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Gravitational wave researchers cast new light on Antikythera mechanism mystery

gla.ac.uk

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

#61

Post by ab5tract »

skirge wrote: post #24
itronitron wrote: post #18

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.

Early science in the Renaissance and later, until the 20th century, was almost entirely driven by people who could afford to pursue their efforts while sustained by income that required little or zero direct effort.

Give humanity a chance. It might just surprise you.

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

#62

Post by IAmGraydon »

refulgentis wrote: post #32
lupusreal wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's clickbait. I suppose you think it isn't clickbait because it isn't lying but I classify it as such because it seems intended to give wild impressions which are contrary to truth, namely that the mechanism had anything to do with gravitational waves. Clickbaiting without lying is a common technique among science reporters, almost as common as clickbaiting with lies.

I'm sorry if I'm coming off as combative, I'm legitimately, genuinely, confused: what part is clickbait? They are gravitational wave researchers. Poking around this: I have a test for myself before I rant about science journalism: "would it be confusing without the thing my rant is angry about?" Answer here is yes, I'm very familiar with this sort of thing from the astrophysics people in my physics department 18 year…

I have to echo what others have said - this is absolutely clickbait. The fact that they also happen to do gravitational field research has nothing to do with the discoveries involving the Antikythera mechanism. It was included to make the reader of the headline wonder if the designers of the Antikythera mechanism knew something of gravitational waves. The only way to get the answer is to then click into the article to find out.

Unfortunately, this is the state of media today. It would be very helpful if the admins of HN could implement a way that users with enough karma could identify and vote to delete articles that have disingenuous headlines. Yes, we can flag articles, but maybe if we could choose WHY we're flagging to make others aware of what the problem is. If we don't protect the integrity of this site as an elevated place to have intellectual discourse, we will eventually lose it to the tidal wave of garbage content that seems to be getting worse by the day.

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

#63

Post by 8xeh »

lupusreal wrote: post #12
Schiphol wrote: 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…

This is a way to show off someone's mathematical work to a non-mathematical audience and to promote the college. Would you prefer "Our scientists wrote a paper about some math they did called 'An Improved Calendar Ring Hole-Count for the Antikythera Mechanism'", you should read it." ?

That doesn't seem as likely to grab the attention of people who watched Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

The antikythera mechanism is a (bad) predictor of planetary locations. People have recreated it in its entirety using legos. There isn't much mystery about what it does.

However, a new high resolution X-ray of the device inspired some scientists to do some neat math on it. I read the paper, it's good work. I'd love to a chance to get an article published about one of my papers, even more if regular people had even the slightest chance to understand it.

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

#64

Post by triyambakam »

coldtea wrote: post #27
triyambakam wrote: post #20

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?

It was found in the ocean from what I understand, not actually in Greece. And I would consider that weal evidence anyways, e.g. coins from land found in another.

I wasn't aware it had Greek symbols on it. That's all I meant.

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

#65

Post by shiroiushi »

api wrote: post #11
yinser wrote: 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.”

It seems like the high ancient world was so close to industrializing. Just a few missing pieces, probably a more rigorous scientific method and mathematics. Maybe some economic inventions too like the stock corporation to enable venture investing. I also wonder about the abolition of slavery. It was normal through pretty much all of human history up to the last 200 years or so. Why build machines at great scale when…

>Why build machines at great scale when there is so much almost free human labor?

Slaves weren't free. At least in the early United States, slaves were considered a significant investment; only rich plantation (land) owners could afford them. If they were cheap, then everyone would have had one. Here's an interesting article about the topic:

https://www.measuringworth.com/slavery.php

A typical slave in the US in the early 1800s cost several hundred dollars, which in today's dollars is between $60k and $184k. Obviously, this isn't something typical people can afford.

I'm not sure if slaves were this expensive back in ancient Greek or Roman times, but I suspect it probably wasn't that different.

Industrialization would have completely changed the economics of these places.

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

#66

Post by gus_massa »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #15
yinser wrote: 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.

For $10 you can buy one of this that can measure .1mm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calipers and there are better devices.

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

#67

Post by db48x »

lupusreal wrote: post #12
Schiphol wrote: 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…

Because reporters are not trained to respect science or to believe that they could understand it, and University press offices employ a lot of reporters who can’t make it at a real newspaper.

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

#68

Post by shiroiushi »

bluGill wrote: post #49
NegativeLatency wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UBI and better healthcare would allow me the freedom to innovate. Right now it’s a much more significant barrier to strike out on my own and build something. So it makes more sense to me to just have a 9-5 job, but if there was a bit more wiggle room I’d certainly try it.

Would you innovate or just play minecraft/guitar or read books about innovation but never innovate.

Some people would just play Minecraft, but a few would innovate, and the economic value of those innovations would be far greater than the economic value lost to the Minecraft players who quit their McJobs.

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

#69

Post by fuzzfactor »

dekhn wrote: post #57
IvyMike wrote: post #50

I'm currently building this 3d printed version of the Antikythera mechanism. It's not easy: https://www.printables.com/model/284372-antikythera-mechanis... It is insane how complicated this is, and this is a simplified version of the actual thing. This schematic of the proposed full mechanism (I think it's hypothesizing some of the missing parts) blows my mind: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Anti…

This is one situation where metalwork probably beats 3d printing, in terms of ease of implementation. My guess is that the antikythera was probably state of the art, built by a highly advanced workshop by extremely skilled artisans, and cost an obscene amount of money. Like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harrison#H4

>steadfastly pursuing various methods during thirty years of experimentation,

And the best was yet to come . . .

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

#70

Post by Accujack »

8xeh wrote: post #63
lupusreal wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is a way to show off someone's mathematical work to a non-mathematical audience and to promote the college. Would you prefer "Our scientists wrote a paper about some math they did called 'An Improved Calendar Ring Hole-Count for the Antikythera Mechanism'", you should read it." ? That doesn't seem as likely to grab the attention of people who watched Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. The antikythera mechani…

Precision matters, and legos only have a certain amount of precision.

Besides that, things like the number of holes in the calendar ring matter.

Check out Clickspring on youtube, he's one of the people who narrowed the hole count down to 2 numbers, and this paper argues hard for one of those.

He's building a replica of the mechanism using period tools, and it's amazingly precise so far.

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