TruthDive
Mummies’ secret to be revealed by CT scannerOctober 30, 2011 – 3:35 pm
By Kanchana Devi | Permalink
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Washington, Oct 30 (TruthDive): Scientists at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History are using a CT scanner to investigate mummies, spacesuits, pottery, antique violins, and other priceless objects.
A high-born Peruvian woman in her 40s, is dead for about seven centuries and researchers at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History would like to know a bit more about her.
The nameless woman is one of the best preserved Peruvian mummies anywhere, and the CT scanner allows researchers to peer inside her without damaging her.
The scanner uses x-rays to shoot thousands of images of the object in thin slices. Computer software then reassembles the images to create highly accurate, detailed three-dimensional models and reconstructions.
“We could probably do the same with a traditional autopsy,” says Bruno Frohlich, a physical anthropologist with the museum, “but there would be nothing left for future generations and it would destroy something that should not be destroyed.”
In addition to mummies, researchers here have used CT scanners to examine priceless Stradivarius violins, marine fossils, pottery, aging NASA spacesuits and more. The applications are innumerable, researchers say. On Thursday, Dr Frohlich, a native of Denmark who has been with the museum since 1978, brandished a set of fossilised reptile jaws between 50 million and 100 million years old.
Because the rocky sediment lodged in cracks and crevices in the jaws has a different density than the fossilised bone, the CT scanner will allow researchers to remove the sediment digitally by isolating it from the bone in the digital images, says Dr Frohlich.
Researchers ran a NASA spacesuit through the CT scanner in order to learn how its polymer fibres were breaking down with age, in order to preserve it for the future, says David Hunt, another museum anthropologist.
And recently, researchers in Mongolia sent Dr Frohlich a collection of mummies – with the bodies separated from the heads and no records to match them up. This was fine, Dr Frohlich says, because the CT scanner will allow him to reassemble the mummies by matching the bone density of each specimen
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Washington, Oct 30 (TruthDive): Scientists at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History are using a CT scanner to investigate mummies, spacesuits, pottery, antique violins, and other priceless objects.
A high-born Peruvian woman in her 40s, is dead for about seven centuries and researchers at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History would like to know a bit more about her.
The nameless woman is one of the best preserved Peruvian mummies anywhere, and the CT scanner allows researchers to peer inside her without damaging her.
The scanner uses x-rays to shoot thousands of images of the object in thin slices. Computer software then reassembles the images to create highly accurate, detailed three-dimensional models and reconstructions.
“We could probably do the same with a traditional autopsy,” says Bruno Frohlich, a physical anthropologist with the museum, “but there would be nothing left for future generations and it would destroy something that should not be destroyed.”
In addition to mummies, researchers here have used CT scanners to examine priceless Stradivarius violins, marine fossils, pottery, aging NASA spacesuits and more. The applications are innumerable, researchers say. On Thursday, Dr Frohlich, a native of Denmark who has been with the museum since 1978, brandished a set of fossilised reptile jaws between 50 million and 100 million years old.
Because the rocky sediment lodged in cracks and crevices in the jaws has a different density than the fossilised bone, the CT scanner will allow researchers to remove the sediment digitally by isolating it from the bone in the digital images, says Dr Frohlich.
Researchers ran a NASA spacesuit through the CT scanner in order to learn how its polymer fibres were breaking down with age, in order to preserve it for the future, says David Hunt, another museum anthropologist.
And recently, researchers in Mongolia sent Dr Frohlich a collection of mummies – with the bodies separated from the heads and no records to match them up. This was fine, Dr Frohlich says, because the CT scanner will allow him to reassemble the mummies by matching the bone density of each specimen
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