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Gravitational wave researchers cast new light on Antikythera mechanism mystery

gla.ac.uk

21–30 of 105 posts

Re: Gravitational wave researchers cast new light on Antikythera mechanism mystery

#23
post #10

Greeks were cooking with gas (from the paper): “However, we note that the degree of manufacturing precision is remarkable, with standard errors in hole positions of only 0.028mm radially, and 0.129mm azimuthally. Budiselic et al. quote a standard deviation for their individual position measurements of 0.037 mm, so a good deal of the radial error may come from the measurements of the X-ray images themselves.”

As someone who spent a decade doing precision metrology with optical devices... there isn't a way to correctly measure that part with the precision they indicate in the measured values.

Re: Gravitational wave researchers cast new light on Antikythera mechanism mystery

#24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why build machines at great scale when there is so much almost free human labor? It's crazy that to some extent this is still true today. Automation could go a lot further with existing technologies and make many workers' lives easier or safer. But it is often cheaper to hire humans and burn through them instead of spending the money to implement new kinds of robotics. Especially when companies only think until the…

This is probably the best argument in favor of universal basic income (UBI). Any nation that leans into that can then focus on innovation.

People who will depend on UBI won't innovate. People who innovate don't need UBI. Slavery was expensive (guards, low productivity). In USSR Soviets realised that in Gulags it's more effective to pay Zeks regular salary and treat them as contractors than keep them as slave work force.

Re: Gravitational wave researchers cast new light on Antikythera mechanism mystery

#25
post #10

Greeks were cooking with gas (from the paper): “However, we note that the degree of manufacturing precision is remarkable, with standard errors in hole positions of only 0.028mm radially, and 0.129mm azimuthally. Budiselic et al. quote a standard deviation for their individual position measurements of 0.037 mm, so a good deal of the radial error may come from the measurements of the X-ray images themselves.”

These statements are 100% pseudo-scientific woo. If you look at the mechanism, you can't measure anything on it even with 1mm precision, let alone 0.037mm. https://static.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/AF613... I can't believe so many people people for for that kind of woo.

Good job we have something a bit better than human eyes:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258728873_X-ray_Tom...

Re: Gravitational wave researchers cast new light on Antikythera mechanism mystery

#26
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guy is re-creating using only materials available at the time: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZioPDnFPNsHnyxfygxA0...

Clickspring is the most skilled machinist of youtube. Watching him work is so incredibly satisfying.

Definitely the most interesting to me.

Re: Gravitational wave researchers cast new light on Antikythera mechanism mystery

#27

Is there evidence that it was actually made in Greece or could it simply have ended up there?

You mean besides being found in Greece, made at a time range where Greeks were both powerful in the context of the hellenistic empire and had important mathematicians and astronomers like Archimedes and Hipparhos, the labels being in Greek, and the whole on-device manual being in Greek?

Re: Gravitational wave researchers cast new light on Antikythera mechanism mystery

#28
post #3

The paper [here]( https://bhi.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/07-HJJuly24-AOT... ) makes it clear that these researchers (whose main topic is gravitational waves) have used Bayesian analyses to estimate how likely different counts for holes present in the full calendar ring are. This is cool, but the bit about "techniques developed to analyse the ripples in spacetime" is, well, making reference to Bayesian analysis.

Why is science reporting such irredeemable clickbaity trash? Not just from the mainstream media with commercial motive, from whom I naturally expect trash, but also from nonprofit universities of all places. Seriously, who is the intended audience of this headline? People who only read the headline and think "Woweee science is amazing!" before scrolling down? Anybody who reads the article will roll their eyes at the…

I don't understand what you mean, I think the headline must have changed?

It is currently (4:50 PM EST) "GRAVITATIONAL WAVE RESEARCHERS CAST NEW LIGHT ON ANTIKYTHERA MECHANISM MYSTERY" both in the article, and on the HN item.

If it didn't change, I guess my confusions stems from this is an extremely straightforward way to state it.

Two gravitational wave researchers wrote the paper, and the paper gave us more certainty about whether the Antikythera mechanism represents 354 or 365 days.

I can't envision how to make it less sensationalist.

Re: Gravitational wave researchers cast new light on Antikythera mechanism mystery

#29
post #3

The paper [here]( https://bhi.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/07-HJJuly24-AOT... ) makes it clear that these researchers (whose main topic is gravitational waves) have used Bayesian analyses to estimate how likely different counts for holes present in the full calendar ring are. This is cool, but the bit about "techniques developed to analyse the ripples in spacetime" is, well, making reference to Bayesian analysis.

I haven't read through the paper but it seems that it comes to the same conclusion as this prior paper: https://bhi.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/BHI-Antikythera...

Re: Gravitational wave researchers cast new light on Antikythera mechanism mystery

#30
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably the best argument in favor of universal basic income (UBI). Any nation that leans into that can then focus on innovation.

People who will depend on UBI won't innovate. People who innovate don't need UBI. Slavery was expensive (guards, low productivity). In USSR Soviets realised that in Gulags it's more effective to pay Zeks regular salary and treat them as contractors than keep them as slave work force.

The American way of thinking. Meanwhile half the workforce essentially still works as a slave.
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