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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

#71

Post by dekhn »

swells34 wrote: post #23
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.”

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.

If you're in optical measurement and it should be around 200nm (rayleigh criterion, wavelength dependent), am I missing something? Obviously, that's just angular resolution, not measurement precision, so I'm guessing I'm missing some detail.

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

#72

Post by dekhn »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #13
api wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? 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…

After many years of working on the the problem of biological automation, I came to conclude that it's really hard to beat an extremely skilled/smart lab tech for general purpose experiments. And my company thinks on the decade+ timescale.

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

#73

Post by cwillu »

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…

Making a technically true statement that you know will be misinterpreted by its intended audience is not meaningfully distinct from lying to that audience.

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

#74

Post by cwillu »

refulgentis wrote: post #40
lupusreal wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"it seems intended to give wild impressions which are contrary to truth, namely that the mechanism had anything to do with gravitational waves" It's not technically lying but it will nonetheless induce people to think something which isn't true. If this confuses you, consider this article/example: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20171114-the-disturbing-a... > "A classic example might be if your mum asks if you've…

Running through this in my head again and again, and editing 500 times along the way, apologies. I'm done now: You believe that it is narrowly true gravitational wave researchers did this, like a kid saying they "wrote their essay" in response to whether they "did [completed] their homework" I believe it is wholly true. I believe we agree on the narrow truth that they are gravitational wave researchers. I believe we…

Someone I once considered a friend, handed out invitations to a christmas party he was holding. While nothing he told us about the plans were strictly false, it turned out it was a direct marketing campaign. And there were no sales conducted at the event, instead he called everyone who showed up a week later to see if we were interested in anything we saw. He deliberately crafted a hook to be misleading to his target audience, even though nothing he said was false. I now consider him deeply untrustworthy and have severely limited my contact with him.

I believe the author of the title deliberately crafted a title that would be misconstrued by his target audience into believing something false, even though it was technically true.

I believe this isn't lying, but I also believe it's not meaningfully distinct from lying.

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

#75

Post by orbital-decay »

shiroiushi wrote: post #65
api wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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.

The price fluctuated heavily. After a successful conquest slaves were way more affordable. Generally, a lot of people were able to afford slaves, so it was cheaper on average too. It was also place-dependent, compare for example Athens where roughly half of the population was free, and Sparta, where most of the population was enslaved.

And of course even when slaves were expensive, most economically important labor was done by them anyway.

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

#76

Post by est »

> Professor Woan used a technique called Bayesian analysis, which uses probability to quantify uncertainty based on incomplete data, to calculate the likely number of holes in the mechanism using the positions of the surviving holes and the placement of the ring’s surviving six fragments. His results showed strong evidence that the mechanism’s calendar ring contained either 354 or 355 holes.

> At the same time, one of Professor Woan’s colleagues at the University’s Institute for Gravitational Research, Dr Joseph Bayley, had also heard about the problem. He adapted techniques used by their research group to analyse the signals picked up by the LIGO gravitational wave detectors, which measure the tiny ripples in spacetime, caused by massive astronomical events like the collision of black holes, as they pass through the Earth, to scrutinise the calendar ring.

The title was very clickbait

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

#77

Post by eichin »

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.

So it's sort of like saying "techniques developed for nuclear weapons design" when all you mean is Monte Carlo methods?

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

#78

Post by TibbityFlanders »

shiroiushi wrote: post #68
bluGill wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[dead]

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

#79

Post by emporas »

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…

> It seems like the high ancient world was so close to industrializing.

There are many factors at play. Serious industrialization requires several components to build on. There is a reason for example that "All roads lead to Rome". That's because no roads lead to Athens.

The machines to do the work, were the animals. Horses to carry merchandise around, bulls to plow land were used all over the place, by Romans, Greeks, Sumerians, Persians, everyone.

Metal constructions used for heavy work like iron, were too brittle, and bronze was too weak to withstand significant forces. It is only the last two hundred years that strong alloys were developed for industrial applications.

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

#80

Post by mnky9800n »

eichin wrote: post #77
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.

So it's sort of like saying "techniques developed for nuclear weapons design" when all you mean is Monte Carlo methods?

I'm definitely referring to Monte Carlo this way from now on.
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