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Second expedition to Antikythera seeks more mechanism remains

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Thor, God of Thunder
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« on: September 03, 2015, 01:34:44 am »

Second expedition to Antikythera seeks more mechanism remains

 August 25, 2015 9:09AM
   

 

Return to Antikythera
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THE Antikythera device: It’s an ancient computer which remains just beyond the grasp of science — and divers. Now they’re set to return to the wreck which has preserved the relic for centuries.

This week archaeologists are preparing once again to dive into the waters around the Greek island of Antikythera.

Below is one — possibly two — ancient wrecks from which an enormous treasure trove has already been recovered.

Rare bronze busts. Sculpted marble marvels. Coins and jewels.

A bronze celestial analogue computer.
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Thor, God of Thunder
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« Reply #1 on: September 03, 2015, 01:36:41 am »




 Exquisite intricacy ... Some of the fine detail of the Antikythera mechanism. Source: Supplied
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Thor, God of Thunder
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« Reply #2 on: September 03, 2015, 01:37:06 am »

Deep history

A weather-wracked expedition was conducted at the site last year. A revolutionary robotic diving suit only managed a few dives when the waves calmed enough.

Since then the sea floor has been carefully mapped to specifically target fresh items of interest.

“We were shocked to discover the wreck was much larger than earlier work had indicated — 30 to 50 metres long,” expedition leader Brendan Foley told the Archaeology Hour Podcast.

“The hull timbers were 11cm thick. This would make the wreck bigger than the pleasure barges Caligula built for his artificial lake and they were the largest Roman era ships known.”

Coins found on the site date the disaster to between 70BC and 67BC.

While any and all new discoveries will present a valuable window in to life BC, there is one thing they want to find above all else.

More fragments of the Antikythera mechanism.

“In its original state the metal components of the mechanism were thin sections of copper alloy,” Foley told the podcast. “After thousands of years on the sea bottom they would now have the consistency of Fimo craft clay — very fragile indeed.”

Some speculate, based on differences in fragments found, that there may actually have been two computational devices in the wreck. Called astrolabes, they were used to predict the motion of the planets and the dates of upcoming eclipses.
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Thor, God of Thunder
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« Reply #3 on: September 03, 2015, 01:37:39 am »



 Precious cargo ... A Roman-era grain ship, much larger than the example above, is believed to have been carrying loot from the Roman occupation of Greece when it sank off the island of Antikythera. Source: Supplied
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Thor, God of Thunder
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« Reply #4 on: September 03, 2015, 01:37:55 am »

Titanic event

Foley said the current theory about the origin of the wreck was that it was a large grain carrier hastily converted to carrying loot from a recent Roman conquest — Greece.

General Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix marched into Greece in 87BC. A decade later, the wreck may have been used to haul his spoils of war back to Rome.

But Foley isn’t certain the ship was his: “We know some of Sulla’s ship’s sank north of Antikythera — but we do not think this is one of his ships at this time.“

    Will old artifacts reveal new secrets at the #AntikytheraWreck? #Forensic science at http://t.co/IAJ7VNKBeY pic.twitter.com/UWFrgvnMmP
    — Antikythera Divers (@antikytheradive) August 3, 2015

He believes several bronze statues have yet to be recovered from the wreck. One bronze spear, for example, does not fit any statue so far found.

The cargo may have been the cause of the ship’s demise.

“The marble and bronze artworks would have been difficult to stabilise inside the hull and would have made it difficult to trim the vessel,” Foley said.

Divers will be operating for up to 90 minutes on the sea floor. This will be followed by up to an hour of decompression to prevent ‘the bends’, a condition where gas builds up in the blood stream.
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Thor, God of Thunder
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« Reply #5 on: September 03, 2015, 01:38:31 am »

http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/second-expedition-to-antikythera-seeks-more-mechanism-remains/story-fnjwl1aw-1227497703179
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Xomon
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« Reply #6 on: September 03, 2015, 01:43:18 am »

It was an astronomical device, used to set up calendars for the Olympics and to predict eclipses and other stellar positions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
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The Creeper
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« Reply #7 on: September 03, 2015, 01:46:24 am »

The point that has to be made is that the pinion and gear theory was already 550 years old at the time the AM was build, and it was described by Archimedes. 150 years before the AM Hero of Alexandria (the steam engine guy) introduced the pinion and rack and the gear reduction to Europe. So it should surprise nobody that somebody would be able to build a mechanical calculation machine with them around 200 AD.
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DieChecker
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« Reply #8 on: September 03, 2015, 01:53:15 am »

Depends on who the main driver of the revolution was, but most of the larger empires knew the importance of balancing what you take out with what you put in, the Celts even more so, they'd have driven a fairly clean Industrial Revolution because of the religious importance they placed on green spaces. I'd argue that because the Industrial Revolution came after centuries of religious upheaval and reevaluation and the Enlightenment (where a truly secular society started to emerge) the religious convictions of "these are yours to sheppard" were lost in favour of "these are just mine."
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Heartmonger
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« Reply #9 on: September 03, 2015, 02:02:21 am »

I'm going to go out on a limb here and resurrect some memories of a History of Technology course I took nearly 40 years ago. One of the things I learned was that medieval books on technology would depict a grist mill and a fulling mill, both driven by water wheels, complete with the water wheel in both illustrations even though it was identical in both types of mills. The reason for this is that pre-Renaissance people saw the two mills as being organic entities, so that the wheel driving the grist mill was different from the one driving the fulling mill, even though it was identical.
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Astra
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« Reply #10 on: September 03, 2015, 02:04:52 am »

That is absolutely true. Things we take as obvious were really not as obvious as we think they are. Mass production is a relatively new phenomenon, and there are really only about two or three examples of it in ancient history. The concept of interchangeable parts is not an easy (or kind) one to grasp if you happen to be the artisan who has to hand-make each individual piece.
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Treppanierolumenarch
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« Reply #11 on: October 16, 2016, 09:19:37 pm »





A schematic representation of the gearing of the Antikythera Mechanism, including the 2012 published interpretation of existing gearing, gearing added to complete known functions, and proposed gearing to accomplish additional functions, namely true sun pointer and pointers for the five then-known planets, as proposed by Freeth and Jones, 2012.[6] Based also upon similar drawing in the Freeth 2006 Supplement[31] and Wright 2005, Epicycles Part 2.[41]Proposed (as opposed to known from the artefact) gearing crosshatched.
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Treppanierolumenarch
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« Reply #12 on: October 16, 2016, 09:21:30 pm »



Hublot went all out while preserving the original spirit of the mechanism. The list of features is amazing. Besides the obvious time telling function the front of the contraption contains things like the Zodiac, Panhellenic games calendar, Egyptian calendar, lunar phases and the Sun and Moon aperture. The back side of the device showcases the Callippic, Metonic, Saros and Exeligmos cycles. If you don’t know what these are, hit wikipedia up, this is a watch magazine, not an astronomical one.
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Treppanierolumenarch
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« Reply #13 on: October 16, 2016, 09:22:11 pm »


    Physical description

     

    The Antikythera Mechanism is not all in one piece. There are 82 catalogued fragments of the Antikythera Mechanism and they are kept at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, Greece, according to the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project. Many of the pieces have been named and functions have been attributed them.

    The calendar scale represents a 360-day year and is divided into 12 months of 30 days each plus a five-day extra period, which corresponds to the Greek-Egyptian calendar. 

    The planetary dials list the five planets that were known at the time: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. It is thought that these dials may have shown planetary cycles.

    The zodiac scale is a 360-degree dial divided into the 12 signs of the zodiac, which are split into a "fast" zone and a "slow" zone. These speed zones are believed to represent the varying apparent speed of the sun.

    These dials had seven pointers, total, though they are lost or destroyed. The sun pointer shows the date on the calendar scale and the sun’s position in the sky on the zodiac scale. It makes a complete turn for each year. The moon pointer shows the moon’s position in the sky on the zodiac scale.

    Below the moon pointer is a revolving black-and-white ball that represents the moon’s phases. This seems to have modeled the moon's elliptical orbit around Earth rather than a circular orbit. This is at odds with Greek philosophers' belief that all heavenly orbits were perfect circles.

 
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Treppanierolumenarch
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« Reply #14 on: October 16, 2016, 09:22:38 pm »

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