The colorful secret of a 1,600-year-old Roman chalice at the British Museum is   
   the key to a super­sensitive new technology that might help diagnose human   
   disease or pinpoint biohazards at security checkpoints.   
      
   The glass chalice, known as the Lycurgus Cup because it bears a scene   
   involving King Lycurgus of Thrace, appears jade green when lit from the front   
   but blood-red when lit from behind—a property that puzzled scientists for   
   decades after the museum    
   acquired the cup in the 1950s. The mystery wasn’t solved until 1990, when   
   researchers in England scrutinized broken fragments under a microscope and   
   discovered that the Roman artisans were nanotechnology pioneers: They’d   
   impregnated the glass with    
   particles of silver and gold, ground down until they were as small as 50   
   nanometers in diameter, less than one-thousandth the size of a grain of table   
   salt. The exact mixture of the precious metals suggests the Romans knew what   
   they were doing—“an    
   amazing feat,” says one of the researchers, archaeologist Ian Freestone of   
   University College London.   
      
      
   Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Thi   
   -1600-Year-Old-Goblet-Shows-that-the-Romans-Were-Nanotechnology-   
   ioneers-220563661.html   
      
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