Slashdot Mirror
Ancient Astronomical Computer Decoded
slimjim8094 writes "A mechanical device from 150BC was found in a shipwreck. Upon examination with X-Rays, the device appeared to be a revolutionary computer used to calculate lunar cycles. This device "is technically more complex than any known for at least a millennium afterward." From the article
"The hand-operated mechanism, presumably used in preparing calendars for planting and harvesting and fixing religious festivals, had at least 30, possibly 37, hand-cut bronze gear-wheels, the researchers said. A pin-and-slot device connecting two gear-wheels induced variations in the representation of lunar motions according to the Hipparchos model of the Moon's elliptical orbit around Earth."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Can You Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of These? /sorry
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
I thought they were built by aliens who used them as space ships... StarGate...
So it looks like an astrolabe, works like an astrolabe, but it's not, it's a computer?
/. summary.
I'm only in history 101, and I knew what it was from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrolabe
Overly complex and tediously designed. It sounds like a prototype.
The production version probably had a sleek plastic case and LED display, but probably only supported lunar cycle calculation and none of the other farming predictors or epicycle calculators.
It was the Greek Apple, so to speak. The Grappa.
and a few hundred thousand dead gauls, we'd all be speaking Latin or Etruscan. Would have been pretty cool if they could have hooked up one up of these as a fire control mechanism to a chieroballista. Tom
This device is fairly well known by now. Google generates 455.000 hits on the Antikythera and has more than 800 images, including a 2005 X-ray image at Wikipedia.
Can we find a new story to post? Here it is, just with a different news source, and only five days ago: http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/ 23/2242225
It's not their fault. Their calendar's gears broke, and they keep thinking it's 2005.
Oh You POS
NPR radio said that it appeared in Greek literature that other complex devices were used by the wealthy to amuse guests.
Currently I have a Nixie clock for the same 'guest amusement' function. In several millennium when this creation is rediscovered it will seem oddly complex and mysterious. Bill Gates and Scott McNealy, what mysterious technical devices are in your living room?
So whats a Nixie? Forgot already have we? Jeff Thomas and Laurence Wilkins build good Nixie clocks.
http://www.amug.org/~jthomas/clockpage.html
Cheers,
Jim Burke
It's nearly a week ago. I guess there are those who forget that quickly.
DUPE
Common sense is not so common
"My gears outnumbers your gears, loser!" from the ancient scroll recently found called "Gears of War".
It also accurately predicts the frequency of dupe posts on Slashdot. Currently, the predicted dupe rate is 2.314x10^6 Hz, or, a period of 5 days. Remarkable accuracy.
Brett
Microsoft Corp has filed a lawsuit against the Ancient Greeks, asserting IP violations stretching as far back as 2100 years ago.
Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer was quote as saying 'Microsoft reserves the right to protect its intellectual property for the benefit of innovation. Essentially, if you as a company CEO were to ask me if you had a balance-sheet liability for using the Antikythera Mechanism, my answer would have to be yes'.
Hipparchos, the alleged creator of the Antikythera Mechanism, could not be reached for comment.
We might be 100-1000 years ahead of ourselves technologically by now...
*looks outside* Darn, still no flying cars!
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
I know it is off topic, but being a dupe I think this is fair game.
Slashdot should hold a dup-finder software contest. Scripts are submitted in one of a few preselected languages, and the script that identifies the most dups with the fewest false positives in 18 months wins a prize of some sort.
Table-ized A.I.
It is not clear to me if the sophistication label given to it is due to the mechanics or the math. It appears to be in the math rather than so much the mechanics. But that is not surprising since the ancient greeks put more stock in math than mechanics. They didn't need mechanical devices because they had slaves.
Table-ized A.I.
Post: A mechanical device from 150BC was found in a shipwreck. Upon examination with X-Rays, the device appeared to be a revolutionary computer used to calculate lunar cycles. This device "is technically more complex than any known for at least a millennium afterward."
Translation: Some crank ex-programmer was gearing up for a raise with the loony idea of cyclic checks, and was ready to ship the classy object in C when it began to wreack havoc and the whole thing sunk. A new developer tried to insert a byte to handle the Y1K bug.
Have you read my journal today?
That was the idea at first, but they were limited by technology and had to settle on pyramids. It is well known that the best shape for a spaceship is a cube. That's why they never got off earth.
Swi
Since we all know the root word for Slave is the same as the that for the Slavic peoples, and we know those white eastern european guys are pretty good at math...
Are you saying the ancients didn't need computers because they had mathematicians?
archaeologists also discovered: hyroglyphs depicting a story called 'The Antikythera Mechanism is for Porn'.
AC: Only on slashdot... could the sentence "My hovercraft is full of eels." be moderated "+4, Insightful
The article hints that the fabricators of this device were slightly ahead of their time:
"...the mystery finally unveiled, we found the purpose of this device is finding duplicate articles on slashdot then preventing them from being posted, saving the editors much embarassment and nay saying. In addition to saving thousands of people having to compose lengthly dupe messages in high hopes it will get modded '+5 Insightful'"
Yeah, yeah, I know its already been stated, but I couldn't resist.
It was made of petrified GRITS!
The initial discovery was posted before. This article, however, is about how it works. They didn't know what it was meant to do before.
They had computers on the moon too...
SCIREV.NET - fanfics,reviews & more
Yeah...but does it run Linux?
This is so old I've actually seen television documentaries about it!
"The television is the retina of the mind's eye" - Videodrome
why do people always complain about this. Slashdot isn't perfect, what is? You'd rather get your tech news from msn? Yeah, that'd be great.
Just think...maybe if they add 5 or 10 more gears to the device, it will then also be able to predict dupes on Slashdot...
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Yeh, this astrolube, ummm, labe, was probably one that got torpedoed in WW 2.5x10^-15 by the Proto-Soviets, who somehow bombed themselves into the future, but went broke and couldn't go back in time, so maybe this was another "Enigma" machine. Now, wouldn't THAT be, umm, enigmatic?
Wikipedia.... look out Shakra and the Sleetaks might be coming back...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Straight to the Nature article: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v444/n7119/ab s/nature05357.html
A thing that counts lunar cycles? A lunatic. Decoded. Maybe I've been spending too much time alone reading /.
That's why the ship sank !!!
What was posted earlier was a pre-story. Basically, that this latest research had finished and was going to be presented at the end of the month. It has now been presented, and this story covers the details that were not covered in the pre-story.
Bullshit.
It was discovered in 1902. Slashdot's search doesn't seem to go back that far. Both Slashdot stories are about the same research results released this week.
No doubt these ancient peoples used the most sophisticated technology available to them to attempt to predict when their women would start PMS-ing.
Yeah, but can I run Linux on that one? :)
This has already been posted before. Please, slashdot devs, make some system to relate these articles of yours.
Interestingly, the Antikythera device had an 'anti-dupe' mechanism, preventing the town crier from proclaiming the same bit of news more than once. Those ancient Greeks are still ahead of us in so many ways.
I believe the "news" this time is that the internals have recently been imaged in high resolution by non-invasive techniques, thus revealing more detail about its workings and purpose. This BBC article tells more, and mentions a Radio 4 programme to be shown on 12th December.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6191462.stm
Argh.
You shoudn't have taken those pills...
int main() { while(1) fork(); }
Whatever the kinds of drugs you are using, I want it, and I want lots of it.
Re being a dupe: The article from a few days ago was about a team claiming to have discovered the purpose, and announcing it would be disclosed in a few days. This looks to be the disclosure.
I think the best insight you could gain from this is that human intelligence is pretty much ageless. You have brilliant people who 'know a lot' today - but a thousand, two thousand, several thousand years ago they were not the least bit less intelligent, just building on less of a foundation. In terms of literature, technology and law many of them were quite brilliant.
There's video of the recreation and 3d animation of the original here:
e ws/2006/11/29/ugreek129.xml
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/n
Somewhere along the lines, I thought the definition of a computer required programmability and executing a sequence of instructions, and not just cranking a few gears
And in a suprising discovery, they did it again!
Commentators of the time were aghast shouting words like "duplicate" and "post".
Released this week you say?
The article I'm referring to was posted a few months ago.
That means this isn't a dupe of that article, since this information didn't exist at that point!
"3. Relink to a copy of the story on your own advertising supported blog"?
> why do people always complain about this.
Because it could be fairly trivially fixed, and would make Slashdot a lot better.
> Slashdot isn't perfect, what is?
Bach's "The Art of Fugue".
perhaps trivially fixed, but such would be the task of the people who operate it. Its very easy to say something should be improved, not so easy to be the one doing it.
And yes, Bach does rock, although I've always thought Mussorgsky was under-rated.
The article I'm referring to was posted a few months ago.
You didn't explicitly "refer to" any article. So one assumes you were talking about this from last week:
This search finds that, as well as
Which is probably what you were thinking of.
Just make a search on De Solla Prices diagram of the antikytheras.
Simple math that we all can understand.
The sun gear has 64 teeth.
It meshes with the smaller of a 38,48 gear pair.
The 48 meshes with the smaller of a 24,127 gear pair.
The 127 meshes with the 32 teeth of the moon gear.
The ratio of angular speeds can then be calculated as (64/38) x (48/24) x (127/32)=(254/19) = 13.36842..
which is an excellent approximation of the astronomical ratio 13.368267..
This corresponds with the Metonic cycle, in which 19 solar years correspond exactly with 235 lunations,and therefore with 254 sidereal revolutions of the Moon.
Thus. for every 19 (direct) turns of the main drive wheel; this produces 2,356/2 revolutions of the whole differential turntable, and all the gears mounted upon it.
This is just awsome. You can pin point where the moon will be located, just by turning one wheel a certain number of time, according to what year is it. Thus, you can tell what the tide will look like days, weeks, months ahead of your trip at sea.
How come this device died and disapeared for centuries? Given the Egyptians knowledge of the earths equinox, this was the key to discover America way before Colombus did.
The last time this research was mentioned, in a post was linked a mathematical analisis of a predictive maya table of Solar and Lunar Eclipses in the Dresden codex
d =0&mode=nested&commentsort=0&op=Change&sid=208132& cid=16971732&pid=16971732
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?threshol
After reading the linked paper, i got the impression that our culture falsely asumes that our common view of mathematics its the best one to use... and thats the first obstacle when trying to fully understand ancient maths practices
I think this one is even more annoying than a dupe. The Antikythera Mechanism is well known and has been discussed on Slashdot manymanymany times. This is akin to a story about the iPod headlined "Portable mp3 player released". The name "Antikythera Mechanism" doesn't even appear in the posting.
I dont get why some people never learn to preview their post to test their linked urls
I know you're joking, but given the fact that we're finding old stuff based on some pretty intense knowledge, I'm starting to think that Graham Hancock might be right about us being older, as a race, than we think we are. He attracts a lot of criticisms, but mostly from egyptologists because his interpretations of artifacts found contradict theirs. The book is an excellent read though.
Though aliens would be fun too, I suppose...
Oh god, that woman is John Romero!
It's an amazing achievement, but it was on a boat that crashed. Makes you wonder really.
According to Steven Wright, he was paid gobs of money by the US government for years to research who financed the pyramids.
After a couple of decades, he told them "It was this guy named Eddie."
Now, I ask you: is Wright an Iron Maiden fan, where Eddie would tie into the whole Egypt/mummy thing, or a Van Halen fan?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
will it run Vista?
A longer summary article of the recent paper whose abstract is referenced above is here. Note that this is a recent article. The Antikythera Mechanism has been discussed before on /., but this paper is recent.
Charles Babbage just got pwned
I posted an email to tell the editor it was a dupe (of a dupe of a dupe) while it was still 'in the mysterious future' - but it got posted anyway...sigh.
www.sjbaker.org
...they have found evidence that little apple symbol was cleaved on the outside.
Which makes you wonder...
Being a lunar calendar I think they used them so they would know when to hide from the werewolves. Either that or to predict the full moon so they would know the best nights for outdoor toga parties.
Honestly, does every artifact have to be religious? You'd think the ancients never did anything secular.
Coding Blog
When you look at devices like this, the precision construction of the pyramids, the alignment of Stonehenge, and some of the Aztec and Mayan engineering in North America, it's pretty clear that the "primitive" people weren't as primitive as we might think.
Even without hard mathematics, a great deal of engineering can be done with simple tools:
The interesting thing to me is that despite the varied religious and social backgrounds of the regions, every single case seemed to reserve that knowledge of basic engineering for some form of priesthood. Some say that this indicates there was a global or root religion, whether some form of Freemasonry, Kabal, Egyptian, or older religion.
Personally I think it's the obvious outgrowth of all those people living in a world that conforms to the same physical laws, properties, and geometry. No matter what language was used to describe the technique for inscribing a circle, the actual work done would have been the same.
I've even heard some people postulate that such primitive peoples "worshipped math and geometry". I suppose that's so in the largest scope, but I think it was a worship of knowledge and learning, not of mathematics per se.
It's also interesting how certain proportions and combinations of those basic shapes repeat across history and cultures. It's like we're hardwired to find those combinations comforting and familiar, no matter how they've been used.
Sinuous shapes are much less common. Only a few societies seem to have made regular use of constructs like "French curves" on a large scale, and only in more recent times. Combined with mythos of evil or powerful serpents and dragons, perhaps those symbols actually indicated rare individuals who could work with and visualize those formulas. After all, there is no denying that people working with advanced mathematics seem to intuit solutions, then prove the answer correct, or work through the details of the calculation.
Perhaps the "wizards" of old were those rare individuals, and the dragons they helped slay were actually charts and graphs predicting eclipses and such, misunderstood by peasants who saw scribblings on parchment or castle walls that they could only interpret as being pictures of some fantastical beast. :)
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Yes but does it run Linux?
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!
Chums up, let's do this!
Mechanism is a Greek word.
Being a lunar calendar ...
Er ... ok. Can I be an Irish calendar? Yes that right, today is Guinness day, the third of second Guinness this year.
Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
Duh, everyone 'worships' something, whether it's sports/computers/whatever.. but back then if you didn't understand something then you probably made a god to 'explain' it. (yes, I'm actually a Christian, but I do think people making up gods is stupid :p )
which is totally what she said
The decline of Greek culture started with the Roman conquest of the Greek empire. (Some would argue that it started with the emergence of a Greek empire itself.) Items like the Antikythera mechanism that took a highly skilled, well educated artisan with access to exceptionally good tools and high quality raw materials quite some time to make became more and more rare. Add this to the fact that such accuracy isn't really needed and a sufficiently well educated person could do the calculations for twenty years out in an evening and compose a list and you've got a really ingenuous solution to a problem that doesn't really exist. Then combine this with the emergence of Christianity where the majority of feast days are calcuated on the solar calendar rather than the lunar calendar (with the sole exception of Easter and the feast days that are contingent on the date of Easter) and you don't really have any need for something like this.
Why, do they have polonium 210 in them?
This threat just proves that time travel is possible, and that /. readers are constantly moving back and forth in time!!!
/. submission on time travel, apply for patent, write paper ==> fame & $$$
Prepare
-- Cave quid dicis, quando, et cui
As long as it's not your God.
I keed, I keed!
We already knew that there was an ancient, much more advanced civilization that lived on Earth.
A crummy commercial?!? Sheesh! Why did we even bother decoding that?
I thought they were built by aliens who used them as space ships... StarGate...What kind of Stargate geek are you?
Anyone who knows anything about Stargate knows that the pyramids were the landing pads, not the spaceships themselves!
It was made of petrified GRITS!
.sig space for lease, inquire within
I knew that magazine had been around a while, but dayum! Petrified you say!? They should add that to the Grit History page!
--
This
;) *shrug* it's up to me if I want to believe that's the one that wasn't made up. I always end up thinking it's insane that something just existed, has always existed, and always will exist. I come to the conclusion that it's impossible, but then I realise that obviously I exist, and the universe exists, and it freaks me out :p How can something just have always existed? Doesn't really fit into our human brains (cue troll saying it only doesn't work in my brain)
which is totally what she said
Farmers do not use astrolabes. They care about seasons and weather.
Lunar position is important to Sailors for predicting the tides.
Hint: The device was found on a boat.
The researchers should really look into if this device was helpful for determining longitude.
THAT would be an incredible revelation.
227-3517
No, it just shows how much damage to civilisation the Romans actualy did. This is an important point in the days of Pax Americana.
A new inscription found on the device said "Duke Nukem Forever Countdown calendar"
I always end up thinking it's insane that something just existed, has always existed, and always will exist.So... Not at all like God then.
I read about this (or similar) device two years ago in a magazine article. The article stated that a machine that "accurately predicts the position of 20 stars, and the moon, was discovered off the coast of Greece." The article also stated that the gears were made of gold, not bronze. Is this the same machine discussed here on slashdot, or have more than one of this type of ancient device been discovered off of the coast of greece?
Same story is on Fark. Guess were there's a majority of posts trying to make fun of the thing, ancient poeple, ancient europe, hell just everything that's not contemporary uhmerica... Bleh.
The patent finally ran out on it last week! Unfortunately, there's still a copyright on the software (the guy turning the crank).
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I read this on Yahoo News 2 fucking days ago, just like half the "news" that gets posted here anymore. Where is the old Slashdot, where I used to read all kinds of cool technology-related stories that I would never see in mainstream media? Gone forever, replaced with this pile of regurgitated dreck.
Actually, a fact not often quoted is that the confidence factor for mitochondrial DNA dating is plus or minus an order of magnitude. I know this because my ex applied for a doctorate position with the team who pioneered this work. She wasn't completely convinced by the science, and chose a position at Cambridge in preference. I'm sure, esoterica aside, that there is a kernel of truth in Hancock and Bauval's position.
Excellent point.
--MarkusQ
It's been a while since I've read fingerprints of the gods, the only "science" I really remember was the calculations involving the earth's precession to determine what the night sky would have looked like thousands of years ago, and then using that to try and draw conclusions of what some of these very large structures, like the sphynx and pyramids, were trying to say, if anything. What was the mitochondrial DNA testing used for?
Oh god, that woman is John Romero!
Of course there will be lots of graphic sex scenes when the Hollywood movie comes out.
Wow, you've got a really sharp brain on you there.. *rolleyes*
Yes I find it crazy that a sentient being has always existed too, but no more crazy than inanimate matter existing and then becoming sentient beings..
which is totally what she said
I remember him stressing that in his book as well. Though I think he also took a poke at the spanish for burning down the oldest library in the world... in any event, the wikipedia entry has a fairly nice summary of the ideas presented in the book. I'm not really a big fan of the Earth Crustal Displacement theory... Einstein was, if that helps lend it some credibility.... in any event, there is evidence that a pole shift has taken place before, so it's not clear how many times it may have happened, and how long it would need to be in effect for there to be solid traces of it... maybe there's a geologist in the crowd who could shed some light on how fast the poles would have to shift for there to be no detectable change in the magnetic materials in rocks.
Oh god, that woman is John Romero!
The mitochondrial DNA test was used as a dating technique, to attempt a figure for the age of the human race. It assumes that the mutation rate in certain non-conserved sections of mitochondrial DNA is constant, which is probably true until a mutation is reached that has a net beneficial or detrimental effect for the organism, at which point the mutation is either conserved or discarded. Mitochondrial DNA constitutes an extra genome, in effect, and is passed via the female line only (and as far as we know, asexually, which is less than ideal for the avoidance of local optima). It was one of the factors that brought older estimates of 1 million years plus for the age of the population down to its present 100k years. Unfortunately, no-one ever quotes the confidence factor, which could put the figure at 1 million years, or as little as 10000. Also, what the dating mechanism tells us is that our population springs from a pool of around 5000 individuals. It doesn't tell us *why*. Of course, this pool might be the true progenitor of modern humans, but then again, it could point to a natural disaster and associated population crunch, rather than a true speciation event. ISTR about 80kyears ago there was a caldera supervolcano event, coinciding with some extinctions. Bauval's geometric and astronomical study of the pyramids seems quite compelling. Of course, I'm not an Egyptologist, I'm just a physics student.
No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.
G'night everybody!
Today you don't have to sit around filing triangular gears. It's been automated.m l
m l
http://www.ams.org/featurecolumn/archive/kyth5.ht
And here's the specs http://www.ams.org/featurecolumn/archive/kyth2.ht
Those old guys did a pretty good job. Without even electric grinding tools.
Electricity! When we wanted electricity, we had to rub amber. Or get a torpedo fish.
Suppose that something similar to that is going to happen and there's nothing we can do to stop it. If we were going to leave a message for a future civilization (possibly 10000 years from now) warning them on how to stop it, how would you do so?
That's the big question in Fingerprints of the Gods: How would you write a message that had to last >10k years? And if we (as a species) are older than we think, how would we read the message of a civilization, left to us, >10k years ago? Would we even recognize it as a message, or would bloody egyptologists, the Roman empire, the Spanish inquisition and crypt looters get in the way of ever understanding that message?
Even if you think that Hancock is a bit of a loon (and who isn't?) the book is incredibly interesting...
Oh god, that woman is John Romero!
"How would you write a message that had to last >10k years?"
I think if we put a face on the moon people 10k years later would figure it out....ohh wait...
"Personal ownership is a hallmark of conservative capitalism. And I don't believe I am entitled to anything that I did n
Does NewScientist post dups? Scientific American? Nature?
The fact that most of US read slashdot and know the content better than the staff is SAD and makes slashdot look unprofessional and shoddy if its own editors can't detect whether the same article has been already posted or not.
Simple.
And no, I'm not a troll, but after years of bitching about this, it is getting rather pathetic.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Sure, it's perfectly rational that matter has always existed? And biochemistry can't explain the creation of life, maybe I just need to go look in the back chapters of some textbook though, eh? Maybe an appendix somewhere with the magical answer..
which is totally what she said
There a number of examples in history where a single genius invents a lot of amazing stuff in a short period of time. New discovered universal gravition, calculas, and optics. Galileo discovered lows of motion and telescope. Imhotep pretty invented the pyramids. You can see his intermediate projects from mastaba to step pyramids to true stone ones. Archimedes and so on ...
There are probably many such geniuses unrecorded in history. Writing systems appear fair ly suddenly in dyanastic Egpyt and the alphabet in Urgait. Other historians suggest long transitional phases, with some evidence. But I can equally envison some light-bulb guy doing this in a single career.
Perhaps the clock machinist was one of these geniuses.
What is life though? Just a bunch of cells converting matter to energy until they can't do it anymore. Then it's dead. Add more cells doing the same thing in different ways with different materials, and life gets more interesting at the expense of being more fragile.
Now listen up, you primitive screwheads. See this? This... is my boomstick! The 12-gauge double-barreled Remington. S-Mart's top of the line. You can find this in the sporting goods department. That's right, this sweet baby was made in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Retails for about $109.95. It's got a walnut stock, cobalt blue steel, and a hair trigger. That's right. Shop smart. Shop S-Mart. You *got* that?
>Anyone who knows anything about Stargate knows that the pyramids were the landing pads, not the spaceships themselves!
The grandparent might have confused the Egyptian pyramids with Ha'taks.
Of all major operating systems, UNIX is the only one originally meant for gaming.
RTFA
It says clearly that the antikyhera can NOT be called a computer but a calculator.
In the early middle ages, you had the reign of Justinian and continual development up through what is considered the ``golden age'' of the Byzantine Empire in the ninth to eleventh centuries. Certain aspects of technology may have been in decline, but they held on to Greek Fire and quite a few other wonders of science.
I also think you overstate the case of the Greek love of theory. One of the popular criticisms of Thales was that, as a philosopher, he was too unconcerned with practical matters. The legend goes that in response to this when he calculated that conditions were correct for a bumper olive crop, he cornered the market on olive presses and by the time the harvest came in he made a fortune.
By the first century BC (to which this mechanism most probably dates) the Romans had conquered the Greeks and Greek culture overtook a good deal of the Roman Empire. The Romans, with provinces along the Atlantic coast of Europe, would have certainly been interested in tides. In fact, the vessel that was carrying the Antikythera mechanism was Roman.
"How much damage to civilization the Romans actualy did." I am rather perplexed by this statement. A list of contributions to civilization made by Rome could include:
-world class civil engineering: there are many structures built by Roman engineers still standing and a number are still in use
-the concept of republican government (and I mean in the sense of a body of legislators elected by citizens empowered to conduct community business; not the US political party)
-extensive body of literature and philosophy which forms much of the foundation of Western civilization today and is still relevant
-preserved Greek literature, structures, and philosophy and incorporated same into Roman culture
-demonstrated that a large political body composed of many regions incorporating a variety of cultures and races could be established and be stable and peaceful
I am not saying that Rome was perfect and obviously its society eventually became corrupt and thus vulnerable to destruction, but it is absurd to talk about Roman damage to civilization.
"Lack of technical competence coupled with the arrogance of power, as usual, leads to no good end."
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?
Use Ctrl-C instead of ESC in Vim!
4 out of 5 Grays recommend Astrolube for smooth, productive probings.
Yeah, but is the device Y2K compliant?
-
For most of the Byzantine era, Byzantium was a superpower. Outside of brief but notable incursions by the Muslims (who by that time were rather heavily Hellenized) and the Bulgarians, most of Greece was under Greek control from the beginning of the Byzantine era (whether you measure the beginning from the third or from the fifth century) up through nearly the eleventh century. Additionally large swaths of southern Italy were controlled by Constantinople during this period as well as large chunks of Asia Minor. Modern scholars largely agree (contra Gibbon) that education and learning were widespread through most of the Byzantine era. And bear in mind that `barbarian' simply meant non-Greek to the Hellenes. Romans, despite being fellow citizens of the empire would would have been barbarous to them if they couldn't speak Greek.
Funnily enough, I have all the DVDs up to series 7 - about 50 DVDs all up. And thank you for the correction, they were the landing pads.
The Aztecs actually had a aqueduct system that rivaled the Romans.
We-ell... reaching for my tinfoil hat... Earth's core is a solid lump of mostly crystalline iron, kept so by huge pressures. The core rotation is, surprisingly, not coaxial with the rotation observed at the crust. The solid but cracked crust sits on a fluid with a very high level of viscosity. The moon exerts a differential pull on the earth, according to how far each particle of Earth lies from the moon. Would this system exhibit chaotic behaviour? Could the solid core get so out of shape with respect to the rest of the fluid body that it causes a viscous lock-up (a-la the fluid coupling mechanism in an auto box)? If this happened, it would be, er, rather spectacular...
That easy... Spray Paint it on the Moon!
See the Pictures of the Flood of '08
::crickets::
The Aztecs actually had a aqueduct system that rivaled the Romans.
Sure... but they built it more than 1000 years after the Romans built theirs.
Should I for some reason actually CARE about the Antikythera crap? Is this the Creator's way of making me take notice?
except for the lack of atmosphere, leaving it completely unprotected from meteor(ite)s ... so even a giant message written in giant stone letters on the moon, would probably not last >10k years
Oh god, that woman is John Romero!
It is not, however, absurd to talk about Roman damage to science. If you look at the roll call of classical western scientists, you'll find the heydey of classical science in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, largely ending as Rome was subjugating the Hellenistic world. There's a handful of notables from Alexandria (Heron, Galen, Ptolemy) in the 2nd century AD, but largely, classical scientific achievement perished on the point of the Roman sword. The tale of the death of Archimedes is symbolic of his whole generation. If necessity is the mother of invention, liberty is at the very least its wetnurse.
You forgot what may be most important of all (though perhaps you thought it fell under the banner of government)- the roman legal system, which is the basis for most legal systems in Western culture today.
Existence is a funny thing in the fact that like God, you can't prove it. How do you know that everything is just an illusion possibly including yourself too. Either way, if you cut yourself it still hurts so I guess it really doesn't matter either way.
Pagan? Geek? Check out #paganism on Freenode IRC
Yes, but once you've got life it's fairly simple to make more. Nobody knows how it's actually created yet AFAIK
which is totally what she said
exactly, it's obviously not an 'illusion', because there would still have to be something experiencing the illusion. I mean you can try to get all deep and theoretical, but it's just blatantly obvious that something exists :p And something from nothing makes no sense.. it's crazy. Something has always existed.. makes me feel weird just thinking about it.
which is totally what she said
Simple.
It is not professional.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Considering the size, power, and long life of the Roman Republic + Empire, the most astonishing thing about them is how _little_ they were able to do with it all. They did provide us with some remarkable advances within law and rhetoric, as well as a civil administration system out of which Europe could develop the middle ages. Its engineering may have been astonishing but since those skills failed to survive the fall of the western Empire, I don't see that this was any particular benefit to us. What they failed to do was to advance the state of the art in agriculture and non-engineering technical disciplines. Instead, they compensated for their growing domestic needs by expanding their empire rather than by improving their agricultural and manufacturing techniques. In contrast, the middle ages, in which local lords often could not take from others what they lacked themselves, brought us a wealth of improvements to the way we manufacture both food and tools. In many ways, the fall of the Romans was a prerequisite for European society to recover from a 500+ year period of stagnation.
Which isn't to say the Romans didn't do _something_ for us, but by the time Christianity arrived the only major function left to them was to Christianize all of Europe and then fade away.
sigs are hazardous to your health
I think you mean Astroglide.
Romanes Eunt Domus!
Vista:XPSP2::ME:98SE
Sure. If time is as simple as, say, a Moebius loop, then there you are ! :)
As for the chemistry...
a
b
c
d
Flat Earth, Flat Time, Flatheads. Yawn !
1D. 2D. 3D. nD. nnD. n'D. n'nD... iR-D. Oh, and why not ? Dee-Dee ! (DxD).
Or, Georg Cantor.
Go figure.
All of which still is only 'prebiotic', not biotic.. my original statement still stands. You could argue that the prebiotic molecules could somehow develope into a lifeform, but it hasn't been demonstrated. Even if it was then that obviously doesn't disprove the existence of God either, but it could be the case that life simply can't just spontaneously form, in the same way that I can't create another me without the correct tools, even though I've got a [semi?]functional me here already.
which is totally what she said
Right. Got that part about time and simple geometries ? good.
Now. Once upon a few years ago, partisans of 'life cannot come from mere chemistry or inorganic natural processes', argued that the selfsame 'pre-biotic' gunk could never be produced by 'mere chemical means'. Never mind physical means. Well it was. Then they said methane might, but not anything more complicated. Then it was. Then, that single-polarized molecules could not be naturally inorganically produced. They were. Then, that phosphated bases could not... Long chains couild not... etc.etc.etc.
'Way back' in the 60's/70's, organic molecules with 20000+ 'pieces' were produced.
All that seems to lead somewhere. Sort of a trend. Got it ?
So, yes. All indications are that organic life can and probably did come from plain old inorganic + interesting physical environments. With space-born organics (or even 'finished products') probably helping along at key points. Actually, micro-gravitic environments might benefit several aspects of the ladder.
Just avoid saying it out loud in your Kansas school.
Actually I live in the UK. As I said, even if life can 'spontaneously' arise outside of a lab, it wouldn't mean that there is no 'god'.
The fact remains that it still hasn't been done in a lab yet either, no matter how many building blocks have been created, even though there must 'obviously' be a way to get something into a basic 'living' state if you have all the pieces and technology required, but we don't have that ability yet).
What's funny is that then to any organisms that we can create, we would be a kind of god. Then in hundreds/thousands of years we will be able to do things that people right now would find unbelievable. If you really believe that life can come from nothing, and that the nothing has always existed, then what's so hard to believe that somewhere else life has developed and evolved into a state of being a god. Our universe could be a science experiment for some kid in an advanced culture in another universe/dimension/whatever. If you believe that our universe, or at least something has existed for an infinite amount of time (didn't look up the moebius thingy, though I think I remember the general shape, or lack of it), then I don't see what's so implausible about God other than you'd prefer to believe that we are the ones in control?
which is totally what she said
Actually I live in the UK.
And I've lived in the 'colonies' OR 'overseas' - so long ago that they still existed - and even the politically correct of the time used such nomenclature. Casual conversation there, and in GB itself, then and in later years, made it clear that the 'Kansas BoE' mentality is not exactly limited to Kansas. Nor is it recent. Nor is it exactly minoritary. Nor a priviledge of those with less formal education, or less social status. Much the contrary.
As I said, even if life can 'spontaneously' arise outside of a lab, it wouldn't mean that there is no 'god'.
God's existence was not in question.
You were declaring the improbability (or all-out impossibility) of a non-magical 'origin' and development of life - or existence - based on your considering yourself unable to concieve it. That is a rather weak proposition for your 'conclusion'. Reality probably doesn't care too much about our skills at concieving of it. Or maybe it does, who knows ? In any case, the first manual to read - regardin reality - is nature itself.
Practical understanding of reality merely requires that casual chains within existence are to be considered before exceptionally magical ones. In other wods, if a flower-pot nearly falls on the street, I'll look for what pushed it (wind, cats, flapping curtains, etc.). If I become seriously ill, I'll see a doctor and take the treament/medicine - whether I also consult a Priest / Shaman / Astrologist / Whatever as well.
Reality tends to work 'naturally'. Hocus-pocus is only really called for regarding those parts that are too weakly understood to be properly explained.
Appealing to divinity as a foil to serious investigation and rational understanding is a rather shallow proposal.
The fact remains that it still hasn't been done in a lab yet either, no matter how many building blocks have been created, even though there must 'obviously' be a way to get something into a basic 'living' state if you have all the pieces and technology required, but we don't have that ability yet).
All indications are that nature had, and did. More than enough pieces. More than enough 'technology'. Irrespective of 'our' ability. Despite which, we have uncovered and deciphered 'tracks' and indications sufficient to effect some pale emulations based on our undoubtedly still limited understanding of the precise natural processes that occurred.
The progress and accumulation of positive results in identifying and reproducing the steps involved, indicate that investigators are indeed slowly discovering what really happenned.
What's funny is that then to any organisms that we can create, we would be a kind of god. Then in hundreds/thousands of years we will be able to do things that people right now would find unbelievable. If you really believe that life can come from nothing, and that the nothing has always existed, then what's so hard to believe that somewhere else life has developed and evolved into a state of being a god. Our universe could be a science experiment for some kid in an advanced culture in another universe/dimension/whatever. If you believe that our universe, or at least something has existed for an infinite amount of time (didn't look up the moebius thingy, though I think I remember the general shape, or lack of it), then I don't see what's so implausible about God other than you'd prefer to believe that we are the ones in control?
Kernel error : Logical Catastrophe : Non-sequitur overload.
What's funny is that then to any organisms that we can create, we would be a kind of god. Then in hundreds/thousands of years we will be able to do things that people right now would find unbelievable.
That's still a universe where we would all have to obey 'natural' laws. Uncommon local conditions would still have to be enacted by 'natural' means. And would be susceptible to rational investigation. There would just be more hurdles to overcome. Less consistenc
Still being an anonymous coward I see, oh well.. you do like to base things on reason it appears (not that I am saying I don't), though you still seem to be ignoring the idea of something coming from nothing. You're simply ascribing it to hocus pocus too, by saying that everything is in a loop, which you somehow think is more clevererer than ascribing it to a God, though I agree that it has the same problem of something coming from nothing. Any loop involving evolution would result in a being with godly capabilities - through its own biology, or more likely through technology.
I do enjoy thinking things out, reasoning, logic, etc, though I also believe in God. It would be kind of neat if we just evolved, but *shrug* it's not what I believe. It's nice to believe in the 'force' and so on, in a world where the unknown is possible.. I don't believe in that world specifically, though I do believe that there is a spiritual realm, just without most of the nonsense that you get in movies. Most people like to believe in a general magic or higher purpose in the universe, and ignore any god (because they tend to associate that with having to live up to some kind of godly standard). You like playing with mobius strips in your head and thinking that explains everything, even though you can't quite seem to explain how. "S'a higher geometry.. s'complex - quantum - explains everything!". Anyway sorry if I'm being cranky or sarcastic. I guess religion does tend to make you stop considering things so much, because you feel you have the answer. Though it presents its own mysteries and things to think about - if someone believes something without first thinking it through or having a reason for believing, then they shouldnt believe it.
which is totally what she said