inventions | Outside The Lines

Do you think the words color and science belong next to each other? Does it surprise you to know that colors actually advance science, and makes new discoveries possible?

It is rate to discuss color science because of its vastness in content, as well as its difficult-to-appreciate science related principles. So while putting a pin in the mechanics of color science for a moment, how can we view color as an opportunity to push science forward? Let’s take a look at asteroid Vesta.

Vesta is the second largest formation in the asteroid belt, considered by many scientists now to be a planet. In the past, dimensions considered Vesta to be too large to be an asteroid, but too small to be a planet, Vesta sat undefined in a sort of astrology limbo. All that is beginning to change because of color.

The image above was taken by NASA’s space orbiter Dawn, the first man made craft to orbit around Vesta. Dawn’s framing camera uses near-infrared filters where red, green, and blue represent varying degrees of nanometers. The colors are assigned by scientists and detect the presence of previously unknown mineral and rock types. What this has revealed is a well segregated world of ingredients and layers. The information suggest steep visible spectral slopes and areas of recent landslides that reveal craters and other mountainous regions.

With colors assigned to specific elements, it is now much easier for scientists to detect what lie on asteroids, planets, moons, and other objects floating around in our universe. With this ability of more intricate detection, it is more possible to theorize what went into the development of our solar system and the complex elements that support it.

By spotting water, mineral deposits, and other elements difficult to detect, the use of color has certainly broadened the spectrum of analysis scientists can employ when studying a subject in the vast reaches of space.

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Asteroid Vesta’s ‘Rainbow’ Ingredients Shine in New Image (livescience.com)
New Images Of Vesta Asteroid Taken By NASA Spacecraft (huffingtonpost.com)
New NASA dawn visuals show Vesta’s ‘color palette’ (physorg.com)

Being an artist also means having a deep connection with the world around you, viewing life with a different set of lenses. To an artist, creativity and beauty encompasses just about every facet of daily life. The amount of individual interests available to an artist are limitless.

Like many artists, Leonardo da Vinci didn’t just consider himself to be a man of one concentration. One fascination of Leonardo’s was that of invention and design.

Throughout his life, Leonardo had taken time to document ideas for inventions that intrigued and inspired him. He did this by sketching them in his journal. However, the ability to create prototypes and test each of these inventions went unrealized in his life. Unfortunately, Leonardo died before any of the world would know of his true genius. His works were scattered and lost, many of them not seen again for hundreds of years.

In the example above, taken from the Museum of Sciences website, we can see that Leonardo da Vinci had a vision for a flying vehicle nearly 500 years before the first manned aircraft would be designed and piloted by Paul Cornu in 1907.

In his drawings, it is easy to see Leonardo’s dead on grasp of where the future of technology was headed. From tanks and parachutes, to diving and aircraft landing gears, Leonardo would touch upon them all in his pen and paper interpretations.

Was it because he was a supremely intelligent and enlightened human being, or that he had visions of a future far superior to our own? In any case we may never know, but it was likely a pairing of the two that lead him to jot down so many innovative and profound ideas.

It is startling to note how severely under noticed the conceptions went until the incredible discovery of some of Leonardo’s works; drawings that would captivate the imaginations of so many throughout the world.

It is a lesson to us that an artist is more than artist, he is an instrument in the progression of the world and its many views.

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