An ancient Greek computer that was more than 1,000 years before its time could accurately predict the movements of planets and stars, even if it appears to be moving backwards over the sky, new research has found.
The Antikythera mechanism was discovered in a shipwreck off the coast of Greece in the early 20th century.
Archaeologists immediately suspected that it was a kind of astronomical clock, but thought it was probably a renaissance because of its complexity.
Only in the second half of the 20th century did researchers realize that it dates from ancient Greece – probably around 100 BC-200 BC – and that it accurately tracked the movement of the sun and moon and predicted when eclipses would occur.
No other machine of such complex dates can be traced so far, and the technology was lost to the late medieval era.
It has now been discovered that the Antikythera mechanism also detected the movements of Venus and Saturn – even when their orbits, when viewed from Earth, appear to be traveling backwards through the air.
Until now, no one knew that the ancient Greeks possessed this kind of astronomical knowledge, let alone how to program it into an analog computer, which left the researchers stunned.
“The classical astronomy of the first millennium BC has its origins in Babylon, but nothing in this astronomy suggests how the ancient Greeks found the highly accurate 462-year cycle for Venus and 442-year cycle for Saturn,” PhD said. candidate and UCL Antikythera research team said. member Aris Dacanalis.
Evidence that the researchers discovered using X-rays discovered that the mechanism, found in pieces, mapped the orbits of all the other planets known to the ancient Greeks.
“After considerable difficulty, we were able to adapt the evidence in fragments A and D to a mechanism for Venus, which forms exactly the 462-year planetary relationship, with the 63-speed gear playing a decisive role,” he said. David Higgons, team member, said. .
Diagram of the lever action of the AM (thanks to the Adler Planetarium, Chicago).
The next step, according to the researchers, is to build a physical relaxation of the Antikythera mechanism – something they admit will be difficult, even with modern technology.
“A particular challenge is the system of nested tubes that carry the astronomical outputs,” said co-author of the study, Adam Wojcik.
The research was published this week in the journal Scientific Reports.
“Our work reveals the Antikythera mechanism as a beautiful conception, translated by excellent engineering into an ingenious device,” it concludes.
“It challenges all our prejudices about the technological capabilities of the ancient Greeks.”
On this day in 1902, the Antikythera mechanism was discovered