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Researchers home in on possible “day zero” for Antikythera mechanism
- divbzero 4y agoAt first I misread that as “zero day” for Antikythera mechanism. That would be a tough one to patch.
- white_dragon88 4y ago[dead]
- ezekg 4y agoI spent a minute looking at the title and your comment thinking "but that's what it says..." then I realized "zero day" != "day zero"
- gnulinux 4y agoThis thread show how non-linear and non-deterministic reading is. Many people including me seems to have read "day zero" as "zero day" I wonder how our brains process text such that an out-of-order interpretation is possible. Probably helps that "zero day" is a common phrase (I'd argue "day zero" is pretty common too!)
- queuebert 4y agoMe too! I thought it was a late April Fool's joke.
- an_account_name 4y agoCVE-205BC-00001
- jordemort 4y agoAntikythera: Only one hole in the default install, in a heck of a long time!
- brimble 4y agoOh wow. I looked at it probably a dozen times and read it that way every time, until I read your post and tried again just now.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ufo 4y ago"Closed; Won't Fix"
- mcbits 4y agoThat's what they get for using cupric oxide. At this point they should rebuild it from scratch in ferric oxide.
- pfdietz 4y agoI see what you did there.
- udev 4y agoI read it as in researched found zero-day vulnerability to Antikythera mechanism.
- Aardwolf 4y agoSame, but then I thought that zero days don't matter for non-networked devices like this one
- dotancohen 4y agoSo did my grandpa, until the day he and his pacemaker walked through the security checkpoint at Schiphol.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- GEBBL 4y agoI did too!
- pfdietz 4y agoMe three!
- intrasight 4y agoSame, and honestly that would make for a good story too - as in SciFi. The builder of the mechanism. purposefully adds an error in order to change the trajectory of human history.
- whatshisface 4y ago"When the mainspring is overwound, the mechanism will begin to drill holes in the floor of the cargo hold..."
- dylan604 4y ago
- voldacar 4y agoDo we know anything at all about the creators of this device, other than that they were Greek? Where was it made? What kind of tools did they use to do the machining? How large was the workshop or factory where it was manufactured? Who was the target customer, how much did it cost? Since we have only one device like this and it was found under rare circumstances (shipwreck), it seems like you could do a Bayesian analysis to get a rough order of magnitude estimate of how many of these were built.
- forinti 4y agoIt was probably made by Archimedes: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/an-ancient-greek-astronomical-calculation-machine-reveals-new-secrets/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/an-ancient-greek-...
- voldacar 4y agoThanks, that's an excellent article. I'm still not really convinced that Archimedes made it, as it would be a massive coincidence for the only device we found to be the same one described in a book by some notable figure. It seems plausible that Archimedes may have created the original design, though. I assume that the average person who encountered one would have been very impressed, so I find it really surprising that we don't have more texts that at least mention the existence of these devices.
- upsidesinclude 4y agoYour assumption about average people might be giving undue credit. Average people werent literate. They might not have any use for a calendar or know about astronomy if they even believed in the constellations as something other than godly. Very few people were in the circles of the highly educated. With many other intricate, rare instruments throughout history, the case is that they were commissioned by the extraordinarily wealthy from the most notable scholars and inventors
- 4y ago
- dmurray 4y agoNow to complete the historical record we just need to fill in the 65 million year gap between the last day of the dinosaurs and the first day of the Antikythera mechanism.
- dylan604 4y agosuch shortsightedness on your part. what about the ~13.5 billion (how do you spell that like Sagan pronounced it?) years before the dinosaurs existed of the rest of the universe for a "complete" historical record? ;P
- jeffro_rh 4y agoBloom County taught us that it is spelled "Billyuns"
- VistaBrokeMyPC 4y agoYou might appreciate Dimitri Martin parodying Sagan, if you haven't seen it already. https://youtu.be/fYo-OdQ-5ic https://youtu.be/fYo-OdQ-5ic
- dylan604 4y agoactually, i just tried watching, but it was just not for me. i find that with a lot of funny or die stuff though. i find some of it damn funny, and other stuff just roll my eyes and stop watching. it's a matter of taste, and this particular example just seemed over produced and lazy at the same time. specifically the actor's performance
- jabroni_salad 4y agoI love every story that comes out of this thing, particularly because I like watching machining videos and have enjoyed Clickspring's work for some time. I wonder how many other historical artifacts like this have potential discoveries attached to them if only a tradesmen will try to fool around with it in his garage.
- robinduckett 4y agoHow any article on the subject can omit Clickspring's build is beyond me
- ygra 4y agoNot only the build, but also research. Chris has published a paper on it during a lengthy build hiatus.
- pluc 4y agoIt's "hone in" not "home in"
- ntrz 4y agoMerriam-Webster says 'hone in' is an "acceptable but far less common" variant of 'home in'. I think either one works.
- pluc 4y agoMerriam-Webster also says 'irregardless' is a word so maybe don't let them dumb down a language because they say it's okay
- ntrz 4y agoAs far as all the sources I can find say, 'hone in' originated as an error for 'home in', but has become widespread enough to be considered an acceptable variant. If one of them is being let in erroneously by the nasty descriptivists at Merriam-Webster, it'd be 'hone in'. But either one gets the meaning across, so I don't see the issue.
- unsupp0rted 4y ago“Irregardless” is a word. You just used it, so do millions of others, and when they use it I know exactly how to understand it.
- macintux 4y agoUnlike “inflammable” which is virtually guaranteed to confuse.
- UncleSlacky 4y ago"Inflammable means flammable? What a country!" - Dr Nick Riviera
- IncRnd 4y ago
- criddell 4y agoHas the mechanism been completely documented? It seems similar to a clockwork mechanism and there are some wonderful explainer pages on mechanical clocks[1]. Something like this for the Antikythera mechanism would be really helpful. [1]: https://animagraffs.com/mechanical-watch/ https://animagraffs.com/mechanical-watch/
- cormullion 4y agoThere’s an iOS app which simulates it. Playing with the Antikythera mechanism on an iPhone certainly spans some history…
- shakna 4y ago> Has the mechanism been completely documented? To put it simply: No. To put it in more words: The most recent and accurate model of how it is expected to have worked is from just last year [0]. We have had working models produced in the real world, and have had computer simulations as well, but they have involved best-guesses at some parts here and there. However, even that model has a major flaw - it depends on the Greeks having access to a technology (hollow tubing of a particular accuracy), that we have no evidence that they did. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/mar/12/scientists-move-closer-to-solving-mystery-of-antikythera-mechanism https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/mar/12/scientists-m...
- jsnell 4y ago> “In one day, there occurred too many astronomical events for it to be coincidence. This date was a new moon, the new moon was at apogee, there was a solar eclipse, the Sun entered into the constellation Capricorn, it was the winter solstice" Solar eclipses by definition happen on a new moon, so that's not much of a coincidence. "The sun entering capricorn" is just arbitrary bullshit, not a precise measurement, but surely it has to either always fall on the solstice or never? Eliminate those duplicates, and it is looking a lot less impressive.
- TheBlight 4y ago>He concluded that the device was specifically designed to model "epicyclic" motion in keeping with the ancient Greek notion that celestial bodies moved in circular patterns, called epicycles. (This was pre-Copernicus, so the fixed point around which they moved was believed to be the Earth.) Slightly tangential, but the whole pre/post-Copernicus narrative seems unlikely to be true to me. At least I find it difficult to believe it wasn't until the 16th century that someone worked this out and everyone prior was of some woefully mistaken (yet suspiciously Christian-aligned) view that the Earth was the center of the universe.
- robonerd 4y agoEarth being the center of the universe makes a lot of sense in a naive way, it doesn't feel like the earth is moving. Sat in this chair, I feel as though I am at rest, and when I look at the sky long enough, I see that the stars are moving. And even with Copernicus's insight, he was still missing some key details which made it harder to believe he had the general idea right. Copernicus modeled the solar system using circular orbits, not elliptical orbits. To fit the observed data to this model, he needed epicycles, just as the geocentric model required.
- TheBlight 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristarchus_of_Samos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristarchus_of_Samos We even have record of someone reasoning this out of simple observations nearly 2000 years prior. This suggests to me it was known (at least by intellectuals) for a very very long time.
- cryptonector 4y agoWhat's funny about Copernicus not understanding that the planets orbits were elliptical is that it must have been clear that the moon's orbit around Earth is. The Antikythera mechanism models an elliptical orbit for it, so it must have been obvious. Now, it's not obvious that the moon's orbit around the Earth is like that of the planets around the Sun, but it doesn't take much imagination to think that orbits are similar in nature regardless of what is being orbited.
- dotancohen 4y ago> “This is a very specific and unique date,” Voulgaris said. “In one day, there occurred too many astronomical events for it to be coincidence. This date was a new moon, the new moon was at apogee, there was a solar eclipse, the Sun entered into the constellation Capricorn, it was the winter solstice.” That's not a lot of coincidences, some of them are dependent. For instance, a solar eclipse can _only_ happen during a new moon. And the Sun enters a new constellation every month, the winter solstice defines the first day of a new month. The fact that a solar eclipse occurred exactly during the winter solstice is about 100:1 (there are at least two solar eclipses every year), and exactly the fact that a solar eclipse happened at a lunar inflection is about 15:1 (twice per month). So it's still a once in 500 year event, but not nearly as outstanding as the article makes it seem. Every day some once-in-500-year event or another occurs in astronomy.
- oh_sigh 4y agoI think it would be less likely than 1-in-500, because even though there are multiple solar eclipses per year somewhere on earth, you would need to look at a the likelihood of a solar eclipse at a fairly specific part of the Mediterranean.
- PeterisP 4y ago> there are at least two solar eclipses every year That's only if you consider them globally, as a solar eclipse (especially a partial one) covers only a small part of Earth. A single particular location e.g. Ancient Greece would see a full solar eclipse roughly every 360 years and some kind of partial eclipse roughly once a century, so that's quite a big difference, making a solar eclipse exactly during the winter solstice in Greece a very rare once in a 10000 year event.
- Cyberthal 4y agoYes, and solar eclipses are the most noticeable astronomical event. Since the mechanism's precision is to the day, this makes it a 10,000 years * 365 days = 3,650,000:1 chance of being a coincidence.
- ElephantsMyAnus 4y agoHow do we know it wasn't already an antique when the ship sank?
- lilyball 4y ago> Others have made independent calculations and arrived at a different conclusion: the calibration date would more likely fall sometime in the summer of 204 BCE, although Voulgaris countered that this doesn't explain why the winter solstice is engraved so prominently on the device. Any chance someone engraved it on the device after it was built? Alternatively, why does something engraved on the front necessarily have to be involved in the device calibration? Maybe they put that on there simply because it's a yearly important event that is related to astronomy?
- SergeAx 4y agoI am learning, reading, listening and speaking English for about 35 years, but it still drives me crazy sometimes. I understood that "home" in this headline is a verb, and "to home in" doesn't means "coming to one's place", but still had too look up the exact meaning of the combination.
- ogogmad 4y agoIf you've played videogames like TimeSplitters 2 [1], you would have encountered these "homing rockets". They try to follow their target so they don't miss. These "homing rockets" "home in" on their target. So think in terms of heat-seeking missiles, not houses or homes! [1] - https://youtu.be/cLWMpfb24_8?t=44 https://youtu.be/cLWMpfb24_8?t=44
- SergeAx 4y agoYes, I got exactly this example while googling the definition. But to be honest, I didn't meet a "homing missile" term since 1990s air combat simulators.