The Antikythera Mechanism, or Antikythera Mechanism, as it was called, salvaged by divers in the Greek Mediterranean in 1901, is the oldest known analog computer and planetarium, dating back to the 1st century BC in Roman Greece.
At least for now. Researchers at the University of Glasgow have published a new study that challenges conventional understandings of the mechanism’s shape and function.
Researchers wonder about the function of the mechanism.
The Antikythera mechanism, made of wood and bronze, was found broken into more than 80 pieces. Dating back to around 2,200 years ago, it is a hand-powered model of the solar system, consisting of concentric rotating rings.
After years of study by many archaeologists and scientists, this discovery is widely considered to be the oldest example of an analog computer and a solar calendar. The main reason is that one of its rings, the calendar ring, has 365 holes, which represents the solar calendar.
But as stated on the page com.artnetA new study conducted by researchers at the University of Glasgow, published in Watches Magazine, He challenges this understanding by claiming that the ring had 354 holes, which corresponds to the lunar calendar of 354 days.
We present a new analysis of the positions of the holes below the calendar ring of the Antikythera mechanism. […] “A 360-hole ring is strongly unfavorable, and a 365-hole ring is not plausible given the assumptions of our model,” Graham Woon and Joseph Bailey explain in their paper.
Other scientists resist the new theory.
Other scientists are resistant to the new theory. One reason is that the mechanism already contains a ring that corresponds to the lunar calendar, which is based on a 19-year Metonic cycle. So adding a second, less precise ring seems redundant and unlikely.
On the other hand, Wan and Bailey, astronomers who specialize in studying tiny ripples in spacetime, analyzed X-ray images of the mechanism “to dispel the assumption of a century-long 365-day calendar in the Antikythera mechanism.”
Based on measurements taken by YouTube horologist Chris Bodsilk in a 2020 study, Woan and Bayley created a model that compared their positions to those in a circle and ran it in their astronomical software, which uses probability to measure uncertainty in incomplete data.
“Using all the data, the 354-hole hypothesis is about 229 times more likely than the 360-hole hypothesis, which they also considered, and much more likely than the 365-hole hypothesis,” the researchers wrote.
The academic controversies surrounding the Antikythera Mechanism are no longer new. The mystery of the mechanism was recently covered in the film Indiana Jones and the Mark of Destiny2023.
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