It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.

Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.

Thank you.

 

Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.

 

Eclipse Prediction on the Ancient Greek Astronomical Calculating Machine Known as the Antikythera Me

page: 1
11

log in

join
share:

posted on Aug, 1 2014 @ 01:36 AM
link   
Published July 30, 2014 in the journal PLoS ONE. This is an article that discusses the Antikythera Mechanism ability to predict eclipses. The report is technical but has a great deal of detailed images and information on the device in regards to this particular function.

Link



The ancient Greeks built a machine that can predict, for many years ahead, not only eclipses but also a remarkable array of their characteristics, such as directions of obscuration, magnitude, colour, angular diameter of the Moon, relationship with the Moon’s node and eclipse time. It was not entirely accurate, but it was an astonishing achievement for its era.


Link to large image




An epoch for the Antikythera Mechanism in 205 BC brings it close to the life of Archimedes, who was killed in the siege of Syracuse in Sicily in 212 BC. It is known from the writings of Cicero that Archimedes built a machine just like the Antikythera Mechanism [6]: “… the famous Sicilian had been endowed with greater genius than one would imagine it possible for a human being to possess… this… globe… on which were delineated the motions of the sun and moon and of those five stars which are called wanderers… (the five planets)… Archimedes… had thought out a way to represent accurately by a single device for turning the globe those various and divergent movements with their different rates of speed…”

Cicero, De re publica, 54–51 BC


Link to large image
edit on 1/8/14 by Hanslune because: (no reason given)

edit on 1/8/14 by Hanslune because: (no reason given)



posted on Aug, 1 2014 @ 01:45 AM
link   
a reply to: Hanslune

Cool.

Check your link... not working.



posted on Aug, 1 2014 @ 01:46 AM
link   
a reply to: Hanslune

Links broken



posted on Aug, 1 2014 @ 01:53 AM
link   

originally posted by: Sremmos80
a reply to: Hanslune

Links broken



Odd..... Link fixed!



posted on Aug, 1 2014 @ 08:55 AM
link   
It's a rare occurrence to find something so extraordinary, and also have written historical confirmation and details. Gotta love it when that happens. We need to find out what Archimedes was eating. Really smart guy.
edit on 8/1/2014 by Klassified because: (no reason given)



posted on Aug, 1 2014 @ 10:07 AM
link   
a reply to: Hanslune


Very very cool Hans,
The most astonishing thing about the AM and it's mechanics is that the Greeks didn't understand the concept of ratios in terms of rotational movment. Coming up with a complex gear train like that using comparative geometry is almost impossibly difficult.

edit on 1-8-2014 by punkinworks10 because: (no reason given)



posted on Aug, 1 2014 @ 10:09 AM
link   
a reply to: punkinworks10

Yet they did it, with fair accuracy. If it was indeed that man who built it he was a rare genius.



posted on Aug, 2 2014 @ 01:02 AM
link   
You're all wrong, Hans. The Antikythera Mechanism was a technological gift from aliens.

It was reverse-engineered to create the cuckoo clock.

I thought everybody knew that?



posted on Aug, 2 2014 @ 01:09 AM
link   
a reply to: Astyanax

Well, actually it was an alien cheese slicer and sex toy but we put it to more mundane tasks.




top topics



 
11

log in

join