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1,700 year old egg never broke

atlasobscura.com

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Re: 1,700 year old egg never broke

#22

Post by viciousvoxel »

kubb wrote: post #9

[flagged]

This is actually my wife's job/area of research, except typically they use the eggshell proteins to determine taxonomy. It's extremely rare that DNA survives in these types of samples but the proteins are preserved in the eggshell's mineral matrix.

Re: 1,700 year old egg never broke

#23

Post by viciousvoxel »

jessekv wrote: post #17
kubb wrote: post #9

[flagged]

"Scientist" is cool, but personally I would call myself a "forensic archeologist" if I had this gig.

It's usually just called archaeology or perhaps biomolecular archaeology. Forensic archaeology is a bit different, and it usually pertains to humans and their crimes.

Re: 1,700 year old egg never broke

#28

Post by metalman »

Cyphase wrote: post #18
shrx wrote: post #16

I wonder why they don't put it in a CT scanner first before breaking it.

> A Micro CT scan showed that this ancient egg is still full of liquid. > “Researchers are planning to carefully extract the liquid to better study it,” stated Edward Biddulph, Senior Project Manager, who oversaw the site excavation. “It’s a controlled process similar to egg blowing, where a tiny hole is made in its shell after creating a 3D model.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_microtomography

I think it is a mistake not to cut the top off the egg and just look inside as ancient egg shell has no value after it drys out and the visual information may be unique,so off with its top, and then take samples of the "liquid" and the inner shell lining, if it's present, and then see if there is any remaining structure of an embryo or the egg as laid.

Re: 1,700 year old egg never broke

#30

Post by parl_match »

mulmen wrote: post #14
fifilura wrote: post #2

I guess they are scientists and know better than me, but my bet is that is will just contain sludge. Egg shells are more organic than you expect. This is why you use stuff like waterglass https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_silicate to seal them.

> Egg shells are more organic than you expect. I expect them to be completely organic. What else would they be?

namespace collision: to the layperson, it's organic because it came from an organism. from a chemical perspective, it's considered non-organic

i admit i read ops comment and was confused for a second until it clicked. they're mostly calcium carbonate

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