bodies of their slain comrades cut to pieces, among whom was the leader. All the victims were young men of strong constitution, for many of them this battle was far from the first. Some of the bodies bore deep stab wounds, others were hacked with an ax, some corpses lay completely decapitated. One of the warriors was scalped with a sword blow. The surviving fighters gathered the pieces together and put them in the hold of the larger of the ships. Then they covered their military comrades with a cloth, on top of which they laid out their shields, building a burial mound of them.
In 2008, excavators laying an electrical cable near the Estonian village of Salme came across human bones. They notified the local authorities about the accidental find, and they immediately called archaeologists. Today Neil Price never ceases to wonder how lucky he is. “For the first time, archaeologists were lucky enough to find the burial place of a Viking military unit who died in a raid,” he explains. The special value of the burial is also that the discovered soldiers died 50 years before the Scandinavian invaders made the first attacks on the English monastery on the island of Lindisfarne in 793: for a long time this event was considered the first attack of the Vikings on foreign lands. “The most unusual thing about the find is the sheer number of swords,” Price explains. Many scholars believed that the first raids were made by units of the Scandinavians, consisting of several dozen poor peasants with simple spears and bows in their hands, led by several experienced warriors who wielded swords and other complex weapons. Burial at Salma disproves such notions: more swords were found here than human remains. This means that the Scandinavians, who occupied a fairly high position, went on early sorties.
On a January morning, I was escorted through many corridors to a small storage facility located in an industrial area in the south of Edinburgh. Here, for more than a year, scientists have been dismantling valuables from the Galloway hoard that once belonged to one of the Scandinavian leaders. He plundered them in numerous raids, with them and was buried about 1,100 years ago in the southwest of Scotland. Now it is a collection of rare and extraordinarily beautiful objects - from gold ingots, brocade from Byzantium or from some Muslim country to a Christian cross covered with enamel. Independent archaeologist Alwyn Owen, who studies the life of the Vikings, claims that she has never seen anything like it in her entire life: "This is an incredible find, just incredible!"
Found in the burial of a noble Scandinavian warrior in Sweden, the iron bits are decorated with gilded bronze. Although the Vikings are known as skilled shipbuilders, the nobility also loved horses - they kept valuable breeds. Photo: Robert Clarke, Uppsala University Museum
Alwyn has laid out several artifacts on the table - she is engaged in restoration. My attention is drawn to an exquisite golden bird-shaped object that resembles an estelle, a small pointer used by clergymen to read religious texts. Nearby lies a fine gold pendant - most likely a reliquary. Alwin herself is intently examining the silver brooches. They are engraved with mythical creatures and anthropomorphic faces. Almost all of them were made for the Anglo-Saxons, Owen said. “It looks like some settlement or monastery once had to go through a terrible shock,” she suggests.
Obviously, the owner of these treasures had a weakness for beautiful things, and, instead of melting the loot into ingots, he preferred to engage in collecting unusual objects of art. According to archaeologist Steve Ashby of the University of York, the Vikings had a good taste for rare items made by foreign craftsmen, and among the elite, the possession of a large number of such artifacts was considered a sign of high status. “The cream of Scandinavian society was a real dandy,” Steve explains. "And the luxury items were on display."
The Viking leaders also loved to glimpse, chose bright clothes and wore catchy jewelry: rings, neck torcs, large brooches and massive bracelets. At the same time, they did not compete in who surpasses whom: each item was a living reminder of a distant campaign and served as a coveted reward for courage and bravery. Seasoned viking one appearance showed all the delights of a warrior's life, prompting young Scandinavians to join the ranks of the fighters and swear allegiance to him in exchange for a share in the loot. “The military elite could not afford to be modest - they needed fresh blood, new fighters,” Ashby explains.
The first victims of the Vikings were monasteries located on the coast and on the islands. The attacks were carefully planned, and they were preceded by reconnaissance: Scandinavian merchants often visited the coastal settlements of Europe, strolled through the trading rows, looking closely at the goods, and also noticed the weighty silver bowls and golden church utensils stored in neighboring monasteries.
At first, the Vikings planned their raids in the summer and attacked in several ships with a hundred or two warriors. They attacked suddenly, sweeping away everyone who got in their way, and by the time the locals had time to gather the militia, they were already rushing home in full sail. In the 9th century, in France alone, they managed to plunder more than 120 settlements. “If you lived in the north-west of France at the end of the 9th century, then, most likely, you would have decided that the end of the world had come,” Price describes those times.
As the jewels flowed to Scandinavia, young men joined the ranks of the Vikings in droves. The squads grew, turning into armies with 30 or more ships. In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle under the year 865, it is mentioned how hundreds of ships arrived on the east coast of the country, on board which was the "great army." By land and river, the troops launched an invasion into the interior of England, capturing vast territories.
Not far from the modern town of Lincoln, archaeologist Julian D. Richards of the University of York is excavating one of the winter camps of that great army - the Torksey site. It could accommodate from three to four thousand soldiers, and the researchers believe that it was not just an army: it had its own forges, where they forged stolen metal, there was a brisk trade in the streets and children frolicked. Women were mainly engaged in household chores, but there were also those who led detachments of men into battle.
One of the earliest Irish sources mentions a warrior by the name of Inghen Ruide, or the Red-Haired Woman, - apparently, she got her name because of her hair color. In the 10th century, she led the Viking flotilla in Ireland. Anna Chelström, an anthropologist at Stockholm University, recently completed a re-examination of Viking remains found in the Birka trading settlement in Sweden. The participants in the burial ceremony put a whole arsenal in the grave, which testified to the high status of the deceased. For decades, archaeologists believed that the buried warrior was a man. Imagine Anna's surprise when the analysis of the pelvic bones showed that the remains of a woman lie there. The unknown leader was respected by many Vikings. “Together with her, we discovered chess-like pieces for the game,” says Carlotta Hedenstierna-Jonson of Uppsala University. “Apparently, she was developing battle tactics, which means she was at the head of the army.”
The fleet that sowed death and destruction throughout Western Europe, was also used to transport slaves and goods between markets thousands of miles distant from each other - from Asia Minor to Eastern Europe and possibly even Iran. In medieval Arab and Byzantine written sources there are stories about caravans of armed Scandinavian slave traders and merchants, called Rus, who mastered trade routes in the Black and Caspian Seas. “I have seen the Rus ... I have never seen [people] with more perfect bodies,” wrote Ahmad Ibn-Fadlan, an Arab traveler and diplomat of the 10th century. "And with each of them there is an ax, a sword and a knife."
To find out more about trade to the east, archaeologists are excavating along ancient trade routes. On a June morning, on the Dnieper embankment, I met with Veronika Murasheva, an archaeologist from the State Historical Museum (Moscow). Here, in Smolensk region, there was a settlement of Gnezdovo, founded by the Eastern Vikings - Russia - 1100 years ago. Favorably located at the intersection of two trade arteries - the Dnieper, which flows into the Black Sea, and many tributaries of the Volga, which carry water to the Caspian - Gnezdovo flourished and expanded, eventually occupying an area of \u200b\u200b30 hectares. Having studied Gnezdovo for a century and a half, Russian archaeologists have discovered many defensive structures, warehouses, workshops, port buildings and about 1200 mounds, where valuable artifacts were found. As it turned out, Gnezdovo was chosen by the Scandinavian elite, who imposed tribute on the Slavic population and controlled trade flows in the south. Every year in the spring merchants left here on ships loaded with valuable goods - furs, honey, wax, amber, walrus tusks and, of course, slaves. Many ships headed for the Black Sea to Constantinople. Arriving in the capital Byzantine Empire, Russia was actively selling goods and buying on the way back another, no less valuable: amphorae with olive oil and wine, glass products, colored mosaics and rare fabrics.
The second trade route led even further to the East, along the tributaries of the Volga, to the bazaars stretching on its shores and on the Caspian. Muslims generously paid for foreign slaves with silver coins - dirhams, because the Koran forbade the enslavement of brothers in faith.
Marek Jankowiak, a medievalist at Oxford University, has brought together the records of more than a thousand treasures with dirhams discovered during excavations of Viking settlements in different parts of Europe. This allowed him to estimate the number of people sold by the Scandinavians into slavery - according to Marek's calculations, it turned out that several tens of thousands of Eastern Europeans, mainly Slavs, were enslaved only in the 10th century. Human trafficking brought the Vikings an income of millions of dirhams - unimaginable in those days.
Among the Vikings, there were many legends about distant campaigns, one of them is the story of the merchant Bjarni Herulfsson. According to legend, his ship went astray in thick fog while crossing from Iceland to Greenland. When the fog cleared, Bjarni and his squad saw new lands, little like Greenland: they were covered with dense forest. Bjarney, choosing not to waste time researching new territory, went on, until eventually his ship reached the New World - it looks like he was the first European to see the new continent. Having accidentally discovered North America, the Vikings began to regularly visit these lands.
Their achievements in conquering the seas are still shrouded in mystery: were the Vikings the first conquerors of the New World? The Scandinavian sagas state that sailors organized four major expeditions west of Greenland in search of wood and other resources. Chroniclers report that already in 985 they were exploring lands on the northeastern coast of present-day Canada and even wintered there in small settlements, engaged in logging, giving birth to children, trading and fighting with the Indians, and even managed to find thickets of wild grapes in a place that nicknamed Vinland. In the 1960s, the famous explorer Helga Ingstad was able to find in the north of Newfoundland in the town of L'Anse aux Meadows during the excavation of hills that resemble the "long dwellings" of the Vikings, three large buildings, several huts, a furnace for processing marsh ore and fruits gray walnut, which grows hundreds of kilometers south of this place. Nearby there was a peat bog - a source of ore, which the Vikings valued, who smelted iron from it.
And Patricia Sutherland, a professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, looking through old collections in the Canadian Museum of Civilization, stumbled upon ... fragments of Viking yarn. This yarn was found in a place where representatives of the ancient Eskimo culture of the Dorset lived, who inhabited the Arctic until the 15th century. But one of the most intriguing finds was a small stone vessel that resembled a ladle for smelting metal with traces of bronze on the inner surface, as well as tiny glass balls usually formed when metal melts at high temperatures. All this suggests that the Vikings were not only the first to land on Newfoundland, but also visited mainland Canada ...
Winter, wind. I hail a taxi to head to Shetland's Samboro Airport the morning after the up-helly. There was almost no one on the streets - people were celebrating noisily all night. Children sleep soundly, dreaming about brave Vikings, and adults in the morning put their swords and helmets in the closets - until the next holiday. But the spirit of the Vikings, as well as the romantic image of fearless warriors who built boats and conquered cold seas in an effort to conquer new lands, will never fade.
Vikings in the West and Russia in the East
Text: Vladimir PetrukhinOne of the "damned questions" of our entire history was the main question of the Primary Russian Chronicle - "The Tale of Bygone Years": "Where did the Russian land come from?" The chronicler answered this unequivocally: Russia, which gave the name to the land, came from the overseas Varangians called to Novgorod in 862. This point of view of Old Russian historiography, based on the princely tradition, was perceived as canonical afterwards. So, Ivan the Terrible remembered that he too was "from the Germans" (Varangians). Any official historiography was considered tendentious, and in the middle of the 18th century Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov, burdened by the German "dominance" in the Academy of Sciences, considered the chronicle beginning of Russian history - the vocation of foreigners - unworthy of the great "Slavic-Russian" state. He could not directly encroach on the authority of the chronicle and replaced the problem by declaring the Varangians “his own” - the Baltic Slavs.
This historiographic construction became the basis for the struggle against the "reactionary Norman theory", allegedly designed to belittle the ability of the Slavic people to develop independently. The controversy in Russian science in the 1970s broke with the Soviet stereotypes of the era of the struggle against cosmopolitanism: endowing external influences on the country's development with exclusively negative properties. Even then, the head of Soviet historical science, Academician Boris Alexandrovich Rybakov, spoke of a fundamental difference in the onslaught of the Normans in the West and the Varangians in the East: the coast of the Western countries was open for unexpected attacks by the Vikings from the sea, the way to the East was more difficult. Only by cunning and deception could individual detachments penetrate deep into Eastern Europe, as the prophetic Oleg did, who captured Kiev, pretending to be a merchant.
Note that in the west of Europe the Normans took possession of the lands, as a rule, reclaimed in Roman times, with an established system of communications, a network of settlements. The situation in the east was different: the colonization of the forest zone by Slavic tribes did not end there, and rivers remained the main roads. The initial Rus, according to eastern and other sources (including numismatic data), sought to establish itself on these paths leading to the centers of Byzantine and Middle Eastern civilizations. For safe walking along the rivers of Eastern Europe, it was necessary to agree with the local tribes (for which it was necessary at least to know their language): the chronicle conveys an agreement - a "row" concluded in Novgorod by the Varangian squad and princes with the tribes of Slovenes, Krivichi and Mary, regulating relations between power and tributaries. 
The pendant is a sign of belonging to the princely squad in Russia. The bident is a princely sign of the era of Svyatoslav (X century), the banner on the back is close to the image from the coins of Olav Kvaran, the Scandinavian ruler of York, Northumbria and Dublin (X century). Photo: from a private collection.
This system of relations spread by the middle of the 10th century on the way from the Varangians to the Greeks, which was seized by the Russian princes: it is described in detail by the Byzantine emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus in the treatise "On the Administration of the Empire" - Russia ("all the dew" in the treatise) leaves the capital of Kiev in polyudye to feed on the Slavs - tributaries (in the treatise - paktiots) until spring, when the rivers are freed from ice, and the way "to the Greeks" opens. (Note that before the trip to Byzantium, the "dews" bought ship timber from the Slavs to equip boats.)
It is important that the tribute collectors called themselves (in the agreements with the Greeks) "all dews", "Rus" or "all Rus". The same name was given to the princely squad in the chronicle legend about the vocation of the Varangians. The term "Varangian" appeared in Russia when it was necessary to distinguish the Scandinavian mercenaries from Russia - this was the name of the princely squad. Already the chronicler of the end of the 11th century perceived the words "Rus" and "Varangians" as ethnonyms - the names of peoples: Rus was included by him among the Varangian peoples, among the Svei, Urmans (as the Norwegians and Danes were called) and others. Historical onomastics has long clarified the origin of the word "rus": the Baltic Finns, residents of the Eastern Baltic, call Sweden Ruotsi (in Finnish), Rootsi (in Estonian); the ancestors of these peoples, whom the Slavs called Chudyu, took, according to the chronicle, a part in the vocation of the Varangians / Rus - from them the Slavs took the word "Rus" as a designation for immigrants from Sweden. At the beginning of the 19th century, an explanation of the term "rus" was proposed - "rowers, participants in the campaign on rowing ships."
It is quite obvious why the Scandinavians in Eastern Europe called themselves "oarsmen" and not "Vikings": here they could not make their way along rivers, especially along portages, on long ships; accordingly, they went to the east, according to the runic inscriptions, "to Russia", to the west - "to the Viking". It was not without reason that the prophetic Oleg, in his campaign against Constantinople, took the ransom "on the key" - the oarlock, that is, for each rower. In Staraya Ladoga, according to Icelandic sagas and archeology, the Scandinavians had to re-equip ships to travel inland along the Volkhov.
Archaeological research in the second half of the XX - early XXI century showed the interconnected development of urban settlements within an integral river network, especially on the way from the Varangians to the Greeks. The settlements associated with this route in the 9th-10th centuries developed synchronously, their necropolises, numbering many hundreds of complexes (in Birka, Gnezdovo, Kiev), clearly belong to the same archaeological culture. The opening of riverside quarters in Gnezdovo and Kiev (in Podil) was sensational: these quarters were planned so that it would be more convenient to receive boats going along the rivers. This layout is very different from traditional Slavic settlements and coincides with the one that created coastal settlements ("wikis") in the Baltic and the British Isles.