It's outstanding how advanced the ancient Greeks were. What characteristics allowed their civilization to flourish so rapidly in science to the extent that they weren't matched in Europe until the Renaissance?
Tunnel of Eupalinos
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Re: Tunnel of Eupalinos
#12>The Eupalinian aqueduct was used as an aqueduct for 1100 years What things today will be used for 1100 years?
The Panama and Suez canals are good candidates.
Re: Tunnel of Eupalinos
#13>The Eupalinian aqueduct was used as an aqueduct for 1100 years What things today will be used for 1100 years?
The Panama and Suez canals are good candidates.
Assuming no AI takeover, massive technological increase, civilizational collapse due to dysgenics and lack of cheap energy, etc.
Re: Tunnel of Eupalinos
#14I'm curious about this "silting up" described by the article. Was it preventable? Did it happen due to lack of maintenance?
Wikipedia mentions some of it was caused by a bad pipe at a location, but things like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLZElIYHmAI indicate that silting would occur naturally, and need to be controlled. It's quite advanced fluid dynamics and study to work out the variables so the flow doesn't drop silt or erode the channel.
Re: Tunnel of Eupalinos
#15While the accuracy is impressive (the article here says altitude difference of a few millimeters when the tunnels met, but comments have pointed out that’s an error and it is actually a few decimeters), the really cool part to me is the techniques Eupalinos employed to make sure the tunnels connected even if there was significant error.
The diagrams in the article show how they changed the lateral direction of both tunnels to ensure they would collide in the horizontal plane, and expanded the ceiling of one tunnel and the floor of the other to ensure they would also intersect in the vertical plane. The diagrams in the article are illuminating, with some thought you can see it’s a very robust error correction mechanism that requires only a fraction more digging effort, and only requires precise measurements of the length of each tunnel (much easier to precisely measure than the angle or level!). Fascinating stuff.
Re: Tunnel of Eupalinos
#16I'm curious about this "silting up" described by the article. Was it preventable? Did it happen due to lack of maintenance?
Most natural caves in the UK are either silted up or stained with a natural pigment (peat, etc). Keeping water clear in a tunnel over the course of centuries without replacing the wall linings regularly would probably be hard if there's anywhere the silt or pigment could come from.
Re: Tunnel of Eupalinos
#17>The Eupalinian aqueduct was used as an aqueduct for 1100 years What things today will be used for 1100 years?
In the tunnel category, maybe the tunnel under the English Channel, it's pretty impressive in its own right.
Re: Tunnel of Eupalinos
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's actually not in there, but in one of the sources quoted. > 4 Techniques for measuring altitude : Altitude measurements seem to have been made with a chorobates, a primitive leveller with a vessel for water, or forerunners of this instrument. Eupalinos probably measured the south and independently the north entrances more than to check once his between results and to obtain a higher level of accuracy. He would ha…
> the closing error of the levelling is small, only a few decimetres I guess "millimeters" in the article is in error. Decimeters is much more believable.
I'm behind Tor, but anyone else in this comment thread could fix the Wikipedia article
Re: Tunnel of Eupalinos
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Panama and Suez canals are good candidates.
Assuming no AI takeover, massive technological increase, civilizational collapse due to dysgenics and lack of cheap energy, etc.
Even with all those things, the canals might still be used in 1,000 years. None of those things change the likely truth that floating physical goods is cheaper than land transport and those canals are at globally strategic points.
The AI will have to move goods, technology change will still need to move goods, civilisations will rise and fall and still need to move goods. Even if energy gets more expensive, trade will still occur.
Re: Tunnel of Eupalinos
#20Numberphile video about this tunnel:
https://youtu.be/kwrDX5qkwvA