Drafting
BBCNews
After 15 years, Harrison Ford returns to the screens as the intrepid archaeologist Indiana Jones.
Along with a new co-star, played by the British Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Indy puts on the hat again and takes up the whip that have accompanied him since his adventures began in 1981 with “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”
On this occasion, the artifact that he seeks to seize from the Nazis is the one that gives the film its title, the “Dial of Fate”, which the characters in the film refer to as the Archimedean Dial.
It is based on a real object, an ancient Greek artifact discovered by archaeologists in 1900: the Antikythera mechanism.
It is unlikely that this mechanism – almost 2,000 years old – had the power to turn back time, as it does in the film.
But what was the Antikythera mechanism actually? what was it designed for? And what relationship does he have with the famous Greek mathematician mentioned in the film?
The discovery
Had it not been for a storm on the rocky Greek island of Antikythera a little over a century ago, one of the most puzzling and complex objects from the ancient world might never have been discovered.
After taking refuge on the island, a team of sea sponge hunters decided to see if they had any luck under those waters.
Instead they came across the remains of a Roman galley that had sunk in another storm 2,000 years ago, when the Roman Empire began to conquer the Greek colonies in the Mediterranean.
On the sand at the bottom of the sea was the largest heap of Greek treasures ever found.
Among the beautiful copper and marble statues was the most intriguing object in the history of technology.
It’s corroded bronze, no bigger than a modern laptop, made 2,000 years ago in ancient Greece.
It is known as the Antikythera mechanism. And it turned out to be a machine from the future.
“If they hadn’t discovered it in 1900, no one would have imagined, or even believed, that something like this existed… it’s so sophisticated!” Mathematician Tony Freeth told the BBC some time ago.
Incredible
“Imagine: someone, somewhere in ancient Greece, made a mechanical computer!” said Greek physicist Yanis Bitzakis, who, like Freeth, is part of the international research team for the amazing artifact.
“It’s a really amazing genius mechanism,” Freeth added.
They are not exaggerating.
It took about 1,500 years before something approaching the Antikythera mechanism reappeared, in the form of the first astronomical mechanical clocks in Europe.
However, these are the conclusions; understanding what the mysterious object was took time, knowledge and effort.
One of the problems was its anachronism.
The first to examine the 82 recovered fragments in detail was the English physicist and father of scientometrics Derek J. de Solla Price.
He started in the 1950s and in 1971, together with the Greek nuclear physicist Charalampos Karakalos, took X-ray and gamma-ray images of the pieces.
They discovered that there were 27 gear wheels inside, and that it was tremendously complex.
important numbers
Experts had managed to date some of the other pieces found with considerable precision as between 70 BC and 50 BC.
But such an extraordinary object could not date from that time. Perhaps it was much more modern and had just happened to fall in the same place, several thought.
Price guessed that counting the teeth on each wheel might give some clue as to the function of the machine.
With two-dimensional images, the wheels overlapped, which made the task difficult, but he managed to establish two numbers: 127 and 235.
“Those two numbers were very important in ancient Greece,” says astronomer Mike Edmunds.
Could it be possible that they were using them to track the movement of the Moon?
The idea was revolutionary and so advanced that Price doubted the authenticity of the object.
“If ancient Greek scientists could produce these gear systems two millennia ago, the entire history of Western technology would have to be rewritten,” Freeth points out.
The Greece of two millennia ago is one of the most creative cultures that has ever existed, so it was not in question how magnificent its development was in all fields, even in astronomy, considered then as a branch of mathematics.
They knew how celestial bodies moved in space, could calculate their distances, and knew the geometry of their orbits.
Would they have been able to put complex astronomy and mathematics into a contraption and program it to follow the movement of the Moon?
The number 235 that Price had found was the key to the mechanism for computing the cycles of the Moon.
“The Greeks knew that an average of 29.5 days passed from one new Moon to the next. But that was problematic for his 12-month-in-year calendar, because 12 x 29.5=354 days, 11 days less than necessary,” Alexander Jones, a historian of ancient astronomy, explained to the BBC.
“The calendar year, with the seasons, and the calendar year would lose synchrony.”
perfect tune
However, they also knew that 19 solar years is almost exactly 235 lunar months, a cycle whose name is Metonic.
“That means that if you have a 19-year cycle, in the long run your calendar is going to be perfectly in tune with the seasons.”
As if confirming it, in one of the fragments of the Antikythera mechanism they found the Metonic cycle.
Thanks to the teeth of the gear wheels, the mechanism began to reveal its secrets.
The phases of the Moon were immensely useful at that time.
According to them, it was determined when to sow, what was the strategy in battle, what day were the religious holidays, when to pay debts or if they could make night trips.
The other number, 127, helped Price to understand another function related to our natural satellite: the device also showed the revolutions of the Moon around the Earth.
After 20 years of intense research, Price concluded that he had already solved the riddle.
However, there were pieces of the puzzle to fit.
three-dimensional images
The next step required tailor-made technology. And an international team of experts dedicated to investigating the Antikythera mechanism.
The team managed to convince Roger Hadland, an X-ray engineer, to design and bring to the National Archaeological Museum in Athens a special machine to make three-dimensional images of the mechanism.
And, using another device that enhanced the writings that cover a good part of the fragments, the researchers found a reference to the gears and another key number: 223.
Three centuries before the golden age of Athens, ancient Babylonian astronomers discovered that 223 moons after an eclipse (18 years and 11 days, known as a saros cycle), the Moon and the Earth return to the same position so that there will probably be another similar one.
“When there was a lunar eclipse, the Babylonian king resigned and a substitute took over, so that the bad omens were for him. Then they would kill him and the king would take over again,” said John Steele, a Babylonian expert at the British Museum.
And it turns out that 223 was the number of another of the contraption’s wheels.
The Antikythera mechanism could see into the future… it could predict eclipses.
Not just the day, but the time, the direction the shadow would cross, and the color the Moon would be seen.
The importance of the moon
As if that wasn’t amazing enough, they discovered another marvel.
The eclipse cycle depended on the pattern of the Moon’s motion, and “nothing about the Moon is simple,” Freeth explained.
“Not only is its orbit elliptical – so it travels faster when it is closer to Earth – but that elliptical it also rotates slowly, in a period of 9 years”.
Could the Antikythera mechanism track that fluctuating path of the Moon?
Sure enough, it could: two smaller gear wheels, one with a collet to regulate the speed of rotation, accurately replicated the time it takes the Moon to orbit, while another, with 26 and a half teeth, compensated for the displacement. from orbit.
And, as if that were not enough, by examining what remains of the front of the device, the team of experts concluded that it used to have a planetarium as they understood it at the time: with the Earth in the center and five planets revolving around it.
“It was an extraordinary idea: take scientific theories of the time and mechanize them to see what would happen days, months, and many decades later,” the mathematician emphasizes.
A riddle wrapped in an enigma
“Essentially, it was the first time the human race created a computer,” according to Freeth.
“It is truly amazing that a scientist at that time figured out how to use bronze gear wheels to track the complex motions of the Moon and planets.”
But… who was it?
Once again, they explored what was left of the fabulous contraption to find the answer.
One clue was in another of his functions.
The Antikythera mechanism also predicted the exact date of the Panhellenic Games: the Olympia Games, the Pythian Games, the Isthmian Games, the Nemean Games.
The curious thing is that, although the Olympia Games were the most prestigious, the Isthmic Games, in Corinth, appear in much larger letters.
In addition, the experts had already noticed that the names of the months that appeared on another wheel were Corinthian.
Evidence pointed to the designer being a Corinthian and living in the richest colony ruled by that city: Syracuse.
And Syracuse was home to the most brilliant of Greek mathematicians and engineers: Archimedes.
Archimedes?
Perhaps it was the work of the most important scientist in classical antiquity, the man who had determined the distance to the Moon, found how to calculate the volume of a sphere and of that fundamental number π; that he had assured that with a lever he would move the world and so much more.
“Only a mathematician as brilliant as Archimedes could have designed the Antikythera mechanism,” Freeth opines.
The truth is that Archimedes was in Syracuse when the Romans came to conquer it and the general Marco Claudio Marcelo ordered that they not kill him, but a soldier did.
Syracuse was sacked and its treasures sent to Rome. General Marcelo only took two pieces with him, both -he said- were from Archimedes.
The research team thinks they were older versions of the mechanism.
One clue is found in a description written by the formidable orator Cicero of one of Archimedean machines he saw in the house of General Marcelo’s grandson.
“Archimedes found the way to accurately represent in a single apparatus the varied and divergent movements of the five planets with their different speeds, so that the same eclipse occurs both on the globe and in reality.”
What happened to the brilliant Greek technology that produced the first computer?
Why was it not developed? Why was it lost?
Like so many other things, with the fall of the Greeks and then the Romans, the knowledge “migrated” to the East, where it was kept by the Byzantines for a time and then passed on to Arab scholars.
The second oldest known bronze geared contraption is from the 5th century and bears inscriptions in Arabic.
And in the 13th century the Moors brought that knowledge back to Europe.
Previous investigations established that the mechanism was housed in a wooden box, which did not survive the test of time.
A box that contained all the knowledge of the world, time, space and the Universe.
“It’s a bit intimidating to realize that just before the fall of their great civilization, the ancient Greeks had come so close to our era, not only in their thinking but also in their scientific technology,” said Derek J. de Solla Price. .
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See original article on BBC