2012 has only just begun, and already we have a contender for the stupidest press release of the year. A dating site has declared that it's planning on launching the "world's first intergalactic dating app".
Before we get into the meat of the release, I'm a bit hesitant as to whether I should mention the name of the company or not.
On the one hand, I know that this is a publicity attempt, and I don't want to give them the satisfaction. On the other hand, it seems only right to name and shame. As a compromise, I'll let you decide. This link goes to their site, and this is the PR agency that sent us the release. It's up to you as to whether you want to hover over, or even click, those links.
It begins with a pun. I have no complaints about that.
"Singletons should be over the moon. A British company yesterday announced plans to launch the world's first intergalactic dating app."
The world's first what?
"The smart phone application will be accessible to 'alien life forms' on planets up to one light year (six trillion miles) from Earth."
Leaving aside the question of why alien life forms is in quotation marks, I'm trying to work out how the company has managed to limit the app's use to planets within a light year's radius of Earth. Has a ring of signal jammers been installed at that distance? Is this some form of intergalactic DRM?
"Extra-terrestrials will be able to download the app, for free, and make contact with humans by a form of 'space-age' email or futuristic type of text message."
The Space Age is widely considered to have begun with the launch of Sputnik in 1957. Given that arguably the first email system was MIT's CTSS MAIL, developed in 1965, it's hard to argue that email isn't "space-age" already. In which case, why bother mentioning it in the first place? What a "futuristic type" of text message is, is anyone's guess. Maybe it's in neon.
"A two-way GPS satellite -- armed with "Nasa-inspired" technology -- will transfer the communications between Earth and the far-flung corners of our galaxy, the Milky Way, almost instantly via radio waves."
This is my favourite paragraph of all -- there are so many moments of utter WTF. Let's pick through every single one. They've mysteriously picked out a GPS satellite, which is likely to be rather too busy with the GPS system to be sending love notes to aliens. I also love that the technology is "inspired" by Nasa. Just like the rockets I built from Lego when I was eight.
Then there's the "far flung corners of the galaxy" bit -- which clashes with the aforementioned galactic DRM clause. The Milky Way is about 100,000 light years across, and we're not in the centre, making the farthest flung corner around 75,000 light years away, give or take a few thousand light years. Again, though, there's nothing stopping the radio waves travelling any further, so it's not clear why they pick out the far-flung corners of the Milky Way as a limit here.
Finally, there's the claim that radio waves mean "almost instant" transmission. While it's true that the speed of light is pretty damn quick, it doesn't really seem fair to say it's nearly instant over distances like 75,000 light years. After all, it would take a radio wave 75,000 years to travel that distance. 75,000 years ago, humanity was only just starting to make its way out of Africa and into Asia. By the time your messages get to that cute alien on the Scutum Centaurus arm, humanity could well be extinct.
"Sending messages, and even romantic declarations, into space is nothing new. Professional alien hunters have been sending text messages into space in the hope of receiving a reply from extra-terrestrials for years."
Every message that you have ever sent over a wireless electromagnetic medium (mobile phone, SMS, email, or plain ol' radio or television) has gone into space. Most of them won't have made it much further than a few tens of light years away, because wireless communications haven't been with the mass market for that long, but that still reaches more than 50 other solar systems.
"But according to dating website [redacted], its new app will open up the possibility of communicating with alien life forms to 'normal, broadminded people' - rather than just the scientific community."
I particularly love the implication here that the scientific community aren't "normal, broadminded people".
"In a statement the American firm, which has offices in London, admits the as yet un-named app is still in its 'conceptual infancy' and that it could take up to five years before it becomes available."
Leaving aside the question of why someone couldn't come up with a name for this thing, the big story here is that within five years, a dating site is not only going to make first contact with an alien species, but also work out how to flirt with them.
"It fails, however, to mention the two obvious pitfalls - that aliens will need a smart phone or computer to download the app, and that the journey to meet the little green man of our dreams could take up to 100 years."
The question of how fast we can go in space isn't an easy one, because there's not much air resistance in space, so you have to look at acceleration instead. The fastest outward-bound spacecraft yet sent, Voyager 1, has covered 1/600th of a light-year in 30 years and is currently moving at 1/18,000th the speed of light. At this rate, a journey to Proxima Centauri -- the nearest other solar system to us -- would take 72,000 years.
From that, you might be thinking that you won't meet your little green man unless he lives in our solar system. But you're forgetting about time dilation. The closer you get to the speed of light, the slower time appears to pass to you, so you won't age as quickly. If we can build a powerful-enough ship, and it doesn't crash into anything, then it's possible to get to anywhere in the galaxy within a human lifespan. You won't be able to come back for him to meet your parents, though -- if you returned to Earth, you'd find that thousands of years had elapsed.
"A spokesman said: 'The intergalactic dating application will be a first in many ways. It will give normal, broadminded people the opportunity to communicate with other life forms, and could open the doors to true universal dating.'
"In 2008, the social networking site Bebo arranged to have more than 500 images and text messages transmitted into deep space. The signal was aimed at a planet known as Gliese 581C, which was selected because scientists believe it is capable of supporting life. The messages sent included one from Radio One DJ Scott Mills."
The idea that an alien's first human contact might be with Scott Mills is a terrifying one.
"A spokesman for [redacted] said the new app would, 'theoretically', be available to life forms on planets even further away from Earth. Possible locations include Jupiter's moon Europa - which, according to a study, could support complex life - and Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons."
While it's true that the app would technically be available to aliens on planets throughout the Universe (that aforementioned DRM notwithstanding), it's depressing that this dating site reckons that Jupiter and Saturn's moons are further away from Earth than Gliese 581C.
There's also the conflation of "complex life" with "a creature you'd actually want to sleep with". While it's possible that the former lies under the ice of Europa or Enceladus, the prospect of the latter being down there is minute. At best, it would be a soggy experience.
"It is unclear who will fund the app -- a satellite alone costs tens of millions of pounds -- or whether the 'dream' will become a reality. But the spokesman confirmed it has hired a team of experts to begin the 'research and exploratory phase of the mission'."
Leaving aside the ethics of press releasing a "dream", I would like to know the name, qualifications and work history of every single member of the team of experts that have been hired to do this. And why the company didn't talk to any of them before writing this press release. And how they've managed to dispense of their sense of shame.
"He added: 'There are tens of thousands of single people who have scoured the Earth looking for love but have been unsuccessful in their quest. This is their chance to boldly go where no one has gone before -- to literally look to the stars for love.'"
All joking aside, I totally get why this dating site has written this catastrophe of a press release. It's supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, and no product will ever be released. It's just a vehicle for -- they hope -- a few bits of press coverage.
I don't mind silly press releases, but spouting nonsense as fact just isn't on. Most of this stuff is covered in GCSE Physics, and it's definitely all available with a quick Google search. Either way, it sets the awful-press-release bar extremely high for the rest of the year. Here's hoping something arrives later in the year that can beat it.
The White House has responded to two petitions asking the US government to formally acknowledge that aliens have visited Earth and to disclose to any intentional withholding of government interactions with extraterrestrial beings. “The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race,” said Phil Larson from the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy, on the WhiteHouse.gov website. “In addition, there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public’s eye.”Environment Clean Generations
5,387 people had signed the petition for immediately disclosing the government’s knowledge of and communications with extraterrestrial beings, and 12,078 signed the request for a formal acknowledgement from the White House that extraterrestrials have been engaging the human race.
“Hundreds of military and government agency witnesses have come forward with testimony confirming this extraterrestrial presence,” the second petition states. “Opinion polls now indicate more than 50% of the American people believe there is an extraterrestrial presence and more than 80% believe the government is not telling the truth about this phenomenon. The people have a right to know. The people can handle the truth.”
These petitions come from an Obama Administration initiative called ‘We the People’ which has White House staffers respond and consider taking action on any issue that receives at least 25,000 online signatures. Regarding these two petitions, the White House promised to respond if the petitions got 17,000 or more signatures by Oct. 22.
Larson stressed that the facts show that there is no credible evidence of extraterrestrial presence here on Earth. He pointed out that even though many scientists have come to the conclusion that the odds of life somewhere else in the Universe are fairly high, the chance that any of them are making contact with humans are extremely small, given the distances involved.
But that doesn’t mean we aren’t searching, there is just no evidence yet.Environment Clean Generations Larson mentioned SETI (correctly noting that this at first was a NASA effort, but is now funded privately) keeping an “ear” out for signals from any intelligent extraterrestrials, with none found so far. He also added that the Kepler spacecraft is searching for Earth-like planets in the habitable zones around other stars, and that the Curiosity rover will launch to Mars this month to “assess what the Martian environment was like in the past to see if it could have harbored life.”
Regarding any evidence for alien life, all anyone has now is “statistics and speculation,” said Larson. “The fact is we have no credible evidence of extraterrestrial presence here on Earth.”
Whether or not this will appease or satisfy any conspiracy theorists or UFO believers is yet to be seen, but it is gratifying to see the White House respond in such a no-nonsense manner.
UPDATE: The Paradigm Research Group, one of the organizations sponsoring the petitions, has issued a statement saying, “As expected it was written by a low level staffer from the Office of Science and Technology Policy – research assistant Phil Larson. The response was unacceptable.”
The United Nations is set to appoint the head of its Office of Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) as the first official responsible for representing humanity in the case of contact with extraterrestrial life. At an upcoming Royal Society (of London) conference scheduled from October 4-5, Dr Mazlan Othman will explain how the UN plans to implement changes that will result in her being given responsibility as part of her current position as the director of UNOOSA. Othman says the need for such a responsibility is due to the discovery of exoplanets that makes it more likely than ever that humanity will eventually discover extraterrestrial life. She has said that the UN is now actively planning a coordinated response for ‘First Contact’ .
Othman is a respected figure in the astrophysics and Outer Space Affairs community. She was the first female to graduate with a Ph.D in astrophysics from the University of Otago New Zealand (1981) and became Malaysia’s first astrophysicist. She was nominated by Kofi Annan to head UNOOSA from 1999 to 2002, before being summoned back to Malaysia to head the Malaysian National Space Agency from 2002-2007. She was responsible for the training and flight of Malaysia’s first astronaut Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, and was re-appointed head of UNOOSA by the current UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, in 2007. As far as Othman’s scientific expertise is concerned, Professor Richard Crowther, a space law expert at the United Kingdom’s space agency said: “Othman is absolutely the nearest thing we have to a ‘take me to your leader’ person”.
In a recent talk Othman said:
The continued search for extraterrestrial communication, by several entities, sustains the hope that some day human kind will receive signals from extraterrestrials. When we do, we should have in place a coordinated response that takes into account all the sensitivities related to the subject. The UN is a ready-made mechanism for such coordination.
At the October 4-5 Royal Society conference, Othman will go into detail in the process the UN plans to undertake to appoint her as humanity’s first representative for First Contact. The Conference is titled “Towards a scientific and societal agenda on extra-terrestrial life,” and its webpage explains the need for political processes to accommodate scientific study of extraterrestrial life:
Even more than the scientific agenda, a corresponding complementary societal agenda needs to be debated. With a mix of invited talks and panel debates, we particularly look into the detection of life, the communication with potential extra-terrestrial civilizations, the implications for the future of humanity, and the political processes that are required.”
Othman will present at a panel discussion titled: “Extra-terrestrial life and arising political issues for the UN agenda.”
Othman’s position shows that the United Nations is closely monitoring scientific developments concerning the discovery of exoplanets and the growing likelihood that life can be found throughout the universe. Recently, renowned astrophysicist, Stephen Hawking caused a furor when he said that extraterrestrial life is almost certain to exist, but we should be careful since they are likely to be predatory in nature. Hawking’s exopolitical speculations has stimulated wide ranging debate over the motivations of advanced extraterrestrial life. As a member of the Royal Society, Hawking’s views very likely played a role in influencing the agenda of the upcoming Royal Society conference.
The upcoming UN announcement of a First Contact official comes at a convenient time for a grass roots effort to get the City of Denver to pass an Ordinance, Initiative 300, that will create an Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission. Initiative 300 is on the ballot for the November mid-term elections and deals with some of the same “First Contact” issues that Othman will be given responsibility for at the UN. For example, the proposed Ordinance asks:
Shall the voters for the City and County of Denver adopt an Initiated Ordinance to require the creation of an extraterrestrial affairs commission to help ensure the health, safety, and cultural awareness of Denver residents and visitors in relation to potential encounters or interactions with extraterrestrial intelligent beings or their vehicles, and fund such commission from grants, gifts and donations?
It will certainly be difficult to dismiss the importance of Denver’s proposed Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission if the UN moves forward with its plans to appoint Othman as the official responsible for First Contact, and the Royal Society endorses political processes to deal with the detection of extraterrestrial life.
The upcoming appointment of a UN official to be in charge of a future First Contact scenario is a welcome step forward in legitimating discussion about the social and political implications of extraterrestrial life. Such a political discussion – popularly known as exopolitics – is the explicit focus of the upcoming Royal Society Conference. Uthman’s upcoming responsibility makes it more important than ever that the academic/scientific community discusses the social and political implications of the discovery of extraterrestrial life, and the growing likelihood of First Contact.
Curious about just how astrobiologists plan to make good on their goal to find life in space in the next 20 years?
The first will take place later this year, when Russian scientists will tap Earth’s final frontier, the subglacial Antarctic lakes. Any life they find under 2.5 miles of ice in the ancient isolated waters of Lake Vostok won’t technically be extraterrestrial, of course, but it could be new and bizarre – and akin to what’s possibly living in the suspected subsurface oceans on Europa, an ice-covered moon of Jupiter.
Martians could also be on the horizon. With all the attention the Red Planet gets, it should come as no surprise that NASA’s next big flagship mission is headed there. Later this decade the agency will begin a long-term project to bring Mars rocks back to Earth. Many think the Mars Sample Return mission could be the one that finally finds ET (even if it is a long-dead microbe, not a little green man).
If we don’t find aliens in our own backyard, they could be lurking in other solar systems. As soon as next decade, a Terrestrial Planet Finder mission -- something like the New World’s Observer telescope and starshade in our gallery -- will look for signs of life in the atmospheres of extrasolar planets around other stars.
Here on the ground, the Allen Telescope Array, the first instrument completely devoted to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), could analyze enough star systems to come across alien radio transmissions in the next two decades – if the SETI Institute’s new crowd-sourced funding campaign pulls through. Read more about how and when we’ll find life (and what it could look like) in our online-only interview with Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the Institute.
And, just for fun, we’ve also included a round-up of some of our favorite close encounters with “aliens,” including a 1966 UFO chase in Ohio and (possible) microbes on a meteorite announced earlier this year. Happy hunting!
Drilling For Extreme Life
For the past 20 million years, Lake Vostok has been sealed beneath the Antarctic ice sheet. This winter, after nearly 22 years of work, Russian researchers will use mechanical and thermal drills to punch through the final 100 feet before liquid water. Microbes found in Vostok could inform the search for life on the Jovian ice moon Europa, for which a mission could launch in the next decade, and other moons in our solar system thought to contain bodies of liquid water, such as Enceladus and Ganymede.
Drilling For Extreme Life: How It Works
THE SITE
Vostok Station once recorded the lowest temperature on Earth: –128ºF. Fortunately for researchers, average temperatures in the austral summer hover around –33º.The Russian team will commence drilling in December. Once scientists reach liquid water, they will allow water to rise up the borehole and freeze over the winter. They will return to Vostok Station in December 2012 to test the core for life.
THE DRILL
A thermal drill tethered to a power cable from the surface will penetrate the final 30 feet of ice. When the drill approaches the water surface, pressure and water sensors will trigger an expandable borehole packer to seal off the channel, preventing drilling fluid from contaminating the lake and allowing scientists to control how quickly the water will rise.
THE LAKE
Lake Vostok, one of the world’s largest lakes by volume, contains more than 1,000 cubic miles of water. At its farthest depths, some 14,000 feet below the surface, pressure reaches up to 438 atmospheres. If drilled improperly, the pressurized water could race up the borehole, causing an explosion powerful enough to destroy Vostok Station.
Bringing Mars Home
To determine whether life lives or has lived on Mars, scientists will most likely need to bring a sample of the planet back to Earth. The threestage NASA-ESA Mars Sample Return mission, scheduled to run from 2018 to 2027, will involve rovers, a launcher, and an orbiter equipped with an Earth Entry Vehicle (EEV) that will carry the rocks to Earth for testing.
PHASE ONE, 2019-2021: COLLECT AND CACHE
Following launch in 2018, a rover will arrive on Mars in January 2019 and will spend nearly two years collecting rocks with a rotary coring drill. After placing as many as 40 cores in a three-inch-wide cylindrical cache, the mobile ’bot will return to its landing site and place the container on the ground.
PHASE TWO, 2025-2026: FETCH AND LAUNCH
A lander carrying the fetch rover and Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) will touch down on Mars in September 2025. Over the next three months, the rover will retrieve the cache—up to a nine-mile round-trip journey—and package the rocks in an 11-pound Orbiting Sample (OS) sphere stored inside the MAV. By the following May, the MAV rocket will launch and release the OS into orbit.
PHASE THREE, 2026-2027: RENDEZVOUS AND RETURN
An orbiter will arrive at Mars in the summer of 2023. The craft will use optical and radio-frequency tracking systems to monitor the OS launch and will rendezvous with the samples in around May 2026. The orbiter will capture the OS in a basket and transfer it to the onboard eeV—a three-foot-wide, impact-resistant, heat-shielded craft—before setting out for Earth. On descent to Earth in late 2027, the EEV will decouple from the orbiter and crash-land on the planet. The quarantined samples would then be safely recovered.
Spotting Distant Life
To view life on other worlds, scientists will need to use a space-based telescope to scan for biosignatures in an exoplanet’s atmosphere while blocking out starlight that could skew results. The New Worlds Observer, a design developed at the University of Colorado, pairs an ultraviolet-optical-infrared telescope with an external starshade.
THE STARSHADE
The 160-foot-wide starshade moves independently to position itself between the telescope and the star. Its 16 “petals” diffract light away from the center of the shadow it casts onto the observatory.
THE TELESCOPE
The observatory’s 13-foot aperture will collect enough ultraviolet and infrared light reflecting off the planet to distinguish it from interplanetary dust. Future telescope designs will also probably incorporate an internal coronagraph, a device on the instrument that will blot out starlight that slips past the shade.
Searching For New Earths
In 1995 a Swiss team scanning the Milky Way discovered 51 Pegasi b, the first known exoplanet orbiting a sunlike star. Since then, scientists using ground-based and space telescopes have found more than 500 exoplanets in the galaxy. Currently only one, Gliese 581 d is considered a potential Earth analogue—it may even have oceans—but the number will grow. Kepler, a photometric telescope that points toward the constellations Cygnus and Lyra, could find as many as 3,000 new worlds by the end of the decade.
Do Good, Find Aliens
In April, after the National Science Foundation and the state of California cut funding for radio astronomy, the Allen Telescope Array (ATA) at Hat Creek Radio Observatory, the SETI Institute’s primary listening post, went dark for the first time in nearly four years. The ATA scans deep space for alien radio signals, which some scientists say could be our best chance of finding intelligent life.
To replace the estimated $5 million it will cost to get the ATA back online full time for two years, SETI introduced a new program called SETIStars in June. For $15, donors can sponsor three-minute blocks of telescope data. In March, SETI launched the beta version of another program, a citizen-science application called setiQuest Explorer. Amateur alien hunters will be able to analyze radio-telescope data for signs of contact on their computers, tablet or mobile phone. The institute’s public outreach is paying off. By August, SETIStars had generated more than $200,000, enough to turn the ATA back on, at least for a little while.
Earlier this year, Annie Jacobsen's book Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base drew groans from skeptics and believers alike, who derided her claim that the infamous 1947 Roswell crash was really a spy plane sent by Josef Stalin, and piloted by “alien-like children” created by Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, intended to create a mass panic about an alien invasion.
The story was based entirely on one anonymous source without a shred of supporting evidence, which is not unheard of among UFO reports. UFO enthusiasts who like some documentation with their speculation might prefer journalist Leslie Kean's recent book, UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record.
Kean's book topped The New York Times best-seller list -- an unusual achievement for a nonfiction book about extraterrestrials. Part of the reason the book has done so well, Kean told Discovery News, is that “I'm trying to be very straightforward as a journalist, laying out what we know based on the official records. Also, many of the chapters were written by other people [including generals and former Arizona governor Fife Symington], and [former White House chief of staff] John Podesta wrote the foreword. ... They're not just taking my word for it; the reader gets to actually read what these authorities have to say in their own words.”
There are many cases in the book -- from a UFO sighted over Chicago's O’Hare Airport in 2006 to reports from Brazil and Iran -- but one famous UFO incident was solved shortly after the book came out.
The Belgian Ufo photo it's a famous photo taken April 4, 1990, by a man known only as “Patrick” in the Belgian town of Petit-Rechain. Patrick and a female friend noticed a strange aircraft with four lights hovering in the sky above her home. He took a photo that has been called “one of the most convincing” pieces of evidence for the existence of UFOs.
According to one of Kean's contributors, Maj. Gen. Wilfried de Brouwer of the Belgian air force, a distinguished team of experts analyzed the photograph: “A team under the direction of Professor Marc Acheroy discovered that a triangular shape became visible when overexposing the slide. After that, the original color slide was further analyzed by Francois Louange, specialist in satellite imagery with the French national space research center, CNES; Dr. Richard Haines, former senior scientist with NASA; and finally Professor Andre Marion, doctor in nuclear physics and professor at the University of Paris-Sud and also with the CNES.”
The team came to various conclusions, including that there was no indication of tampering with the slide, and that the lights were positioned symmetrically on the craft. A 2002 reanalysis “using more sophisticated technology confirmed the earlier findings and concluded that ‘the picture was not faked. The experts noted especially that the unique characteristics of the lights are very specific and said such an effect would not occur if the picture was a hoax.’”
In fact, the photographer confessed on July 26, 2011, that he had indeed hoaxed the photograph. The image, which was (twice) deemed authentic by the panel of distinguished scientists and experts, was really of a small piece of triangular Styrofoam spray-painted black with lights attached. The skeptics had been right all along.
Kean acknowledged that the hoaxing posed a serious problem: “If the guy says it was a hoax, we pretty much have to assume it was. We know that he’s a liar. He either lied the first time, or he's lying now. I'm going to have to assume that he’s telling the truth now, even though there’s some questions about it.” Belgian UFO expert Patrick Ferryn, who appeared in the History Channel show "Secret Access: UFOs on the Record," which was based on Kean’s book, has also concluded that the photo was faked.
The fact that a UFO photo turned out to be a hoax is nothing new; many have been proven fake. But it raises serious questions about the scientific analysis involved. How could these distinguished Ph.D. experts with decades of experience have been convinced by a piece of painted Styrofoam? And what does that say about other famous UFO photos that have also been “authenticated” by these and other experts?
Kean agrees: “It's a disturbing development, and it shows how hard it is to authenticate a photograph. At the time the book was put together, everyone was relying on what we knew from the labs. As a reporter I'm going to take that information seriously, and de Brouwer certainly took it very seriously, and now the guy comes out [confessing the hoax], so we’re stuck with a serious problem that's still being investigated.” Kean noted, however, that the faked photo is only part of a larger so-called Belgian Wave of UFO sightings that occurred around the same time, and the hoax “doesn’t discount all the sightings that took place.”
The Mysterious 5 Percent
Kean first got interested in UFOs back in 1999, when she received a copy of a French report summarizing two years of UFO evidence analysis. The report, which was not an official government document but included data from more than a dozen retired generals, scientists and space experts, concluded that about 95 percent of UFO reports likely have mundane, prosaic explanations. Yet that remaining elusive 5 percent “cannot be easily attributed to earthly sources” and might be extraterrestrial in origin.
Despite the reluctance of many UFO eyewitnesses and officials to come forward, Kean felt no apprehension about researching the book. “A lot of people talk about being threatened, and the CIA tapping their phones and all that. I think a lot of that stuff is exaggerated among people in the UFO community,” Kean says. Besides, she notes, she's hardly revealing classified information: “I'm really only reporting on information that’s out there; I'm reporting on official information. Anybody can look at the documents and the data. ... None of this is top secret information that would be any threat to anybody.”
The crystal skulls are a number of human skull hardstone carvings made of clear or milky quartz rock, known in art history as "rock crystal", claimed to be pre-Columbian Mesoamerican artifacts by their alleged finders. However, none of the specimens made available for scientific study have been authenticated as pre-Columbian in origin. The results of these studies demonstrated that those examined were manufactured in the mid-19th century or later, almost certainly in Europe. Despite some claims presented in an assortment of popularizing literature, legends of crystal skulls with mystical powers do not figure in genuine Mesoamerican or other Native American mythologies and spiritual accounts.
The skulls are often claimed to exhibit paranormal phenomena by some members of the New Age movement, and have often been portrayed as such in fiction. Crystal skulls have been a popular subject appearing in numerous sci-fi television series,novels,and video games.
Crystal skull collections:
A distinction has been made by some modern researchers between the smaller bead-sized crystal skulls, which first appear in the mid-19th century, and the larger (approximately life-sized) skulls that appear toward the end of that century.The larger crystal skulls have attracted nearly all the popular attention in recent times, and some researchers believe that all of these have been manufactured as forgeries in Europe.
Trade in fake pre-Columbian artifacts developed during the late 19th century to the extent that in 1886, Smithsonian archaeologist William Henry Holmes wrote an article called "The Trade in Spurious Mexican Antiquities" for Science. Although museums had acquired skulls earlier, it was Eugène Boban, an antiquities dealer who opened his shop in Paris in 1870, who is most associated with 19th-century museum collections of crystal skulls. Most of Boban's collection, including three crystal skulls, was sold to the ethnographer Alphonse Pinart, who donated the collection to the Trocadéro Museum, which later became the Musée de l'Homme
Research into crystal skull origins:
Many crystal skulls are claimed to be pre-Columbian, usually attributed to the Aztec or Maya civilizations. Mesoamerican art has numerous representations of skulls, but none of the skulls in museum collections come from documented excavations. Research carried out on several crystal skulls at the British Museum in 1967, 1996 and again in 2004 has shown that the indented lines marking the teeth (for these skulls had no separate jawbone, unlike the Mitchell-Hedges skull) were carved using jeweler's equipment (rotary tools) developed in the 19th century, making a supposed pre-Columbian origin problematic.
The type of crystal was determined by examination of chlorite inclusions, and is only to be found in Madagascar and Brazil, and thus unobtainable or unknown within pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. The study concluded that the skulls were crafted in the 19th century in Germany, quite likely at workshops in the town of Idar-Oberstein renowned for crafting objects made from imported Brazilian quartz at this period in the late 19th century.
It has been established that both the British Museum and Paris's Musée de l'Homme crystal skulls were originally sold by the French antiquities dealer Eugène Boban, who was operating in Mexico City between 1860 and 1880. The British Museum crystal skull transited through New York's Tiffany's, whilst the Musée de l'Homme's crystal skull was donated by Alphonse Pinart, an ethnographer who had bought it from Boban.
An investigation carried out by the Smithsonian Institution in 1992 on a crystal skull provided by an anonymous source who claimed to have purchased it in Mexico City in 1960 and that it was of Aztec origin concluded that it, too, was made in recent years. According to the Smithsonian, Boban acquired the crystal skulls he sold from sources in Germany – findings that are in keeping with those of the British Museum.
A detailed study of the British Museum and Smithsonian crystal skulls was accepted for publication by the Journal of Archaeological Science in May 2008. Using electron microscopy and X-ray crystallography, a team of British and American researchers found that the British Museum skull was worked with a harsh abrasive substance such as corundum or diamond, and shaped using a rotary disc tool made from some suitable metal.
The Smithsonian specimen had been worked with a different abrasive, namely the silicon-carbon compound carborundum which is a synthetic substance manufactured using modern industrial techniques.Since the synthesis of carborundum dates only to the 1890s and its wider availability to the 20th century, the researchers concluded "he suggestion is that it was made in the 1950s or later".
Speculations on smaller skulls:
None of the skulls in museums come from documented excavations. A parallel example is provided by obsidian mirrors, ritual objects widely depicted in Aztec art. Although a few surviving obsidian mirrors come from archaeological excavations, none of the Aztec-style obsidian mirrors are so documented. Yet most authorities on Aztec material culture consider the Aztec-style obsidian mirrors as authentic pre-Columbian objects.
Archaeologist Michael E. Smith reports a non peer-reviewed find of a small crystal skull at an Aztec site in the Valley of Mexico.Crystal skulls have been described as "A fascinating example of artifacts that have made their way into museums with no scientific evidence to prove their rumored pre-Columbian origins." A similar case is the "Olmec-style" face mask in jade; hardstone carvings of a face in a mask form. Curators and scholars refer to these as "Olmec-style", as to date no example has been recovered in an archaeologically controlled Olmec context, although they appear Olmec in style.
However they have been recovered from sites of other cultures, including one deliberately deposited in the ceremonial precinct of Tenochtitlan (Mexico City), which would presumably have been about 2,000 years old when the Aztecs buried it, suggesting these were as valued and collected as Roman antiquities were in Europe.
Perhaps the most famous and enigmatic skull was allegedly discovered in 1924 by Anna Le Guillon Mitchell-Hedges, adopted daughter of British adventurer and popularist author F.A. Mitchell-Hedges. It is the subject of a video documentary made in 1990, Crystal Skull of Lubaantun. It has been noted upon examination by Smithsonian researchers to be "very nearly a replica of the British Museum skull--almost exactly the same shape, but with more detailed modeling of the eyes and the teeth." Anna Hedges claimed that she found the skull buried under a collapsed altar inside a temple in Lubaantun, in British Honduras, now Belize. As far as can be ascertained, F.A. Mitchell-Hedges himself made no mention of the alleged discovery in any of his writings on Lubaantun. Also, others present at the time of the excavation have not been documented as noting either the skull's discovery or Anna's presence at the dig.
In a 1970 letter, Anna also stated that she was, "told by the few remaining Maya that the skull was used by the high priest to will death."For this reason, the artifact is sometimes referred to as "The Skull of Doom". An alternative explanation[who?] is a play on 'Skull of Dunn' (Dunn being an associate of Mitchell-Hedges)[citation needed]. Anna Mitchell-Hedges toured with the skull from 1967 exhibiting it on a pay-per-view basis, and she continued to give interviews about the artifact until her death in 2007.
The skull is made from a block of clear quartz about the size of a small human cranium, measuring some 5 inches (13 cm) high, 7 inches (18 cm) long and 5 inches wide. The lower jaw is detached. In the early 1970s it came under the temporary care of freelance art restorer Frank Dorland, who claimed upon inspecting it that it had been "carved" with total disregard to the natural crystal axes without the use of metal tools.
Dorland reported being unable to find any tell-tale scratch marks, except for traces of mechanical grinding on the teeth, and he speculated that it was first chiseled into rough form, probably using diamonds, and the finer shaping, grinding and polishing was achieved through the use of sand over a period of 150 to 300 years. He said it could be up to 12,000 years old. Although various claims have been made over the years regarding the skull's physical properties, such as an allegedly constant temperature of 70 °F (21 °C), Dorland reported that there was no difference in properties between it and other natural quartz crystals.
While in Dorland's care the skull came to the attention of writer Richard Garvin, at the time working at an advertising agency where he supervised Hewlett-Packard's advertising account. Garvin made arrangements for the skull to be examined at HP's crystal labs at Santa Clara, where it was subjected to several tests. The labs determined only that it was not a composite (as Dorland had supposed), but that it was fashioned from a single crystal of quartz. The lab test also established that the lower jaw had been fashioned from the same left-handed growing crystal as the rest of the skull. No investigation was made by HP as to its method of manufacture or dating.
As well as the traces of mechanical grinding on the teeth noted by Dorland, Mayanist archaeologist Norman Hammond reported that the holes (presumed to be intended for support pegs) showed signs of being made by drilling with metal. Anna Mitchell-Hedges refused subsequent requests to submit the skull for further scientific testing.
F. A. Mitchell-Hedges mentioned the skull only briefly in the first edition of his autobiography, Danger My Ally (1954), without specifying where or by whom it was found.He merely claimed that "it is at least 3,600 years old and according to legend it was used by the High Priest of the Maya when he was performing esoteric rites. It is said that when he willed death with the help of the skull, death invariably followed". All subsequent editions of Danger My Ally omitted mention of the skull entirely.
Eugène Boban, main French dealer in pre-Columbian artifacts during the second half of the 19th century and probable source of many famous skullsThe earliest published reference to the skull is the July 1936 issue of the British anthropological journal Man, where it is described as being in the possession of Mr. Sydney Burney, a London art dealer who is said to have owned it since 1933. No mention was made of Mitchell-Hedges. There is documentary evidence that Mitchell-Hedges bought it from Burney in 1944. The skull was in the custody of Anna Mitchell-Hedges, the adopted daughter of Frederick. She steadfastly refused to let it be examined by experts (making very doubtful the claim that it was reported on by R. Stansmore Nutting in 1962). Somewhere between 1988–1990 Anna Mitchell-Hedges toured with the skull.
In her last eight years, Anna Mitchell-Hedges lived in Chesterton, Indiana, with Bill Homann, whom she married in 2002. She died on April 11, 2007. Since that time the Mitchell-Hedges Skull has been in the custody of Bill Homann. In April 2009, Five, a UK television channel, took the story and revealed that the Mitchell-Hedges Skull, recently tested under a special microscope in the Smithsonian Institution, had been manufactured with tools that Aztecs and Mayans simply did not have. Like the other skulls, this one is a fabrication dating from the second half of the 19th century. Bill Homann however continues to believe in its mystical properties.
British Museum skull: The crystal skull of the British Museum first appeared in 1881, in the shop of the Paris antiquarian, Eugène Boban. Its origin was not stated in his catalog of the time. He is said to have tried to sell it to Mexico's national museum as an Aztec artifact, but was unsuccessful. Boban later moved his business to New York City, where the skull was sold to George H. Sisson. It was exhibited at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in New York City in 1887 by George F. Kunz.[38] It was sold at auction, and bought by Tiffany and Co., who later sold it at cost to the British Museum in 1897.[39] This skull is very similar to the Mitchell-Hedges skull, although it is less detailed and does not have a movable lower jaw.
The British Museum catalogues the skull's provenance as "probably European, 19th century AD"and describes it as "not an authentic pre-Columbian artefact". It has been established that this skull was made with modern tools, and that it is not authentic.
Paris skull:The largest of the three skulls sold by Eugène Boban to Alphonse Pinart (sometimes called the Paris Skull), about 10 cm (4 in) high, has a hole drilled vertically through its center.It is part of a collection held at the Musée du Quai Branly, and was subjected to scientific tests carried out in 2007–08 by France's national Centre de recherche et de restauration des musées de France (Centre for Research and Restoration of the Museums in France, or C2RMF). After a series of analyses carried out over three months, C2RMF engineers concluded that it was "certainly not pre-Columbian, it shows traces of polishing and abrasion by modern tools."Particle accelerator tests also revealed occluded traces of water that were dated to the 19th century, and the Quai Branly released a statement that the tests "seem to indicate that it was made late in the 19th century."
In 2009 the C2RMF researchers published results of further investigations to establish when the Paris skull had been carved. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis indicated the use of lapidary machine tools in its carving. The results of a new dating technique known as quartz hydration dating (QHD) demonstrated that the Paris skull had been carved later than a reference quartz specimen artifact, known to have been cut in 1740. The researchers conclude that the SEM and QHD results combined with the skull's known provenance indicate it was carved in the 18th or 19th century.
Smithsonian Skull:The "Smithsonian Skull" was mailed to the Smithsonian Institution anonymously in 1992, and was claimed to be an Aztec object by its donor and was purportedly from the collection of Porfirio Diaz. It is the largest of the skulls, weighing 31 pounds and is 15 inches high. It was carved using carborundum, a modern abrasive. It has been displayed as a fake at the National Museum of Natural History.
Paranormal claims and spiritual associations
Some believers in the paranormal claim that crystal skulls can produce a variety of miracles. Ann Mitchell-Hedges claimed that the skull she allegedly discovered could cause visions, cure cancer, that she once used its magical properties to kill a man, and that in another instance, she saw in it a premonition of the John F. Kennedy assassination. In the 1931 play The Satin Slipper, by Paul Claudel, King Philip II of Spain uses "a death's head made from a single piece of rock crystal," lit by "a ray of the setting sun," to see the defeat of his Armada in its attack on England (day 4, scene 4, pp. 243–44).
Claims of the healing and supernatural powers of crystal skulls have no support in the scientific community, which has found no evidence of any unusual phenomena associated with the skulls nor any reason for further investigation, other than the confirmation of their provenance and method of manufacture.
Another novel and historically unfounded speculation ties in the legend of the crystal skulls with the completion of the current Maya calendar b'ak'tun-cycle on December 21, 2012, claiming the re-uniting of the thirteen mystical skulls will forestall a catastrophe allegedly predicted or implied by the ending of this calendar. An airing of this claim appeared (among an assortment of others made) in The Mystery of the Crystal Skulls, a 2008 program produced for the Sci Fi Channel in May and shown on Discovery Channel Canada in June. Interviewees included Richard Hoagland, who attempted to link the skulls and the Maya to life on Mars, and David Hatcher Childress, proponent of lost Atlantean civilizations and anti-gravity claims.
Crystal skulls are also referenced by author Drunvalo Melchizedek in his book Serpent of Light.He writes that he came across indigenous Mayan descendants in possession of crystal skulls at ceremonies at temples in the Yucatán, which he writes contained souls of ancient Mayans who had entered the skulls to await the time when their ancient knowledge would once again be required.
The alleged associations and origins of crystal skull mythology in Native American spiritual lore, as advanced by neoshamanic writers such as Jamie Sams, are similarly discounted. Instead, as Philip Jenkins notes, crystal skull mythology may be traced back to the "baroque legends" initially spread by F.A. Mitchell-Hedges, and then afterwards taken up:
By the 1970s, the crystal skulls [had] entered New Age mythology as potent relics of ancient Atlantis, and they even acquired a canonical number: there were exactly thirteen skulls.
None of this would have anything to do with North American Indian matters, if the skulls had not attracted the attention of some of the most active New Age writers.
The Antikythera mechanism (pronounced /ˌæntɨkɨˈθɪərə/ ANT-i-ki-THEER-ə or pronounced /ˌæntɨˈkɪθərə/ ANT-i-KITH-ə-rə) is an ancient mechanical computer designed to calculate astronomical positions. It was recovered in 1900–01 from the Antikythera wreck.Its significance and complexity were not understood until decades later. Its time of construction is now estimated between 150 and 100 BCE. The degree of mechanical sophistication is comparable to a 19th century Swiss clock. Technological artifacts of similar complexity and workmanship did not reappear until the 14th century, when mechanical astronomical clocks were built in Europe.
acques-Yves Cousteau visited the wreck for the last time in 1978, but found no additional remains of the Antikythera mechanism. Professor Michael Edmunds of Cardiff University who led the most recent study of the mechanism said: "This device is just extraordinary, the only thing of its kind. The design is beautiful, the astronomy is exactly right. The way the mechanics are designed just makes your jaw drop. Whoever has done this has done it extremely carefully ... in terms of historic and scarcity value, I have to regard this mechanism as being more valuable than the Mona Lisa."
The device is displayed at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, accompanied by a reconstruction made and donated to the museum by Derek de Solla Price. Other reconstructions are on display at the American Computer Museum in Bozeman, Montana, the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, the Children's Museum of Manhattan in New York, and in Kassel, Germany.
The mechanism is the oldest known complex scientific calculator. It contains many gears, and is sometimes called the first known analog computer,although its flawless manufacturing suggests that it may have had a number of undiscovered predecessors during the Hellenistic Period. It appears to be constructed upon theories of astronomy and mathematics developed by Greek astronomers and it is estimated that it was made around 150-100 BCE.
Consensus among scholars is that the mechanism itself was made in the Greek-speaking world. All the instructions of the mechanism are written in Koine Greek.One hypothesis is that the device was constructed at an academy founded by the ancient Stoic philosopher Posidonius on the Greek island of Rhodes, which at the time was known as a center of astronomy and mechanical engineering, and that perhaps the astronomer Hipparchus was the engineer who designed it since it contains a lunar mechanism which uses Hipparchus's theory for the motion of the Moon. However, the most recent findings of The Antikythera Mechanism Research Project, as published in the July 30, 2008, edition of Nature alternatively suggest that the concept for the mechanism originated in the colonies of Corinth, which might imply a connection with Archimedes.
The circumstances under which it came to be on the cargo ship are unknown. Investigators have suggested that the ship could have been carrying it to Rome, together with other treasure looted from the island to support a triumphal parade being staged by Julius Caesar.
Function:
The device is remarkable for the level of miniaturization and for the complexity of its parts, which is comparable to that of 19th century clocks. It has over 30 gears, although Michael Wright (see below) has suggested as many as 72 gears, with teeth formed through equilateral triangles. When a date was entered via a crank (now lost), the mechanism calculated the position of the Sun, Moon, or other astronomical information such as the location of other planets. Since the purpose was to position astronomical bodies with respect to the celestial sphere, with reference to the observer's position on the surface of the Earth, the device was based on the geocentric model.
The mechanism has three main dials, one on the front, and two on the back. The front dial has two concentric scales. The outer ring is marked off with the days of the 365-day Egyptian calendar, or the Sothic year, based on the Sothic cycle. Inside this, there is a second dial marked with the Greek signs of the Zodiac and divided into degrees. The calendar dial can be moved to compensate for the effect of the extra quarter day in the solar year (there are 365.2422 days per year) by turning the scale backwards one day every four years. Note that the Julian calendar, the first calendar of the region to contain leap years, was not introduced until about 46 BCE, up to a century after the device was said to have been built.
The front dial probably carried at least three hands, one showing the date, and two others showing the positions of the Sun and the Moon. The Moon indicator is adjusted to show the first anomaly of the Moon's orbit. It is reasonable to suppose the Sun indicator had a similar adjustment, but any gearing for this mechanism (if it existed) has been lost. The front dial also includes a second mechanism with a spherical model of the Moon that displays the lunar phase.
There is reference in the inscriptions for the planets Mars and Venus, and it would have certainly been within the capabilities of the maker of this mechanism to include gearing to show their positions. There is some speculation that the mechanism may have had indicators for all the five planets known to the Greeks. None of the gearing for such planetary mechanisms survives, except for one gear otherwise unaccounted for.
Finally, the front dial includes a parapegma, a precursor to the modern day almanac, which was used to mark the rising and setting of specific stars. Each star is thought to be identified by Greek characters which cross reference details inscribed on the mechanism.
The upper back dial is in the form of a spiral, with 47 divisions per turn, displaying the 235 months of the 19 year Metonic cycle. This cycle is important in fixing calendars.
The lower back dial is also in the form of a spiral, with 223 divisions showing the Saros cycle; it also has a smaller subsidiary dial which displays the 54 year "Triple Saros" or "Exeligmos" cycle. (The Saros cycle, discovered by the Chaldeans, is a period of approximately 18 years 11 days 8 hours — the length of time between occurrences of a particular eclipse.)
The Antikythera Mechanism Research Project, with experts from Britain, Greece and the United States, detected in July 2008 the word "Olympia" on a bronze dial thought to display the 76 year Callippic cycle, as well as the names of other games in ancient Greece, and probably used to track dates of the ancient Olympic Games. According to BBC news:
"The four sectors of the dial are inscribed with a year number and two Panhellenic Games: the 'crown' games of Isthmia, Olympia, Nemea, and Pythia; and two lesser games: Naa (held at Dodona) and a second game which has not yet been deciphered."
Speculation about its purpose:
Derek J. de Solla Price suggested that it might have been on public display, possibly in a museum or public hall in Rhodes. The island was known for its displays of mechanical engineering, particularly automata, which apparently were a speciality of the Rhodians. Pindar, one of the nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, said this of Rhodes in his seventh Olympic Ode:
"The animated figures stand
Adorning every public street
And seem to breathe in stone, or
Move their marble feet."
Arguments against it being on public display include:
The device is rather small, indicating that the designer was aiming for compactness and, as a result, the size of the front and back dials is unsuitable for public display. A simple comparison with size of the Tower of the Winds in Athens could give us a hint to suggest that the aim of the Antikythera mechanism manufacturer was the mobility of this device rather than its public display in a fixed place (such as a temple, museum or public hall).
The mechanism had door plates attached to it that contain at least 2,000 characters, forming what members of the Antikythera mechanism research project often refer to as an instruction manual for the mechanism. The neat attachment of this manual to the mechanism itself implies ease of transport and personal use.
The existence of this "instruction manual" implies that the device was constructed by an expert scientist and mechanic in order to be used by a non-expert traveler (the text gives a lot of information associated with well known geographical locations of the Mediterranean area).
The device is unlikely to have been intended for navigation use because:
Some data, such as eclipse predictions, are unnecessary for navigation.
The salt-laden dampness of marine environments would corrode the gears in a short period of time, rendering it useless.
On 30 July 2008, scientists reported new findings in the journal Nature showing that the mechanism tracked the Metonic calendar, predicted solar eclipses, and calculated the timing of the Ancient Olympic Games.Inscriptions on the instrument closely match the names of the months on calendars from Illyria and Epirus in northwestern Greece and with the island of Corfu.
Similar devices in ancient literature:
Cicero's De re publica, a 1st century BCE philosophical dialogue, mentions two machines that some modern authors consider as some kind of planetarium or orrery, predicting the movements of the Sun, the Moon, and the five planets known at that time. They were both built by Archimedes and brought to Rome by the Roman general Marcus Claudius Marcellus after the death of Archimedes at the siege of Syracuse in 212 BCE. Marcellus had a high respect for Archimedes and one of these machines was the only item he kept from the siege (the second was offered to the temple of Virtus). The device was kept as a family heirloom, and Cicero has Philus (one of the participants in a conversation that Cicero imagined had taken place in a villa belonging to Scipio Aemilianus in the year 129 BCE) saying that Caius Sulpicius Gallus (consul with Marcellus' nephew in 166 BCE, and credited by Pliny the Elder as the first Roman to have written a book explaining solar and lunar eclipses) gave a 'learned explanation' of it and demonstrated it working.
I had often heard this celestial globe or sphere mentioned on account of the great fame of Archimedes. Its appearance, however, did not seem to me particularly striking. There is another, more elegant in form, and more generally known, moulded by the same Archimedes, and deposited by the same Marcellus, in the Temple of Virtue at Rome. But as soon as Gallus had begun to explain, by his sublime science, the composition of this machine, I felt that the Sicilian geometrician must have possessed a genius superior to any thing we usually conceive to belong to our nature. Gallus assured us, that the solid and compact globe, was a very ancient invention, and that the first model of it had been presented by Thales of Miletus. That afterwards Eudoxus of Cnidus, a disciple of Plato, had traced on its surface the stars that appear in the sky, and that many years subsequent, borrowing from Eudoxus this beautiful design and representation, Aratus had illustrated them in his verses, not by any science of astronomy, but the ornament of poetic description. He added, that the figure of the sphere, which displayed the motions of the Sun and Moon, and the five planets, or wandering stars, could not be represented by the primitive solid globe. And that in this, the invention of Archimedes was admirable, because he had calculated how a single revolution should maintain unequal and diversified progressions in dissimilar motions.
When Gallus moved this globe it showed the relationship of the Moon with the Sun, and there were exactly the same number of turns on the bronze device as the number of days in the real globe of the sky. Thus it showed the same eclipse of the Sun as in the globe [of the sky], as well as showing the Moon entering the area of the Earth's shadow when the Sun is in line...
[i.e. It showed both solar and lunar eclipses.]
So at least one of Archimedes' machines, probably (considering Gallus' interests and the fact that that portion of the De Republica seems to be concerned with astronomical prodigia and in particular eclipses) quite similar to the Antikythera mechanism, was still operated around 150 BCE.
Pappus of Alexandria stated that Archimedes had written a now lost manuscript on the construction of these devices entitled On Sphere-Making.The surviving texts from the Library of Alexandria describe many of his creations, some even containing simple blueprints. One such device is his odometer, the exact model later used by the Romans to place their mile markers (described by Vitruvius, Heron of Alexandria and in the time of Emperor Commodus).The blueprints in the text appeared functional, but attempts to build them as pictured had failed. When the gears pictured, which had square teeth, were replaced with gears of the type in the Antikythera mechanism, which were angled, the device was perfectly functional.Whether this is an example of a device created by Archimedes and described by texts lost in the burning of the Library of Alexandria, or if it is a device based on his discoveries, or if it has anything to do with him at all, is debatable.
If Cicero's account is correct, then this technology existed as early as the 3rd century BCE. Archimedes' device is also mentioned by later Roman era writers such as Lactantius (Divinarum Institutionum Libri VII), Claudian (In sphaeram Archimedes), and Proclus (Commentary on the first book of Euclid's Elements of Geometry) in the 4th and 5th centuries.
Cicero also said that another such device was built 'recently' by his friend Posidonius, "... each one of the revolutions of which brings about the same movement in the Sun and Moon and five wandering stars [planets] as is brought about each day and night in the heavens..."
It is unlikely that any one of these machines was the Antikythera mechanism found in the shipwreck because both the devices fabricated by Archimedes and mentioned by Cicero were located in Rome at least 30 years later than the estimated date of the shipwreck and the third one was almost certainly in the hands of Posidonius by that date. So we know of at least four such devices. The modern scientists who have reconstructed the Antikythera mechanism also agree that it was too sophisticated to have been a unique device.
It is probable that the Antikythera mechanism was not unique, as shown by Cicero's references to such mechanisms. This adds support to the idea that there was an ancient Greek tradition of complex mechanical technology that was later, at least in part, transmitted to the Byzantine and Islamic worlds, where mechanical devices which were complex, albeit simpler than the Antikythera mechanism, were built during the Middle Ages.Fragments of a geared calendar attached to a sundial, from the 5th or 6th century Byzantine Empire, have been found; the calendar may have been used to assist in telling time.In the Islamic world, Banū Mūsā's Kitab al-Hiyal, or Book of Ingenious Devices, was commissioned by the Caliph of Baghdad in the early 9th century. This text described over a hundred mechanical devices, some of which may date back to ancient Greek texts preserved in monasteries.
A geared calendar similar to the Byzantine device was described by the scientist al-Biruni around 1000 CE, and a surviving 13th century astrolabe also contains a similar clockwork device.It is possible that this medieval technology may have been transmitted to Europe and contributed to the development of mechanical clocks there.
nvestigations and reconstructions:
Reconstruction of the Antikythera mechanism in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens (made by Robert J. Deroski, based on Derek J. de Solla Price model).
The Antikythera mechanism is one of the world's oldest known geared devices. It has puzzled and intrigued historians of science and technology since its discovery. A number of individuals and groups have been instrumental in advancing the knowledge and understanding of the mechanism including: Derek J. de Solla Price (with Charalampos Karakalos); Allan George Bromley (with Frank Percival, Michael Wright and Bernard Gardner); Michael Wright and The Antikythera Mechanism Research Project.
Following decades of work cleaning the device, in 1951 British science historian Derek J. de Solla Price undertook systematic investigation of the mechanism.
Price published several papers on "Clockwork before the Clock".and "On the Origin of Clockwork",before the first major publication in June 1959 on the mechanism: "An Ancient Greek Computer".This was the lead article in Scientific American and appears to have been initially published at the prompting of Arthur C. Clarke, according to the book Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World. In "An Ancient Greek Computer" Price advanced the theory that the Antikythera mechanism was a device for calculating the motions of stars and planets, which would make the device the first known analog computer. Until that time, the Antikythera mechanism's function was largely unknown, though it had been correctly identified as an astronomical device, perhaps being an astrolabe.
In 1971, Price, by then the first Avalon Professor of the History of Science at Yale University, teamed up with Charalampos Karakalos, professor of nuclear physics at the Greek National Centre of Scientific Research "DEMOKRITOS". Karakalos took both gamma- and X-ray radiographs of the mechanism, which revealed critical information about the device's interior configuration.
In 1974, Price wrote "Gears from the Greeks: the Antikythera mechanism — a calendar computer from ca. 80 B.C.",where he presented a model of how the mechanism could have functioned.
Price's model, as presented in his "Gears from the Greeks", was the first theoretical attempt at reconstructing the device. According to that model, the front dial shows the annual progress of the Sun and Moon through the zodiac against the Egyptian calendar. The upper rear dial displays a four-year period and has associated dials showing the Metonic cycle of 235 synodic months, which approximately equals 19 solar years. The lower rear dial plots the cycle of a single synodic month, with a secondary dial showing the lunar year of 12 synodic months.
One of the remarkable proposals made by Price was that the mechanism employed differential gears, which enabled the mechanism to add or subtract angular velocities. The differential was used to compute the synodic lunar cycle by subtracting the effects of the Sun's movement from those of the sidereal lunar movement.
Allan George Bromley
A variant on Price's reconstruction was built by Australian computer scientist Allan George Bromley of the University of Sydney and Sydney clockmaker Frank Percival. Bromley went on to make new, more accurate X-ray images in collaboration with Michael Wright. Some of these were studied by Bromley's student, Bernard Gardner, in 1993.
Michael Wright, formerly Curator of Mechanical Engineering at The London Science Museum and now of Imperial College, London, made a completely new study of the original fragments together with Allan George Bromley. They used a technique called linear X-ray tomography which was suggested by retired consultant radiologist, Alan Partridge. For this, Wright designed and made an apparatus for linear tomography, allowing the generation of sectional 2D radiographic images.Early results of this survey were presented in 1997, which showed that Price's reconstruction was fundamentally flawed.
Further study of the new imagery allowed Wright to advance a number of proposals. Firstly he developed the idea, suggested by Price in "Gears from the Greeks", that the mechanism could have served as a planetarium. Wright's planetarium not only modelled the motion of the Sun and Moon, but also the Inferior Planets (Mercury and Venus), and the Superior Planets (Mars, Jupiter and Saturn).
Wright proposed that the Sun and Moon could have moved in accordance with the theories of Hipparchus and the five known planets moved according to the simple epicyclic theory suggested by the theorem of Apollonios. In order to prove that this was possible using the level of technology apparent in the mechanism, Wright produced a working model of such a planetarium.
Wright also increased upon Price's gear count of 27 to 31 including 1 in Fragment C that was eventually identified as part of a Moon phase display.He suggested that this is a mechanism that shows the phase of the Moon by means of a rotating semi-silvered ball, realized by the differential rotation of the sidereal cycle of the Moon and the Sun's yearly cycle. This precedes previously known mechanisms of this sort by a millennium and a half.
More accurate tooth counts were also obtained,[38] allowing a new gearing scheme to be advanced. This more accurate information allowed Wright to confirm Price's perceptive suggestion that the upper back dial displays the Metonic cycle with 235 lunar months divisions over a five-turn scale. In addition to this Wright proposed the remarkable idea that the main back dials are in the form of spirals, with the upper back dial out as a five-turn spiral containing 47 divisions in each turn. It therefore presented a visual display of the 235 months of the Metonic cycle (19 years ≈ 235 Synodic Months). Wright also observed that fragmentary inscriptions suggested that the pointer on the subsidiary dial showed a count of four cycles of the 19-year period, equal to the 76-year Callippic cycle.
Based on more tentative observations, Wright also came to the conclusion that the lower back dial counted Draconic Months and could perhaps have been used for eclipse prediction.
All these findings have been incorporated into Wright's working model,demonstrating that a single mechanism with all these functions could be built, and would work.
Despite the improved imagery provided by the linear tomography Wright could not reconcile all the known gears into a single coherent mechanism, and this led him to advance the theory that the mechanism had been altered, with some astronomical functions removed and others added.
Finally, as an outcome of his considerable research,Wright also conclusively demonstrated that Price's suggestion of the existence of a differential gearing arrangement was incorrect.
Michael Wright's research on the mechanism is continuing in parallel with the efforts of the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project (AMRP). Recently Wright slightly modified his model of the mechanism to incorporate the latest findings of the AMRP regarding the function of the pin and slot engaged gears that brilliantly simulate the anomaly in the Moon's angular velocity. On 6 March 2007 he presented his model in the National Hellenic Research Foundation in Athens.
[edit]The Antikythera Mechanism Research Project
The Antikythera mechanism is now being studied by the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project,a joint program between Cardiff University (M. Edmunds, T. Freeth), the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (X. Moussas, Y. Bitsakis), the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (J.H. Seiradakis), the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, X-Tek Systems UK. and Hewlett-Packard USA, funded by the Leverhulme Trust and supported by the Cultural Foundation of the National Bank of Greece.
The mechanism's fragility precluded its removal from the museum, so the Hewlett-Packard research team and X-Tek Systems had to bring their devices to Greece. HP built a 3-D surface imaging device, known as the "PTM Dome", that surrounds the object under examination. X-Tek Systems developed a 12 ton 450 kV microfocus computerised tomographer especially for the Antikythera Mechanism.
It was announced in Athens on 21 October 2005 that new pieces of the Antikythera mechanism had been found. There are now 82 fragments. Most of the new pieces had been stabilized but were awaiting conservation.
On 30 May 2006, it was announced that the imaging system had enabled much more of the Greek inscription to be viewed and translated, from about 1,000 characters that were visible previously, to over 2,160 characters, representing about 95% of the extant text. The team's findings shed new light concerning the function and purpose of the Antikythera mechanism. Research is ongoing. The first results were announced at an international conference in Athens, November 30 and December 1, 2006.
New discoveries
On 30 November 2006, the science journal Nature published a new reconstruction of the mechanism by the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project, based on the high resolution X-ray tomography described above.This work doubled the amount of readable text, corrected prior transcriptions, and provided a new translation. The inscriptions led to a dating of the mechanism to around 100 BCE. It is evident that they contain a manual with an astronomical, mechanical and geographical section. The name HISPANIA (ΙΣΠΑΝΙΑ, Spain in Greek) in these texts is the oldest reference to the Iberian Peninsula under this form, as opposed to Iberia.
The new discoveries confirm that the mechanism is an astronomical analog calculator or orrery used to predict the positions of celestial bodies. This work proposes that the mechanism possessed 37 gears, of which 30 survive, and was used for prediction of the position of the Sun and the Moon. Based on the inscriptions, which mention the stationary points of the planets, the authors speculate that planetary motions may also have been indicated.
On the front face were graduations for the solar scale and the zodiac together with pointers that indicated the position of the Sun, the Moon, the lunar phase, and possibly the planetary motions.
On the back, two spiral scales (made of half-circles with two centers) with sliding pointers indicated the state of two further important astronomical cycles: the Saros cycle, the period of approximately 18 years separating the return of the Sun, Moon and Earth to the same relative positions and the more accurate exeligmos cycle of 54 years and one day (essential in eclipse prediction, see Eclipse cycle). It also contains another spiral scale for the Metonic cycle (19 years, equal to 235 lunar months) and the Callippic cycle with a period of 1016 lunar orbits in approximately 76 years.
The Moon mechanism, using an ingenious train of gears, two of them linked with a slightly offset axis and pin in a slot, shows the position and phase of the Moon during the month. The velocity of the Moon varies according to the theory of Hipparchus, and to a good approximation follows Kepler's second law for the angular velocity, being faster near the perigee and slower at the apogee.
On 31 July 2008, a paper providing further details about the mechanism was published in Nature (Nature Vol 454, Issue 7204, July 31, 2008).In this paper, among other revelations, it is demonstrated that the mechanism also contained a dial divided into four parts, and demonstrated a four-year cycle through four segments of one year each, which is thought to be a means of describing which of the games (such as the ancient Olympics) that took place in two and four-year cycles were to take place in any given year.
The names of the months have been read; they are the months attested for the colonies of Corinth (and therefore also traditionally assumed for Corinth, Kerkyra, Epidamnos, and Syracuse, which have left less direct evidence). The investigators suggest that the device may well be of Syracusan design and may descend from the work of Archimedes; alternatively it may have been ordered by and customized for any of these markets and was being shipped.
Nature published another study on 24 November 2010.The study interprets the mechanism to be based in computation methods used in Babylonian astronomy, not ancient Greek astronomy, implying that the Babylonian astronomy inspired the Greek counterpart – including the mechanical constructs.
Andrew Carol, an Apple software engineer, created a replica of the mechanism out of 1,500 LEGO pieces, and has correctly predicted the Solar eclipse of April 8, 2024 as a demonstration of its accuracy.
There is also a 3D model simulator of Price's and the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project representations.
