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Alien Artifact

Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2006 11:01 am
by Ron Caliburn
Scientifc American wrote:Unique Marvel of Ancient Greek Technology Gives Up New Secrets
Unmatched in complexity for 1,000 years, the device counted down the months until eclipses and might once have shown the positions of the planets.

The most sophisticated mechanical device of ancient Greece may finally be giving up its secrets. Researchers have long known the so-called Antikythera mechanism was a calendar of sorts that represented the positions of the sun and moon using a series of gears. In its complexity it outshined all other objects for a thousand years following its creation sometime around the second century B.C. Now an international consortium of researchers has probed the machine's corroded fragments with sophisticated x-ray and light imaging tools to uncover the true sophistication of this geared wonder.

The device could predict eclipses as well as reproduce a subtle irregularity in the moon's orbit, they reveal. Moreover, it may have been able to represent the motions of the planets, although the necessary gears seem to be long gone. They also confirm a prior hypothesis that the device relied on spiral grooves to count off certain lunar cycles. "We don't know what it was for but we do believe we know what it did," says astronomer Mike Edmunds of Cardiff University in Wales.

Divers recovered the Antikythera instrument in 1901 from a 2,000-year-old shipwreck that had sunk beneath the Mediterranean Sea, midway between Greece's Peloponnesian peninsula and the island Crete. What they found was a hunk of calcified bronze gears and other fragments, along with a decayed wooden box that had housed the mechanism. In pioneering work begun in the 1950s (and first described in a 1959 Scientific American article), the late science historian Derek Price reasoned that this encrusted mess was a solar-lunar calendar. The box would open in the front to reveal a dial with rotating gear-driven pointers to mark off the sun's position and the phases of the moon. The back of the device contained two dials that counted off other cycles.

Looking to confirm and build on some recent insights into the Antikythera machine's function, Edmunds and his colleagues collaborated with the National Bank of Greece Cultural Foundation, Hewlett-Packard Laboratories and other institutions to scan the fragments using two new methods. To study the mechanism's fine surface details, they took multiple digital images each lit from a different direction, which allowed them to virtually rotate the object in the light . They also probed below the corrosion using a custom x-ray tomography system.

"We've at least doubled the amount of inscription that was known," reports Edmunds, whose group has published its findings in the November 30 Nature. Notably, the word "stationary" appears several times, perhaps referring to planetary motion, which seems to halt at times because of Earth's relative orbital motion, the group speculates. Other inscriptions include "Aphrodite" or "Venus," "little golden sphere" (referring presumably to the marker for the sun) and "trunnion," a mechanical pivot. The researchers say the markings date the device from 150 to 100 B.C.

The two dials in the rear of the mechanism seem to represent eclipses and a combined solar-lunar calendar. The so-called Metonic cycle is based on the near equivalence of 235 lunar months to 19 solar years. The group found 34 regular markings on one gear fragment. They estimate that the full gear would contain 235 divisions along a spiral of five concentric rings. As the arm that marked the lunar month rotated, a pointer similar to a record player's needle may have slid along the spiral groove to pick out the correct month. Significantly, an inscription on one of the wooden fragments reads "spiral divided into 235 sections," the group reports. An additional pair of gears seems to have accounted for a slight variation in the moon's motion across the sky.

Another gear fragment exhibits markings consistent with a four-turn spiral divided into 223 segments, the same number of lunar months that can elapse between eclipses. Between these divisions the researchers say they found the Greek letters sigma and eta, which could stand for Selene and Helios, the Greek words for moon and sun.

The findings are "seductive" and will set the standard for future work, says medieval science historian Francois Charette of Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. "Everything in their model fits very well with the data they have collected, and just happens to give the relationships that were used in Greek astronomy for these cycles," he says. The researchers plan to make their data available online for others to examine, their report states.

As for the purpose of the Antikythera instrument, Charette says it strikes him as a luxury object, given that numerical tables could have done the same job for less trouble. Craftsmen built similarly elaborate clocks and astrolabes during medieval and Renaissance times, he says. "They were expensive toys."


A Toy? Hah!

There is no reason for the Ancient Greeks to hae something like this. In fact, there's no reason for this device to be created by humans until the 20th century.

No, this device clearly is an example of alien technology and the scientists ar eplaying it up as an ancient greek toy to help hide the truth,

Or

Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2006 11:44 am
by Razor
It could be alien tech, yes... but it seems rather low-grade. What seems more likely to me, is that it was built on earth, but with N.E.O. help, of course.

That or it could be used much like certain monoliths, or StoneHenge and other such large and elaborate calendrical systems. It could even be that it was used as a mystical object to help predict when there would be an upswing in supernatural energy to help time ritual magic and the like.

The world may never know.

Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2006 4:14 pm
by KonThaak
Guys, as the report says, a stone tablet and some quick calculations could've done that, if you wanted to really get into it. And Ron, I think you're seriously downplaying the capabilities of humans to do whatever the hell they want. If they want elaborate waterclocks, they make elaborate waterclocks. If they want houses with 50+ bedrooms (not including bathrooms, the greenroom, the tea room, the living room, the main entertaining room, etc, etc, ad nauseum), they make such a house.

If they want a fancy-ass shiny machine to tell them when the next eclipse is going to be, they'll make it.

Money, determination and ingenuity will win you anything you want.

Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2006 7:54 pm
by Bert_the_Turtle
Yeah, the Ancient Greeks had some brilliant minds and I don't doubt that it was possible for them to build such a thing.

On the other hand, it is entirely possible that an outside force helped them. Maybe Archimedes was something other than human.

Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2006 10:08 pm
by SensorArray
I don't doubt that it has entirely earthly origins. But the fact that it is a thousand years more adavanced than the period it came from is remarkable.

Alternativly it could be evidence for the Extraterrestrial origin of the human race.

Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 2:32 am
by Ron Caliburn
I find it really hard to beleive that at the time humans could produce a mechanical device that could accuratly count for parabolic motion of a planetary body without help.

Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 7:39 am
by KonThaak
I don't. A lot of mathematicians and astronomers of those days needed "real" jobs to support themselves. Many of them were shepherds. Many of them were out all night with the flocks, with nothing to stare at but boring sheep and the movement of the night sky.

They didn't know what any of the celestial bodies were, they just knew that there were a number of "stars" that didn't act like any of the others. These "stars" twinkled, and moved through the sky in different, faster patterns than other stars. They called these "planets", without any of the connotations of the word "planet" that we have today.

They believed the earth to be the center of the universe, and they thought that all celestial bodies were stuck to crystal orbs that wrapped and spun loosely around the earth. The sun was on the orb closest to us, each "planet" was on its own orb further out, and the stars themselves were on the furthest orb out from us, moving all together.

So they misunderstood the real reason that a planetary path would double back on itself in the sky, and loop around to re-align with what it should. They just knew it happened on a regular basis.

So by studying how often and how each planetary path did that, they could, in effect, capture the exact mathematics of the parabolic motion of a planet without having the slightest inkling of what any of it meant.

Shepherding, for the record, is extremely boring work. They had a LOT of time on their hands.

Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 11:19 am
by Ron Caliburn
There's a difference between noticing a pattern and aing a machine that can accurately predict the parabolic path of an object.

I don't think a shepard could have made this device.

Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 12:27 pm
by Wolf Brutscher
Im with Ron on this one.

Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 1:22 pm
by KonThaak
Not just shepherds, but mathematicians, astrologers/astronomers (take your pick; in those days, they were practically the same thing), and other early scientists. Saying they're just shepherds is tantamount to saying I'm just a trucker, or that you're just a shopkeep, Ron.

I just think you're giving too little credit to the capabilities of the early peoples. Human beings are amazing creatures; given the right motives and reasonable resources, they can do pretty much anything.

Something to ponder

Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 4:07 pm
by Eric Eland
Why would alien’s need something to track planets? They would have come in a space ship, they probably have better clocks then we do, complicated space clocks. If it really bothered them they could just go see the planets in question, like a field trip, but to space, where they came from, so more like going home then on a trip.

Unless the aliens came here some other way then ship, magick’s maybe, then they could need to know where things are to go home, or bring friends here, like earth is a vacation for them, like Europe is for everyone else. But if they are so powerful why build a clock, hum, they need to see something to understand you think? They do not like charts and math so much, need to have visual aid to understand, strange magic aliens.

I wonder if they are still around, maybe they left more things to find, magik things that do good I hope, I might go look for them some day, but they found this in water, so I probably wont go there, too much wet. Or it could be the thing isn't a space clock, maybe it makes toothpaste.

Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 6:02 pm
by Bert_the_Turtle
If aliens built that thing, what's to say it wasn't just a hobby model kit?

"I'll put together this intricate astronomical measuring device from crude materials as my weekend project. Now where did I leave the instructions?"

Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 6:22 pm
by AdamaGeist
I realy have to ask... Why is it that so many insist that OOPAs are extra-terestrial in nature? I have to speak with KT here, and remind you all that people are quite capable of creating such devices on their own, if they needed to.

And to answer the other question, 'Why would they need to'? Because times of eclipses and planitary alignments are also times where Natural Energies are at their highest ebb. Anyone that's visited a few lay lines or nexus points at times of solstice or eclipse will be able to attest to that. So why is it so surprising that the one group of people with the ability to act beyond human limitations might want to track planitary movements and such?

It realy comes as no surprise that most of the known Henge sites are on or near known lay-line nexuses.

Rebuttal

Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 6:42 pm
by Eric Eland
But like was said, why bother building some complicated whiz doodle when you can read a chart and know the same thing that you would know from the space clock? Why spend time on a space clock, it would be hard to build and calibrate and power and maintain and move and keep set. Paper is much more mobile and easier to keep set, you just unroll it and your set. It is curious, maybe it is part of a bigger conflagration, little piece of a big magic space clock ritual device, should have come with instructions, then we would know if it made toothpaste or kept space time for something bigger, or was just for fun. Yes, instructions needed too much it could do.

Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 7:14 pm
by AdamaGeist
Because a device will tell you what you need to know at a moment, while a chart means that you'll have to spend a few hours figuring out paterns, plus checking against the sky to conferm your data against the positions of the stars and the planets to doublecheck.

Why do you use a caluclator rather than do all of your math in your head? It's the same damn principle. By the Creator, havn't ANY of you people heard of Ockham's Razor?

The device would be like your 'chart', only less likely to be burnt, washed away in water, or lost. I can't see how such a concept is so difficult for you.

Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 9:46 pm
by Ron Caliburn
AdamaGeist wrote:The device would be like your 'chart', only less likely to be burnt, washed away in water, or lost. I can't see how such a concept is so difficult for you.


Should I point out that his device is only known to us because it was origionally lost in water?

The charts are easy enough to use, just find the right row and column. Equivalents were still being used well into the 20th century.

Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 10:11 pm
by AdamaGeist
Well, I did say LESS likely.

Basic principle of simple solution... Options.

1) Alien race that can transport between dimentions or through space comes to earth during time of Greece's rule, and one of them builds and abandons a device that's not only unneccisary for any extraterestrial race, and difficult for an extradimentional race (Different earth doesn't neccisarily mean that they automaticaly know the order of the planets and stars on our earth.) but is ALSO primitive by most standards, save for those of the day. (Seriously, what extraterstrial race is using GEARS?)

2) Some rich merchant, warlord, or king gets a sudden desire to know where the stars and planets are at any given time, and pays for the best mechinists and astronomers to make him a device that does all the work for him.

Which realy seems the more reasonable answer?

Posted: Sun Dec 03, 2006 1:18 am
by Bert_the_Turtle
Neither of those sound very likely. My vote is still for some ancient magic practitioner and scholar. Probably the Leonardo DaVinci of his era.

Agree, kind of

Posted: Sun Dec 03, 2006 10:59 am
by Eric Eland
I think Bert_the_Turtle is the most right, but it still seems unlikely. Too much work, no great reward. The device has no practical purpose other then being shiny, unless there is something we don't see.

Posted: Sun Dec 03, 2006 12:23 pm
by AdamaGeist
Gah, I can't believe it...

If it serves no reasonable purpose, then the second theory I proposed is, in fact, MOST LIKELY.

People over the ages have wasted quite a BIT of money on useless gewgaws that serve no directly applicable use. Cuckoo clocks, Dioramas inside of eggs, those damn Russian nesting dolls. None of them serve any direct purpose, even if they can be used by magi for one reason or another. And for the most part, Mages were not the ones to buy these things, it was the average powerless but WEALTHY people that did.

The normal population vastly exceeds those with access to the supernatural. Rich people do stupid things and buy pointless gadgets for no reason other than to own them. WHY do I have to explain these things to you people? We just got a prime example not long ago about assuming everything had a paranormal base to it, with those investigators going to trial for murdering an innocent girl.

I'm one of the most heavily involved in the paranormal, with supernatural entities and things beyond human knowledge. I shouldn't have to be the one telling you all to get your X-files goggles off and to review these things with simple reason and logic. Geez, I wish Debunker was here right now.

Posted: Sun Dec 03, 2006 3:26 pm
by Shadowstalker
Be careful what you ask for there Adama. Truth is I tend to agree with you but without a chance to examine the item in person I wouldn't rule anything out save perhaps for some of the more out there Ideas.

Posted: Mon Dec 04, 2006 12:10 am
by KonThaak
Misunderstandings, gentlemen.

Adama, Eric thought you were talking about why aliens would build such a device. Be nice.

Eric, Adama was siding with my argument, that it was, in fact, the Greeks that built it, and not aliens.

Posted: Mon Dec 18, 2006 4:35 am
by Shang Li
Hmm perhaps the greeks were trying to follow the dragon tracks? If you have ever used a geo-meter's compass you already know the complexity of anything that attempts to predict/measure the flows of energy. or perhaps a rich trade captain was using the device to keep his crew from mutiny by predicting events?