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Antikythera Mechanism: An ancient 'computer' that 'shouldn't exist' [video]

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Re: Antikythera Mechanism: An ancient 'computer' that 'shouldn't exist' [video]

#221

Post by darcys22 »

PostOnce wrote: post #219
SavantIdiot wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also this implicit form of -ism built into it, in that certain groups of people were "obviously" less intelligent so it is unlikely they could ever build something magnificent or intellectually obscure. Whether it is a belief that aliens must have built Mayan or Egyptian Pyramids because of a bias that they were dumb savages, or whether it is dismissal of alternate forms of successful government and social o…

nobody thinks Einstein was beneath us because he didn't have an iPhone if something "shouldn't exist" in a time period it has nothing to do with judging those people as inferiors, its simply the timeline of the development of technology (or our misconception thereof)

Einstein is a bad example cause he was very recent also.

Re: Antikythera Mechanism: An ancient 'computer' that 'shouldn't exist' [video]

#222

Post by codegladiator »

simonh wrote: post #213
xyzzy21 wrote: post #194

The presumption that other people aren't smart enough to do what you can or imagine has a name: bigotry. The "shouldn't exist" is bigotry. It's also evidence that we see even today that knowledge is fragile and easily lost when it has a large tacit component. Most things technological are highly fragile because half of the knowledge required to create them is tacit. See also: "FOG BANK".

It has nothing to do with assumptions about how smart people in the past were, we have every reason to believe they were just as smart as us. In fact we have direct evidence from surviving mathematical texts, treatises on philosophy, etc that they could be highly original and insightful thinkers. Smarts is simply not at all the issue and frankly you describing diligent scholars who clearly have huge appreciation and…

I can understand why the op was down voted, but just assuming that a civilization was "not smart" simply because we cannot find evidence feels dumb.

> The real bigots are the conspiracy nuts who think ancient civilizations we know of couldn't have achieved the many things we evidence of, and think it must have been aliens

You are not presenting any evidence that it was otherwise. I am not saying that this device was presented by aliens, but neither you are that it was not.

> So should we assume they had such things? We simply make the best estimates we can and adjust when we find wonderful surprises like this one.

We have evidence that they had it. How they had it is a separate question.

I assume the next "civilization" might not be able to figure out how/what out machines are doing and they would have a similar discussion.

Re: Antikythera Mechanism: An ancient 'computer' that 'shouldn't exist' [video]

#223

Post by masklinn »

evilduck wrote: post #199
gpm wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pile of rust that use to be a tractor, sure, that's not worth much. The pile of rust that use to be a city though... surely that's more concentrated than the rust mixed with rock (or clay) that we originally extracted it from?

Most likely not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_ore , it's almost 50% iron in the worst case and can be up past 70% in the best case. The geological processes that form this ore in the mantle do a pretty good job of concentrating iron by density but it takes geological scales of time to do so and have it lifted back up through the crust. We might have to excavate a lot of earth to get to the concentrated vein of…

> Most likely not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_ore, it's almost 50% iron in the worst case and can be up past 70% in the best case.

FWIW those are the ratios for the oxides themselves but the formations are not necessarily huge piles of pure oxides, if you go a bit lower to the "sources" section the lowest-concentrated formations viable for exploitation are

> Banded iron formations (BIFs) are sedimentary rocks containing more than 15% iron composed predominantly of thinly bedded iron minerals and silica (as quartz).

However that's only for post-industrial societies, at least if you have alternatives, as it requires churning through ridiculous amounts of materials.

When you don't have alternatives the ironsand article (which would be used in places with no good or accessible ore deposits e.g. japan, famously) quotes

> Sand used for mining typically had anywhere from 19% magnetite to as low as 2%.

though much like gold panning the ironsand would be sluice-separated to a concentration of 30-50% before it was further processed.

Most ironsands deposits are not considered financially exploitable to this day though, with the exception of NZ's where the iconic "black sand" beaches of north island are extremely rich in magnetite (up to 40%).

Re: Antikythera Mechanism: An ancient 'computer' that 'shouldn't exist' [video]

#224

Post by 6nf »

kanzenryu2 wrote: post #193

The thing that really gets me is just how densely the whole mechanism is packed together. What a masterpiece. The techniques must have been developed incrementally over many revisions of the machine, perhaps over several lifetimes by various machinists and/or designers. Sadly I read somewhere that the "slop" between the gears (the mechanical imperfections that add or multiply together over many gears) would overwhelm…

From the Clickspring reconstruction, it seems clear to me that the 'slop' in the gears won't be a problem in the final mechanism.

Re: Antikythera Mechanism: An ancient 'computer' that 'shouldn't exist' [video]

#225

Post by Robotbeat »

mcguire wrote: post #203
Robotbeat wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dependency tree of 19th Century or early 20th century society is a lot more straightforward, however. And no, you don't need such sophistication for storing useful amounts of hydrogen. Storing large amounts of hydrogen (in this case, also mixed with poisonous CO) was solved in the beginning of the 19th Century (well, late 18th century) in Britain and Germany by using very large near-atmospheric storage vessels ca…

That gas holder article says they contained methane or coal gas. Methane's density is 0.657 kg/m³; hydrogen's is 0.08375 kg/m³.

Coal gas is a mix that (by energy) is about half hydrogen, as I said. And hydrogen gas a specific energy of 142MJ/kg vs 55.5MJ/kg for methane.

Re: Antikythera Mechanism: An ancient 'computer' that 'shouldn't exist' [video]

#226

Post by marcus_holmes »

bostik wrote: post #165
isk517 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan definitely produced some of the most beautiful looking swords, and they are extremely impressive given the quality of iron they are forged out of, but I don't think any sane person would choose one to take into battle given any other option.

Friend is a hobbyist blacksmith and he said it really well. Japan developed their hugely overdone turned-steel technique because the ore they had to work with was so bad: hammering the garbage out was the only way to get the quality of the steel itself into acceptable levels. As a result, Japanese smiths developed something very close to what we'd now call layered steel. European swordsmiths (think: Toledo) had acces…

This is my point. Constraints sometimes take us to places where we otherwise wouldn't have gone.

The world is (imho) a better place because Japan has bad iron ore. If that wasn't our reality, we would never have guessed it.

Re: Antikythera Mechanism: An ancient 'computer' that 'shouldn't exist' [video]

#227

Post by marcus_holmes »

WalterBright wrote: post #150
marcus_holmes wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan has very low quality iron ores. Yet they turned out (arguably) the best steel swords in the world. Constraints don't always lead to bad outcomes.

A sword is a tiny amount of metal compared to, say, a steam engine. Or a battleship.

Japan fielded armies of hundreds of thousands of men, all equipped with swords. I guess if you totalled the weight on metal on them, you could cobble together a battleship. But it's not really about quantity, more quality of the ore.

And the point isn't about that. The point is that the constraint (bad ore quality) forced the Japanese to get better at metalworking. Resource constraints aren't as bad as we think, because we're used to making things without those constraints. But our descendants, having always had those constraints, will find better ways of solving them than we can think of.

Re: Antikythera Mechanism: An ancient 'computer' that 'shouldn't exist' [video]

#228

Post by supperburg »

There was a point in time where Ancient Rome had plumbed, running water. And there wouldn’t running water again for 2000 years later. I think people are obsessed with technology but in reality stability counts way more than anything else.

Re: Antikythera Mechanism: An ancient 'computer' that 'shouldn't exist' [video]

#229

Post by WalterBright »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #227
WalterBright wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A sword is a tiny amount of metal compared to, say, a steam engine. Or a battleship.

Japan fielded armies of hundreds of thousands of men, all equipped with swords. I guess if you totalled the weight on metal on them, you could cobble together a battleship. But it's not really about quantity, more quality of the ore. And the point isn't about that. The point is that the constraint (bad ore quality) forced the Japanese to get better at metalworking. Resource constraints aren't as bad as we think, beca…

Hundreds of thousands? The battles I read about maybe reached tens of thousands, and who knows how many had swords.

Even in Europe, a large part of the armies were peasants with whatever comes to hand. Their resource constraint on metals wasn't the ore, but the availability of the enormous quantities of wood required to process it.

Re: Antikythera Mechanism: An ancient 'computer' that 'shouldn't exist' [video]

#230

Post by JJMcJ »

ds206 wrote: post #211
JJMcJ wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recently a group finished a stone block of the size in the Egyptian pyramids in just a few days. Another group hauled a Stonehenge sized block of stone from area the stones came from to the site of Stonehenge in about two weeks. Estimate is that, using existing tools of the time, 100 stonemasons could have done the Sphinx in about five years. And we have medieval and classical buildings in Europe where the building m…

Do you have a link or more information regarding the pyramid block formation?

Sorry, I don't. I just so it in passing and didn't book mark it.
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