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Gravitational wave researchers cast new light on Antikythera mechanism mystery
- bbor 2y agoThis is cool (lots of necessary context) but the paper itself is downright gorgeous https://bhi.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/07-HJJuly24-AOTM-2.pdf https://bhi.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/07-HJJuly24-AOT... Oh and quick timesaver for all the dubious people like me: they applied general statistical techniques from their gravity work to parsing the fragments of the computer we have. There’s no direct connection between the two subjects, otherwise. EDIT: some kinda humorous scientific meta-commentary at the very bottom of the paper: they were able to get the anthropology paper based on these findings peer reviewed and published in print well before this technical paper finished peer review. If I were an Academia pen tester, this is the kind of race condition that I’d look for!
- bloopernova 2y agoI'd like to see the LaTeX that generated that paper, it does look really nice.
- aoanla 2y agoHaven spoken to the authors, the really nice layout was done by the journal itself - the source paper is available on arxiv, and whilst a nice paper still, does not have the fancy photos of the authors embedded in sidebars and the like.
- Schiphol 2y agoThe paper [here](https://bhi.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/07-HJJuly24-AOTM-2.pdf https://bhi.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/07-HJJuly24-AOT...) makes it clear that these researchers (whose main topic is gravitational waves) have used Bayesian analyses to estimate how likely different counts for holes present in the full calendar ring are. This is cool, but the bit about "techniques developed to analyse the ripples in spacetime" is, well, making reference to Bayesian analysis.
- lupusreal 2y agoWhy is science reporting such irredeemable clickbaity trash? Not just from the mainstream media with commercial motive, from whom I naturally expect trash, but also from nonprofit universities of all places. Seriously, who is the intended audience of this headline? People who only read the headline and think "Woweee science is amazing!" before scrolling down? Anybody who reads the article will roll their eyes at the headline, and the publisher isn't even getting ad revenue from this shit. Why are they pandering to the most base idiots like this?
- generalizations 2y ago> Seriously, who is the intended audience of this headline? People who only read the headline and think "Woweee science is amazing!" before scrolling down? That's a bigger fraction of the population than we might like to think...and probably the majority of the eventual readers of that headline (as it trickles through to other publications). I'd bet your sarcasm is actually correct there.
- itronitron 2y agoSo, I have some competing thoughts on this. On the one hand, science is tedious and boring but people often pursue it as a career because it is in some way inspirational or aspirational. Students in science programs aren't just yearning for the mines. Also, science is highly repetitive and yet all grant money is scoped as pursuing something new and innovative. When I worked at a research lab, the communications folks would often ask me, can we call it AI? They were almost begging to put that label on it, I suppose they new that would be high quality bait. But no, sorry it's just statistics and computational methods.
- refulgentis 2y agoI don't understand what you mean, I think the headline must have changed? It is currently (4:50 PM EST) "GRAVITATIONAL WAVE RESEARCHERS CAST NEW LIGHT ON ANTIKYTHERA MECHANISM MYSTERY" both in the article, and on the HN item. If it didn't change, I guess my confusions stems from this is an extremely straightforward way to state it. Two gravitational wave researchers wrote the paper, and the paper gave us more certainty about whether the Antikythera mechanism represents 354 or 365 days. I can't envision how to make it less sensationalist.
- MontagFTB 2y agoI would love a website with a 3D breakdown of the Antikythera mechanism that let one peruse it in space, (dis)assemble it, and see how it functions (at least, to be best of our understanding.) Are we far enough along in what we know of it to have such a resource?
- drexlspivey 2y agoThis guy is re-creating using only materials available at the time: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZioPDnFPNsHnyxfygxA0to4RXv4_jDU2 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZioPDnFPNsHnyxfygxA0...
- wildekek 2y agoClickspring is the most skilled machinist of youtube. Watching him work is so incredibly satisfying.
- detourdog 2y agoDefinitely the most interesting to me.
- brcmthrowaway 2y agoWhat about the bald dude with the moustache?
- gmiller123456 2y agoNot sure about "most skilled", as there are some very good machinist with skills in different areas. I'd say he's definatley the most patient, learning and explaining ancient methods and every step along the way. And the videos are certainly of the most visually appealing.
- ink_13 2y agoFor anyone who's not familiar, "this guy" is Chris Budiselic of Clickspring, who's mentioned as an inspiration for this research: > In 2020, new X-ray images of one of the mechanism’s rings, known as the calendar ring, revealed fresh details of regularly spaced holes that sit beneath the ring. Since the ring was broken and incomplete, however, it wasn’t clear how just how many holes were there originally. Initial analysis by Antikythera researcher Chris Budiselic and colleagues suggested it was likely somewhere between 347 and 367.
- stevenmouk 2y ago[dead]
- yinser 2y agoGreeks were cooking with gas (from the paper): “However, we note that the degree of manufacturing precision is remarkable, with standard errors in hole positions of only 0.028mm radially, and 0.129mm azimuthally. Budiselic et al. quote a standard deviation for their individual position measurements of 0.037 mm, so a good deal of the radial error may come from the measurements of the X-ray images themselves.”
- api 2y agoIt seems like the high ancient world was so close to industrializing. Just a few missing pieces, probably a more rigorous scientific method and mathematics. Maybe some economic inventions too like the stock corporation to enable venture investing. I also wonder about the abolition of slavery. It was normal through pretty much all of human history up to the last 200 years or so. Why build machines at great scale when there is so much almost free human labor?
- sigmoid10 2y ago>Why build machines at great scale when there is so much almost free human labor? It's crazy that to some extent this is still true today. Automation could go a lot further with existing technologies and make many workers' lives easier or safer. But it is often cheaper to hire humans and burn through them instead of spending the money to implement new kinds of robotics. Especially when companies only think until the next quarter.
- triyambakam 2y agoIs there evidence that it was actually made in Greece or could it simply have ended up there?
- nine_k 2y agoWhere else, at the time?
- brchr 2y agoMy understanding of the evidence is that it suggests the mechanism was made in Rhodes.
- coldtea 2y agoYou mean besides being found in Greece, made at a time range where Greeks were both powerful in the context of the hellenistic empire and had important mathematicians and astronomers like Archimedes and Hipparhos, the labels being in Greek, and the whole on-device manual being in Greek?
- triyambakam 2y agoIt was found in the ocean from what I understand, not actually in Greece. And I would consider that weal evidence anyways, e.g. coins from land found in another. I wasn't aware it had Greek symbols on it. That's all I meant.
- coldtea 2y ago>It was found in the ocean from what I understand, not actually in Greece. Well, it was found in the Aegean sea, a few hundrend feet off the coast of the namesake Greek island, thousands of miles away from any ocean.
- triyambakam 2y agoNot any different than Arabic coins in Skandinavien burials
- throwaway81523 2y agoThis is a cool statistical paper, one of many depressing papers that makes me wish I knew more math. The "gravitational wave" angle is apparently that it uses some statistical methods that originated in gravity wave research. There are no ultra-sensitive new measurements or anything like that. They use the same X-ray measurements as the Clickspring article from a few years ago (https://bhi.co.uk/antikytheramechanism/ https://bhi.co.uk/antikytheramechanism/) and basically support Clickspring's conclusion (that the Antikythera was a lunar calendar) with increased statistical confidence.
- ridgeguy 2y agoThe paper notes a (to me) amazing thing. The object of the researchers' Bayesian analysis is the number of holes likely to have been made in a metal ring, of which only a fragment remains. They think either 354 or 355 holes, on a 77.1mm radius. The amazing thing is that the holes were placed with an average radial variation of only 28µm. This is about 0.001 inches. 2000 years ago. Our ancestors had some serious skills.
- gumby 2y ago> Gravitational wave researchers cast new light on… Seems like they are a bit out of their lane, as light is an electromagnetic phenomenon, a completely different force from gravitation. More seriously: the fact that the two scientists happen to have been doing data analysis on gravitational data isn’t really relevant to the work, rather it was pulled out to make us click on the article title. Super interesting work though, and not what I would have expected!
- IvyMike 2y agoI'm currently building this 3d printed version of the Antikythera mechanism. It's not easy: https://www.printables.com/model/284372-antikythera-mechanism https://www.printables.com/model/284372-antikythera-mechanis... It is insane how complicated this is, and this is a simplified version of the actual thing. This schematic of the proposed full mechanism (I think it's hypothesizing some of the missing parts) blows my mind: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/AntikytheraMechanismSchematic-Freeth12.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Antikyth... If you have a 3d printer, I really am enjoying the project and recommend it.
- dekhn 2y agoThis is one situation where metalwork probably beats 3d printing, in terms of ease of implementation. My guess is that the antikythera was probably state of the art, built by a highly advanced workshop by extremely skilled artisans, and cost an obscene amount of money. Like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harrison#H4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harrison#H4
- fuzzfactor 2y ago>steadfastly pursuing various methods during thirty years of experimentation, And the best was yet to come . . .
- est 2y ago> Professor Woan used a technique called Bayesian analysis, which uses probability to quantify uncertainty based on incomplete data, to calculate the likely number of holes in the mechanism using the positions of the surviving holes and the placement of the ring’s surviving six fragments. His results showed strong evidence that the mechanism’s calendar ring contained either 354 or 355 holes. > At the same time, one of Professor Woan’s colleagues at the University’s Institute for Gravitational Research, Dr Joseph Bayley, had also heard about the problem. He adapted techniques used by their research group to analyse the signals picked up by the LIGO gravitational wave detectors, which measure the tiny ripples in spacetime, caused by massive astronomical events like the collision of black holes, as they pass through the Earth, to scrutinise the calendar ring. The title was very clickbait