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New Clues for Antikythera Mechanism
fuzzybunny writes "The Register reports that British and Dutch scientists located a previously undetected word on the Antikythera Mechanism which seems to confirm its nature as a tool for astronomical prediction. This device is one of the world's first known geared devices; while its purpose is still not 100% clear, according to the article, 'Athens university researcher Xenophon Moussas is reported as saying the "newly discovered text seems to confirm that the mechanism was used to track planetary bodies."'"
but does it run linux? ;-)
It's also one of the earliest, if not the earliest, -known example of an analog computer.
Philosophy.
It's a navigational device that used the night sky, available to everyone in perfect sync, instead of the many calendars that many Old World societies didn't even have. Maps with directions could encode "turning points" or durations in terms of stars and planets, then limit access to them to only those with the antikythera tech.
The really interesting question is how that portable machine relates to the ancient monuments like the Pyramids, Chichen Itza, and Angkor Wat which replicate star patterns on the ground for the ages.
--
make install -not war
Scientist One:
"The outstanding results obtained from X-Tek's 3-D X-rays are allowing us to make a definitive investigation of the Mechanism. I do not believe it will ever be possible to do better."
Scientist Two: "newly discovered text seems to confirm that the mechanism was used to track planetary bodies"
Scientist One:"It's still up in the air, and there's plenty of work yet to be done.""
"'What was the device actually for?' Was it a used to predict calendars? Was it simply a teaching tool?"
The last questions seem more interesting. What it did is certainly important, but what they used it for is more important. If it was intended as an amusement it is of an entirely different significance to if it was intended as a navigation aid, and different again if it was a scientific tool intended for research.
More info on the actual examination here: http://www.xtekxray.com/antikythera.htm
Can't we all just get along
Wow.
For somthing so old, it looks remarkably similar to my grandpops 1900s pocket watch.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
The greeks made similar considerable advances soon after the death of Alexander the Great. Astronomy, chemistry and mathematical advaces were common because of the information and resouces shared after Alexander the Great united what was thought to be the civilized world.
from the Wik:
It was inscribed with a text of over 2,000 characters, of which about 95% have been deciphered. The full text of the inscription has not yet been published.
Why? Go on, I DARE you... publish the text. Let's all have a look, particuarly if it says "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" over and over... Tell us what it says. We can handle it.
Scientists seem quite keen on delaying the release of their findings until such time as they Know Everything There Is To Know about [insert whatever it is here]. Haven't they heard of beta?
I am a leaf on the wind
A water clock is not a computer. See this page, for example, where they even cite the water clock as a possible power source for the Antikythera mechanism.
"a previously undetected word on the"
Was it a Whole New Word?
I would hypothesize that
-only larger objects in the sky would be used, if this were indeed an astrological device and so
-it ought to be fairly easy to devolve an astrological map to the appropriate year then
-check positioning against it with 'static' night sky objects
If it's not astrological (and we don't know the text yet to get a clue) then it might be just a navigational aid.
It actually looks like a Nardi steering wheel that's been thrown into a burning trash can. It makes me wonder.... the Reg....
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
For those wondering, the text they discovered was "...etarium Pat. Pending (1)"
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
I've been hearing about all of these new discoveries about the device over the past week - but I don't see *ANY* new knowledge. We hear that there is finally proof that it's an analog computer - and that finding this word proves it's an astronomical calculator - but I have a book printed 15 years ago that says exactly that. The mechanism that calculates sun and moon positions is completely well understood and has been for years. There are working replicas of the device in several museums that demonstrate how it works.
Check out the Wikipedia article.
So if these guys have really learned something new - they are failing to communicate whatever it ACTUALLY is that they've found.
www.sjbaker.org
Unless you can flash the bios or something thats just the way it is.
When MS Windows crashes and burns you reboot.
Try that with your career. These guys need to publish to stay employed and they have to be right as often as possible.
Best. Mechanism. Evar.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
Back in 1993, I had an officemate (Bernard Gardner, working for the late Allan Bromley) who worked on doing a 3D reconstruction of this mechanism using the tomography images that had recently been done. From what I recall, they made a bit of progress, discovering that two gears that were previously thought to be joined were merely next to each other and on independent axles; the previous assumption would have resulted in a mechanism that couldn't operate (locked together). But they still really didn't know what it did, and sadly, Allan Bromley (who was one of the main people interested in this device) died in 2002.
Overall, it's a fascinating find - I never cease to be amazed at the complexity of many pre-industrial artifacts.
I'm curious as to what sort of mechanical insights - not just inscription reading - the new analysis technique can provide.
... that so many of the comments made thus far are attempts at humour.
The Antikythera Mechanism is either JOYOUSLY UPLIFTING or SOUL-CRUSHINGLY DEPRESSING. It isn't funny.
Uplifting because the human race developed the differential gear and incredibly intricate machinery TWO THOUSAND YEARS earlier than we thought, and used that technology for science.
Depressing because the human race then lobotomized itself and we practically went back to living in caves.
We had something amazing, and we lost it so utterly that we forgot we'd ever had it. Go humanity.
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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
Per link to xtekxray.com, "A final conclusion on the Mechanism's purpose is expected in 2006, after full examination of the data. The investigation continues to be filmed for a major TV documentary," or somebody paid a pretty penny for exclusive rights to its eventual publication.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
The Register reports that British and Dutch scientists located a previously undetected word
May I recommend the present perfect simple tense? I think you'll find that nuanced grammar adds a delightful twist to the English language.
For instance:
Slashdot contributors and editors have discovered that applying simple grammatical principles can significantly enhance their audience's comprehension of stories posted on the site
Read Pynchon.
Bubo! Bubo! Bubo is Latin for owl. Don't ask me why a bunch of Greeks decided to name their mechanical owl in a language that hadn't been invented yet, but according to "Clash of the Titans" they did.
It will probably just turn out to be the EULA.
Ships back then sank all the time. For example, the one carrying the antikythera sank.
You didn't risk anything you cared about on a ship unless it was needed for ship's operations or salable at the other end for lots of money.
The only reason not to take for granted that it was a navigational device is that only one of them has been found.
No kidding. As a scientist, I'm really sick of this "publish by press release" shit. Smacks of Pons and Fleischmann. And withholding the text? What the hell. If you have something, publish it. If not, don't waste our time. This crap is highly suspicious.
How certain are people about the age of this device? The consensus seems to be 80 BC, but what dating methods have been employed to reach that conclusion?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I was under the impression that Bubo was ancient greek for "mechanical device used to please females and annoy dieties" and that the term came from the name for Hera's favourite pet...
You can have it fast, accurate, or pretty. Pick any 2.
( \nigga
x nigga
8====D nigga
Mod parent up. Few in the world know what the present perfect simple tense is, and the road to shutting MySpace down starts here.
I [have] just posted a troll, didn't I?
I want to sniff some ASS-PANTIES!!!1!!1!~!1!!
The text following this declares that by reading this gear the user is bound by the inscribed agreement and that only one device may be used by a particular individual at any one time, no backup devices may be manufactured and continues on to absolve the maker from any inaccuracies in clestial observation and disclaim any fitness for any general or specific purpose.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.
the fun part is that this was probably something some kid made in shop class and got a D for because it didn't do anything
It seems rather ironic that the first example of such a device of this complexity and precision was brought to our attention after having been found on the bottom of the sea on a Roman shipwreck. Mention is made in the Wikipedia article of perhaps similar but less complex objects, but this markedly more complex mechanism was preserved well enough to (probably) discern its function and actually pull 95% of the text off the device. I wonder if there's any chance some trove of such historical artifacts awaiting discovery on dry land, somehow well-preserved. How much of history might they rewrite?
You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right.
"All your base are belong to us!"
"And over the course of 100 Million years, in an almost never changing world, the dinosaurs continued to develop. The smaller, feather covered species developed throwing sticks as protection and hunting implements, and the skins of their prey were used to carry other skins which were used as camoflage and cold-weather gear.
It's such a shame the impact at Chicxulub completely destroyed these fascinating creatures. I wonder where they would be today, had they survived the K-T boundary event."
All things in the rich tapestry of Earth's history have happened according to their place and time in history. The Greek knowledge, lost, and rediscovered 19 centuries later might well have lead to period of warfare for 2000 years. We might now, just be learning to create steel as a result...
I for one, am quite happy with the way the world is now, and do not wish for the past to be changed. At all.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
Another possibility is that they are totally distinct - the Greeks already knew the world was round, at least some had deduced that the solar system was centered on the sun, and there was a basic understanding that the planets were closer than the stars, but that they were all a gigantic distance away. Again, based on their superb understanding of geometry, it shouldn't have been too hard to produce a basic solar system simulator from their basic knowledge. Although I said that this was distinct from the fixed calendars of other civilizations, I think it reasonable to deduce that the opposite might well have become true - that as Greeks exported technology, other civilizations would have eventually produced similar Mechanisms of their own.
I should add that I do not believe that many of the supposed star maps represent the stars at all. The pyramids are incorrectly placed for the stars they are supposed to represent, for example, Stonehenge is a circle, although the sun could never appear to the north of it, and Avebury is almost three quarters of a mile across, but the stones are only six feet high, making any kind of astronomical observation impossible. I believe they served a sophisticated purpose, that the stones are not randomly placed but very deliberately positioned, but the explanations I have heard sound way too hollow. They're as absurd to me as the archaeologists forever claiming every object they found was a religious icon. I swear, in the year 3000, they'll find dish cloths and decide there was a water cult. Sophistication does NOT mean our idea of sophistication, but ancient does NOT mean ignorant or superstitious either. There are alternatives.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
And what makes us think that most Greeks believed in a geocentric universe? We know precious little about what they knew back then, since we have only a handful of their writings. To insinuate that we have anything like a complete map of the intellectual landscape of the time is sheerest puffery.
A minute's thought might convince us that a heliocentric model was available to them: They knew the earth was a sphere; they knew its size; they knew the sun was far enough away that its rays arrived parallel for all intents and purposes. Add to that that as soon as someone tried to build something like the Antikythera Mechanism they must perforce have noticed (as did Kepler a millennium and a half later) that it's far easier to model the heavens if you place the sun in the center rather than the earth.
Even this mechanism itself cannot be unique, as some articles about it have hinted. An automaton/clockwork/astronomical model this complex cannot have leapt full-formed from the mind of a single inventor. There must be an entire lineage of similar devices. That we have only a single example is simply a hint that there was much more to their technology than we're currently aware of. It's also an indication of how easy it is for a cultural calamity to erase collective memories of high tech; a warning for our times if nothing is. Not to mention that the correct ideas are not necessarily those which survive such a calamity. After all, when the Roman Empire fell, Medieval Europe inherited the Ptolemaic model. Of course, by then Ptolemy was writing (ca. 150) he probably had to work without the benefit of the bulk of the Royal Library at Alexandria so he may have been left to his own devices when considering a model of planetary motion.
And the brethren went away edified.
Or does Greek and Geek seem, mighty similar!
The Antikythera mechanism has bee known to be an orrery for decades. This might be a record for Slashdot publishing old news as new news.
Perseus has a (conjectural) gearing diagram for the mechanism:
s /Jesse/antik.gif
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/GreekScience/Student
Archimedes was inventing calculus ~1800 years before Newton.
8 9174548095&q=NOVA+archimedes
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-65491996
The grandparent post wants you to know that wasn't funny. Couldn't have been. Simply logically impossible for what you wrote to be funny because there's nothing funny here. There just isn't. Period.
You've got two choice: you can be uplifted, or you can crushed by the depressing reality of your progress through the ages. (I'm guessing, given the problem is documentation, that you're gonna have to go with depression.)
I haven't heard whether the antikythera actually worked to accurately show the sky, but I expect that further tests will show that it did.
The Pyramids aren't "incorrectly placed" to represent the stars of "Orion". Their positions are different from Orion's exact shape today, but are exactly correct for their slightly different positions 13.5Ky ago - and again about 12Ky in the future. Discovering that correspondence allowed the discoverers to find 2 previously undocumented pyramids buried nearby, corresponding to other stars in the constellation. FWIW, the "Greek" who knew the Earth was round, even calculating its circumference within 1% accuracy, was Eratosthenes, actually an "Egyptian" (or neighboring "Libyan").
Angkor Wat is sync'ed to "Draco", also 13.5Ky ago. Other global monuments reflect other constellations, including all kinds of Greek monuments.
Stonehenge wasn't merely a sundial, but rather a calibration to various celestial events throughout the year and the centuries.
These devices were used to navigate around a global civilization that shared a celestial framework. Not just markers, but also a consistent framework of stories of supernatural characters that ensured their perpetuation across the world and through time. Because that knowledge was accepted on faith by most, just like most people accept GPS, watches and Web reservation systems on faith today, they're "religious" objects. I hope our exposure to more ancient versions will help us examine our own mystification of current practices at least as much as it demystifies ancient practice.
--
make install -not war
Wouldn't surprise me at all if there was an NDA. Not that long ago I heard about some people that did a high-res scan of Michaelangelo's David and were only allowed to release the 3-D model with DRM applied. Here's an article, although I don't think it was the original one I read. Apparently the Italians are afraid that the market for Davids is going to be flooded with thousands of "simulated marble replicas" based on the "pirated" scans.
Right. Or more likely, they're afraid that it might somehow cause people to not want and fly to Italy to see the original.
Whatever: be careful not to allow anyone to take or distribute photos, either; you never know when they might stop caring about the original once they get their grubby little paws on a postcard. Hell, what value will the original be once everybody can get one?
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
It's full of stars!
Sorry, had to.
I saw this on the Wikipedia entry:
"It also adds support to the idea that there was an ancient Greek tradition of complex mechanical technology which was later transmitted to the Arab world, where similar but simpler devices were built during the medieval period. Of course, they had to copy it. Jawas would never come up with such a white device on their own."
I couldn't believe what I was seeing, and I refreshed, and it dissapeared. But I found it again in the edits and that blew me away.
Shame on the racist troll asshole that put that up. (NB: it wasn't me!)
At Fermilab, no data gets released until the entire experimental collaboration (500-700 people in the case of CDF and D0) has approved, or "blessed" it. Why is this? One is scientific credibility. You don't get to publish a paper and then send out bugfix updates. Once something is published, it is published for all time (well, until civilisation collapses at least). You can retract it by publishing a retraction, but that is looked upon as evidence of a rather bad failure. The second reason is that since it is a US national laboratory, the government owns the data. The department of energy, as I understand it, requires this blessing process before any analysis of their data is published.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
Labelling me overrated before anyone else had rated me and
labelling me redundant when I was the first comment.
I call Shenangians!
Legend, rather than fact. The article says:
2634 BC According to Legend, Huang Di, the Yellow Emperor designs the South Pointing Chariot. It is built for him by the craftsman Fang Bo.
I'll point out that the Yellow Emperor is also credited in Chinese lgeend with inventing the cart, the boat, and the calendar. He's a culture-hero and myth, not history to be cited. The Duke of Chou is similiarly legendified.
Note that the 'reinvention' of it (most likely, the actual invention) dates well after the Antikythera mechanism. And even then, there don't appear to be any surviving plans or carts, and at least one claim that it was an actual person in the cart, not a mechanism.
Astronomy gave us time. As the heavenly bodies of Sun and Moon reappeared as regular as clockwork they swept out the day the month and the year. Understanding the solar year of seasons from the movement of the sunrises along the horizon from spring-solstice point (latin tr. sol-sun stice-stop ) to the depths of the midwinter-solstice was essential technology for farmers. It has been shown that some greek myths encode time markers for the dates of sowing, yearly floods and herd migrations as the battles and romances of constellations.
Due to a axis wobble of the earths orbit the location of the spring equinox precesses against the backdrop of the stars in a 26,000 year cycle. This continual correction to the seosonal-clock was known to the many of the earliest civilisations and is encoded in many cosmological stories and monuments. These are very fine grained astronomical observations and the earliest monuments of man were also observatories.
Much can be gleaned by considering early myth and cultures tales as technical jargon rather than spells or simple animistic belief. So much culture, science and math was lost to the notions that knowledge was irreligious and that early man was a mere primitive.
Maybe if you consider that most of Europe degenerated into constantly waring factions, gangs, families, and states for a couple hundred years, then I guess it was normal. I suppose you could compare it to what Iraq or Somalia is like now. Unless you were in the protection of a walled city, you were fair game for any number of BAD people. That is, unless the plague got you first...or you starved to death from crop failure.
Could not this device be proof of time travel?
threadeds blog
Forgot to mention... how many of Edison's inventions were really his own, and how many (should have) actually belonged to some lab worker/assistant in his labs?
Ignore this signature. By order.
You mean, 'except for the entirety of this article.' Plenty of information is being 'released' here including what they THINK it does. And yet they can't release the partial translation of the text.
Sorry, I don't buy that.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Being Dutch I immediately started reading TFA. No word of the Dutch there however. It's the Greeks!
Sig?
All These Worlds Are Yours Except Europa. Attempt No Landings There
This paper and some related articles mention that the Greek unit of measure, the Greek foot (est. 12.164") is based on a measurement of the earth that is more exact than we had until about 100 years or so ago. Basically, ten Greek feet, times the fourth power of 60, equals the mean circumference of the Earth.
Check out the paper: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/sts/nk/stade.pdf
Can't you just imagine, 2000 years from now future archeologists digging the crust off a long buried beige PC and wondering what the sliding tray on the front was for - then guessing it was to hold coffee cups?
There's a really good old tyme radio program about that, future scientists digging up 1950's USA and these 'experts' getting everything about it completely wrong. "Washing-ton" becomes "pound lanudry", "Oscar" becomes a God and "Elivs" a high priest, etc.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Xenophon - sounds strange to me. No, really.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Bubo is Latin for owl. Don't ask me why a bunch of Greeks decided to name their mechanical owl in a language that hadn't been invented yet
The same reason that in the Thai language, "what" means "temple," "a lie" means "what", "money" means "come here" and "meow" means "I want".
The last one is easy; the Thais' "Eden story" says that humans lived in peace and happiness until the evil cats taught us how to talk, and we've been arguing and fighting ever since. Especially hilarious is hearing two old Thai women arguing, it sounds exactly like two cats in heat!
REG: All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
XERXES: Brought peace.
REG: Oh. Peace? Shut up!
(If you don't know what that's from, well, hand in your geek card on the way out.)
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
"People ski topless around here while smoking dope, so irony is not a high priority".
First of all we should call them "hellenistics", not "greeks".
Then, about the Earth roundness: thought the size was measured by Erathostenes the theory were expressed most by the study of Aristarchus of Samos and Hipparchus of Rhodes.
In such a period (III sec B.C.) in the hellenistc world was the birth of the Science. Beside the ones already mentioned above, Euclides of Alexandria and Apollonius of Perga (mathematics, geometry, Optic), Herophilus of Chalcedon (medicine, anathomy, psychiatry), Ctesibius (mechanics), Archimedes of Syracuse (machanics, mathematic, geometry, pneumathics...).
Ah, mind that these genius all lived in a closed period of time of about 80 years, and yes, as already mentioned hellenistic culture had female researchers (never heard about Ipatia? SHE was the chief reasearcher responsable of the Alexandria Library).
Sadly we lost most of these knoweledge, and it requested almost 2000 years to get it back (someone called it "the lost revolution").
They were well known at scientists such as Copernichus, Keplerus, Leonardo, Galileo, Newton... even Freud. The Illuministic period is responsable of such a CUT.
[irony] Did you ever notice how ironic is the presence of an apple in the Newton's novell (indeed from Voltaire). Doesn't it remind you anything similar? "rationalism-logic" and "superstition-religion" they both were geneterad by the same plant. [/irony]
D'ya suppose the Greeks ever thought about that when they made their biggest works temples, instead of libraries or laboratories?
Hey! I resemble that remark, you insensitive clod!
I'm proud of my Northern Tibetian Heritage
Hellenes, you illiterate clod!
they are smarter than most people and all those dead bodies in the ground? it's fucking silly that scientists think our ancestors were stupid. how many of these scientists would be able to survive 2K years ago? give our ancestors some fucking credit for being smart enough to survive and thrive. Just because they didn't make stupid doodads doesn't make them primitive or stupid. If anything, it shows how ego centric "modern society" is.
Have you ever in your life seen an engineer who would actually document his work? Therefore, it must be art.
no, AFAYK hellenes is simply an alias for greeks. Hellenistic stands for "of greek influence, culture...".
Geographically speaking we cannot say Archimedes was a greek (Syracuse is in Italy), or Euclides was a greek (Alexandria is in Egypt), Perga in Turkey. Thought we cannot say that Alexandria (founded by Alexander the great) was egyptian.
So, as we speak of the "classic" greeks, (Aristoteles, Plato, Socrates, Pythagoras...) it's correct to call them greeks, hellenes.
The scientists from the hellenistic period (dated from 323 B.C. death of Alexandeer) let's call them "hellenistics".
-illitarate-
That's not Irony, that's coincidence.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on