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What the heat wave in Britain has revealed — 11 Comments

  1. Much of this type of satellite and drone imaging has been going on for some time with or without heat or other weather anomalies. The giant meteor impact crater in the Yucatan peninsula that is believed to be responsible for the dinosaur and KT extinction was discovered this way.

    A former colleague does this type of work for the DoD though much is classified. They use hyperspectral imaging (Infrared and UV added). He hired a botanist some years ago to help with the plant/tree analysis.

    A cool factoid from WWII was that much of the allied airborne photo reconnaissance was analyzed with stereo vision. If a plane is traveling at an altitude of 1 mile, and two identical photos are taken, except that the plane has travelled 0.1 mile between the two shots, then it is just like seeing nearby objects with two eyes.

  2. Aerial archaeology. Old stuff. Different things show up in different lighting, different seasons, different photo angles. Stone age/bronze age/iron age/Roman/Dark Age/medieval, all on top of each other. Ground surveys, too – when the vegetation is sparse, they organize crowds of school kids to fan out over fields, looking for artifacts (mostly broken bits of pottery, which last damn near forever), map it all, and file the map away somewhere. They’ve been documenting this stuff for at least fifty years, mainly so that nobody puts a highway or parking lot on top of something potentially interesting. It can be very hard to get a building permit anywhere in Europe.

  3. You see this sort of thing in central Texas where natural rock buried in the soil is much closer to the surface in some areas than in others. During cooler parts of the year the underground rock doesn’t get hot so the grass can grow evenly over the entire yard. But in the hottest parts of the summer, the sun heats the underground rocks to the point where they burn the grass from underneath resulting in dead spots over the buried rocks.

  4. The US did analysis of ancient aquifers in Egypt using x-ray cameras in satellites to let the Russians know they could not hide solos.

    In “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” Doyle wrote about ancient huts in the Moor that were stone age era. I don’t know if they are there but there appear to be some in that area.

  5. also when things cool in the evening you can see stuff as well if you look in infrred as disturbed soil dos not conduct heat the same…

  6. Recently reseachers have discovered an enormous previously unknown Mayan city beneath the canopy of the Peten jungle in Guatemala using lidar mapping technology. The lidar system fires laser pulses to create a topographical map of the surface beneath the jungle. It has also been used to unearth ancient cities in Cambodia.

  7. Archaeologists.. still playing with tools often used by kids.

    No wonder the dating system is all messed up.

  8. When the UK votes in a few more Muslim overlords this sort of curiosity about the past before Mohammed will come to an end. It’s not just the Taliban who have a hostile view of what to them is godless, empty, meaningless, prehistory, knowledge of which provides no obvious power or advantage in the here and now.

  9. From The Master:

    WELAND’S SWORD
    Puck’s Song
    See you the dimpled track that runs,
    All hollow through the wheat?
    O that was where they hauled the guns
    That smote King Philip’s fleet!

    See you our little mill that clacks,
    So busy by the brook?
    She has ground her corn and paid her tax
    Ever since Domesday Book.

    See you our stilly woods of oak,
    And the dread ditch beside?
    O that was where the Saxons broke,
    On the day that Harold died!

    See you the windy levels spread
    About the gates of Rye?
    O that was where the Northmen fled,
    When Alfred’s ships came by!

    See you our pastures wide and lone,
    Where the red oxen browse?
    O there was a City thronged and known,
    Ere London boasted a house!

    And see you, after rain, the trace
    Of mound and ditch and wall?
    O that was a Legion’s camping-place,
    When Caesar sailed from Gaul!

    And see you marks that show and fade,
    Like shadows on the Downs?
    O they are the lines the Flint Men made,
    To guard their wondrous towns!

    Trackway and Camp and City lost,
    Salt Marsh where now is corn;
    Old Wars, old Peace, old Arts that cease,
    And so was England born!

    She is not any common Earth,
    Water or Wood or Air,
    But Merlin’s Isle of Gramarye,
    Where you and I will fare.

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