Scientists have found preserved dinosaur cells – but sadly they still can't build Jurassic Park

Dino-cell hunting. Laurent Mekul

The science behind the Jurassic Park films always seemed far-fetched, even before the latest instalment, Jurassic World, introduced the idea of genetically engineered super-dinosaurs.

For one thing, finding mosquitoes that had drunk the blood of dinosaurs and then been preserved in amber for hundreds of millions of years is incredibly unlikely. But there’s another more important reason: proteins such as DNA degrade fast after a creature’s death. They are almost never found preserved in bones older than a few thousand years. This has been the dogma for many years.

The idea of molecular-level preservation within fossils has always been controversial. No DNA has ever been extracted, for example, from a dinosaur bone precisely because this complex molecule degrades away over relatively short periods of geological time.

But other kinds of molecular and cellular preservation have been reported in fossils, including blood cells, skin cells and the original cellular components of feathers and muscles. The preservation of these kinds of cells and molecules has always been assumed to be extremely rare, only likely at sites of exceptional preservation.

In the case of dinosaur feathers and skin cellular preservation, sites like the Jehol Biota fossil deposit of western China (where rocks are around 120m years old), have proved important because animals are preserved in incredible detail in a fine-grained laminated sediment.

A new study by Sergio Bertazzo and colleagues, most based at Imperial College in London, looks set to change this perception. It suggests preservation of organic remains might be much more common that has always been assumed.

Just your average dinosaur bone. Laurent Mekul

Bertazzo’s team studied a series of Canadian dinosaur bones, all about 80m years old, using state-of-the-art analytical techniques to examine the surfaces and internal composition of the fossils at very small scales. Intriguingly, not all of the team’s dinosaur bones were exceptionally preserved. They were just ordinary chunks of bone, the kind very often collected by palaeontologists from Mesozoic-era (the period when dinosaurs lived) sites around the world.

The researchers analysed the fossils at the nanoscale, using an electron microscope to reveal details smaller than can be seen with light, and a mass spectrometer to analyse their chemical composition. The study identified clear structures in the fossils that were consistent with the preservation of original bone collagen, the protein component of all vertebrate bones.

3D reconstruction of one of the fossils

The structures seen in the Canadian bones might not be pretty, but this is a hugely important piece of work that changes our perception of how and why soft tissue are preserved in fossil bones.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t make a Jurassic Park-style theme park any more feasible because the DNA in the cells had still degraded. But at least we have more information about cell shapes and the preservation of proteins that make up bones.

The potential to identify cellular structures and their organic components also means further studies on extinct animals, long thought largely impossible, might indeed be doable using the techniques highlighted in this paper if more cells are found.

Not pretty Sergio Bertazzo

One clear area that could use these results would be the hugely debated field of dinosaur physiology. Were dinosaurs really warm-blooded with a faster metabolism like living birds, or were they more reptilian in their biology?

We might not (yet) be able to bring dinosaurs back to life, but we are moving towards understanding much more about their fossil preservation and biology than ever thought possible.

Scientists anxious about the future of research funding

Like in 2010, cuts to science are a real possibility. sw77/Flickr, CC BY-SA

With the Comprehensive Spending Review looming in the autumn, it is hard to know exactly how researchers will fare over the next five years. But given that there was no protection for the science budget in the Tories’ manifesto, it seems everything is up for grabs. Last week’s announcement of severe cuts of £450m to the government department that funds research is a worrying sign. Another challenge is an ongoing review that has the potential to change the way that the funding is distributed.

The problem with ‘place’

A series of recent policy announcements have left scientists wondering how the whole funding system for research might change. At the end of 2014, the former coalition government published a strategy for science and innovation that, while warm in sentiment, was short in detail and commitment. Much of the money committed in the document was not new, such as the government’s decision to invest £200m in a new materials centre in Manchester, dubbed the “Royce”.

The document, which introduced the term “place” as one of five central pillars, stressed the importance of regional clustering. This could be a problem because research funding in the UK has traditionally been distributed by the research councils on the basis of the most excellent applications, with ministers unlikely to get involved in the decisions. It is hard not to see this new criterion as a potential tool enabling ministers to launch projects as they see fit.

Will Manchester catch up with London when it comes to science? Stacey MacNaught/Flickr, CC BY-SA

But perhaps the most important (because it is new) announcement in the strategy was the launch of a review into the research councils, to be led by Paul Nurse, president of the Royal Society. This was despite the fact that the councils had just survived another review into their operations, led by the Cabinet Office.

In their response to the review’s consultation, the Royal Society – carefully keeping itself at arm’s length from Nurse himself – commented that funding decisions should be more transparent and that those making them should be accountable. This is a clear reference to the unease felt by many about decisions such as the allocation of such large funds for the Royce. The society also warned that if UK funding becomes distributed on an increasingly regional basis rather than following excellence, the risk of duplication and unhelpful competition might grow.

Inevitably one can start to see what might be termed battle lines being drawn up in the scientific community. An article putting “big science” (huge expensive projects such as the LHC) in opposition to small projects recently appeared, swiftly followed by a rebuttal stating that “size doesn’t matter”.

But, fundamentally we need to be sure that decision-making processes are as good as they can be and that scientists work closely with politicians to develop these ideas. This is important, as decisions should have the trust of the community as well as the approval of politicians. Research councils also mustn’t be pitted against each other, because we need them all – but inevitably they are competing for funds. And we need to be sure that “place” doesn’t trump excellence all the time and that our infrastructure is fit for purpose across the country, not just where a politician’s whim chooses to fund something substantial.

The next generation

It isn’t only the system of grants and infrastructure that seems to be mutating. There are very substantial changes in the way research students are resourced, with more changes potentially on the horizon. We have increasingly lost the ability to fund individual PhD students on project grants and block grants to departments alike. Instead, there is increasing concentration in big training centres of students in particular fields.

Critical mass may in some cases lead to a better training environment, but it also makes it decidedly patchy. Some topics don’t find favour while others end up with a very significant number of studentships available, extending over the next five years. Locking so many studentships up in this way, the next area screaming for a batch of studentships in the short term is likely to suffer.

We need to be sure UK science is not in a position where young researchers are only likely to be funded by the European Research Council because the UK system has moved so far that only established individuals and centres can get funded. (In passing one should note that such ERC funding would become essentially impossible if we headed for Brexit).

Finally, suddenly out of nowhere, there is a suggestion that loans should be made available, not just for taught Master’s programmes but for PhDs as well, for which there seems to have been no prior demand voiced at all. This introduces the danger of students expecting to be able to go to departments without regard to any developing strategy, nationally or locally, or whether the destination is fit for the student’s purpose. That is hardly likely to be beneficial to the student or to the department concerned, which will struggle to plan ahead. This does not look like a joined-up policy and it is hard to see why it is being floated.

The UK definitely needs a good supply of the most talented students staying on to do research but that goal is not likely to be met by students taking up loans because they have the financial confidence that they’ll be able to pay back the loan one day – regardless of the fact they already have debt around their neck from their undergraduate loan. This does not look like a progressive move – studentships in the sciences are currently needs-blind. Decisions are essentially based only on the quality of the student, which means that the best students get funded.

Let us hope the responses to the recent policy consultation come back with a resounding rejection of this potential scheme – and that that rejection is heeded by the politicians.

With no higher education bill in the Queen’s Speech we look set for more disconnected policy decisions affecting universities and research from different parts of the government. Scientists need to speak up, they need to engage with policymakers and they need to make the case collectively heard for the importance of research on all scales – with and without immediate impact. We are told Osborne “gets it” so let’s hope the “it” he gets sits well with researchers.

Apple can't rely on numbers alone to make streaming a success

Facing the music Jeff Chiu/AP/Press Association Images

Apple has finally launched its own music streaming service at its Worldwide Developers' Conference in San Francisco.

That the iPhone maker should go in this direction should not come as a surprise to anyone. Last year, Apple bought the audio products company Beats by Dr Dre for US$3bn (£2bn) with the statement that music has a “special place” for the company. Apple is – after all – the company that pioneered portable digital music for the mass market and changed the way we listen through iTunes and the iPod.

While the focus of reporting around last year’s purchase was to question the value of the Beats headphone and speaker business, less attention was paid to the small US-based streaming service that came as part of the deal in the form of Beats Music. The question at the time and now is why Apple, a company with more than US$170 billion (£111bn) in cash did not go after the obvious candidate in the streaming music business: Spotify.

The reasoning for this decision becomes clearer when you contrast Apple’s business model with that of Spotify. Apple’s new product will be a subscription-only service, offering no free accounts or commercial advertising (although it will include a free 24-hour online radio service). Beats also has the advantage over Spotify in having a recognisable brand name that is appealing, and a personality associated with that brand.

This combined pair of qualities is something that Apple, of any technology company, will appreciate and exploit. The other potential candidate subscription-only music streaming service with a high-profile celebrity owner, Tidal, just came along too late to come onto Apple’s radar.

Tidal’s subscription-only service, founded by Jay-Z, has arguably struggled with low uptake in an environment where a free service is the baseline expectation. However, a revamped iTunes Radio service that challenges Spotify’s market may also bring new life to the Tidal service, which claims to have 770,000 subscribers.

Other services such as Deezer work with the freemium business model, offering both advertising-supported and subscription accounts in a similar way to Spotify. But there is no intention within Deezer of changing in the short term.

Not quite worth a high-five Monica Davey/EPA

There are currently at least 35 existing music streaming services but only 12 of these are recognised as global services and none of these are subscription-only. This categorisation itself reflects the complexity of rights management and the relationship of intellectual property laws with the traditional music publishing music model.

Apple’s announcement does still leave a few questions unanswered including the extent to which artists will see any benefits from this development. Without revisiting the existing relationships that artists have with music companies and broadcasters the project will lack the financial innovation that is required in the business of streaming music.

The music industry has previously relied on consumers buying the media containing the music. Without the need for any physical media to distribute music, Apple is involving itself in the urgent need to rethink and future-proof the business model for global music distribution.

While it may not initially appear to be the case, the combination of a global audience of 800m iTunes accounts and the many millions of devices that can interact with iTunes all creates a potentially instant user base of up to 100m subscribers that far outstrips all the current subscription services. The launch of Apple’s service could again put it at the forefront of revolutionising the music business worldwide.

While the numbers all appear to signal another imminent success for Apple, this is nonetheless a major business innovation that will require the sustained support of the company. This support will need to be financial and also helps to explain why Apple saved its money by not chasing a Spotify valued at US$8 (£5bn) billion and went for the cheaper option.

Expect very soon to regularly see advertising encouraging us to buy into iTunes Radio. iTunes Radio will also need to reinvent the relationship between music producers and performers in ways that echo the reinvention of television that Netflix has successfully championed.

Signals of Apple’s intention to go beyond a simple head-to-head competition with Spotify have been emerging over the last few months. Apple’s engagement of artists Drake and Pharrell and former BBC radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe are all early signs of an effort to actively change the relationships between producers and consumers of music. For consumers willing to pay the suggested US$10 (£6.50) a month, Apple’s streaming service could help to yet again extend the experience and enjoyment of listening to music.

Of course space exploration is worth the money

No such thing as a free launch NASA/Aubrey Gemignani/EPA

I don’t suppose that readers would expect me to contradict the title of this article – that would be tantamount to signing my own redundancy notice. But, given an environment where phrases such as “pay restraint”, “austerity package” and “falling service provision” are bandied around, it might be thought somewhat profligate to suggest that millions of pounds (euros, dollars) are spent on exploration of space.

Why do we need to go to Mars? How many pictures of galaxies do we need? Surely that money could be better spent on more worthy areas, such as health and education? I would agree with that conclusion if the money were simply placed in a sack and burnt. But the millions do not go up in smoke: they are used to pay for jobs and services.

Rockets and spaceflight instruments do not assemble themselves. They are designed and built by people, who get paid. They are fabricated from components which have to be manufactured and then purchased. The community engaged in the space industry includes specialist scientists and engineers, designers, graphic artists and IT professionals, as well as a vast support system: HR, catering, cleaning, etc.

This is where much of the space budget is spent - on salaries that in turn generate a market for other goods and services (houses, clothing, food) – as well as returning funds to the government through taxation. In fact, the European Space Agency might be regarded as a massive money-spinning operation, in which every euro contributed by the government is returned ten-fold to the nation in terms of the value of the jobs generated.

How the space budget is spent is just one of the major benefits which comes from the UK’s space industry, one of the fastest-growing sectors of the UK economy.

Jobs, services and technology Daniel Reinhardt/EPA

There are other spin-offs, because “space” is much closer than is generally thought. When talking about space, people usually think about stars and galaxies, wonderful images from telescopes, Neil Armstrong walking on the Moon, the rings of Saturn, and so on.

Looking much closer to home, the armada of satellites orbiting the Earth that, among many other things, beam information to satellite navigation systems, broadcast television programmes and monitor the weather are part of a global space network. Where would we be now if we didn’t have the internet? These are daily services which we take for granted, and are rarely, if ever, considered as “space exploration”.

Along with an understanding of what goes into space exploration comes an appreciation of the people who help to make space exploration happen: teachers. Without their inspirational support and guidance, we would not have succeeding generations of engineers, scientists and other specialists who make the UK’s space industry so successful.

But the UK has been so successful in growing its space industry, it doesn’t have enough “homegrown” specialists to employ. So we need more teachers, more trained scientists and engineers – and more space industry!

Is space a waste of money? Certainly not!

Disclosure

Monica Grady receives funding from the STFC and is a Trustee of Lunar Mission One.

US hack shows data is the new frontier in cyber security conflict

Data mining Shutterstock

More than four million personal records of US government workers are thought to have been hacked and stolen, it has been. With US investigators blaming the Chinese government (although the Chinese deny involvement), this incident shows how data could be the new frontier for those in cyberspace with a political agenda.

In April 2015, the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) – the body that provides the human resources function for the federal government and is responsible for background checks for security clearances – realised its records had been hacked.

Along with the direct personnel details, there are a whole range of references and contacts contained in the OPM records. The sensitive data could be used to identify people with security clearances, and could be used for the impersonation or blackmail of federal employees. Someone with security clearance could be exposed to identity fraud, where an intruder could gain access to sensitive information using the stolen identifies.

The data could also be used to hack into other government sites. For example, intruders recently attempted to breach the Inland Revenue Service’s systems (this time it was blamed on Russia) using personal information taken from tax returns stolen during other commercial breaches.

Such attacks create a certain amount of national humiliation. The hacking of confidential data from Sony highlighted how embarrassing it can be for information to leak. The contents of its sensitive emails are now searchable on Wikileaks, and we have probably only seen the tip of the iceberg in terms of the data that was taken.

How did the hackers beat the system?

Aware of the threat of attack, the OPM said it has “undertaken an aggressive effort” to improve its cybersecurity over the last year. So why, many might ask, did it take the government so long to detect the security breach?

Many large companies now use advanced intrusion detection systems (IDS) that raise alerts of possible security breaches that are then collected, logged and analysed. At the OPM, the system that detected the breach was called EINSTEIN. It was developed by a division of the Department of Homeland Security to monitor the exit points of US government by examining the packets carried around a network for possible signs of intrusion.

The growing threat of attacks has led to the use of tools that gather all the event logs from IDS agents on a network. Human analysts then have to make sense of the events coming in, in order to spot possible signs of an intrusion. To do this advanced computer systems filter down the event logs and present only the most important ones to the analysts.

Special Operations Centres (SOC) and SIEM (Security Information and Event Management)

Unfortunately some of the tell-tale signs of an intrusion could be lost. In the case of EINSTEIN, the system has to monitor the gateways devices coming from each of the partner government agencies, where it might be difficult to detect an intruder who has remote access to the inside of one the networks.

It is common for an IDS to detect where there are high rates of data loss (which large amounts of data are filtered off the network). So if this data loss is fairly slow, the IDS will often not detect it. The system must be tuned to show standard signs of intrusions so it does not trigger too many alerts and swamp its human administrators. Cyber attackers, however, often understand these standard detection methods and will use ways to slowing down the intrusion and avoid being noticed.

Many networks use a firewall to separate servers that can be accessed from untrusted networks from the protected main network infrastructure is then protected on another network. In many large networks, IDS agents exist across the whole network and listen for possible intrusions. The problem is that an intruder can often get over the firewall, and then remotely access the protected systems. Many organisations also allow employees to access their computer remotely through a secure network connection. With stolen access details, an intruder can use this remote access path in the same way.

The other major weakness of many IDSs is that they cannot examine the contents of encrypted data packets, such as where users visit secured websites starting with “https://”. To overcome this, many systems ban direct secure connections and route the data via a proxy, where they can examine the packets between the user’s computer and the secure connection to the internet. Unfortunately, intruders can set up connections using what is known as an end-to-end encryption tunnel that bypass this provision and in which data loss cannot be detected by the proxy or IDS.

Secure tunnels with proxy and end-to-end

While it has not been proven that the most recent attack was driven by a political agenda, the information once leaked from a site can then be sold on for the purposes of compromising nation states. Governments still need to understand the risks around their documents and make sure there are effective safeguards in place to restrict access to sensitive information. They often have a lot to learn from high-risk companies, such as in the finance sector, where there is often large-scale detection of intrusions and monitoring for data loss.

The US agencies are saying that all those affected by the hack of the OPM will be insured against any loss they might experience as a result. But data is the life blood of most organisations and probably one of its important assets, so the need for improved security increases by the day.

Revealed: the great geologist behind the Origin of Species

The young Darwin was also a great geologist. Wikimedia

After Charles Darwin published the landmark On the Origin of Species in 1859 at the age of 50, he devoted the rest of his professional life to building up evidence to support its central claim – namely that species of plants and animals evolve over time to adapt to their surroundings through the process of natural selection.

The extensive number of manuscripts he filled on these subsequent studies of plants and animals are being published online for the first time this month, giving everyone the opportunity to read the great naturalist’s work in its original opaque scrawl.

To understand how Darwin arrived at these conclusions, however, it is necessary to turn to the manuscripts from the first half of his life, which have already been published online as part of the same project. They reveal something that is not nearly so well known about Darwin: he was also a great geologist. Not only that, his geological work was essential to developing his great insight into evolution.

Charles' narrow escape

Darwin’s father Robert intended for his son to train as an Anglican pastor. But after a Bachelor of Arts degree at Cambridge, Darwin spent a summer “geologising" (as he called it) in Wales with Adam Sedgwick. Sedgwick, an important 19th-century geologist who was 24 years older, taught him to draw geological maps and how to catalogue and describe specimens. 

At the end of this period, the 22-year-old accepted the opportunity of a lifetime to join HMS Beagle to survey South America, and other parts of the world, as the ship’s naturalist. He recorded these five years in detail in his notebooks, which was published a few years later as The Voyage of the Beagle. He set out heavily influenced not only by Sedgwick but also by Charles Lyell’s The Principles of Geology (1830). Lyell argued that the Earth changes gradually over time, a theory that helped Darwin to look at the natural world with fresh eyes. 

The Voyage of the Beagle makes a great read. The young Darwin discusses everything from indigenous tribes of Tierra del Fuego to scenery, climate, geology and seasickness. He can tell you which species of lizards are tasty:

These lizards, when cooked, yield a white meat, which is liked by those whose stomachs soar above all prejudices. 

He can also tell you the best way to eat his famous Galapagos tortoises:

While staying in this upper region we lived entirely upon tortoise meat: the breastplate roasted … with the flesh on it, is very good; and the young tortoises make excellent soup; but otherwise the meat to my taste is indifferent.

High-altitide deductions

The team visited Chiloé, an island off the coast of Chile, where Darwin saw a thick bed of recent oyster shells 350 feet above the sea. Later, at around 7,000 feet in the Andes of Argentina, he came across something else rather unexpected – the petrified remains of a forest, where the trees had been fossilised in an upright position. Darwin’s explanation was that they initially grew above sea level, were then plunged beneath sea level for a short time, and were then raised above it. Although it is now thought that the trees were fossilised beneath the ash of a volcanic eruption, Darwin’s observations set him on the road towards an important conclusion. 

Intellectual heights: The Andes Arabos Life, CC BY

His thinking was then solidified a few weeks later when the crew of the Beagle witnessed a very strong earthquake. He wrote:

A bad earthquake at once destroys our oldest associations: the earth, the very emblem of solidity, has moved beneath our feet like a thin crust over a fluid; one second of time has created in the mind a strange idea of insecurity, which hours of reflection would not have produced.

The crew visited the Chilean coastal town of Conceptión, which was close to the epicenter of the earthquake. It was entirely destroyed, and had been inundated by three successive tsunami waves. What Darwin noticed around the bay was even more astonishing than the fossil shells that he had seen earlier: the level of the land was permanently uplifted after the earthquake. At the nearby island of Santa María, meanwhile, the Beagle’s Captain FitzRoy noticed putrid mussel shells still clinging to the rocks ten feet above the water line.

Concepción after the earthquake, sketched by Beagle crew member, John Clements Wickham Wikimedia, CC BY-SA

Darwin realised is that if the land could raise up a few feet in this way, successive earthquakes could have a much bigger effect. In a letter dated March 1835 to his friend and mentor John Henslow, he states:

I can now prove that both sides of the Andes have risen in the recent period to a considerable height. 

Without the geology …

Through Lyell’s influence, Darwin had been quick to grasp the impact that slow and gradual change can have on a landscape. This insight helped him to later grasp the full significance of small differences between species, such as the Galapagos finches and tortoises. He finally realised that species were not immutable, and can evolve gradually over time.

Most importantly, his understanding of geology helped him to see that the processes forming the Earth’s crust had taken an extremely long time – and not, as was widely believed in the 19th century, Archbishop Ussher’s claim that the Earth was created in 4004 BC. During these aeons, different species would have the time to evolve. 

It was the passion for detail, so evident in the Beagle notebooks, which informed Darwin’s later work On the Origin of Species and the subsequent studies that are about to appear online. Indeed this love of detail may go too far for some people – after writing up his Beagle notes, Darwin spent eight years studying barnacles for example. But by truly looking at the world, he was able to see what others had not. Above all, he did not set out with a grand theory that he needed to prove. Instead he put together many obsersations and constructed a grand theory from those tiny details. 

Our latest scientific research partner was a medieval bishop

The Greatest Mind You've Never Heard Of

There was something unusual about our recent research collaboration on the science of light, colours and the perception of rainbows: one member of the team wrote his best science in the 1220s.

The Ordered Universe Project sees humanities scholars and scientists come together to carefully read the 13th century scientific treatises of the English polymath Robert Grosseteste. It was set up in the hope that the work’s technical content might receive a deeper analysis than previous scholarship.

What no one expected was that the scientists in our team would be inspired to do new work as a result. They have ended up becoming co-authors of new scholarly editions of medieval texts. And the humanities scholars among us now also co-author papers in the Proceedings of the Royal Society and other scientific journals.

Grosseteste – “The Greatest Mind You’ve Never Heard of” according to the title of the festival event sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Research Council – lived at an explosive period in the history of thought. He was born in East Anglia of humble origins in the late 12th century. But his studies in Hereford, Oxford and probably Paris enabled him to crest the new intellectual tidal wave surging through the schools and early universities of Europe, triggered by the rediscovery of most of Aristotle’s writings.

The bright, eager and incisive mind that Grosseteste clearly possessed fed hungrily on this wealth of new material. He was also clearly inspired by the realisation that the human mind can through observation and thought discover structures within the material world that were previously hidden and understand them for the first time.

For example, in his treatise on the rainbow, De iride, he is the first to identify refraction as the phenomenon that produces the rainbow (rather than reflection, as Aristotle thought). Any scientist today would also recognise his articulation of the “aha!” moments we all live for, a phenomenon he calls “sollertia”.

A truly integrated mind

His thinking is, of course, of its own time not of ours. So when he tackles the problem of cosmic origins, the physical problem he sets himself is the creation of a universe with the Earth at its centre, a model we know today to be wrong.

His Christian worldview does inform his thinking, motivating him to argue that the physical origin of the cosmos is a real issue, contradicting Aristotle who proposed a world without any beginning. But for this 13th century bishop (Creationists please note) it is the questions, not the answers, that lie in the book of Genesis.

The result is a highly mathematical and physical “Big Bang” theory of an early expanding universe driven by the force of light, that for the first time unites the Earth, the Moon and the cosmos beyond them under a single physical theory of matter. His formulation gave the team some computational headaches to work through even 800 years later.

A colour projection inspired by Grosseteste’s De iride Smithson, Anderson, Dinkova-Bruun, Greti et al

His was a truly integrated mind that expected to see the laws of light and matter at work in the cosmos also visible in common objects on Earth. So for Grosseteste, colour is a manifestation of just this. The Ordered Universe team were able to tease out from the 400-word jewel of a treatise De colore (On colour) that he thinks of colours within a three-dimensional abstract space. For Grosseteste, the differences between all possible colours can be captured using variation of just three qualities.

This is remarkable. As there are the three different types of wavelength-selective cone cells in the human retina, colour really does possess a three-dimensional structure (that’s why screens display colours as a mix of red, blue and green).

The appropriate abstract geometry to represent differences between colours is still a question of active research today. The problem was that Grosseteste’s qualities of greatness, clarity and purity had no obvious mapping onto red, green and blue. If only we could have given him a standard colour chart to comment on.

Delightfully, there is such an eternal colour chart: rainbows are the same yesterday as today in all their variations of angle, raindrop sizes and solar illumination. And these three natural “rainbow co-ordinates” are just the ones Grosseteste uses to describe their colour.

After considerable calculation of the spectral features of all possible rainbows, we projected them into a standard 3D perceptual colour space developed by vision scientists in the 20th century. We found that our vision scientist of the 13th century had indeed recognised that rainbows create a way of mapping this space, with the beautiful twist that they generate a new “double-spiral” co-ordinate system for colour-space (see image above).

It feels like a collaboration across the centuries, but the project also affirms the sense that deeply interdisciplinary research takes us into our academic core.