Turn up the heat and see what you get

When we were kids we learned to write invisibly with lemon juice and then later we could reveal the secret message by holding it close to a flame. The heat revealed what had been previously hidden.

This summer's British heat wave is doing the same thing. The heat is revealing long lost patterns beneath the surface. Sam Knight digs a little deeper in this New Yorker piece on the visible archaeology. 

Mayan LiDAR application

LiDAR is already established as an incredibly useful tool. But National Geographic shows a new application for it. In a remote jungle in Guatemala, LiDAR helped produce a detailed map of an ancient civilization. Jumping past the details, one researcher described the project's impact this way:

“After decades of combing through the forests, no archaeologists had stumbled across these sites. More importantly, we never had the big picture that this data set gives us. It really pulls back the veil and helps us see the civilization as the ancient Maya saw it.”

 Be sure to click over and look at the imagery. Really amazing stuff.