Antikythera mechanism: The ancient celestial-tracking device discovered in a shipwreck off Greece - Livescience.com

The Antikythera mechanism is an ancient shoebox-sized device that is sometimes called the world's oldest computer for its ability to perform astronomical calculations. .

Discovered by sponge divers off the Greek island of Antikythera in 1901, the remains of the mechanism are now preserved in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.

The mechanism was capable of performing different calculations, and it could help track the motions of the sun, moon and five of the planets; it could even tell when athletic competitions, such as the Olympics, were set to take place, the researchers wrote.

Whoever made the device would have had to know a great deal about astronomy, metallurgy and mechanology, Aristeidis Voulgaris, team leader of the Functional Reconstruction of Antikythera Mechanism (Frame) project, told Live Science in an email.

The recovered fragments of the mechanism contained writing and inscriptions, and over the past two decades, scientists have been able to read more of these Greek inscriptions using high-tech imaging methods, such as 3D X-ray scanning.

CT scans "revealed inscriptions describing the motions of the sun, moon and all five planets known in antiquity and how they were displayed at the front as an ancient Greek cosmos," the researchers wrote in the Scientific Reports article.

The mechanism used "cycles from Babylonian astronomy, mathematics from Plato's Academy and ancient Greek astronomical theories," the researchers wrote. .

The mechanism represents "a level of technology exceeding anything else of the kind for which we have either physical remains or detailed descriptions from antiquity," Alexander Jones, a professor of the history of the exact sciences in antiquity at New York University's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, wrote in his book "A Portable Cosmos: Revealing the Antikythera Mechanism, Scientific Wonder of the Ancient World (opens in new tab)" (Oxford University Press, 2017).

The authors of the Scientific Reports article found that someone viewing the front of the mechanism would have seen dials that showed the movements of the moon, sun, lunar nodes (points where the moon's orbit crosses the ecliptic, the path the sun appears to take through the constellations), Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, as well as the Zodiac calendar. .

The back of the mechanism had dials showing the Metonic cycle (a 19-year cycle after which the phases of the moon occur on the same days of the year), the Callippic cycle (a period of 76 years, equal to four Metonic cycles), the Olympiad cycle (when the Olympics were held every four years), the Saros cycle (a period of more than 18 years between lunar eclipses) and the exeligmos (a period of more than 54 years, or three Saros cycles). .

The user winds the mechanism forwards to the desired date, as shown on one of its calendars," Tony Freeth, a researcher with the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project, wrote in a paper published in 2014 in the journal PLOS One (opens in new tab).

was like.Their finds include a bronze arm that was once attached to a statue, a board game, possible remains of an ancient throne, and a marble statue head of Hercules, Live Science previously reported.

In 2016, archaeologists unearthed the ancient skeleton of a male at the shipwreck, Live Science reported at the time.

(2021) "A Model of the Cosmos in the ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism" Scientific Reports 5821  

(2014) "Eclipse Prediction on the Ancient Greek Astronomical Calculating Machine Known as the Antikythera Mechanism" PlosOne 

(2017) "A Portable Cosmos: Revealing the Antikythera Mechanism, Scientific Wonder of the Ancient World" Oxford University Press

et al (2022) "The Initial Calibration Date of the Antikythera Mechanism after the Saros spiral mechanical Apokatastasis" arXiv