Podcasts about Hipparchus

Ancient Greek scholar

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  • Sep 15, 2024LATEST
Hipparchus

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Best podcasts about Hipparchus

Latest podcast episodes about Hipparchus

Der Brettspiele Podcast, den die Welt nicht braucht
Folge 285 – cooperative courage menu

Der Brettspiele Podcast, den die Welt nicht braucht

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 15, 2024


Print and Play BasteleckeAgent Avenue(https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/422732/agent-avenue)Hipparchus(https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/400858/hipparchus)Ptolemy(https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/388720/ptolemy)The Yellow House(https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/420385/the-yellow-house) Was habe ich gespielt?Spiele auf BGA & Yucata.de: PatchworkYINSH Mit den KindernDorfromantikZombie Würfel Podcast Hinweis Twitter / X – @vintersphrostBluesky – @vintersphrost.bsky.socialMastodon – @vintersphrost@brettspiel.spaceBoardgamearena.com – vintersphrostYucata.de – vintersphrostInstagram – https://www.instagram.com/vintersphrost/YouTube Hörspiel Einspieler – https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCER_eNjl0R-Rzev5IMG2uufJSbXt01Mp

The Hellenistic Age Podcast
099: Hellenistic Science - Geography and Astronomy

The Hellenistic Age Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 30, 2024 48:57


Our understanding the cosmos and our place in it has perplexed humanity for untold generations. The astronomers and geographers of the Hellenistic period were no different, looking to explain celestial phenomena and the nature of the Earth. Eratosthenes of Cyrene managed to calculate the circumference of the Earth to an astonishingly close value, Hipparchus did the same with the distance of the Moon, and Aristarchus of Samos proposed the earliest known model of heliocentrism 1800 years before Copernicus. The pinnacle of these theories came together was the incredible Antikythera Mechanism, the world's oldest analog computer, which will bring our series on science and technology to an end. Episode Notes: (https://hellenisticagepodcast.wordpress.com/2024/08/30/099-hellenistic-science-geography-and-astronomy/) Episode Transcript: (https://hellenisticagepodcast.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/099-hellenistic-science-astronomy-and-geography-transcript.pdf) Social Media: Twitter (https://twitter.com/HellenisticPod) Facebook (www.facebook.com/hellenisticagepodcast/) Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/hellenistic_age_podcast/) Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/hellenisticagepodcast) Show Merchandise: Etsy (https://www.etsy.com/shop/HellenisticAgePod) Redbubble (https://www.redbubble.com/people/HellenisticPod/shop?asc=u) Donations: Patreon (https://patreon.com/TheHellenisticAgePodcast) Ko-Fi (https://ko-fi.com/hellenisticagepodcast) Amazon Book Wish List (https://tinyurl.com/vfw6ask)

The New Thinkery
Plato's Hipparchus

The New Thinkery

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 17, 2024 59:23


Join us for a deep dive into the world of Plato as we explore Plato's Hipparchus. The guys unpack this lesser-known dialogue, delving into its themes of justice, leadership, and the ideal state. Discover how Plato's insights from over two millennia ago still resonate in today's society, offering time-tested wisdom and thought-provoking ideas.

Gambiarra Board Games
GBG Fala de Carteado #004 - Carteados a dois

Gambiarra Board Games

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 8, 2024 105:39


No 4º programa da série Fala de Carteado, Gustavo Lopes e Magana convidam Giovani Barros para falar sobre carteados a dois. Fizemos uma seleção de carteados para dois jogadores e comentamos sobre diferentes tipos de carteados a dois. O Fala de Carteado será um programa de 13 episódios em sua primeira temporada para falar sobre Carteados com Magana (Carteado Around the World) como co-host e convidados. Edição - Fabs Fabuloso e Gustavo Lopes. Capa - Gustavo Lopes . Jogos citados: Abluxxen, 1000?, Scout, Sea Salt & Paper, Tichu, Sail, destaques Magana e Giovani, Claim, Fox in the Forest Duet, Fox in the Forest, Jekyll vs Hyde, Violet and the Grumpy Nisse, Hipparchus, Awinbawe, Four Clans Conflict, Tango, Sumo, Ptolomey, Lhama, Blast, Cinderella Dance, Combo Trax, Lua Cheia, Cupid: Tricks & Tactics, Hot Dog, Vidrasso, Crisps, Dickory, Gin Rummy, Koi KoiQuer comprar jogos por um precinho bacana e contribuir com o Gambiarra Board Games? Acessa https://bravojogos.com.br/ e utilize o cupom GAMBIARRANABRAVO Confira as fotos dos jogos em nosso instagram instagram.com/gambiarraboardgames E-mail para sugestões: contato@papodelouco.com papodelouco.com Apoio Acessórios BG: https://www.acessoriosbg.com.br BGSP: https://boardgamessp.com.br/ Bravo Jogos: https://bravojogos.com.br/ Aroma de Madeira: https://www.aromademadeira.com.brAbertura: Free Transition Music - Upbeat 80s Music - 'Euro Pop 80s' (Intro A - 4 seconds)Jay Man - OurMusicBoxhttps://www.our-music-box.com​https://www.youtube.com/c/ourmusicboxBloco 1: Abertura: Music: Lo Fi Hip Hop 06 by WinnieTheMoog/Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/8167-lo-fi-hip-hop-06/Licensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseBloco 2: Music: Bossa Of Brazil Shores by MusicLFiles/Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/8789-bossa-of-brazil-shores/Licensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-licenseBloco 3: Music: Happy Calm Intro 57 by TaigaSoundProd/Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/11772-happy-calm-intro-57/Licensed under CC BY 4.0: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Cosmos with Cosmos
THE SHOT: Hip, Hip... Hipparchus!

Cosmos with Cosmos

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 13, 2023 10:46


In this episode, Brandon discusses not the man, but the telescope….Hip, Hip for Hipparchus! Take a shot with us! *Always Drink Responsibly* Follow Us! Twitter: @drinkingcosmos Instagram: @cosmoswithcosmos   cosmoswithcosmos.com Credits: Eric Skiff - Resistor Anthems  http://EricSkiff.com/music Stars Background Vid Credit - Josu Relax http://relaxing-site.890m.com https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6dJEAs0-Gk Theme Music Remixed by: Ron Proctor https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC__fjzKFm0X0BQWHjYX8Z_w Check Out! Wildixia https://www.etsy.com/shop/Wildixia?ref=profile_header Rolling Bluff Planetarium https://www.rollingbluffsplanetarium.com/

The Confronting Christianity Podcast
Can We Trust the Gospels? with Peter Williams

The Confronting Christianity Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 31, 2023 28:30


Rebecca McLaughlin is joined by Peter Williams to have a conversation about the trustworthiness of the gospels.Questions Covered in This Episode:How far off from Jesus's death and resurrection were the Gospels written?How can people remember the things Jesus said with such great detail decades after Jesus's resurrection?Why are there differences between the gospels in Jesus's teachings?Why do the gospels have a different ordering of events?Why do we hear about Bartimaeus in one gospel and he doesn't have a name in another?Do the gospels use names as eye witness evidence?Can you tell us a bit more about the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15?Help us think through the historical context clues that the gospels were written in the place they claim to be written.When Jesus dies on the cross, the curtain in the temple is torn in two. Is there any historical record of this happening?Guest Bio:Dr Peter J. Williams is the Principal and CEO of Tyndale House, Cambridge. He was educated at the University of Cambridge, where he received his MA, MPhil, and PhD in the study of ancient languages related to the Bible. Dr Williams is also an Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of Divinity in the University of Cambridge, Chair of the International Greek New Testament Project, and a member of the Translation Oversight Committee of the English Standard Version of the Bible. He assisted Dr Dirk Jongkind in Tyndale House's production of a major edition of the Greek New Testament and his book Can We Trust the Gospels? has been translated into 10 languages.Resources Mentioned:Matthew 5-7, Luke 15, Genesis 33:4“New evidence for Hipparchus' Star Catalogue revealed by multispectral imaging”“The Surprising Genius of Jesus” by Peter J. Williams“Can We Trust the Gospels?” by Peter J. WilliamsSponsors:To learn more about our sponsors please visit our website.Follow Us:Instagram | TwitterOur Sister Shows:Knowing Faith | The Family Discipleship Podcast | Starting Place | Tiny TheologiansConfronting Christianity is a podcast of Training the Church. For ad-free episodes and more content check out our Patreon.

Cardinal Astrology
Episode 202 Further musing on Eclipses and the Saros Cycle.

Cardinal Astrology

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 20, 2023 48:46


Eclipses come in series called Saros Cycles. And how to look at eclipses and your own chart. Bernadette Brady Astrologer has studied and written about Saros Cycles. An important lunar periodicity that was probably first observed and named by Babylonian astronomers about two millennia BC, the Saros cycle came down to us through the compilations of Hipparchus and Ptolemy. It was successfully employed to predict a solar eclipse on 28 May 585 BC by Thales of Miletus.

Instant Trivia
Episode 968 - On ice - Classic monopoly tokens - Althing - Capitals at statehood - Mayor garcetti's los angeles

Instant Trivia

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 6, 2023 8:22


Welcome to the Instant Trivia podcast episode 968, where we ask the best trivia on the Internet. Round 1. Category: On Ice 1: Put this letter on "ice" and you get what Mickey and Minnie are. M (mice). 2: Put this letter on "ice" and you get gaming material that may be loaded. D (dice). 3: Put this letter on "ice" and you get the kind of "guys" who "finish last". N (nice). 4: Put this letter on "ice" and you get the type of crime Crockett and Tubbs fought. V (vice). 5: Put this letter on "ice" and you get a grain grown in paddies. R (rice). Round 2. Category: Classic Monopoly Tokens 1: You wear one of these to protect your fingers when sewing. a thimble. 2: The one Lincoln wore to Ford's Theatre is in the Smithsonian. a top hat. 3: Awaiting the inevitable is like "waiting for the other" this "to drop". the shoe. 4: On May 30, 2010 Dario Franchitti claimed a big victory in one. a racecar. 5: It's also a classic combat game from Milton Bradley. the battleship. Round 3. Category: Althing 1: Formed in 930 A.D., the Althing of this country is one of the oldest legislative assemblies in the world. Iceland. 2: There are this many members of the Althing--they'll always fall one short of filling an entire checkerboard. sixty-three. 3: This position that has the country's real power (and the cabinet) is appointed by the president with the Althing's approval. the prime minister. 4: In 1874 the king of this nearby Scandinavian country vested the Althing with legislative power in internal affairs. Denmark. 5: The Althing had an upper and lower house until 1991; now it's this type of legislature, meaning "one chamber". unicameral. Round 4. Category: Capitals At Statehood 1: Augusta. Georgia. 2: San Jose. California. 3: Huntsville. Alabama. 4: Guthrie. Oklahoma. 5: Wheeling. West Virginia. Round 5. Category: Mayor Garcetti'S Los Angeles 1: (His Honor, the Mayor Eric Garcetti delivers the clue.) Just north of Hollywood and Vine, the studios at Capitol Records have been used by Frank Sinatra, Green Day, Sam Smith and this band, who recorded their "Surfin' Safari" album in the tower. the Beach Boys. 2: (His Honor, the Mayor Eric Garcetti delivers the clue.) The Hollywood Sign was originally the Hollywoodland Sign, a $21,000 billboard in 1923, for this 2-word type of development owned by the publisher of the L.A. Times. real estate. 3: (His Honor, the Mayor Eric Garcetti delivers the clue.) Using the term "California romanza" to mean "freedom to make one's own form", this 3-named architect's first L.A. project, Hollyhock House, was completed in 1921. Frank Lloyd Wright. 4: (His Honor, the Mayor Eric Garcetti delivers the clue.) At L.A.'s Griffith Observatory, the Astronomers Monument features 6 giants of the field: Hipparchus, Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Herschel and this Italian genius. Galileo. 5: (His Honor, the Mayor Eric Garcetti delivers the clue.) Between 1921 and 1955 Italian immigrant Simon Rodia constructed a collection of 17 structures he called Nuestro Pueblo or "Our Town"; today, it's a National Historic Landmark known as this. the Watts Towers. Thanks for listening! Come back tomorrow for more exciting trivia! Special thanks to https://blog.feedspot.com/trivia_podcasts/

Board Game Dojo
Dracula vs. Van Helsing, Ptolemy & Hipparchus

Board Game Dojo

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 2, 2023 20:03


It's a 2-player only, Geonil-centric, card game extravanganza here at the Board Game Dojo today. We are reviewing Dracula vs. Van Helsing, the spiritual successor to Jekyll vs. Hyde. We are reviewing the 2-player shedding game Ptolemy. And we are reviewing the 2-player trick-taking game Hipparchus. What a day!   Support us on Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/theboardgamedojo Check out our Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpNqwAiQpSxCeGVAUosYfPw   My Best Chef: https://youtu.be/i7j-SWF8p5A?si=2kMHC1pzZqnfbmaQ Hyena Hero Wants to Slack Off: https://youtu.be/4buG4J1Zx7Q?si=_Y6YBlTE9uwANRUL Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/boardgamedojo/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheBGDojo

Biblical Archaeology Today w/ Steve Waldron
Hipparchus Oldest Known Astronomy Catalog Discovered

Biblical Archaeology Today w/ Steve Waldron

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 3, 2023 6:37


On a palimpsest using spectral technology. Thank you for listening! Please share and subscribe, leave a 5 star review!

Stuff You Missed in History Class
Unearthed! Year-end 2022, Part 2

Stuff You Missed in History Class

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 18, 2023 38:52


Part two of our Unearthed! wrap up of 2022 covers a potpourri of stuff that didn't go together, books and letters, edibles and potables, and apparel, including more than one pair of blue jeans. Research: “Chemical clues to the mystery of what's coating Stradivari's violins.” 10/25/2022. https://www.acs.org/pressroom/newsreleases/2022/october/chemical-clues-to-the-mystery-of-whats-coating-stradivaris-violins.html Alex, Bridget. “Why Prehistoric Herders Didn't Spit Out Their Watermelon Seeds.” Smithsonian. 11/3/2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/watermelon-seeds-were-snacked-before-its-flesh-became-sweet-180981008/ Andalou Agency. “Rare 1,800-year-old medal bearing Medusa discovered in SE Türkiye.” 10/5/2022. https://www.dailysabah.com/gallery/rare-1800-year-old-medal-bearing-medusa-discovered-in-se-turkiye/images “Researchers identify bird species depicted in ancient, finely detailed Egyptian painting.” Via Phys.org. 12/27/2022. https://phys.org/news/2022-12-bird-species-depicted-ancient-finely.html Armstrong, Kathryn. “Ireland to return mummified remains and sarcophagus to Egypt.” BBC. 12/8/2022. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-63908027 Aronsky, Tali. “First sentence ever written in Canaanite language discovered: Plea to eradicate beard lice.” EurekAlert. 11/8/2022. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/970428 Associated Press. “Massachusetts museum returns sacred items to Sioux tribes.” 11/6/2022. https://apnews.com/article/travel-museums-massachusetts-south-dakota-5468cac3216c4ef489a70bfb8830b846 Associated Press. “Swedes find 17th century sister vessel to famed Vasa warship.” 10/25/2022. https://phys.org/news/2022-10-swedes-17th-century-sister-vessel.html Bardan, Roxana. “NASA Views Images, Confirms Discovery of Shuttle Challenger Artifact.” NASA. 11/10/2022. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-views-images-confirms-discovery-of-shuttle-challenger-artifact Barkin, Joel. “Colgate University Repatriates More than 1,500 Funerary Objects and to the Oneida Indian Nation, Apologizes for Acquisition of Cultural Artifacts.” 11/9/2022. https://www.oneidaindiannation.com/colgate-university-repatriates-more-than-1500-funerary-objects-and-to-the-oneida-indian-nation-apologizes-for-acquisition-of-cultural-artifacts/ Benzine, Vittoria. “Archaeologists Recovered 275 Artifacts From the Wreck of a 19th-Century Ship That Sunk in the Search for the Northwest Passage.” Artnet. 12/26/2022. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/hms-erebus-parks-canada-recovered-artifacts-leather-folio-2236362 Cheshire, Ben. “Somerton Man Charles Webb's true identity revealed in family photographs and divorce papers.” Australian Story. 11/20/2022. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-21/somerton-manfamily-photographs-revealed-/101643524 City of Tulsa. “1921 Graves Investigation Update – November 15, 2022.” Press release. https://www.cityoftulsa.org/press-room/1921-graves-investigation-update-november-15-2022/ Dartmouth College. “Ancient stone tools from China provide earliest evidence of rice harvesting.” Phys.org. 12/7/2022. https://phys.org/news/2022-12-ancient-stone-tools-china-earliest.html Enking, Molly. “Archaeologists Find 1,900-Year-Old Snacks in Sewers Beneath the Colosseum.” Smithsonian. 12/2/2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ancient-roman-spectator-snacks-dog-bones-discovered-in-colosseum-dig-180981211/ Enking, Molly. “Archaeologists Find 24 Bronze Statues, Preserved in Tuscan Spa for 2,300 Years.” Smithsonian. 11/10/2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/groundbreaking-ancient-roman-bronze-statues-discovered-in-tuscany-180981105/ Enking, Molly. “Pope Francis Will Return Parthenon Sculptures to Greece.” Smithsonian. 12/23/2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/vatican-museum-will-return-parthenon-sculptures-to-greece-180981354/ Enking, Molly. “The First-Ever List of Japanese Americans Forced Into Incarceration Camps Is 1,000 Pages Long.” Smithsonian. 11/18/2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/list-japanese-americans-internment-camps-ireicho-180981133/ Feldman, Ella. “For 158 Years, a Cézanne Portrait Hid Behind a Still Life of Bread and Eggs.” Smithsonian. 12/29/2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/for-158-years-a-cezanne-self-portrait-hid-behind-a-still-life-of-bread-and-eggs-180981323/ Feldman, Ella. “Harvard Museum Pledges to Return Hair Samples of 700 Native American Children.” 11/16/2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/harvard-museum-apologizes-for-owning-700-hair-samples-of-native-american-children-180981135/ Feldman, Ella. “Who Is Behind This Vermeer Painting? Probably Not Vermeer.” Smithsonian. 10/11/2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/who-is-behind-this-johannes-vermeer-painting-probably-not-vermeer-180980919/ Fraňková, Ruth. “Unique Bronze Age belt discovered near Opava.” Radio Prague International. 10/7/2022. https://english.radio.cz/unique-bronze-age-belt-discovered-near-opava-8763557 Government of Mexico. “223 archaeological pieces are returned to Mexico in collaboration with the Netherlands.” Press Release 477. https://www.gob.mx/sre/prensa/223-archaeological-pieces-are-returned-to-mexico-in-collaboration-with-the-netherlands?tab= Graziadei, Jason. “Remains Of Shipwreck Discovered Along Nantucket's South Shore.” Nantucket Current. 12/5/2022. https://www.nantucketcurrent.com/remains-of-shipwreck-discovered-along-nantucket-s-south-shore Herschel Museum of Astronomy. “Giving Caroline Her Voice Back.” https://herschelmuseum.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Herschel-Museum-buys-Caroline-Herschels-memoirs-FINAL.pdf Hill, Amelia. “Early medieval female burial site is ‘most significant ever discovered' in UK.” The Guardian. 12/6/2022. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/dec/06/medieval-female-burial-site-found-near-harpole-is-most-significant-ever-discovered-in-uk Hill, Michael. “University returning 1,500 artifacts to Oneida Indian Nation.” Associated Press. 11/8/2022. https://apnews.com/article/science-new-york-oneida-colgate-university-0b3c3f434d9fd4f5e71066a347ef9c1b Holpuch, Amanda. “Pants Recovered From Shipwreck Sell for $114,000 at Auction.” New York Times. 12/11/2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/11/us/jeans-shipwreck-auction.html Hunt, Katie. “The Black Death is still affecting the human immune system.” CNN. 10/19/2022. https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/19/world/black-death-plague-immune-system-scn-wellness/index.html Hurriyet Daily News. “Smuggled artifacts return to Türkiye.” 11/14/2022. https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/smuggled-artifacts-return-to-turkiye-178488 Kunze, Jenna. “After 130 Years, Massachusetts Museum Will Return Sacred Lakota Artifacts.” Native News Online. 10/10/2022. https://nativenewsonline.net/sovereignty/after-130-years-massachusetts-museum-will-return-sacred-lakota-artifacts Kuta, Sarah. “A Medieval Manuscript Has Revealed the Oldest Known Map of the Stars.” Smithsonian. 10/24/2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/medieval-manuscript-oldest-map-of-the-stars-Hipparchus-180980993/ Kuta, Sarah. “A World War II Shipwreck Is Leaking Toxic Chemicals Into the North Sea.” Smithsonian. 10/19/2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/a-world-war-ii-shipwreck-is-leaking-toxic-chemicals-into-the-sea-180980970/ Kuta, Sarah. “Rewriting the Story of Ötzi, the Murdered Iceman.” Smithsonian. 11/10/2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-true-story-behind-otzi-the-murdered-iceman-180981103/ Kuta, Sarah. “Unusual 120-Year-Old Whaleback Shipwreck Discovered in Lake Superior.” Smithsonian. 10/27/2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/unusual-120-year-old-whaleback-shipwreck-discovered-in-lake-superior-180981012/ Kuta, Sarah. “Woman's Name and Doodles Found Hidden in 1,200-Year-Old Religious Manuscript.” Smithsonian. 12/6/2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/womans-name-and-doodles-found-in-1200-year-old-religious-manuscript-180981240/ Larson, Clarise. “Southeast Alaska village of Kake welcomes artifacts — some over 200 years old — back home.” Anchorage Daily News. 11/27/2022. https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/rural-alaska/2022/11/27/southeast-alaska-village-of-kake-welcomes-artifacts-some-over-200-years-old-back-home/ Lawson-Tancred, Jo. “Cologne Hands Back 92 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria, But a Few Will Remain in Germany on Long-Term Loan.” ArtNet. 12/16/2022. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/benin-bronzes-cologne-2231179 Mair, George. “Remains of Pictish period cross with bird carvings uncovered in Scottish kirkyard.” The Scotsman. 10/21/2022. https://www.scotsman.com/heritage-and-retro/heritage/remains-of-pictish-period-cross-with-bird-carvings-uncovered-in-scottish-kirkyard-3888200 net. “Medieval shipwreck's cargo revealed by researchers.” https://www.medievalists.net/2022/10/medieval-shipwrecks-cargo-revealed-by-researchers/ net. “Two medieval shipwrecks discovered in Sweden.” https://www.medievalists.net/2022/12/two-medieval-shipwrecks-discovered-in-sweden/ Melin, Thomas. “Skaftö wreck's cargo tells a tale of 15th century trade routes.” University of Gothenburg via EurekAlert. 10/24/2022. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/968872 Metcalfe, Tom. “Thor's Hammer amulet from Viking Age unearthed in Sweden.” LiveScience. 11/1/2022. https://www.livescience.com/thor-hammer-amulet-found-sweden Miller, Ken. “21 new coffins found in search for Tulsa Massacre victims.” Associated Press. Via Phys.org. 11/2/2022. https://phys.org/news/2022-11-graves-tulsa-massacre-victims.html Morales, Mark and Dakin Andone. “Philadelphia police reveal identity of child found dead inside a box 65 years ago.” CNN. 12/9/2022. https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/08/us/philadelphia-boy-in-box-thursday/index.html Nicioli, Taylor. “Medieval ship found in Norway's biggest lake.” 12/12/2022. https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/12/world/norway-medieval-shipwreck-found-scn/index.html Nicioli, Taylor. “Rare 300-foot whaleback boat discovered at the bottom of Lake Superior.” CNN. 10/20/2022. https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/20/world/whaleback-barge-129-shipwreck-great-lakes-scn/index.html “Wreck from Wadden Sea reveals 17th-century wedding dress.” 11/11/2022. https://nos-nl.translate.goog/artikel/2451961-wrak-uit-waddenzee-geeft-17de-eeuwse-trouwjurk-prijs?_x_tr_sl=nl&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp Osborne, Margaret. “Explorers Find Cameras Abandoned by Mountain Climbers in 1937.” Smithsonian. 10/31/2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/explorers-find-cameras-abandoned-by-mountain-climbers-in-1937-180981048/ Osborne, Margaret. “Scientists Find Plaster Copies of Fossil Destroyed by Nazis.” 11/7/2022. Smithsonian. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/scientists-find-plaster-copies-of-fossil-destroyed-by-nazis-180981080/ Poggioli, Sylvia. “Discovery of ancient bronze statues in Italy may rewrite Etruscan and Roman history.” NPR. 12/3/2022. https://www.npr.org/2022/12/03/1138904735/italy-ancient-bronze-statues-discovery-tuscany “Disputed oil sketch in Dutch museum is a Rembrandt, research finds.” 11/3/2022. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/disputed-oil-sketch-dutch-museum-is-rembrandt-research-finds-2022-11-03/ Ruane, Michael. “Bones of ancient native dogs found at Jamestown.” Washington Post. 12/29/2022. https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/12/29/dogs-native-jamestown-discovered/ Siggins, Lorna. “Research finds mysterious structure in Cork Harbour is prehistoric tomb.” Irish Examiner. 10/18/2022. https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/munster/arid-40986065.html Solomon, Tessa. “Netherlands Returned More Than 200 Pre-Hispanic Artifacts To Mexico.” ArtNews. 12/9/2022. https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/netherlands-returned-pre-hispanic-artifacts-to-mexico-1234649810/ Southern Methodist University. "For 400 years, Indigenous tribes buffered climate's impact on wildfires in the American Southwest." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 7 December 2022. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/12/221207142213.htm. The History Blog. “14th c. cog shipwrecks found in Sweden.” http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/65803 The History Blog. “Bronze Medusa medallion found.” http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/65302 Turnbull, Tiffanie. “Tasmanian tiger: Remains of last thylacine found in cupboard after 85 years.” BBC News. 12/5/2022. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-63855426 University of the Basque Country. “One of Europe's most ancient domestic dogs lived in the Basque Country.” Science Daily. 11/28/2022. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/11/221128101244.htm Vang, Gia. “Pair of 1880s Levi's Sold for $76,000 at Auction. They Reveal a Dark Part of US History.” NBC. 12/12/2022. https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/vintage-1880s-levis-jeans-sold/3028900/ Weber, Bob. “'Hallowed space': Divers pull 275 artifacts from 2022 excavation of Franklin ship.” CBC. 12/19/2022. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/franklin-expedition-excavation-1.6690878 Whiddington, Richard. “The U.S. Has Returned Seven Very Ancient Seals That Were Looted From the Baghdad Museum After One Appeared in an Online Auction.” ArtNet. 12/15/2022. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/seven-seals-returned-iraq-2230014   Willsher, Kim. “Notre Dame's uncovered tombs start to reveal their secrets.” The Guardian. 12/9/2022. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/09/notre-dames-uncovered-tombs-start-to-reveal-their-secrets Wilson, Joseph. “Words on bronze hand may rewrite past of Basque language.” Phys.org. 11/16/2022. https://phys.org/news/2022-11-words-bronze-rewrite-basque-language.html Yirka, Bob. “New study of Ötzi the Iceman suggests his preservation story was not a series of miracles.” 11/9/2022. https://phys.org/news/2022-11-tzi-iceman-story-series-miracles.html See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Stuff You Missed in History Class
Unearthed! Year-end 2022, Part 1

Stuff You Missed in History Class

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 16, 2023 41:49


It's time to cover things and stories that were unearthed in the last quarter of 2022. Part one covers a whole bunch of updates, a whole bunch of shipwrecks, and a whole bunch of repatriations.    Research: “Chemical clues to the mystery of what's coating Stradivari's violins.” 10/25/2022. https://www.acs.org/pressroom/newsreleases/2022/october/chemical-clues-to-the-mystery-of-whats-coating-stradivaris-violins.html Alex, Bridget. “Why Prehistoric Herders Didn't Spit Out Their Watermelon Seeds.” Smithsonian. 11/3/2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/watermelon-seeds-were-snacked-before-its-flesh-became-sweet-180981008/ Andalou Agency. “Rare 1,800-year-old medal bearing Medusa discovered in SE Türkiye.” 10/5/2022. https://www.dailysabah.com/gallery/rare-1800-year-old-medal-bearing-medusa-discovered-in-se-turkiye/images “Researchers identify bird species depicted in ancient, finely detailed Egyptian painting.” Via Phys.org. 12/27/2022. https://phys.org/news/2022-12-bird-species-depicted-ancient-finely.html Armstrong, Kathryn. “Ireland to return mummified remains and sarcophagus to Egypt.” BBC. 12/8/2022. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-63908027 Aronsky, Tali. “First sentence ever written in Canaanite language discovered: Plea to eradicate beard lice.” EurekAlert. 11/8/2022. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/970428 Associated Press. “Massachusetts museum returns sacred items to Sioux tribes.” 11/6/2022. https://apnews.com/article/travel-museums-massachusetts-south-dakota-5468cac3216c4ef489a70bfb8830b846 Associated Press. “Swedes find 17th century sister vessel to famed Vasa warship.” 10/25/2022. https://phys.org/news/2022-10-swedes-17th-century-sister-vessel.html Bardan, Roxana. “NASA Views Images, Confirms Discovery of Shuttle Challenger Artifact.” NASA. 11/10/2022. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-views-images-confirms-discovery-of-shuttle-challenger-artifact Barkin, Joel. “Colgate University Repatriates More than 1,500 Funerary Objects and to the Oneida Indian Nation, Apologizes for Acquisition of Cultural Artifacts.” 11/9/2022. https://www.oneidaindiannation.com/colgate-university-repatriates-more-than-1500-funerary-objects-and-to-the-oneida-indian-nation-apologizes-for-acquisition-of-cultural-artifacts/ Benzine, Vittoria. “Archaeologists Recovered 275 Artifacts From the Wreck of a 19th-Century Ship That Sunk in the Search for the Northwest Passage.” Artnet. 12/26/2022. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/hms-erebus-parks-canada-recovered-artifacts-leather-folio-2236362 Cheshire, Ben. “Somerton Man Charles Webb's true identity revealed in family photographs and divorce papers.” Australian Story. 11/20/2022. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-21/somerton-manfamily-photographs-revealed-/101643524 City of Tulsa. “1921 Graves Investigation Update – November 15, 2022.” Press release. https://www.cityoftulsa.org/press-room/1921-graves-investigation-update-november-15-2022/ Dartmouth College. “Ancient stone tools from China provide earliest evidence of rice harvesting.” Phys.org. 12/7/2022. https://phys.org/news/2022-12-ancient-stone-tools-china-earliest.html Enking, Molly. “Archaeologists Find 1,900-Year-Old Snacks in Sewers Beneath the Colosseum.” Smithsonian. 12/2/2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ancient-roman-spectator-snacks-dog-bones-discovered-in-colosseum-dig-180981211/ Enking, Molly. “Archaeologists Find 24 Bronze Statues, Preserved in Tuscan Spa for 2,300 Years.” Smithsonian. 11/10/2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/groundbreaking-ancient-roman-bronze-statues-discovered-in-tuscany-180981105/ Enking, Molly. “Pope Francis Will Return Parthenon Sculptures to Greece.” Smithsonian. 12/23/2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/vatican-museum-will-return-parthenon-sculptures-to-greece-180981354/ Enking, Molly. “The First-Ever List of Japanese Americans Forced Into Incarceration Camps Is 1,000 Pages Long.” Smithsonian. 11/18/2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/list-japanese-americans-internment-camps-ireicho-180981133/ Feldman, Ella. “For 158 Years, a Cézanne Portrait Hid Behind a Still Life of Bread and Eggs.” Smithsonian. 12/29/2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/for-158-years-a-cezanne-self-portrait-hid-behind-a-still-life-of-bread-and-eggs-180981323/ Feldman, Ella. “Harvard Museum Pledges to Return Hair Samples of 700 Native American Children.” 11/16/2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/harvard-museum-apologizes-for-owning-700-hair-samples-of-native-american-children-180981135/ Feldman, Ella. “Who Is Behind This Vermeer Painting? Probably Not Vermeer.” Smithsonian. 10/11/2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/who-is-behind-this-johannes-vermeer-painting-probably-not-vermeer-180980919/ Fraňková, Ruth. “Unique Bronze Age belt discovered near Opava.” Radio Prague International. 10/7/2022. https://english.radio.cz/unique-bronze-age-belt-discovered-near-opava-8763557 Government of Mexico. “223 archaeological pieces are returned to Mexico in collaboration with the Netherlands.” Press Release 477. https://www.gob.mx/sre/prensa/223-archaeological-pieces-are-returned-to-mexico-in-collaboration-with-the-netherlands?tab= Graziadei, Jason. “Remains Of Shipwreck Discovered Along Nantucket's South Shore.” Nantucket Current. 12/5/2022. https://www.nantucketcurrent.com/remains-of-shipwreck-discovered-along-nantucket-s-south-shore Herschel Museum of Astronomy. “Giving Caroline Her Voice Back.” https://herschelmuseum.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Herschel-Museum-buys-Caroline-Herschels-memoirs-FINAL.pdf Hill, Amelia. “Early medieval female burial site is ‘most significant ever discovered' in UK.” The Guardian. 12/6/2022. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/dec/06/medieval-female-burial-site-found-near-harpole-is-most-significant-ever-discovered-in-uk Hill, Michael. “University returning 1,500 artifacts to Oneida Indian Nation.” Associated Press. 11/8/2022. https://apnews.com/article/science-new-york-oneida-colgate-university-0b3c3f434d9fd4f5e71066a347ef9c1b Holpuch, Amanda. “Pants Recovered From Shipwreck Sell for $114,000 at Auction.” New York Times. 12/11/2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/11/us/jeans-shipwreck-auction.html Hunt, Katie. “The Black Death is still affecting the human immune system.” CNN. 10/19/2022. https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/19/world/black-death-plague-immune-system-scn-wellness/index.html Hurriyet Daily News. “Smuggled artifacts return to Türkiye.” 11/14/2022. https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/smuggled-artifacts-return-to-turkiye-178488 Kunze, Jenna. “After 130 Years, Massachusetts Museum Will Return Sacred Lakota Artifacts.” Native News Online. 10/10/2022. https://nativenewsonline.net/sovereignty/after-130-years-massachusetts-museum-will-return-sacred-lakota-artifacts Kuta, Sarah. “A Medieval Manuscript Has Revealed the Oldest Known Map of the Stars.” Smithsonian. 10/24/2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/medieval-manuscript-oldest-map-of-the-stars-Hipparchus-180980993/ Kuta, Sarah. “A World War II Shipwreck Is Leaking Toxic Chemicals Into the North Sea.” Smithsonian. 10/19/2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/a-world-war-ii-shipwreck-is-leaking-toxic-chemicals-into-the-sea-180980970/ Kuta, Sarah. “Rewriting the Story of Ötzi, the Murdered Iceman.” Smithsonian. 11/10/2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-true-story-behind-otzi-the-murdered-iceman-180981103/ Kuta, Sarah. “Unusual 120-Year-Old Whaleback Shipwreck Discovered in Lake Superior.” Smithsonian. 10/27/2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/unusual-120-year-old-whaleback-shipwreck-discovered-in-lake-superior-180981012/ Kuta, Sarah. “Woman's Name and Doodles Found Hidden in 1,200-Year-Old Religious Manuscript.” Smithsonian. 12/6/2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/womans-name-and-doodles-found-in-1200-year-old-religious-manuscript-180981240/ Larson, Clarise. “Southeast Alaska village of Kake welcomes artifacts — some over 200 years old — back home.” Anchorage Daily News. 11/27/2022. https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/rural-alaska/2022/11/27/southeast-alaska-village-of-kake-welcomes-artifacts-some-over-200-years-old-back-home/ Lawson-Tancred, Jo. “Cologne Hands Back 92 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria, But a Few Will Remain in Germany on Long-Term Loan.” ArtNet. 12/16/2022. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/benin-bronzes-cologne-2231179 Mair, George. “Remains of Pictish period cross with bird carvings uncovered in Scottish kirkyard.” The Scotsman. 10/21/2022. https://www.scotsman.com/heritage-and-retro/heritage/remains-of-pictish-period-cross-with-bird-carvings-uncovered-in-scottish-kirkyard-3888200 net. “Medieval shipwreck's cargo revealed by researchers.” https://www.medievalists.net/2022/10/medieval-shipwrecks-cargo-revealed-by-researchers/ net. “Two medieval shipwrecks discovered in Sweden.” https://www.medievalists.net/2022/12/two-medieval-shipwrecks-discovered-in-sweden/ Melin, Thomas. “Skaftö wreck's cargo tells a tale of 15th century trade routes.” University of Gothenburg via EurekAlert. 10/24/2022. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/968872 Metcalfe, Tom. “Thor's Hammer amulet from Viking Age unearthed in Sweden.” LiveScience. 11/1/2022. https://www.livescience.com/thor-hammer-amulet-found-sweden Miller, Ken. “21 new coffins found in search for Tulsa Massacre victims.” Associated Press. Via Phys.org. 11/2/2022. https://phys.org/news/2022-11-graves-tulsa-massacre-victims.html Morales, Mark and Dakin Andone. “Philadelphia police reveal identity of child found dead inside a box 65 years ago.” CNN. 12/9/2022. https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/08/us/philadelphia-boy-in-box-thursday/index.html Nicioli, Taylor. “Medieval ship found in Norway's biggest lake.” 12/12/2022. https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/12/world/norway-medieval-shipwreck-found-scn/index.html Nicioli, Taylor. “Rare 300-foot whaleback boat discovered at the bottom of Lake Superior.” CNN. 10/20/2022. https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/20/world/whaleback-barge-129-shipwreck-great-lakes-scn/index.html “Wreck from Wadden Sea reveals 17th-century wedding dress.” 11/11/2022. https://nos-nl.translate.goog/artikel/2451961-wrak-uit-waddenzee-geeft-17de-eeuwse-trouwjurk-prijs?_x_tr_sl=nl&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp Osborne, Margaret. “Explorers Find Cameras Abandoned by Mountain Climbers in 1937.” Smithsonian. 10/31/2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/explorers-find-cameras-abandoned-by-mountain-climbers-in-1937-180981048/ Osborne, Margaret. “Scientists Find Plaster Copies of Fossil Destroyed by Nazis.” 11/7/2022. Smithsonian. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/scientists-find-plaster-copies-of-fossil-destroyed-by-nazis-180981080/ Poggioli, Sylvia. “Discovery of ancient bronze statues in Italy may rewrite Etruscan and Roman history.” NPR. 12/3/2022. https://www.npr.org/2022/12/03/1138904735/italy-ancient-bronze-statues-discovery-tuscany “Disputed oil sketch in Dutch museum is a Rembrandt, research finds.” 11/3/2022. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/disputed-oil-sketch-dutch-museum-is-rembrandt-research-finds-2022-11-03/ Ruane, Michael. “Bones of ancient native dogs found at Jamestown.” Washington Post. 12/29/2022. https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/12/29/dogs-native-jamestown-discovered/ Siggins, Lorna. “Research finds mysterious structure in Cork Harbour is prehistoric tomb.” Irish Examiner. 10/18/2022. https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/munster/arid-40986065.html Solomon, Tessa. “Netherlands Returned More Than 200 Pre-Hispanic Artifacts To Mexico.” ArtNews. 12/9/2022. https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/netherlands-returned-pre-hispanic-artifacts-to-mexico-1234649810/ Southern Methodist University. "For 400 years, Indigenous tribes buffered climate's impact on wildfires in the American Southwest." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 7 December 2022. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/12/221207142213.htm. The History Blog. “14th c. cog shipwrecks found in Sweden.” http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/65803 The History Blog. “Bronze Medusa medallion found.” http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/65302 Turnbull, Tiffanie. “Tasmanian tiger: Remains of last thylacine found in cupboard after 85 years.” BBC News. 12/5/2022. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-63855426 University of the Basque Country. “One of Europe's most ancient domestic dogs lived in the Basque Country.” Science Daily. 11/28/2022. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/11/221128101244.htm Vang, Gia. “Pair of 1880s Levi's Sold for $76,000 at Auction. They Reveal a Dark Part of US History.” NBC. 12/12/2022. https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/vintage-1880s-levis-jeans-sold/3028900/ Weber, Bob. “'Hallowed space': Divers pull 275 artifacts from 2022 excavation of Franklin ship.” CBC. 12/19/2022. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/franklin-expedition-excavation-1.6690878 Whiddington, Richard. “The U.S. Has Returned Seven Very Ancient Seals That Were Looted From the Baghdad Museum After One Appeared in an Online Auction.” ArtNet. 12/15/2022. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/seven-seals-returned-iraq-2230014   Willsher, Kim. “Notre Dame's uncovered tombs start to reveal their secrets.” The Guardian. 12/9/2022. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/09/notre-dames-uncovered-tombs-start-to-reveal-their-secrets Wilson, Joseph. “Words on bronze hand may rewrite past of Basque language.” Phys.org. 11/16/2022. https://phys.org/news/2022-11-words-bronze-rewrite-basque-language.html Yirka, Bob. “New study of Ötzi the Iceman suggests his preservation story was not a series of miracles.” 11/9/2022. https://phys.org/news/2022-11-tzi-iceman-story-series-miracles.html See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

逐工一幅天文圖 APOD Taigi
674. 英仙座 內底 ê 雙 星團 ft. 阿錕 (20221122)

逐工一幅天文圖 APOD Taigi

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 21, 2022 1:46


真少星團會 chhāi 遮爾倚。這是咱 tī 夜空 用目睭就有通直接看著 ê 天體,tī 西元前 130 年 彼陣去予 希臘天文學家 Hipparchus 編 tī 星表內底。這組 開放星團 離咱有 7000 光年遠,嘛是用雙筒千里鏡就有通看著 ê 目標。In 是希臘神話內底 ê 英雄星座,tī 北天 一个 引人注目 ê 星場,英仙座 內底。這兩个星團咱這馬 kā 叫做 英仙座 h kah χ,嘛會當叫做 NGC 869(正爿頂懸彼个) kah NGC 884。In 兩个 ê 距離干焦幾若百 光年 遠,內底有足濟比 太陽 閣較少年、閣較燒 ê 恆星。這兩个 星團 ê 年歲,照 in ê 成員星來估算,嘛差不多老。毋但按呢,in 兩个 ê 距離嘛有相倚。這表示講,這兩个 星團 應該是 ùi 仝一个 恆星形成區 生出來--ê。 ——— 這是 NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day ê 台語文 podcast 原文版:https://apod.nasa.gov/ 台文版:https://apod.tw/ 今仔日 ê 文章: https://apod.tw/daily/20221122/ 影像:Tommy Lease 音樂:P!SCO - 鼎鼎 聲優:阿錕 翻譯:An-Li Tsai (NCU) 原文:https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap221122.html Powered by Firstory Hosting

The 365 Days of Astronomy, the daily podcast of the International Year of Astronomy 2009
Weekly Space Hangout - Hipparchus' Lost Star Catalog with Dr. Victor Gysemberg

The 365 Days of Astronomy, the daily podcast of the International Year of Astronomy 2009

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 2, 2022 66:49


https://youtu.be/k7GpdIsuetA Streamed live on Nov 23, 2022. Host: Fraser Cain ( @fcain ) Special Guest: Greek astronomer Hipparchus, who lived in the second century BCE, is considered to be the greatest astronomical observer of his time. Among his achievements are the development of trigonometry, the ability to predict solar eclipses, discovering and measuring the precession of the equinoxes, and, in approximately 135 BCE, the compilation of the first comprehensive star catalogue in the western world. Since that time, scientists have spent centuries searching for Hipparchus' Star Catalogue, but it disappeared and has never been found.   Or has it?   In 2017, researchers used multispectral imaging and computer algorithms to examine an ancient manuscript that had been discovered in a Greek Orthodox monastery in Egypt in 2012. The resulting images not only uncovered astronomy-related writings (e.g., Eratosthenes' star-origin myths [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataste...] and the third-century poem Phaenomena [https://www.britannica.com/topic/Phae...] about the constellations,) but also hidden in the manuscript were star coordinates. Could this manuscript include part of Hipparchus' star catalogue?   Tonight we are airing Fraser's prerecorded interview with Dr. Victor Gysembergh, research professor at the French National Scientific Research Centre. Victor is one of the two experts who examined the manuscript images - tune in to hear all about his conclusions.   Victor Gysembergh is a CNRS research professor at the Centre Léon Robin (Sorbonne Université). He is currently working on an edition of the fragments of Eudoxus of Cnidus, as well as on editions of Claudius Ptolemy's treatise On the Analemma and his recently discovered treatise on the Meteoroscope.   You can read all about this exciting discovery here: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/med...   You can also read the resulting paper about this find here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub...   You can learn more about Hipparchus here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipparchus  Regular Guests: Dr. Nick Castle ( @PlanetaryGeoDoc / https://wanderingsci.com/ )  Dr. Paul Byrne ( @ThePlanetaryGuy / https://eps.wustl.edu/people/paul-byrne ) Beth Johnson - SETI Institute ( @SETIInstitute & @planetarypan ) This week's stories: - Artemis 1 goodness! - Webb seeing so much exoplanet atmosphere. - A partial solar eclipse on Mars. - A precise asteroid impact prediction. - Mars rover update!   We've added a new way to donate to 365 Days of Astronomy to support editing, hosting, and production costs.  Just visit: https://www.patreon.com/365DaysOfAstronomy and donate as much as you can! Share the podcast with your friends and send the Patreon link to them too!  Every bit helps! Thank you! ------------------------------------ Do go visit http://www.redbubble.com/people/CosmoQuestX/shop for cool Astronomy Cast and CosmoQuest t-shirts, coffee mugs and other awesomeness! http://cosmoquest.org/Donate This show is made possible through your donations.  Thank you! (Haven't donated? It's not too late! Just click!) ------------------------------------ The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by the Planetary Science Institute. http://www.psi.edu Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at info@365DaysOfAstronomy.org.

Weekly Space Hangout
Weekly Space Hangout — November 23, 2022: Hipparchus' Lost Star Catalogue with Dr. Victor Gysembergh

Weekly Space Hangout

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 25, 2022 61:49


Greek astronomer Hipparchus, who lived in the second century BCE, is considered to be the greatest astronomical observer of his time. Among his achievements are the development of trigonometry, the ability to predict solar eclipses, discovering and measuring the precession of the equinoxes, and, in approximately 135 BCE, the compilation of the first comprehensive star catalogue in the western world. Since that time, scientists have spent centuries searching for Hipparchus' Star Catalogue, but it disappeared and has never been found. Or has it? In 2017, researchers used multispectral imaging and computer algorithms to examine an ancient manuscript that had been discovered in a Greek Orthodox monastery in Egypt in 2012. The resulting images not only uncovered astronomy-related writings (e.g., Eratosthenes' star-origin myths and the third-century poem Phaenomena about the constellations,) but also hidden in the manuscript were star coordinates. Could this manuscript include part of Hipparchus' star catalogue? Tonight we are airing Fraser's prerecorded interview with Dr. Victor Gysembergh, research professor at the French National Scientific Research Centre. Victor is one of the two experts who examined the manuscript images - tune in to hear all about his conclusions. Victor Gysembergh is a CNRS research professor at the Centre Léon Robin (Sorbonne Université). He is currently working on an edition of the fragments of Eudoxus of Cnidus, as well as on editions of Claudius Ptolemy's treatise On the Analemma and his recently discovered treatise on the Meteoroscope. You can read all about this exciting discovery here: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/medieval-parchment-worlds-oldest-star-map-2195744 You can also read the resulting paper about this find here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/00218286221128289 You can learn more about Hipparchus here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipparchus Image credit: Heritage Daily/Peter Mallik - (Adapted) **************************************** The Weekly Space Hangout is a production of CosmoQuest. Want to support CosmoQuest? Here are some specific ways you can help: Subscribe FREE to our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/c/cosmoquest Subscribe to our podcasts Astronomy Cast and Daily Space where ever you get your podcasts! Watch our streams over on Twitch at https://www.twitch.tv/cosmoquestx – follow and subscribe! Become a Patreon of CosmoQuest https://www.patreon.com/cosmoquestx Become a Patreon of Astronomy Cast https://www.patreon.com/astronomycast Buy stuff from our Redbubble https://www.redbubble.com/people/cosmoquestx Join our Discord server for CosmoQuest - https://discord.gg/X8rw4vv Join the Weekly Space Hangout Crew! - http://www.wshcrew.space/ Don't forget to like and subscribe! Plus we love being shared out to new people, so tweet, comment, review us... all the free things you can do to help bring science into people's lives.

The 365 Days of Astronomy, the daily podcast of the International Year of Astronomy 2009

Paul Hill, Ralph Wilkins and Dr. Jenifer “Dr. Dust” Millard host.  Damien Phillips, John Wildridge and Dustin Ruoff produce. The Discussion:  - Enjoying the recent eclipse (weather permitting). - Jeni is officially recognised as being great. - Visiting the Herschel Museum. And listeners' emails on: - Having astronomy on the brain. - Cartoon characters in space. - A reflection of Venus off swamp gas!   The News:  - Rounding up the astronomy news in November, we have: - Why spiral galaxies seem to line up from our perspective. - The origin story for Saturn's rings. - Still waiting for NASA's first Artemis moon mission. - Farewell Apollo 9's Jim McDivitt. - Boeing's zombie Starliner spacecraft gets a crew. - The big news story: Hipparchus' star charts found buried in early Christian parchments.   The Sky Guide:  This month we're taking a look at the winter constellation of Andromeda with a guide to its history, how to find it, a few deep sky objects to seek out and a round-up of the solar system views on offer in November.    Q&A: What are the wispy striated filaments visible in the JWST images of the Carina Cliffs? From our good friend Rachel Kronick   http://www.awesomeastronomy.com   Bio:  Awesome Astronomy is a podcast beamed direct from an underground bunker on Mars to promote science, space and astronomy (and enslave Earth if all goes well).   We've added a new way to donate to 365 Days of Astronomy to support editing, hosting, and production costs.  Just visit: https://www.patreon.com/365DaysOfAstronomy and donate as much as you can! Share the podcast with your friends and send the Patreon link to them too!  Every bit helps! Thank you! ------------------------------------ Do go visit http://www.redbubble.com/people/CosmoQuestX/shop for cool Astronomy Cast and CosmoQuest t-shirts, coffee mugs and other awesomeness! http://cosmoquest.org/Donate This show is made possible through your donations.  Thank you! (Haven't donated? It's not too late! Just click!) ------------------------------------ The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by the Planetary Science Institute. http://www.psi.edu Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at info@365DaysOfAstronomy.org.

AWESOME ASTRONOMY
#125 - November 2022 Part 1

AWESOME ASTRONOMY

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 1, 2022 53:10


The Discussion: Enjoying the recent eclipse (weather permitting) Jeni is officially recognised as being great Visiting the Herschel Museum And listeners' emails on: Having astronomy on the brain Cartoon characters in space A reflection of Venus off swamp gas!   The News: Rounding up the astronomy news in November, we have: Why spiral galaxies seem to line up from our perspective The origin story for Saturn's rings Still waiting for NASA's first Artemis moon mission Farewell Apollo 9's Jim McDivitt Boeing's zombie Starliner spacecraft gets a crew The big news story: Hipparchus' star charts found buried in early Christian parchments   The Sky Guide: This month we're taking a look at the winter constellation of Andromeda with a guide to its history, how to find it, a few deep sky objects to seek out and a round-up of the solar system views on offer in November.   Q&A: What are the wispy striated filaments visible in the JWST images of the Carina Cliffs? From our good friend Rachel Kronick

Looking Up
Looking Up - 26 Oct 22 An ancient text has been found and accurately dated

Looking Up

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 26, 2022 5:33


An ancient text has been found and accurately dated, to the Greek astronomer Hipparchus in 129 BCE. This is a major historical breakthrough as it shows that people were accurately measuring the stars at that time, and using charts to predict their positions and movements.

Looking Up
Looking Up - 26 Oct 22

Looking Up

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 26, 2022 5:33


An ancient text has been found and accurately dated, to the Greek astronomer Hipparchus in 129 BCE. This is a major historical breakthrough as it shows that people were accurately measuring the stars at that time, and using charts to predict their positions and movements.

The John Batchelor Show
#BigAstronomy: Discovering Hipparchus's Second Century BCE star catalog.

The John Batchelor Show

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 22, 2022 8:30


Photo: No known restrictions on publication. @Batchelorshow #BigAstronomy: Discovering Hipparchus's Second Century BCE star catalog. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03296-1?error=cookies_not_supported&code=8bb82a4c-36e5-4043-82b1-e104bd63807a

Canary Cry News Talk
TRUSS FALL

Canary Cry News Talk

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 22, 2022 153:14


Canary Cry News Talk #550 - 10.21.2022 - Recorded Live to Tape TRUSS FALL - Data Reaper, Crypto Chaos, Synthetic Mucus, UFO Science A Podcast that Deconstructs Mainstream Media News from a Biblical Worldview. Harvard: Index of MSM Ownership (Harvard.edu) SHOW NOTES: HELLO, RUN DOWN LIZ TRUSS After just 44 days, Liz Truss eligible to collect a £115,000 allowance for the rest of her life (Insider) → List of shortest terms (ABC)  → UK Prime Minister Liz Truss announces resignation (ABC News)  → Truss QUITS after just 44 days: PM admits defeat (DailyMail)  → Boris ‘expected to run for Prime Minister' after Liz Truss's resignation (Evening Standard)    WEF/POLYTICKS Tulsi Gabbard compares Biden to Hitler campaigning for Senate GOP candidate (Wa. Ex.)    DAY JINGLE/PERSONAL/EXEC.   FLIPPY Google's ping pong robot pulls off a 340-hit rally (MSN/DailyMail)   BEING WATCHED CHINA TikTok Parent ByteDance Planned To To Monitor Physical Location Of US Citizens (Forbes)   DATA Texas sues Google for allegedly capturing biometric data of millions without consent   DNA/BEAST SYSTEM 3.8 million Texas students to take home DNA identification kits 5 months after Uvalde (The Hill)   PARTY TIME BREAK 1: TREASURE   SBF/SANCTIONS/CRYPTO/BEUROCRACY SBF offers sweeping crypto sanctions (Decrypt) → FTX president stepped down end of September → Crypto's Political Megadonor Has Shut His Wallet (Atlantic)   BEAST SYSTEM Synthetic Mucus reduces HIV and Herpes (Wiley) → Mystery find of microbial DNA elements called Borgs (Nature)   BREAK 3: TALENT   UFO Clip: Dramatic videos of UFOs over the Pacific are revealed (33, DailyMail)  Why science suddenly has a lot to say about UFOs and UAP (Big Think)  All Domain Resolution Office (Defense   BREAK 4: TIME END   This Episode was Produced By: Executive Producers Mark D** (Sir MARGA Mark Knight of the Fam5)   Producers Sir MORV Knight of the Burning Chariots, Sir LX Protocol V2 Knight of the Berrean Protocol, Sir Casey the Shield Knight, Dame Gail, Sir Scott Knight of Truth, Runksmash, Sir Darrin Knight of the Hungry Panda's.   Audio Production BrotherG Kalub   Visual Art Dame Allie of the Skillet Nation Sir Dove Knight of Rusbeltia   Microfiction Runksmash - Pondering what he's stumbled across Chris takes a bite of the canary man, this New Golden Age isn't what they were promised when he was a kid. His discontent compells him to go for a walk, but no sooner than he leaves his room does he hear the siren.   The Sentinel - Silence falls on the druids… instinctively they begin to form a circular clearing in front of the three strangers. One begins to chant, then another, then another… their voices loud like thunder. “Talris… Talris… Talris!”   CLIP PRODUCER Emsworth, FaeLivrin, Epsilon   TIMESTAPERS Jackie U, Jade Bouncerson, Christine C, Pocojoyo, Joelle S   SOCIAL MEDIA DOERS Dame MissG of the OV and Deep Rivers   LINKS HELP JAM   ADDITIONAL STORIES Newsmax Bans Lara Logan After She Goes Full QAnon (Daily Beast) Obesity risk in middle-aged women linked to air pollution in new study (Yahoo)  → Air pollution may lead to weight gain, obesity in women (Study Finds)  U.K. military warns ex-pilots not to train Chinese air force (WaPo) (Archive)  China could invade Taiwan this year, US admiral warns (News AU)  Kim Jong Un's Batshit Threats Just Got a Lot Scarier (DailyBeast)  Documents detail plans to gut Twitter's workforce (WaPo) (Archive)  Video: Bill Gates Says European Energy Crisis Is “Good” (Summit News)  The Smallest Catch: Mystery of the disappearing Alaskan snow crabs deepens as it's revealed SEVEN BILLION have disappeared from the Bering Straits in the last four years - and entire industry faces ruin (DailyMail)  Warming waters cited as "key culprit" in mass die-off of Alaska snow crabs (CBS News)  More than 80 percent of the U.S. is facing troubling drought conditions (WaPo) (Archive)  1,000 Australian schools are fed insects (Spectator)  White House is pushing ahead research to cool Earth by reflecting back sunlight (CNBC)  Exxon, Shell and Chevron Sued by NJ Over Climate Change (Bloomberg) (Archive)  → Climate protesters who glued themselves to Volkswagen's floor are left in the dark (Metro UK)  PM Jacinda Ardern to visit Antarctica, Scott Base to see redevelopment and climate change research (NZ Herald)  Ardern to visit Antarctica next week (Yahoo / AAP)  Ardern to travel to Antarctica for two days on the ice (Stuff)  Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to visit Antarctica for 65th anniversary of Scott Base (News Hub)  Scientists call for setting limits, possible moratorium on fishing in Antarctica's Southern Ocean (PhysOrg) World's oldest map of the stars that was lost for 2,000 years is FOUND: Ancient Greek astronomer Hipparchus' catalog is discovered hiding under writings on ancient parchment that had been scraped off and reused for centuries (DailyMail)  …more Ukraine/Russia… Cyberpandemic: NRA of Russia Hacks Russian Defense Contractors (IBT)  Why NATO Needs to Plan for Nuclear War (Foreign Policy)  Estonia declares Russia a terrorist state, 'biggest danger to world peace' (J Post)  China Urges Citizens to Leave Ukraine (Newsmax)  Putin declares martial law in annexed Ukrainian regions (NBC News)  Putin brings in martial law in annexed Ukrainian territory amid fears he will move to full war footing and detonate a nuke over Black Sea (DailyMail)  → No point for Russia to maintain previous diplomatic presence in the West, Lavrov says (TASS) WHO: Ugandan Ebola outbreak 'rapidly evolving' after 1 month (abc News)  Moderna CEO Admits COVID Is Like Seasonal Flu, Only Vulnerable Need Jabs (Summit News)  The Unvaccinated Deserve Reparations (Epoch Times) (Archive)  Jill Biden Predicts Wave of Cancer Diagnoses After COVID-19 (Epoch Times) (Archive)  Health Officials Dumped Stocks in Jan 2020, Before COVID Declared Emergency (Senger)  Fake Joe Rogan interviews fake Steve Jobs in an AI-powered podcast (Ars Technica) Meta's VR Headset Harvests Personal Data Right Off Your Face (Wired) Robots in workplace contribute to burnout, job insecurity (ScienceDaily)              Swap Robotics is paving the way for electric solar vegetation cuts and sidewalk snow plowing (TechCrunch)  Antarctica SkySkraper (eVob)

The Song of Urania
Episode 21: Hipparchus the GOAT

The Song of Urania

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 12, 2022 69:53


After briefly examining the astronomy of Timocharis and Aristyllus, who developed the first known stellar catalog, we turn our attention to Hipparchus, who I claim was the greatest astronomer of ancient times. Hipparchus made major developments in virtually every area of astronomy known to him. His measurement of the lengths of the year and month were of unprecedented accuracy, he measured the distance to the Moon, and he developed a star catalog that was an order of magnitude larger than the earlier catalog of Timocharis and Aristyllus, which he was able to use to discover the precession of the equinoxes.

Math Science History with Gabrielle Birchak
Episode 69: Hipparchus-The Trigonometry of our Cosmos

Math Science History with Gabrielle Birchak

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 23, 2022 14:43


Hipparchus was one of the first mathematicians who trigonometrically defined his astronomical observations through stereographic projection, which is incredibly awe-inspiring!  To read the podcast's transcripts and to see a visual description of stereographic projection, please visit me at www.MathScienceHistory.com. For more information about my sponsor, Athletic Greens, visit www.athleticgreens.com/emerging  Until next time, carpe diem! All music by Lloyd Rodgers - No Copyright - No rights reserved

StarDate Podcast
Moon and Spica

StarDate Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 3, 2022 2:14


Spica cruises along with the Moon this evening. The leading light of the constellation Virgo is close below the Moon at nightfall, and sets before midnight. Astronomers have studied Spica for millennia. In fact, Spica played a starring role in an important discovery about our own planet. Around 127 B.C., Greek astronomer Hipparchus carefully studied Spica's location. He noted its position relative to the Sun's position at the fall equinox. He then compared his observations to those made by other skywatchers a few centuries earlier. And he found something surprising: Spica had shifted a bit. And in fact, other stars he measured showed that same change. Hipparchus called that change the precession of the equinoxes. The entire celestial sphere — every single star — shifts by a little more than one degree per century. That isn't caused by the stars, though. Instead, it's the result of a “wobble” in Earth's rotation — like the wobble of a gyroscope that's beginning to slow down. It takes about 26,000 years to complete a single wobble. During that time, Earth's north celestial pole draws a big circle on the sky. Different stars along that circle take turns as the pole star. The wobble also means that every star shifts position relative to the point of the equinox. So over the millennia, the entire celestial sphere rotates through the seasons — a discovery made possible in part by brilliant Spica.  Script by Damond Benningfield Support McDonald Observatory

The 365 Days of Astronomy, the daily podcast of the International Year of Astronomy 2009

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xty1Pmlgsto Ralph Wilkins hosts. Damien Phillips, John Wildridge and Dustin Ruoff produce. How big is the Sun?  How do we know?  How does it compare to the planets in our solar system and other stars in the galaxy?  What's the fate of the Sun? We answer all of these questions in this episode. Our show on Hipparchus' Antikythera Mechanism: https://youtu.be/aDU3XX49quI   We've added a new way to donate to 365 Days of Astronomy to support editing, hosting, and production costs.  Just visit: https://www.patreon.com/365DaysOfAstronomy and donate as much as you can! Share the podcast with your friends and send the Patreon link to them too!  Every bit helps! Thank you! ------------------------------------ Do go visit http://www.redbubble.com/people/CosmoQuestX/shop for cool Astronomy Cast and CosmoQuest t-shirts, coffee mugs and other awesomeness! http://cosmoquest.org/Donate This show is made possible through your donations.  Thank you! (Haven't donated? It's not too late! Just click!) ------------------------------------ The 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast is produced by the Planetary Science Institute. http://www.psi.edu Visit us on the web at 365DaysOfAstronomy.org or email us at info@365DaysOfAstronomy.org.

Midnight Train Podcast
The Antikythera Mechanism (Nerd Overload)

Midnight Train Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 29, 2022 114:36


Sign up for bonus episodes at www.themidnighttrainpodcast.com    Well since last week's episode left Logan up at night with nightmares and I still can't get the stains out of my shorts; we have decided to make this week's episode a little more on the lighter side. So we are diving deep into the wonderful world of politics! You got it, today we are going to discuss The Biden Administrations wonderful and brilliant plans and maybe even get an interview with Brandon himself! HA like that would ever happen. Fuck those guys. We are actually talking about the Antikythera Mechanism, and the mysteries surrounding it.   The Antikythera mechanism is a hand-powered orrery( a mechanical model of our solar system) from Ancient Greece that has been dubbed the world's first analog computer since it was used to forecast celestial locations and eclipses decades in advance. The ancient Olympic Games' four-year cycle, which was akin to an Olympiad, could also be followed using this method.   In 1901, wreckage from a shipwreck off the shore of the Greek island of Antikythera included this artifact. Archaeologist Valerios Stais recognized it as bearing a gear on May 17, 1902. The gadget, which was found as a single lump and then fragmented into three primary components that are now divided into 82 individual shards following conservation efforts, was contained in the remnants of a wooden box that measured 34 cm 18 cm 9 cm (13.4 in 7.1 in 3.5 in). While several of these shards have inscriptions, four of them have gears. The biggest gear has 223 teeth and is around 13 centimeters (5.1 in) in diameter.   Using contemporary computer x-ray tomography and high resolution surface scanning, a team at Cardiff University led by Mike Edmunds and Tony Freeth was able to image inside fragments of the crust-encased mechanism in 2008 and decipher the faintest writing that had once been inscribed on the machine's outer casing. This shows that it contained 37 bronze meshing gears that allowed it to mimic the Moon's erratic orbit, where the Moon's velocity is higher in its perigee than in its apogee, follow the motions of the Moon and Sun across the zodiac, and anticipate eclipses. Astronomer Hipparchus of Rhodes researched this motion in the second century BC, and it is possible that he was consulted when building the device. It is believed that a piece of the system, which also determined the locations of the five classical planets, is missing.   The device has been variously dated to between 150 and 100 BC, or to 205 BC, and it is thought to have been devised and built by Greek scientists. In any event, it had to have been built prior to the shipwreck, which has been dated to around 70–60 BC by many lines of evidence. Researchers suggested in 2022 that the machine's initial calibration date, rather than the actual date of manufacture, would have been December 23, 178 BC. Some academics disagree, arguing that the calibration date should be 204 BC. Up to the astronomical clocks of Richard of Wallingford and Giovanni de' Dondi in the fourteenth century, comparable complicated machines had not been seen.   The National Archaeological Museum in Athens currently has all of the Antikythera mechanism's fragments as well as a variety of reproductions and artistic reconstructions that show how it would have appeared and operated.   During the first voyage with the Hellenic Royal Navy, in 1900–1901, Captain Dimitrios Kontos and a crew of sponge divers from Symi island found the Antikythera shipwreck. Off Point Glyphadia on the Greek island of Antikythera, at a depth of 45 meters (148 feet), a Roman cargo ship wreck was discovered. The crew found various huge items, including the mechanism, ceramics, special glassware, jewelry, bronze and marble statues, and more. In 1901, most likely that July, the mechanism was pulled from the rubble. The mechanism's origin remains unknown, however it has been speculated that it was transported from Rhodes to Rome along with other seized goods to assist a triumphant procession that Julius Caesar was staging.   The National Museum of Archaeology in Athens received all the salvaged debris pieces for storage and examination. The museum personnel spent two years assembling more visible artifacts, like the sculptures, but the mechanism, which looked like a mass of tarnished brass and wood, remained unseen. The mechanism underwent deformational modifications as a result of not treating it after removal from saltwater.   Archaeologist Valerios Stais discovered a gear wheel lodged in one of the rocks on May 17, 1902. Although most experts judged the object to be prochronistic and too complicated to have been created during the same era as the other components that had been unearthed, he originally thought it was an astronomical clock. Before British science historian and Yale University professor Derek J. de Solla Price developed an interest in the object in 1951, investigations into the object were abandoned. The 82 pieces were photographed using X-ray and gamma-ray technology in 1971 by Price and Greek nuclear researcher Charalampos Karakalos. In 1974, Price issued a 70-page report summarizing their findings.   In 2012 and 2015, two more searches at the Antikythera wreck site turned up artifacts and another ship that may or may not be related to the treasure ship on which the mechanism was discovered. A bronze disc decorated with a bull's head was also discovered. Some speculated that the disc, which has four "ears" with holes in them, may have served as a "cog wheel" in the Antikythera mechanism. There doesn't seem to be any proof that it was a component of the mechanism; it's more probable that the disc was a bronze ornament on some furniture.   The earliest analog computer is typically referred to as the Antikythera mechanism. The production of the device must have had undiscovered ancestors throughout the Hellenistic era based on its quality and intricacy. It is believed to have been erected either in the late second century BC or the early first century BC, and its construction was based on mathematical and astronomical ideas created by Greek scientists during the second century BC.   Since they recognized the calendar on the Metonic Spiral as originating from Corinth or one of its colonies in northwest Greece or Sicily, further investigation by the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project in 2008 showed that the idea for the mechanism may have originated in the colonies of Corinth. The Antikythera Mechanism Research Initiative contended in 2008 that Syracuse could suggest a relationship with the school of Archimedes because it was a Corinthian colony and the home of Archimedes. In 2017, it was shown that the Metonic Spiral's calendar is of the Corinthian type and cannot be a Syracuse calendar. Another idea postulates that the device's origin may have come from the ancient Greek city of Pergamon, site of the Library of Pergamum, and claims that coins discovered by Jacques Cousteau at the wreck site in the 1970s correspond to the time of the device's creation. It was second in significance to the Library of Alexandria during the Hellenistic era due to its extensive collection of art and scientific scrolls.   A theory that the gadget was built in an academy established by Stoic philosopher Posidonius on that Greek island is supported by the discovery of Rhodian-style vases aboard the ship that carried the object. Hipparchus, an astronomer active from around 140 BC to 120 BC, lived at Rhodes, which was a bustling commercial port and a center for astronomy and mechanical engineering. Hipparchus' hypothesis of the motion of the Moon is used by the mechanism, raising the likelihood that he may have developed it or at the very least worked on it. The island of Rhodes is situated between the latitudes of 35.85 and 36.50 degrees north; it has lately been proposed that the astronomical events on the Parapegma of the Antikythera mechanism operate best for latitudes in the range of 33.3-37.0 degrees north.   According to a research published in 2014 by Carman and Evans, the Saros Dial's start-up date corresponds to the astronomical lunar month that started soon after the new moon on April 28, 205 BC. This suggests a revised dating of about 200 BC. Carman and Evans claim that the Babylonian arithmetic style of prediction suits the device's predictive models considerably better than the conventional Greek trigonometric approach does. According to a 2017 study by Paul Iversen, the device's prototype originated in Rhodes, but this particular model was modified for a customer from Epirus in northwest Greece. Iversen contends that the device was likely built no earlier than a generation before the shipwreck, a date that is also supported by Jones.   In an effort to learn more about the mechanism, further dives were made in 2014 and 2015. A five-year investigative program that started in 2014 and finished in October 2019 was followed by a second five-year session that began in May 2020.   The original mechanism probably came in one encrusted piece from the Mediterranean. It broke into three main parts shortly after that. In the meanwhile, more little fragments have come loose from handling and cleaning, and the Cousteau expedition discovered other fragments on the ocean floor. Fragment F was found in this fashion in 2005, suggesting that other fragments may still remain in storage, undetected since their first retrieval. The majority of the mechanism and inscriptions are found on seven of the 82 known fragments, which are also mechanically noteworthy. Additionally, 16 smaller components include inscriptions that are illegible and fragmentary.    The twelve zodiacal signs are divided into equal 30-degree sectors on a fixed ring dial that represents the ecliptic on the mechanism's front face. Even though the borders of the constellations were arbitrary, this was consistent with the Babylonian practice of allocating an equal portion of the ecliptic to each zodiac sign. The Sothic Egyptian calendar, which has twelve months of 30 days plus five intercalary days, is marked off with a rotating ring that is located outside that dial. The Greek alphabetized versions of the Egyptian names for the months are used to identify them. To align the Egyptian calendar ring with the current zodiac points, the first procedure is to spin it. Due to the Egyptian calendar's disregard for leap days, a whole zodiac sign would cycle through every 120 years.   Now we cannot show you pictures because well you couldn't see them. So we will try to describe them as best we can and we can also post them online.    The mechanism was turned by a now-lost little hand crank that was connected to the biggest gear, the four-spoked gear shown on the front of fragment A, gear b1, via a crown gear. As a result, the date indicator on the front dial was shifted to the appropriate day of the Egyptian calendar. Since the year cannot be changed, it is necessary to know the year that is currently in use. Alternatively, since most calendar cycles are not synchronized with the year, the cycles indicated by the various calendar cycle indicators on the back can be found in the Babylonian ephemeris tables for the day of the year that is currently in use. If the mechanism were in good operating order, the crank would easily be able to strike a certain day on the dial because it moves the date marker around 78 days each full rotation. The mechanism's interlocking gears would all revolve as the hand crank was turned, allowing for the simultaneous determination of the Sun's and Moon's positions, the moon's phase, the timing of an eclipse, the calendar cycle, and maybe the positions of planets.   The position of the spiral dial pointers on the two huge dials on the rear had to be observed by the operator as well. As the dials included four and five complete rotations of the pointers, the pointer had a "follower" that followed the spiral incisions in the metal. Before continuing, a pointer's follower had to be manually shifted to the opposite end of the spiral after reaching the terminal month place at either end of the spiral.   Two circular concentric scales may be seen on the front dial. The Greek zodiac signs are denoted on the inner scale, which is divided into degrees. A series of similar holes underneath the movable ring that rests flush with the surface and runs in a channel that makes up the outer scale are marked off with what appear to be days.   This outer ring has been thought to symbolize the 365-day Egyptian calendar ever since the mechanism was discovered, but new study contradicts this assumption and suggests it is really divided into 354 intervals. The Sothic and Callippic cycles had previously pointed to a 365 14-day solar year, as evidenced in Ptolemy III's proposed calendar reform of 238 BC. If one accepts the 365-day presupposition, it is acknowledged that the mechanism predates the Julian calendar reform. The dials aren't thought to represent his intended leap day, but by rotating the scale back one day every four years, the outer calendar dial may be adjusted against the inner dial to account for the effect of the extra quarter-day in the solar year.   The ring is most likely seen as a manifestation of a 354-day lunar calendar if one accepts the 354-day evidence. It is perhaps the first instance of the Egyptian civil-based lunar calendar postulated by Richard Anthony Parker in 1950, given the age of the mechanism's putative manufacture and the existence of Egyptian month names. The lunar calendar was intended to act as a daily indicator of succeeding lunations and to aid in the understanding of the Metonic(The moon phases return at the same time of year every almost precisely 19 years during the Metonic cycle. Although the recurrence is imperfect, careful examination shows that the Metonic cycle, which is defined as 235 synodic months, is only 2 hours, 4 minutes, and 58 seconds longer than 19 tropical years. In the fifth century BC, Meton of Athens determined that the cycle was exactly 6,940 days long. The creation of a lunisolar calendar is made easier by using these full integers.) and Saros(The saros, which may be used to forecast solar and lunar eclipses, is a period of exactly 223 synodic months, or around 6585.3211 days, or 18 years, 10, 11, or 12 days (depending on how many leap years there are). In what is known as an eclipse cycle, the Sun, Earth, and Moon return to about the same relative geometry, a nearly straight line, one saros time after an eclipse, and a nearly similar eclipse will take place. A sar is a saros's lower half.) dials as well as the Lunar phase pointer. Unknown gearing is assumed to move a pointer across this scale in synchrony with the rest of the mechanism's Metonic gearing. A one-in-76-year Callippic cycle correction and practical lunisolar intercalation were made possible by the movement and registration of the ring with respect to the underlying holes.   The dial also shows the Sun's location on the ecliptic in relation to the current year's date. The ecliptic serves as a useful reference for determining the locations of the Moon, the five planets known to the Greeks, and other celestial bodies whose orbits are similarly near to it.   The locations of bodies on the ecliptic were marked by at least two points. The position of the Moon was displayed by a lunar pointer, while the location of the mean Sun and the current date were also provided. The Moon position was the oldest known application of epicyclic gearing(Two gears positioned so that one gear's center spins around the other's center make up an epicyclic gear train, sometimes referred to as a planetary gearset.), and it mimicked the acceleration and deceleration of the Moon's elliptical orbit rather than being a simple mean Moon indicator that would signal movement uniformly across a circular orbit.   The system followed the Metonic calendar, anticipated solar eclipses, and computed the time of various panhellenic athletic competitions, including the Ancient Olympic Games, according to recent research published in the journal Nature in July 2008. The names of the months on the instrument closely resemble those found on calendars from Epirus in northwest Greece and with Corfu, which was formerly known as Corcyra.   Five dials are located on the rear of the mechanism: the Metonic, Saros, and two smaller ones, the so-called Olympiad Dial (recently renamed the Games dial since it did not track Olympiad years; the four-year cycle it closely matches is the Halieiad), the Callippic(a certain approximate common multiple of the synodic month and the tropical year that was put out by Callippus around 330 BC. It is a 76-year span that is an improvement over the Metonic cycle's 19 years.), and the Exeligmos(a time frame of 54 years, 33 days over which further eclipses with the same characteristics and position may be predicted.)   Both the front and rear doors of the wooden casing that houses the mechanism have inscriptions on them. The "instruction manual" looks to be behind the rear door. "76 years, 19 years" is inscribed on one of its parts, denoting the Callippic and Metonic cycles. "223" for the Saros cycle is also written. Another piece of it has the phrase "on the spiral subdivisions 235," which alludes to the Metonic dial.   The mechanism is exceptional due to the degree of miniaturization and the intricacy of its components, which is equivalent to that of astronomical clocks from the fourteenth century. Although mechanism specialist Michael Wright has argued that the Greeks of this era were capable of designing a system with many more gears, it includes at least 30 gears. Whether the device contained signs for each of the five planets known to the ancient Greeks is a subject of significant controversy. With the exception of one 63-toothed gear that is otherwise unaccounted for, no gearing for such a planetary display is still in existence.   It is quite likely that the mechanism featured additional gearing that was either removed before being placed onboard the ship or lost in or after the shipwreck due to the enormous gap between the mean Sun gear and the front of the box as well as the size and mechanical characteristics on the mean Sun gear. Numerous attempts to mimic what the Greeks of the time would have done have been made as a result of the absence of evidence and the nature of the front section of the mechanism, and of course various solutions have been proposed as a result of the lack of evidence.   Michael Wright was the first to create a model that included a simulation of a future planetarium system in addition to the existing mechanism. He said that corrections for the deeper, more fundamental solar anomaly would have been undertaken in addition to the lunar anomaly (known as the "first anomaly"). Along with the well-known "mean sun" (present time) and lunar pointers, he also provided pointers for this "real sun," Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.   A solution that differs significantly from Wright's was published by Evans, Carman, and Thorndike. Their suggestion focused on the uneven spacing of the letters on the front clock face, which seemed to them to imply an off-center sun indication arrangement. By eliminating the requirement to imitate the solar anomaly, this would simplify the mechanism. Additionally, they proposed that simple dials for each individual planet would display data such as significant planetary cycle events, initial and final appearances in the night sky, and apparent direction changes rather than accurate planetary indication, which is rendered impossible by the offset inscriptions. Compared to Wright's concept, this system would result in a far more straightforward gear system with significantly lower forces and complexity.   After much investigation and labor, Freeth and Jones released their idea in 2012. They developed a concise and workable answer to the planetary indicator puzzle. They also suggest that the date pointer, which displays the mean position of the Sun and the date on the month dial, be separated to display the solar anomaly (i.e., the sun's apparent location in the zodiac dial). If the two dials are properly synced, Wright's front panel display may be shown on the other dials as well. However, unlike Wright's model, this one is simply a 3-D computer simulation and has not been physically constructed.   Similar devices A first-century BC philosophical debate by Cicero, De re publica (54-51 BC), discusses two devices that some contemporary authors believe to be some sort of planetarium or orrery, forecasting the motions of the Sun, Moon, and the five planets known at the time. After Archimedes' demise at the siege of Syracuse in 212 BC, the Roman commander Marcus Claudius Marcellus took both of them to Rome. One of these devices was the sole thing Marcellus preserved during the siege because of his admiration for Archimedes (the second was placed in the Temple of Virtue). The instrument was kept as a family heirloom, and according to Philus, who was present during a conversation Cicero imagined had taken place in Scipio Aemilianus's villa in the year 129 BC, Gaius Sulpicius Gallus, who served as consul with Marcellus's nephew in 166 BC and is credited by Pliny the Elder with being the first Roman to have written a book explaining solar and lunar eclipses, gave both a "learned explanation" and working demonstrations of the device.   According to Pappus of Alexandria (290–c. 350 AD), Archimedes had penned a now-lost treatise titled On Sphere-Making that described how to build these contraptions. Many of his innovations are described in the ancient documents that have survived, some of which even have crude illustrations. His odometer is one such instrument; the Romans later used a similar device to set their mile marks (described by Vitruvius, Heron of Alexandria and in the time of Emperor Commodus). Although the pictures in the literature looked to be practical, attempts to build them as shown had been unsuccessful. The system worked properly when the square-toothed gears in the illustration were swapped out for the angled gears found in the Antikythera mechanism.   This technique existed as early as the third century BC, if Cicero's story is accurate. Later Roman authors including Lactantius (Divinarum Institutionum Libri VII), Claudian (In sphaeram Archimedes), and Proclus (Commentary on the First Book of Euclid's Elements of Geometry) in the fourth and fifth century also make reference to Archimedes' invention.   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"   Given that the third device was almost certainly in Posidonius's possession by that time and that both the Archimedes-made and Cicero-mentioned machines were found in Rome at least 30 years after the shipwreck's estimated date, it is unlikely that any one of these machines was the Antikythera mechanism discovered in the wreck. The researchers who rebuilt the Antikythera mechanism concur that it was too complex to have been a singular invention.   This proof that the Antikythera mechanism was not unique strengthens the argument that there was a tradition of complex mechanical technology in ancient Greece that was later, at least in part, transmitted to the Byzantine and Islamic worlds. During the Middle Ages, complex mechanical devices that were still simpler than the Antikythera mechanism were built in these cultures.A fifth- or sixth-century Byzantine Empire geared calendar fragment that was mounted to a sundial and maybe used to help tell time has been discovered. The Caliph of Baghdad commissioned Bani Ms's Kitab al-Hiyal, also known as the Book of Ingenious Devices, in the early ninth century AD. Over a hundred mechanical devices were detailed in this document, some of which may have been found in monastic manuscripts from antiquity. Around 1000, the scholar al-Biruni described a geared calendar that was comparable to the Byzantine mechanism, and a 13th-century astrolabe also had a clockwork system that is similar to it. It's probable that this medieval technology was brought to Europe and had a part in the region's development of mechanical clocks.   Su Song, a Chinese polymath, built a mechanical clock tower in the 11th century that, among other things, measured the positions of several stars and planets that were shown on an armillary sphere that spun mechanically.   Conspiracy Corner The Antikythera Mechanism was thought to have been created between 150 and 100 BCE at first, but recent research dates its development to approximately 205 BCE. It's interesting that this technology seems to have just vanished because comparable items didn't start turning up until the 14th century. But why did the ancient Greeks permit such a significant development to be forgotten over time? Posidonius carried on the work of the Greek astronomer Hipparchus by instructing students at an astronomy academy. Posidonius invented a contraption that "in each rotation reproduces the identical motions of the Sun, the Moon and the five planets that take place in the skies every day and night," according to Cicero, one of Posidonius' students. Which remarkably resembles the Antikythera Mechanism. However, when the Mechanism was created in the second century BCE, Posidonius was not yet alive. Hipparchus was, though. Posidonius could have built an instrument based on Hipparchus' Antikythera Mechanism, which he made many years before. What about Posidonius' instrument, though? A time traveler from the future may have developed the Mechanism, or it may genuinely be a futuristic gadget that was taken back to ancient Greece and put there on purpose if it dates to the second century BCE and equivalent technology didn't start emerging until decades later. Some people think the entire thing is a hoax despite overwhelming scientific proof to the contrary. After all, it is challenging to reconcile the Antikythera mechanism's antiquity with its growth in technology. The Turk, a fictional chess-playing robot constructed in the 18th century, has been likened to the mechanism by some. But scientists easily acknowledge that The Turk is a fraud. Why would they fabricate evidence of the mechanism's reliability? What would they be attempting to conceal? Even though it is quite old, the Antikythera mechanism represented an enormous advance in technology. So how did the Greeks of antiquity come up with the concept, much alone construct it? They didn't, according to The Ancient Aliens: “Beings with advanced knowledge of astronomical bodies, mathematics and precision engineering tools created the device or gave the knowledge for its creation to someone during the first century BC. But the knowledge was not recorded or wasn't passed down to anyone else.” Therefore, aliens either provided humanity the ability to make this gadget or the knowledge to do so, but they didn't do anything to assure that we built on it or learnt from it. It seems like the aliens weren't planning ahead very well. This theory, like the extraterrestrial one, is based simply on the observation that the Antikythera mechanism seems to be too technologically sophisticated for its period. The mythical Atlantis was a highly developed metropolis that vanished into the ocean. Many people think the city genuinely exists, despite the fact that Plato only described it in a sequence of allegories. And some of those individuals believe the Antikythera mechanism proves Atlantis existed since it was too sophisticated for any known culture at the time; they believe Atlantis, not Greece, is where the mechanism originated. According to the notion of intelligent design, a higher power purposefully created many things on Earth because they are too sophisticated to have arisen by simple evolution. Because the Antikythera mechanism is so much more sophisticated than any other artifact from that age, some people think it is proof of intelligent design. If this is the case, you have to question what divine, omnipotent creature would spend time creating such a minute object for such a trivial goal. Greece's coast is home to the island of Rhodes. Greek artifacts were placed into the ship transporting the Mechanism, which was sailing for Rome. One explanation for this might be that the Antikythera mechanism was taken together with the spoils from the island of Rhodes. How come Rhodes was pillaged? following a victorious war against the Greeks, as part of Julius Caesar's triumphal procession. Could the loss of one of history's most significant and cutting-edge technical advancements be accidentally attributed to Julius Caesar? The Antikythera mechanism may have predicted the color of eclipses, which is thought to be impossible by scientists, according to new translations of texts on the device. Therefore, were the forecasts the mechanism provided only educated guesses, or did the ancient Greeks have knowledge that we do not? According to legend, an extraterrestrial species called the Annunaki (possible episode?) invaded and inhabited Earth (they were revered as gods in ancient Mesopotamia), leaving behind evidence of their presence. The Antikythera mechanism could be one of these hints. The Mechanism uses what appears to be distinct technology that was, as far as we are aware, extremely different from anything else that was built about 200 BCE. It estimates when lunar eclipses would occur, which advanced space invaders would undoubtedly know something about. An intriguing view on the process is held by Mike Edmunds from Cardiff University. The uniqueness and technological innovation of the item are frequently highlighted in reports about it. However, Edmunds speculates that the mechanism may have been in transit to a client when the ship carrying it went down. If one device was being delivered, might there possibly be others — if not on this ship, then potentially on others from Rhodes? — he asks in his essay. There may have been more of these amazing machines that have been lost to the passage of time or are still out there waiting to be found. MOVIES - films from the future - https://filmsfromthefuture.com/movies/

Gresham College Lectures
The Incredible Sine Wave and its Uses

Gresham College Lectures

Play Episode Listen Later May 31, 2022 59:50 Transcription Available


The beautiful sine wave turns out to have a huge number of practical applications, from the motion of springs, to waves in the sea, to sound waves, light waves and more. It is curious that the function which defines the sine wave, sin(x), comes from comparing the lengths of sides in right-angled triangles – just about the least curvy things you could imagine. How does that concept result in the lovely curve of the sine wave?A lecture by Sarah HartThe transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/sine-waveGresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.Website: http://www.gresham.ac.ukTwitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollegeFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollegeInstagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

Gresham College Lectures
The Broken Cosmic Distance Ladder

Gresham College Lectures

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 4, 2022 58:11 Transcription Available


Measuring distances to astronomical objects outside our Galaxy is a surprisingly hard challenge: it wasn't until 1923 that Edwin Hubble obtained proof that Andromeda is indeed a galaxy in its own right. Today, astronomers extend distance measurements in the cosmos to the edge of the visible Universe, building up a 'cosmic distance ladder' made of several rungs. This talk will explore a major conundrum of contemporary astronomy: as observations have become more precise, the distance ladder appears today to be broken.A lecture by Roberto TrottaThe transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/cosmic-distanceGresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.Website: http://www.gresham.ac.ukTwitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollegeFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollegeInstagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

The Complete History of Science
Hipparchus: The Greatest Astronomer of Antiquity

The Complete History of Science

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 19, 2022 16:39 Transcription Available


In the second century B.C. Greek astronomy came of age.  While it had previously been closely connected with philosophy and mathematics, the increased use of observation pushed astronomy into the realm of science.  And the man most responsible for this was Hipparchus of Nicaea.  This episode delves into some of Hipparchus's achievments, as well as arguing that more than any other persons Hipparchus was responsible for turning astronomy into a fully fledges science.Contact: thecompletehistoryofscience@gmail.comTwitter: @complete_sciMusic Credit: Folk Round Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

Interplace
You Are What You Map

Interplace

Play Episode Listen Later May 8, 2021 17:05


Hello Interactors,Today we’re branching into topography and the role western colonial expansion plays in the creation and articulation of our naturally occurring geography. Most of us are not very skilled at critiquing the role maps have played in shaping how we see the globe and the people on it. But I’m optimistic that when we do we can better confront the boundaries that maps have created between people and place.As interactors, you’re special individuals self-selected to be a part of an evolutionary journey. You’re also members of an attentive community so I welcome your participation.Please leave your comments below or email me directly.Now let’s go…NAME THAT PLACEI spent last April talking about how the United States was surveyed and diced in little squares that are featured in our maps today. It was a technique ripped out of ancient Rome as a way to rationally quantify space across massive swaths of land. The United States perfected gridded cartesian cadastral cartography, but drawing little lines on paper as a means of assessing, assuming, and asserting control over land had been done for centuries by European colonial settlers around the world – beginning in the Renaissance. The Renaissance accelerated mapping. This was an era of discovering new knowledge, instrumentation, and the measuring and quantification of the natural world. Mercator’s projection stemmed from the invention of perspective; a word derived from the Latin word perspicere – “to see through.” European colonial maps were drawn mostly to navigate, control, and dominate land – and its human occupants. We have all been controlled by these maps in one way or other and we still are. Our knowledge of the world largely stems from the same perspective Mercator was offering up centuries ago. The entire world sees the world through the eyes of Western explorers, conquerors, and cartographers. That includes elements of maps as simple as place names. Take place names in Africa, as an example. The country occupied by France until 1960, Niger, comes from the Latin word for “shining black”. Its derogatory adaptation by the British added another ‘g’ making a word we now call the n-word. But niger was not the most popular Latin word used to describe people of Africa, it was an ancient Greek derivative; Aethiops – which means “burn face”. If you replace the ‘s’ at the end with the ‘a’ from the beginning, you see where the name Ethiopia comes from. Even the name of my home state of Iowa has dubious origins. Sure it’s named after the Indigenous tribe, the Iowa or Ioway, but the Iowa people did not call themselves that. They referred to themselves in their own language as the Báxoje (Bah-Kho-Je). They settled primarily in the eastern and south eastern part of the land we now call Iowa. Most of them were forced to relocate to reservations in Kansas and Oklahoma. It’s believed the name Iowa, came from a Sioux word – ayuhwa which means “sleepy ones.” It would be like the south winning the Civil War and then turning around and declaring the region to their north henceforth be referred to as: Yankees. Even the word Sioux is a French cheapening of a word from the Ojbiwe people– Nadouessioux (na·towe·ssiw). The Sioux were actually a nation combined of the Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota people. They referred to themselves as Oceti Sakowin (oh-CHEH-tee SHAW-kow-we) or “Seven Council Fires”. They covered the sweeping plains of most of what we now call Minnesota; which stems from the Dakota phrase Mni Sota Makoce – “where the waters reflect the sky”. They extended south to the northwest corner of so-called Iowa and east to the more aptly named state of South Dakota. These people were expelled from Minnesota after the Dakota War of 1862. They continue to suffer today the pains felt by America’s largest mass execution in history at the hands of none other than Abraham Lincoln. Just months after signing the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln ordered 38 Dakota and Lakota men to be hung. Dissatisfied with the pace and politics of the makeshift trial of 303 Indigenous people, he decided on his own who should live and who should die. On April 23rd, 1863 the United States declared their treaties with the Lakota and Dakota null and void, closed their reservations, and marched them off their land. It took until this year, 2021, for the United States to give a southern sliver of land back to them. And in Northern Minnesota they’re still fighting to protect the water that reflects the sky.MAPS AND MATH FROM A MAN FROM BATH There’s another Westernized place name just west of where the Dakota and Lakota people thrived called Gannett Peak. It’s the tallest mountain in the state of Wyoming and is part of the Bridger-Teton range. I’m sure you’ve heard of the more popular neighboring range, the Grand Teton’s; another notable (and sexist) French place name which means – ‘Big Boobs’. Gannett Peak is named after Henry Gannett – the father of American mapmaking. Born in Bath, Maine in 1846 he went on to graduate from Harvard’s Lawrence Scientific School in 1869. After some time in the field documenting geology from the Great Lakes to the mines of Colorado he returned to Harvard for a degree in mining engineering. He spent a couple years working at the Harvard College Observatory making maps and calculating the building’s precise longitude. He then was hired as the chief astronomer-topographer-geographer by the United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories in 1872. A mouthful. Perhaps daunted by such a long name for a department charged with precision and clarity of information, the USGGST was shortened to USGS in 1779 – the U.S. Geological Society. Some claim Gannett lobbied for USGGS in an attempt to maintain the word geographical and not just geological. If so, he was likely outvoted by his boss and prominent geologist, Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden. His book, The Great West: its Attractions and Resources gives you a clue as to why geologists were maybe more revered than geographers in the late seventeen and eighteen hundreds. After all, there’s gold in them there hills.The study of naturally occurring geometric properties and their spatial relations over a continuous plane is the work of topology. Documenting and surveying those studies is the work of a topographer. And the artifact they generate is called a topographic map. The first large scale topographic mapping project was Cassini’s Geometric Map of France in 1792. Then, in 1802 the British followed with the highly precise topographic map of India. As I’ve noted in previous posts, the earliest surveying and mapping of the British colonies and the United States were funded and controlled by government backed private companies like the Hudson Bay Company in the 1600s and the Ohio Company of Associates in the 1700s. IT’S UP TO YOU TO QUESTION YOUR VIEWThe topographic map of India was also directed by a British colonizing super-spreader the East India Company. They, together with the British government, had been at it for 200 years already. But in the early 1800s they were seeking accuracy. They wanted far more precise control over the Indigenous land, resources, trade, and people. The people of India are second to Africa in genetic diversity and emerged via Africa through the Indus River valley; hence the name India. This massive southeast Asian continent was first named by the Spanish or Portuguese – India is Latin for “Region of the Indus River”. The map that the East India Company commissioned in 1802 is called the Great Trigonometrical Survey. Trigonometry had already been awhile. In 140BC its Greek inventor, Hipparchus, used it, as the British did, for spherical trigonometry – the relationship of spherical triangles that emerge when three circles wrapping around a sphere intersect to form a spherical triangle. It’s used to measure the spherical curvature of the earth and was employed with precision by the East India Company using instruments with cool names like theodolite and Zenith sector. What resulted was a map of India featuring a fine-grained triangulated lattice accurately depicting the designated borders of British claimed territories. It was also the first accurate height measurements of Mount Everest, K2, and Kanchenjunga. Those heights were surveyed by Indigenous Tibetan surveyors who were secretly hired and trained by the British. Europeans were not allowed into Tibet at the time, so the surveyors had to pretend they were just hiking. This trigonometrical triangulated technique was the first accurate measure of a section of the longitudinal arc. The same arced sections that defined the curved edges of Henry Gannett’s topographic quadrangle mapping system which he perfected seventy years later on the other side of the globe at an arc distance of roughly 8,448 miles or 13,595 kilometers.Gannett’s career arc makes it easy to see why he figures prominently in American geography. Following is just a sampling of his contributions.He was the first geographer assigned to the census for the country’s tenth census survey. Gannett was responsible for drawing the first census tracts and invented the enumeration of districts based on population and geography. He chaired the Board of Geographic Names and later wrote a book on the history of United States place names. You can read a digitized version online. It includes a surprisingly long list of place names across the country and their origins. He demarcated the first 110,000 miles of national forests and served as Teddy Roosevelt’s research program director for his National Conservation Commission which projected future natural resource use.He helped form the National Geographic Society, Association of American Geographers, and other astronomy and geology clubs.He published two hundred articles on human geography, cartography, and geomorphology all while editing a handful of journals and publishing textbooks.The topographical techniques and programs Gannett pioneered were used all the way to the 1980’s and 90’s as GPS and computers took over. As amazing as his work was, it was no match for satellite imagery, GPS, and computer imaging. The topography he painstakingly surveyed and mapped is now available to anyone with access to a computer and an internet connection.Gannett was one of many geographers throughout the history of western colonization. Sure he was more influential than most, but they were all tasked with the same thing. Whether it was triangulating British territories in India, finessing French regions in Africa, or delineating Dutch districts in Brazil they were all measuring, mapping, and manipulating how others should see the world. It’s the paradox of mapmaking. No matter your intent, whatever line you draw will reflect the bias you bring. Mercator was biased by perspective because that’s what the culture of his time led him to do. Gannett mapped natural occurring features of the land because the mapping of minerals and other natural resources was in high demand. Iowa was named Iowa because that’s what they knew. Even attempts to counter-map the dominance of cartesian colonial cartography can’t escape its own bias. Nobody can. But we live on a melting planet, so our days remain a few. If we’re going to survive this calamity, we must see that our thoughts are skewed. So the next you look at a map, consider its point of view. If we all do this together, we can invent a world anew. Sources: Henry Gannett Chapter. The History of Cartography, Volume 6: Cartography in the Twentieth Century. Edited by Mark Monmonier.Wikipedia. Subscribe at interplace.io

The History of Computing
A Steampunk's Guide To Clockworks: From The Cradle Of Civilization To Electromechanical Computers

The History of Computing

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 21, 2021 40:53


We mentioned John Locke in the episode on the Scientific Revolution. And Leibniz. They not only worked in the new branches of science, math, and philosophy, but they put many of their theories to use and were engineers.  Computing at the time was mechanical, what we might now think of as clockwork. And clockwork was starting to get some innovative new thinking. As we've covered, clockworks go back thousands of years. But with a jump in more and more accurate machining and more science, advances in timekeeping were coming. Locke and Huygens worked on pendulum clocks and then moved to spring driven clocks. Both taught English patents and because they didn't work that well, neither were granted. But more somethings needed to happen to improve the accuracy of time.  Time was becoming increasingly important. Not only to show up to appointments and computing ever increasing math problems but also for navigation. Going back to the Greeks, we'd been estimating our position on the Earth relative to seconds and degrees. And a rapidly growing maritime power like England at the time needed to use clocks to guide ships. Why? The world is a sphere. A sphere has 360 degrees which multiplied by 60 minutes is 21,600. The North South circumference is 21603 nautical miles. Actually the world isn't a perfect sphere so the circumference around the equator is 21,639 nautical miles. Each nautical mile is 6,076 feet. When traveling by sea, trying to do all that math in feet and inches is terribly difficult and so we came up with 180 lines each of latitude, running east-west and longitude running north-south. That's 60 nautical miles in each line, or 60 minutes. The distance between each naturally goes down as one gets closer to the poles - and goes down a a percentage relative to the distance to those poles. Problem was that the most accurate time to check your position relative to the sun was at noon or to use the Polaris North Star at night. Much of this went back to the Greeks and further. The Sumerians developed the sexagesimal system, or base 60 and passed it down to the Babylonians in the 3rd millennium BCE and by 2000 BCE gave us the solar year and the sundial. As their empire grew rich with trade and growing cities by 1500 BCE the Egyptians had developed the first water clocks timers, proved by the Karnak water clock, beginning as a controlled amount of water filling up a vessel until it reached marks. Water could be moved - horizontal water wheels were developed as far back as the 4th millennium BCE.  Both the sundial and the water clock became more precise in the ensuing centuries, taking location and the time of the year into account. Due to water reacting differently in various climates we also got the sandglass, now referred to as the hourglass.  The sundial became common in Greece by the sixth century BCE, as did the water clock, which they called the clepsydra. By then it had a float that would tell the time. Plato even supposedly added a bowl full of balls to his inflow water clock that would dump them on a copper plate as an alarm during the day for his academy.  We still use the base 60 scale and the rough solar years from even more ancient times. But every time sixty seconds ticks by something needs to happen to increment a minute and every 60 minutes needs to increment an hour. From the days of Thales in the 600s BCE and earlier, the Greeks had been documenting and studying math and engineering. And inventing. All that gathered knowledge was starting to come together. Ctesibius was potentially the first to head the Library of Alexandria and while there, developed the siphon, force pumps, compressed air, and so the earliest uses of pneumatics. He is accredited for adding a scale and float thus mechanics. And expanding the use to include water powered gearing that produced sound and moved dials with wheels. The Greek engineer Philo of Byzantium in the 240s BCE, if not further back, added an escapement to the water clock. He started by simply applying a counterweight to the end of a spoon and as the spoon filled, a ball was released. He also described a robotic maid who, when Greeks put a cup in her hand, poured wine.  Archimedes added the idea that objects displaced water based on their volume but also mathematical understanding of the six simple machines. He then gets credited for being the first to add a gear to a water clock. We now have gears and escapements. Here's a thought, given their lifetimes overlapping, Philo, Archimedes, and Ctesibius could have all been studying together at the library. Archimedes certainly continued on with earlier designs, adding a chime to the early water clocks. And Archimedes is often credited for providing us with the first transmission gears. The Antikythera device proves the greeks also made use of complex gearing. Transferring energy in more complex gearing patterns. It is hand cranked but shows mathematical and gearing mastery by choosing a day and year and seeing when the next eclipse and olympiad would be. And the Greeks were all to happy to use gearing for other devices, such as an odometer in the first century BCE and to build the Tower of the Winds, an entire building that acted as a detailed and geared water clock as well as perhaps a model of the universe.  And we got the astrolabe at the same time, from Apollonius or Hipparchus. But a new empire had risen. The astrolabe was a circle of metal with an arm called an alidade that users sighted to the altitude of a star and based on that, you could get your location. The gearing was simple but the math required to get accurate readings was not. These were analog computers of a sort - you gave them an input and they produced an output. At this point they were mostly used by astronomers and continued to be used by Western philosophers at least until the Byzantines. The sundial, water clocks, and many of these engineering concepts were brought to Rome as the empire expanded, many from Greece. The Roman Vitruvius is credited with taking that horizontal water wheel and flipping it vertical in 14 CE. Around the same time, Augustus Caesar built a large sundial in Campus Martius. The Romans also added a rod to cranks giving us sawmills in the third century. The larger the empire the more time people spent in appointments and the more important time became - but also the more people could notice the impact that automata had. Granted much of it was large, like a windmill at the time, but most technology starts huge and miniaturizes as more precision tooling becomes available to increasingly talented craftspeople and engineers.  Marcus Vitruvius Pollio was an architect who wrote 10 books in the 20s BCE about technology. His works link aqueducts to water-driven machinations that could raise water from mines, driven by a man walking on a wheel above ground like a hamster does today but with more meaning. They took works from the Hellenistic era and put them in use on an industrial scale. This allowed them to terraform lands and spring new cities into existence. Sawing timber with mills using water to move saws allowed them to build faster. And grinding flour with mills allowed them to feed more people. Heron of Alexandria would study and invent at the Library of Alexandria, amongst scrolls piled to the ceilings in halls with philosophers and mechanics. The inheritor of so much learning, he developed vending machines, statues that moved, and even a steam engine. If the Greeks and early Roman conquered of Alexandria could figure out how a thing work, they could automate it.  Many automations were to prove the divine. Such as water powered counterweights to open doors when priests summoned a god, and blew compressed air through trumpets. He also used a wind mill to power an organ and a programmable cart using a weight to turn a drive axle. He also developed an omen machine, with ropes and pulleys on a gear that caused a bird to sing, the song driven by a simple whistle being lowered into water. His inventions likely funding more and more research.  But automations in Greek times were powered by natural forces, be it hand cranked, fire, or powered by water. Heron also created a chain driven automatic crossbow, showing the use of a chain-driven machine and he used gravity to power machines, automating devices as sand escaped from those sand glasses. He added pegs to pulleys so the distance travelled could be programmed. Simple and elegant machines. And his automata extended into the theater. He kept combining simple machines and ropes and gravity into more and more complex combinations, getting to the point that he could run an automated twenty minute play. Most of the math and mechanics had been discovered and documented in the countless scrolls in the Library of Alexandria.  And so we get the term automated from the Greek word for acting of oneself. But automations weren't exclusive to the Greeks. By the time Caligula was emperor of the Roman Empire, bronze valves could be used to feed iron pipes in his floating ships that came complete with heated floors. People were becoming more and more precise in engineering and many a device was for telling time. The word clock comes from Latin for bell or clogga. I guess bells should automatically ring at certain times. Getting there... Technology spreads or is rediscovered. By Heron the Greeks and Romans understood steam, pistons, gears, pulleys, programmable automations, and much of what would have been necessary for an industrial or steampunk revolution. But slaves were cheap and plentiful in the empire. The technology was used in areas where they weren't. Such as at Barbegal to feed Arles in modern France, the Romans had a single hillside flour grinding complex with automated hoppers, capable of supplying flour to thousands of Romans. Constantine, the first Christian Roman emperor, was based there before founding Constantinople. And as Christianity spread, the gimmicks that enthralled the people as magic were no longer necessary. The Greeks were pagans and so many of their works would be cleansed or have Christian writings copied over them. Humanity wasn't yet ready. Or so we've been led to believe.  The inheritors of the Roman Empire were the Byzantines, based where Europe meets what we now think of as the Middle East. We have proof of geared portable sundials there, fewer gears but showing evidence of the continuation of automata and the math used to drive it persisting in the empire through to the 400s. And maybe confirming written accounts that there were automated lions and thrones in the empire of Constantinople. And one way geared know-how continued and spread was along trade routes which carried knowledge in the form of books and tradespeople and artifacts, sometimes looted from temples. One such trade route was the ancient Silk Road (or roads). Water clocks were being used in Egypt, Babylon, India, Persia, Greece, Rome, and China. The Tang Dynasty in China took or rediscovered the escapement to develop a water powered clockwork escapement in the 700s and then in the Song Dynasty developed astronomical clock towers in the 900s. By now the escapements Su Sung is often credited for the first mechanical water clock in 1092. And his Cosmic Engine would mark the transition from water clocks to fully mechanical clocks, although still hydromechanical. The 1100s saw Bhoja in the Paramara dynasty of India emerge as a patron of the arts and sciences and write a chapter on mechanical bees and birds. These innovations could have been happening in a vacuum in each - or word and works could have spread through trade.  That technology disappeared in Europe, such as plumbing in towns that could bring tap water to homes or clockworks, as the Roman Empire retreated. The specialists and engineers lacked the training to build new works or even maintain many that existed in modern England, France, and Germany. But the heads of rising eastern empires were happy to fund such efforts in a sprint to become the next Alexander. And so knowledge spread west from Asia and was infused with Greek and Roman knowhow in the Middle East during the Islamic conquests. The new rulers expanded quickly, effectively taking possession of Egypt, Mesopotamia, parts of Asia, the Turkish peninsula, Greece, parts of Southern Italy, out towards India, and even Spain. In other words, all of the previous centers of science. And they were tolerant, not looking to convert conquered lands to Islam. This allowed them to learn from their subjects in what we now think of as the Arabic translation movement in the 7th century when Arabic philosophers translated but also critiqued and refined works from the lands they ruled. This sparked the Muslim golden age, which became the new nexus of science at the time. Over time we saw the Seljuks, ruling out of Baghdad, and Abbasids as Islamic empires who funded science and philosophy. They brought caravans of knowledge into their capitals. The Abbasids even insisted on a specific text from Ptolemy (the Almagest) when doing a treaty so they could bring it home for study. They founding of schools of learning known as Madrasas in every town. This would be similar to a university system today. Over the centuries following, they produced philosophers like Muhammad Ibn Musa Al-Khwarizmi, who solved quadratic equations, giving us algebra. This would become important to make clockwork devices became more programmable (and for everything else algebra is great at helping with). They sent clockworks as gifts, such as a brass automatic water clock sent to Charlemagne between 802 and 807, complete with chimes. Yup, the clogga rang the bell. They went far past where Heron left off though. There was Ibn-Sina, Al-Razi, Al-Jazari, Al Kindi, Thābit ibn Qurra, Ridwan, and countless other philosophers carrying on the tradition. The philosophers took the works of the Greeks, copied, and studied them. They evolved the technology to increasing levels of sophistication. And many of the philosophers completed their works at what might be considered the Islamic version of the Library of Alexandria, The House of Wisdom in Baghdad. In fact, when Baghdad was founded about 50 miles north of ancient Babylon, the Al-Mansur Palace Library was part of the plan  and over subsequent Caliphs was expanded adding an observatory that would then be called the House of Wisdom. The Banu Musa brothers worked out of there and wrote twenty books including the first Book of Ingenious Devices. Here, they took the principles the Greeks and others had focused on and got more into the applications of those principles. On the way to their compilation of devices, they translated books from other authors, including A Book on Degrees on the Nature of Zodiacal Signs from China and Greek works.The three brothers combined pneumatics and aerostatics. They added plug valves, taps, float valves, and conical valves. They documented the siphon and funnel for pouring liquids into the machinery and thought to put a float in a chamber to turn what we now think of as the first documented crank shaft. We had been turning circular motion into linear motion with wheels, but we were now able to turn linear motion into circular motion as well. They used all of this to describe in engineering detail, if not build and invent, marvelous fountains. Some with multiple jets alternating. Some were wind powered and showed worm-and-pinion gearing.   Al-Biruni, around the turn of the first millennia, came out of modern Uzbekistan and learned the ancient Indian Sanskrit, Persian, Hebrew, and Greek. He wrote 95 books on astronomy and math. He studied the speed of light vs speed of sound, the axis of the earth and applied the scientific method to statics and mechanics. This moved theories on balances and weights forward. He produced geared mechanisms that are the ancestor of modern astrolabes.  The Astrolabe was also brought to the Islamic world. Muslim astronomers added newer scales and circles. As with in antiquity, they used it in navigation but they had another use, to aid in prayer by showing the way to Mecca.  Al-Jazari developed a number of water clocks and is credited with others like developed by others due to penning another Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices. Here, he describes a camshaft, crank dive and reciprocating pumps, two way valves, and expanding on the uses of pneumatic devices. He developed programmable humanoid robots in the form of automatic musicians on a boat. These complex automata included cams and pegs, similar to those developed by Heron of Alexandria, but with increasing levels of sophistication, showing we were understanding the math behind the engineering and it wasn't just trial and error. All golden ages must end. Or maybe just evolve and migrate. Fibonacci and Bacon quoted then, showing yet another direct influence from multiple sources around the world flowing into Europe following the Holy Wars.  Pope Urban II began inspiring European Christian leaders to wage war against the Muslims in 1095. And so the Holy Wars, or Crusades would begin and rage until 1271. Here, we saw manuscripts copied and philosophy flow back into Europe. Equally as important, Muslim Caliphates in Spain and Sicily and trade routes. And another pair of threats were on the rise. The plague and the Mongols.  The Mongol invasions began in the 1200s and changed the political makeup of the known powers of the day. The Mongols sacked Baghdad and burned the House of Wisdom. After the mongols and Mughals, the Islamic Caliphates had warring factions internally, the empires fractured, and they turned towards more dogmatic approaches. The Ottomon empire rose and would last until World War I, and while they continued to sponsor scientists and great learners, the nexus of scientific inquiry and the engineering that inspired shifted again and the great works were translated with that shift, including into Latin - the language of learning in Europe. By 1492 the Moors would be kicked out of Spain. That link from Europe to the Islamic golden age is a critical aspect of the transfer of knowledge. The astrolabe was one such transfer. As early as the 11th century, metal astrolabes arrive in France over the Pyrenees to the north and to the west to Portugal . By the 1300s it had been written about by Chaucer and spread throughout Europe. Something else happened in the Iberian peninsula in 1492. Columbus sailed off to discover the New World. He also used a quadrant, or a quarter of an astrolabe. Which was first written about in Ptolemy's Almagest but later further developed at the House of Wisdom as the sine quadrant.  The Ottoman Empire had focused on trade routes and trade. But while they could have colonized the New World during the Age of Discovery, they didn't. The influx of wealth coming from the Americas caused inflation to spiral and the empire went into a slow decline over the ensuing centuries until the Turkish War of Independence, which began in 1919.  In the meantime, the influx of money and resources and knowledge from the growing European empires saw clockworks and gearing arriving back in Europe in full force in the 14th century.  In 1368 the first mechanical clock makers got to work in England. Innovation was slowed due to the Plague, which destroyed lives and property values, but clockwork had spread throughout Europe. The Fall of Constantinople to the Ottomons in 1453 sends a wave of Greek Scholars away from the Ottoman Empire and throughout Europe. Ancient knowledge, enriched with a thousand years of Islamic insight was about to meet a new level of precision metalwork that had been growing in Europe. By 1495, Leonardo da Vinci showed off one of the first robots in the world -  a knight that could sit, stand, open its visor independently. He also made a robotic lion and repeated experiments from antiquity on self driving carts. And we see a lot of toys following the mechanical innovations throughout the world. Because parents.  We think of the Renaissance as coming out of Italy but scholars had been back at it throughout Europe since the High Middle Ages. By 1490, a locksmith named Peter Hele is credited for developing the first mainspring in Nurnburg. This is pretty important for watches. You see, up to this point nearly every clockwork we've discussed was powered by water or humans setting a dial or fire or some other force. The mainspring stores energy as a small piece of metal ribbon is twisted around an axle, called an abror, into a spiral and then wound tighter and tighter, thus winding a watch.  The mainspring drove a gear train of increasingly smaller gears which then sent energy into the escapement but without a balance wheel those would not be terribly accurate just yet. But we weren't powering clocks with water. At this point, clocks started to spread as expensive decorations, appearing on fireplace mantles and on tables of the wealthy. These were not small by any means. But Peter Henlein would get the credit in 1510 for the first real watch, small enough to be worn as a necklace. By 1540, screws were small enough to be used in clocks allowing them to get even smaller. The metals for gears were cut thinner, clock makers and toy makers were springing up all over the world. And money coming from speculative investments in the New World was starting to flow, giving way to fuel even more investment into technology. Jost Burgi invented the minute hand in 1577. But as we see with a few disciplines he decided to jump into, Galileo Galilei has a profound impact on clocks. Galileo documents the physics of the pendulum in 1581 and the center of watchmaking would move to Geneva later in that decade. Smaller clockworks spread with wheels and springs but the 1600s would see an explosion in hundreds of different types of escapements and types of gearing.  He designed an escapement for a pendulum clock but died before building it.  1610 watches got glass to protect the dials and 1635 French inventor Paul Viet Blois added enamel to the dials. Meanwhile, Blaise Pascal developed the Pascaline in 1642, giving the world the adding machine. But it took another real scientist to pick up Galileo's work and put it into action to propel clocks forward. To get back to where we started, a golden age of clockwork was just getting underway. In 1657 Huygens created a clock driven by the pendulum, which by 1671 would see William Clement add the suspension spring and by 1675 Huygens would give us the balance wheel, mimicking the back and forth motion of Galileo's pendulum. The hairspring, or balance spring, then controlled the speed making it smooth and more accurate. And the next year, we got the concentric minute hand. I guess Robert Hooke gets credit for the anchor escapement, but the verge escapement had been in use for awhile by then. So who gets to claim inventing some of these devices is debatable. Leibniz then added a stepped reckoner to the mechanical calculator in 1672 going from adding and subtracting to multiplication and division. Still calculating and not really computing as we'd think of it today. At this point we see a flurry of activity in a proton-industrial revolution. Descartes puts forth that bodies are similar to complex machines and that various organs, muscles, and bones could be replaced with gearing similar to how we can have a hip or heart replaced today. Consider this a precursor to cybernetics. We see even more mechanical toys for the rich - but labor was still cheap enough that automation wasn't spreading faster.  And so we come back to the growing British empire. They had colonized North America and the empire had grown wealthy. They controlled India, Egypt, Ireland, the Sudan, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Cyprus, Hong Kong, Burma, Australia, Canada, and so much more. And knowing the exact time was critical for a maritime empire because we wouldn't get radar until World War II.  There were clocks but still, the clocks built had to be corrected at various times, based on a sundial. This is because we hadn't yet gotten to the levels of constant power and precise gearing and the ocean tended to mess with devices. The growing British Empire needed more reliable ways than those Ptolemy used to tell time. And so England would offer prizes ranging from 10,000 to 20,000 pounds for more accurate ways to keep time in the Maritime Act in 1714. Crowdsourcing. It took until the 1720s. George Graham, yet another member of the Royal Society, picked up where Thomas Tompion left off and added a cylinder escapement to watches and then the deadbeat escapement. He chose not to file patents for these so all watch makers could use them. He also added mercurial compensation to pendulum clocks. And John Harrison added the grid-iron compensation pendulum for his H1 marine chronometer. And George Graham added the cylinder escapement.  1737 or 1738 sees another mechanical robot, but this time Jacques de Vaucanson brings us a duck that can eat, drink, and poop. But that type of toy was a one-off. Swiss Jaquet-Droz built automated dolls that were meant to help sell more watches, but here we see complex toys that make music (without a water whistle) and can even write using programmable text. The toys still work today and I feel lucky to have gotten to see them at the Museum of Art History in Switzerland. Frederick the Great became entranced by clockwork automations. Magicians started to embrace automations for more fantastical sets.  At this point, our brave steampunks made other automations and their automata got cheaper as the supply increased. By the 1760s Pierre Le Roy and Thomas Earnshaw invented the temperature compensated balance wheel. Around this time, the mainspring was moved into a going barrel so watches could continue to run while the mainspring was being wound. Many of these increasingly complicated components required a deep understanding of the math about the simple machine going back to Archimedes but with all of the discoveries made in the 2,000 years since.  And so in 1785 Josiah Emery made the lever escapement standard. The mechanical watch fundamentals haven't changed a ton in the past couple hundred years (we'll not worry about quartz watches here). But the 1800s saw an explosion in new mechanical toys using some of the technology invented for clocks. Time brings the cost of technology down so we can mass produce trinkets to keep the kiddos busy.  This is really a golden age of dancing toys, trains, mechanical banks, and eventually bringing in spring-driven wind-up toys.  Another thing happened in the 1800s. With all of this knowhow on building automations, and all of this scientific inquiry requiring increasingly complicated mathematics, Charles Babbage started working on the Difference Engine in 1822 and then the Analytical Engine in 1837, bringing in the idea of a Jacquard loom punched card. The Babbage machines would become the precursor of modern computers, and while they would have worked if built to spec, were not able to be run in his lifetime.  Over the next few generations, we would see his dream turn into reality and the electronic clock from Frank Hope-Jones in 1895. There would be other innovations such as in 1945 when the National Institute of Standards and technology created the first atomic clock. But in general parts got smaller, gearing more precise, and devices more functional. We'd see fits and starts for mechanical computers, with Percy Ludgate's Analytical Machine in 1909, the Marchant Calculator in 1918, the electromechanical Enigma in the 1920s, the Polish Enigma double in 1932, the Z1 from Konrad Zuse in 1938, and the Mark 1 Fire Control Computer for the US Navy in the World War II era, when computers went electro-mechanical and electric, effectively ending the era of clockwork-driven machinations out of necessity, instead putting that into what I consider fun tinkerations. Aristotle dreamed of automatic looms freeing humans from the trappings of repetitive manual labors so we could think. A Frenchman built them. Long before Aristotle, Pre-Socratic Greek legends told of statues coming to life, fire breathing statues, and tables moving themselves. Egyptian statues were also known to have come to life to awe and inspire the people. The philosophers of the Thales era sent Pythagoras and others to Egypt where he studied with Egyptian priests. Why priests? They led ascetic lives, often dedicated to a branch of math or science. And that's in the 6th century BCE. The Odyssey was written about events from the 8th century BCE.  We've seen time and time again in the evolutions of science that we often understood how to do something before we understood why. The legendary King Solomon and King Mu of the Zhao dynasty are said to have automata, or clockwork, or moving statues, or to have been presented with these kinds of gifts, going back thousands of years. And there is the chance that they were. Since then, we've seen a steady advent of this back and forth between engineering and science.  Sometimes, we understand how to do something through trial and error or random discovery. And then we add the math and science to catch up to it. Once we do understand the science behind a discovery we uncover better ways and that opens up more discoveries. Aristotle's dream was realized and extended to the point we can now close the blinds, lock the doors, control the lights, build cars, and even now print cars. We mastered time in multiple dimensions, including Newton's relative time. We mastered mechanics and then the electron and managed to merge the two. We learned to master space, mapping them to celestial bodies. We mastered mechanics and the math behind it. Which brings us to today. What do you have to do manually? What industries are still run by manual labor? How can we apply complex machines or enrich what those can do with electronics in order to free our fellow humans to think more? How can we make Aristotle proud? One way is to challenge and prove or disprove any of his doctrines in new and exciting ways. Like Newton and then Einstein did. We each have so much to give. I look forward to seeing or hearing about your contributions when its time to write their histories!

time canada australia english europe earth china house technology guide france england water fall wisdom british french germany nature european christianity italy innovation simple ireland western romans spain north america greek rome world war ii middle east humanity portugal hong kong discovery muslims museum switzerland computers greece islam nigeria kenya latin columbus babylon independence library standards renaissance egyptian tower ancient americas albert einstein hebrew new world bacon newton national institutes odyssey islamic magicians turkish plague arabic degrees sudan granted jacques plato us navy roman empire smaller aristotle civilization persian winds persia locke cyprus cradle enigma vinci equally mecca baghdad computing babylonians sicily sierra leone king solomon galileo royal society british empire art history burma bce silk road transferring mesopotamia frenchman uzbekistan heron crusades descartes ottoman empire constantinople byzantine charlemagne zhao crowdsourcing holy wars caligula john locke philo pythagoras fibonacci moors north south thales mongol mongols blaise pascal byzantium chaucer arles galileo galilei archimedes pyrenees iberian hellenistic leibniz scientific revolution southern italy sumerians ptolemy karnak babbage tang dynasty mughals charles babbage antikythera ridwan george graham huygens song dynasty jacquard astrolabe high middle ages augustus caesar robert hooke apollonius pascaline z1 clockworks european christian difference engine analytical engine pope urban ii abbasids hipparchus konrad zuse campus martius seljuks madrasas vaucanson
StarDate Podcast
Moon and Spica

StarDate Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 5, 2021 2:14


You don’t need big telescopes or special instruments to learn about the universe. Sometimes, you can learn a great deal with not much more than your eyes alone. 2200 years ago, for example, the Greek astronomer Hipparchus learned that the stars change position relative to the Sun from year to year. He did so by measuring the position of Spica, the brightest star of Virgo. Spica is in good view at dawn tomorrow, to the lower left of the last-quarter Moon. During a lunar eclipse, Hipparchus measured the angle from Spica to the middle of the Moon. And from that, he calculated Spica’s position relative to the Sun. He found that the star had moved about two degrees since another eclipse 150 years earlier — about the width of a finger held at arm’s length. He realized that the entire celestial sphere — the background of fixed stars — rotated with respect to the Sun. That rotation is known as the precession of the equinoxes. It’s caused not by the stars, but by Earth. Our planet “wobbles” on its axis like a spinning gyroscope that’s running down. As it wobbles, the stars appear to shift position relative to the Sun. It takes about 26,000 years to complete one full wobble and have the stars return to their starting positions. The precession of the equinoxes was an important discovery because it showed that the heavens can change — a discovery made with some simple tools and the nimble mind of Hipparchus. Script by Damond Benningfield Support McDonald Observatory

Stardate Podcast
Moon and Spica

Stardate Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 5, 2021 2:14


You don’t need big telescopes or special instruments to learn about the universe. Sometimes, you can learn a great deal with not much more than your eyes alone. 2200 years ago, for example, the Greek astronomer Hipparchus learned that the stars change position relative to the Sun from year to year. He did so by measuring the position of Spica, the brightest star of Virgo. Spica is in good view at dawn tomorrow, to the lower left of the last-quarter Moon. During a lunar eclipse, Hipparchus measured the angle from Spica to the middle of the Moon. And from that, he calculated Spica’s position relative to the Sun. He found that the star had moved about two degrees since another eclipse 150 years earlier — about the width of a finger held at arm’s length. He realized that the entire celestial sphere — the background of fixed stars — rotated with respect to the Sun. That rotation is known as the precession of the equinoxes. It’s caused not by the stars, but by Earth. Our planet “wobbles” on its axis like a spinning gyroscope that’s running down. As it wobbles, the stars appear to shift position relative to the Sun. It takes about 26,000 years to complete one full wobble and have the stars return to their starting positions. The precession of the equinoxes was an important discovery because it showed that the heavens can change — a discovery made with some simple tools and the nimble mind of Hipparchus. Script by Damond Benningfield Support McDonald Observatory

RCSpirituality
Dec 09 St Hipparchus How Can I Follow The Example Of The Martyrs Amid My Small Struggles

RCSpirituality

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 8, 2020 4:17


The History of Computing
The First Analog Computer: The Antikythera Device

The History of Computing

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 28, 2020 16:26


Sponges are some 8,000 species of animals that grow in the sea that lack tissues and organs. Fossil records go back over 500 million years and they are found throughout the world. Two types of sponges are soft and can be used to hold water that can then be squeezed out or used to clean. Homer wrote about using Sponges as far back as the 7th century BCE, in the Odyssey. Hephaestus cleaned his hands with one - much as you and I do today.  Aristotle, Plato, the Romans, even Jesus Christ all discussed cleaning with sponges. And many likely came from places like the Greek island of Kalymnos, where people have harvested and cultivated sponges in the ocean since that time. They would sail boats with glass bottoms looking for sponges and then dive into the water, long before humans discovered diving equipment, carrying a weight, cut the sponge and toss it into a net. Great divers could stay on the floor of the sea for up to 5 minutes.  Some 2,600 years after Homer, diving for sponges was still very much alive and well in the area. The people of Kalymnos have been ruled by various Greek city states, the Roman Empire, the Byzantines, Venetians, and still in 1900, the Ottomans. Archaeologist Charles Newton had excavated a Temple of Apollo on the island in the 1850s just before he'd then gone to Turkey to excavate one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World: The Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, built by Mausolus - such a grand tomb that we still call buildings that are tombs mausoleums in his honor, to this day. But 1900 was the dawn of a new age. Kalymnos had grown to nearly 1,000 souls. Proud of their Greek heritage, the people of the island didn't really care what world power claimed their lands. They carved out a life in the sea, grew food and citrus, drank well, made head scarfs, and despite the waning Ottomon rule, practiced Orthodox Christianity.  The sponges were still harvested from the floor of the sea rather than made from synthetic petroleum products. Captain Dimitrios Kontos and his team of sponge divers are sailing home from a successful run to the Symi island, just as they'd done for thousands of years, when someone spots something. They were off the coast of Antikythera, another Greek island that has been inhabited since the 4th or 5th millennia BCE, which had been a base for Cilician pirates from the 4th to 1st centuries BCE and at the time the southern most point in Greece. They dove down and after hearing stories from the previous archaeological expedition, knew they were on to something. Something old. They brought back a few smaller artifacts like a bronze arm - as proof of their find, noting the seabed was littered with statues that looked like corpses.  They recorded the location and returned home. They went to the Greek government in Athens, thinking they might get a reward for the find, where Professor Ikonomu took them to meet with the Minister of Education, Spyriodon, Stais. He offered to have his divers bring up the treasure in exchange for pay equal to the value of the plunder and the Greek government sent a ship to help winch up the treasures.  They brought up bronze and marble statues, and pottery. When they realized the haul was bigger than they thought, the navy sent a second ship. They used diving suits, just as those were emerging technology. One diver died. The ship turned out to be over 50 meters and the wreckage strewn across 300 meters.  The shipwreck happened somewhere between 80 and 50 BCE. It was carrying cargo from Asia Minor probably to Rome, sank not by pirates, which had just recently been cleared from the area but likely crashed during a storm. There are older shipwrecks, such as the Dokos from around 2200 BCE and just 60 miles east of Sparta, but few have given up as precious of cargo. We still don't know how the ship came to be where it was but there is speculation that it was sailing from Rhodes to Rome, for a parade marking victories of Julius Caesar. Everything brought up went on to live at the National Museum of Archaeology in Athens. There were fascinating treasures to be cataloged and so it isn't surprising that between the bronze statues, the huge marble statues of horses, glassware, and other Greek treasures that a small corroded bronze lump in a wooden box would go unloved. That is, until archaeologist Valerios Stais noticed a gear wheel in it.  He thought it must belong to an ancient clock, but that was far too complex for the Greeks. Or was it? It is well documented that Archimedes had been developing the use of gearwheels. And Hero of Alexandria had supposedly developed a number of great mechanical devices while at the Library of Alexandria.  Kalymnos was taken by Italians in the Italo-Turkish War in 1912. World War I came and went. After the war, the Ottoman Empire fell and with Turkish nationalists taking control, they went to war with Greece. The Ottoman Turks killed between 750,000 and 900,000 Greeks. The Second Hellenic Republic came and went. World War II came and went. And Kylamnos was finally returned to Greece from Italy. With so much unrest, archeology wasn't on nearly as many minds.  But after the end of World War II, a British historian of science who was teaching at Yale at the time, took interest in the device. His name was Derek de Solla Price. In her book, Decoding the Heavens, Jo Marchant takes us through a hundred year journey where scientists and archaeologists use the most modern technology available to them at the time to document the device and publish theories as to what it could have been used for. This began with drawings and moved into X-ray technology becoming better and more precise with each generation. And this mirrors other sciences. We make observations, or theories, as to the nature of the universe only to be proven right or wrong when the technology of the next generation uncovers more clues. It's a great book and a great look at the history of archaeology available in different stages of the 19th century.  She tells of times before World War II, when John Svoronos and Adolf Wilhelm uncovered the first inscriptions and when Pericles Redials was certain the device was a navigational instrument used to sail the ship. She tells of Theophanidis publishing a theory it might be driven by a water clock in 1934. She weaves in Jeaques Cousteau and Maria Savvatianou and Gladys Weinberg and Peter Throckmorton and Price and Wang Ling and Arthur C. Clarke and nuclear physicist Charalambos Karakolos and Judith Field and Michael Wright and Allan Bromley and Alan Crawley and Mike Edmunds and Tony Freeth and Nastulus, a tenth century astronomer in Baghdad. Reverse engineering the 37 gears took a long time. I mean, figuring up the number of teeth per gear, how they intersected, what drove them, and then trying to figure out why this prime number or what calendar cycle this other thing might have represented. Because the orbit isn't exactly perfect and the earth is tilted and all kinds of stuff. Each person unraveled their own piece and it's a fantastic journey through history and discovery.  So read the book and we'll skip to what exactly the Antikypthera Device was. Some thought it an astrolabe, which had begun use around 200 BCE - and which measured the altitude of the sun or stars to help sailors navigate the seas. Not quite. Some theorized it was a clock, but not the kind we use to tell time today. More to measure aspects of the celestial bodies than minutes.  After generations of scientists studied it, most of the secrets of the device are now known. We know it was an orrery - a mechanical model of the solar system. It was an analog computer, driven by a crank, and predicted the positions of various celestial bodies and when eclipses would occur many, many decades in advance - and on a 19 year cycle that was borrowed from cultures far older than the Greeks. The device would have had some kind of indicator, like gems or glass orbs that moved around representing the movements of Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Saturn, and Venus. It showed the movements of the sun and moon, representing the 365 days of the year as a solar calendar and the 19-year lunar cycle inherited from the Babylonians - and those were plotted relative to the zodiac, or 12 constellations. It forecast eclipses and the color of each eclipse. And phases of the moon. Oh and for good measure it also tracked when the Olympic Games were held.  About that one more thing with calculating the Olympiad - One aspect of the device that I love, and most clockwork devices in fact, is the analogy that can be made to a modern micro service architecture in software design. Think of a wheel in clockwork. Then think of each wheel being a small service or class of code. That triggers the next and so-on. The difference being any service could call any other and wouldn't need a shaft or the teeth of only one other wheel to interact - or even differential gearing.  Reading the story of decoding the device, it almost feels like trying to decode someone else's code across all those services.  I happen to believe that most of the stories of gods are true. Just exaggerated a bit. There probably was a person named Odin with a son named Thor or a battle of the Ten Kings in India. I don't believe any of them were supernatural but that over time their legends grew. Those legends often start to include that which the science of a period cannot explain. The more that science explains, the less of those legends, or gods, that we need. And here's the thing. I don't think something like this just appears out of nowhere. It's not the kind of thing a lone actor builds in a workshop in Rhodes. It's the kind of device that evolves over time. One great crafter adds another idea and another philosopher influences another. There could have been a dozen or two dozen that evolved over time, the others lost to history. Maybe melted down to forge bronze weapons, hiding in a private collection, or sitting in a shipwreck or temple elsewhere, waiting to be discovered.  The Greek philosopher Thales was said to have built a golden orb. Hipparchus of Rhodes was a great astronomer. The Antikythera device was likely built between 200 and 100 BC, when he would have been alive. Was he consulted on during the creation, or involved? Between Thales and Hipparchus, we got Archimedes, Euclid, Pythagoras, Aristotle, Philo, Ctesibius, and so many others. Their books would be in the Library of Alexandria for anyone to read. You could learn of the increasingly complicated Ctesibius water clocks along with their alarms or the geometry of Euclid or the inventions of Philo. Or you could read about how Archimedes continued that work and added a chime.  We can assign the device to any of them - or its' heritage. And we can assume that as with legends of the gods, it was an evolution of science, mathematics, and engineering. And that the science and technology wasn't lost, as has been argued, but instead moved around as great thinkers moved around. Just as the water clock had been in use since nearly 4000 BCE in modern day India and China and become increasingly complicated over time until the Greeks called them clepsydra and anaphoric clocks. Yet replacing water with gears wasn't considered for awhile. Just as it took Boolean algebra and flip-flop circuits to bring us into the age of binary and then digital computing.  The power of these analog computers could have allowed for simple mathematic devices, like deriving angles or fractions when building. But given that people gotta' eat and ancient calculation devices and maps of the heavens helped guide when to plant crops, that was first in the maslovian hierarchy of technological determinism.  So until our next episode consider this: what technology is lying dormant at the bottom of the sea in your closet. Buried under silt but waiting to be dug up by intrepid divers and put into use again, in a new form. What is the next generation of technical innovation for each of the specialties you see? Maybe it helps people plant crops more effectively, this time using digital imagery to plot where to place a seed. Or maybe it's to help people zero in on information that matters or open trouble tickets more effectively or share their discoveries or claim them or who knows - but I look forward to finding out what you come up with and hopefully some day telling the origin story of that innovation!

The History of Computing
The Evolution and Spread of Science and Philosophy from the Bronze Age to The Classical Age

The History of Computing

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 21, 2020 31:24


Science in antiquity was at times devised to be useful and at other times to prove to the people that the gods looked favorably on the ruling class. Greek philosophers tell us a lot about how the ancient world developed. Or at least, they tell us a Western history of antiquity. Humanity began working with bronze some 7,000 years ago and the Bronze Age came in force in the centuries leading up to 3,000 BCE. By then there were city-states and empires. The Mesopotamians brought us the wheel in around 3500 BCE, and the chariot by 3200 BCE. Writing formed in Sumeria, a city state of Mesopotamia, in 3000 BCE. Urbanization required larger cities and walls to keep out invaders. King Gilgamesh built huge walls. They used a base 60 system to track time, giving us the 60 seconds and 60 minutes to get to an hour. That sexagesimal system also gave us the 360 degrees in a circle. They plowed fields and sailed. And sailing led to maps, which they had by 2300 BCE. And they gave us the Epic, with the Epic of Gilgamesh which could be old as 2100 BCE. At this point, the Egyptian empire had grown to 150,000 square kilometers and the Sumerians controlled around 20,000 square kilometers. Throughout, they grew a great trading empire. They traded with China, India and Egypt with some routes dating back to the fourth millennia BCE. And commerce and trade means the spread of not only goods but also ideas and knowledge. The earliest known writing of complete sentences in Egypt came to Egypt a few hundred years after it did in Mesopotamia, as the Early Dynastic period ended and the Old Kingdom, or the Age of the Pyramids. Perhaps over a trade route.  The ancient Egyptians used numerals, multiplications, fractions, geometry, architecture, algebra, and even quadratic equations. Even having a documented base 10 numbering system on a tomb from 3200 BCE. We also have the Moscow Mathematical Papyrus, which includes geometry problems, the Egyptian Mathematical Leather Roll, which covers how to add fractions, the Berlin Papyrus with geometry, the Lahun Papyri with arithmetical progressions to calculate the volume of granaries, the Akhmim tablets, the Reisner Papyrus, and the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, which covers algebra and geometry. And there's the Cairo Calendar, an ancient Egyptian papyrus from around 1200 BCE with detailed astronomical observations. Because the Nile flooded, bringing critical crops to Egypt. The Mesopotamians traded with China as well. As the Shang dynasty from the 16th to 11th centuries BCE gave way to the Zhou Dynasty, which went from the 11th to 3rd centuries BCE and the Bronze Age gave way to the Iron Age, science was spreading throughout the world. The I Ching is one of the oldest Chinese works showing math, dating back to the Zhou Dynasty, possibly as old as 1000 BCE. This was also when the Hundred Schools of Thought began, which Conscious inherited around the 5th century BCE. Along the way the Chinese gave us the sundial, abacus, and crossbow. And again, the Bronze Age signaled trade empires that were spreading ideas and texts from the Near East to Asia to Europe and Africa and back again. For a couple thousand years the transfer of spices, textiles and precious metals fueled the Bronze Age empires.  Along the way the Minoan civilization in modern Greece had been slowly rising out of the Cycladic culture. Minoan artifacts have been found in Canaanite palaces and as they grew they colonized and traded. They began a decline around 1500 BCE, likely due to a combination of raiders and volcanic eruptions. The crash of the Minoan civilization gave way to the Myceneaen civilization of early Greece.  Competition for resources and land in these growing empires helped to trigger wars.  Those in turn caused violence over those resources. Around 1250 BCE, Thebes burned and attacks against city states cities increased, sometimes by emerging empires of previously disassociated tribes (as would happen later with the Vikings) and sometimes by other city-states.  This triggered the collapse of Mycenaen Greece, the splintering of the Hittites, the fall of Troy, the absorption of the Sumerian culture into Babylon, and attacks that weakened the Egyptian New Kingdom. Weakened and disintegrating empires leave room for new players. The Iranian tribes emerged to form the Median empire in today's Iran. The Assyrians and Scythians rose to power and the world moved into the Iron age. And the Greeks fell into the Greek Dark Ages until they slowly clawed their way out of it in the 8th century BCE. Around this time Babylonian astronomers, in the capital of Mesopomania, were making astronomical diaries, some of which are now stored in the British Museum.  Greek and Mesopotamian societies weren't the only ones flourishing. The Indus Valley Civilization had blossomed from 2500 to 1800 BCE only to go into a dark age of its own. Boasting 5 million people across 1,500 cities, with some of the larger cities reaching 40,000 people - about the same size as Mesopotamian cities. About two thirds are in modern day India and a third in modern Pakistan, an empire that stretched across 120,000 square kilometers. As the Babylonian control of the Mesopotamian city states broke up, the Assyrians began their own campaigns and conquered Persia, parts of Ancient Greece, down to Ethiopia, Israel, the Ethiopia, and Babylon. As their empire grew, they followed into the Indus Valley, which Mesopotamians had been trading with for centuries.  What we think of as modern Pakistan and India is where Medhatithi Gautama founded the anviksiki school of logic in the 6th century BCE. And so the modern sciences of philosophy and logic were born. As mentioned, we'd had math in the Bronze Age. The Egyptians couldn't have built pyramids and mapped the stars without it. Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar couldn't have built the Mesopotamian cities and walls and laws without it. But something new was coming as the Bronze Age began to give way to the Iron Age. The Indians brought us the first origin of logic, which would morph into an almost Boolean logic as Pāṇini codified Sanskrit grammar linguistics and syntax. Almost like a nearly 4,000 verse manual on programming languages. Panini even mentions Greeks in his writings. Because they apparently had contact going back to the sixth century BCE, when Greek philosophy was about to get started. The Neo-Assyrian empire grew to 1.4 million square kilometers of control and the Achaeminid empire grew to control nearly 5 million square miles.  The Phoenicians arose out of the crash of the Late Bronze Age, becoming important traders between the former Mesopotamian city states and Egyptians. As her people settled lands and Greek city states colonized lands, one became the Greek philosopher Thales, who documented the use of loadstones going back to 600 BCE when they were able to use magnetite which gets its name from the Magnesia region of Thessaly, Greece. He is known as the first philosopher and in the time of Socrates even had become one of the Seven Sages which included according to Socrates. “Thales of Miletus, and Pittacus of Mytilene, and Bias of Priene, and our own Solon, and Cleobulus of Lindus, and Myson of Chenae, and the seventh of them was said to be Chilon of Sparta.”  Many of the fifth and sixth century Greek philosophers were actually born in colonies on the western coast of what is now Turkey. Thales's theorum is said to have originated in India or Babylon. But as we see a lot in the times that followed, it is credited to Thales. Given the trading empires they were all a part of though, they certainly could have brought these ideas back from previous generations of unnamed thinkers. I like to think of him as the synthesizers that Daniel Pink refers to so often in his book A Whole New Mind.  Thales studied in Babylon and Egypt, bringing thoughts, ideas, and perhaps intermingled them with those coming in from other areas as the Greeks settled colonies in other lands. Given how critical astrology was to the agricultural societies, this meant bringing astronomy, math to help with the architecture of the Pharoes, new ways to use calendars, likely adopted through the Sumerians, coinage through trade with the Lydians and then Persians when they conquered the Lydians, Babylon, and the Median. So Thales taught Anaximander who taught Pythagoras of Samos, born a few decades later in 570 BCE. He studied in Egypt as well. Most of us would know the Pythagorean theorem which he's credited for, although there is evidence that predated him from Egypt. Whether new to the emerging Greek world or new to the world writ large, his contributions were far beyond that, though. They included a new student oriented way of life, numerology, the idea that the world is round, numerology, applying math to music and applying music to lifestyle, and an entire school of philosophers emerged from his teachings to spread Pythagoreanism. And the generations of philosophers that followed devised both important philosophical contributions and practical applications of new ideas in engineering. The ensuing schools of philosophy that rose out of those early Greeks spread. By 508 BCE, the Greeks gave us Democracy. And oligarchy, defined as a government where a small group of people have control over a country. Many of these words, in fact, come from Greek forms. As does the month of May, names for symbols and theories in much of the math we use, and many a constellation. That tradition began with the sages but grew, being spread by trade, by need, and by religious houses seeking to use engineering as a form of subjugation.  Philosophy wasn't exclusive to the Greeks or Indians, or to Assyria and then Persia through conquering the lands and establishing trade. Buddha came out of modern India in the 5th to 4th century BCE around the same time Confucianism was born from Confucious in China. And Mohism from Mo Di. Again, trade and the spread of ideas. However, there's no indication that they knew of each other or that Confucious could have competed with the other 100 schools of thought alive and thriving in China. Nor that Buddhism would begin spreading out of the region for awhile. But some cultures were spreading rapidly. The spread of Greek philosophy reached a zenith in Athens. Thales' pupil Anaximander also taught Anaximenes, the third philosopher of the Milesian school which is often included with the Ionians. The thing I love about those three, beginning with Thales is that they were able to evolve the school of thought without rejecting the philosophies before them. Because ultimately they knew they were simply devising theories as yet to be proven. Another Ionian was Anaxagoras, who after serving in the Persian army, which ultimately conquered Ionia in 547 BCE. As a Greek citizen living in what was then Persia, Anaxagoras moved to Athens in 480 BCE, teaching Archelaus and either directly or indirectly through him Socrates. This provides a link, albeit not a direct link, from the philosophy and science of the Phoenicians, Babylonians, and Egyptians through Thales and others, to Socrates.   Socrates was born in 470 BCE and mentions several influences including Anaxagoras. Socrates spawned a level of intellectualism that would go on to have as large an impact on what we now call Western philosophy as anyone in the world ever has. And given that we have no writings from him, we have to take the word of his students to know his works. He gave us the Socratic method and his own spin on satire, which ultimately got him executed for effectively being critical of the ruling elite in Athens and for calling democracy into question, corrupting young Athenian students in the process.  You see, in his life, the Athenians lost the Peloponnesian War to Sparta - and as societies often do when they hit a speed bump, they started to listen to those who call intellectuals or scientists into question. That would be Socrates for questioning Democracy, and many an Athenian for using Socrates as a scape goat.  One student of Socrates, Critias, would go on to lead a group called the Thirty Tyrants, who would terrorize Athenians and take over the government for awhile. They would establish an oligarchy and appoint their own ruling class. As with many coups against democracy over the millennia they were ultimately found corrupt and removed from power. But the end of that democratic experiment in Greece was coming. Socrates also taught other great philosophers, including Xenophon, Antisthenes, Aristippus, and Alcibiades. But the greatest of his pupils was Plato. Plato was as much a scientist as a philosopher. He had works of Pythagoras, studied the Libyan Theodorus. He codified a theory of Ideas, in Forms. He used as examples, the Pythagorean theorem and geometry. He wrote a lot of the dialogues with Socrates and codified ethics, and wrote of a working, protective, and governing class, looking to produce philosopher kings. He wrote about the dialectic, using questions, reasoning and intuition. He wrote of art and poetry and epistemology. His impact was vast. He would teach mathemetics to Eudoxus, who in turn taught Euclid. But one of his greatest contributions the evolution of philosophy, science, and technology was in teaching Aristotle.  Aristotle was born in 384 BCE and founded a school of philosophy called the Lyceum. He wrote about rhetoric, music, poetry, and theater - as one would expect given the connection to Socrates, but also expanded far past Plato, getting into physics, biology, and metaphysics. But he had a direct impact on the world at the time with his writings on economics politics,  He inherited a confluence of great achievements, describing motion, defining the five elements, writing about a camera obscure and researching optics. He wrote about astronomy and geology, observing both theory and fact, such as ways to predict volcanic eruptions. He made observations that would be proven (or sometimes disproven) such as with modern genomics. He began a classification of living things. His work “On the Soul” is one of the earliest looks at psychology. His study of ethics wasn't as theoretical as Socrates' but practical, teaching virtue and how that leads to wisdom to become a greater thinker.  He wrote of economics. He writes of taxes, managing cities, and property. And this is where he's speaking almost directly to one of his most impressive students, Alexander the Great. Philip the second of Macedon hired Plato to tutor Alexander starting in 343. Nine years later, when Alexander inherited his throne, he was armed with arguably the best education in the world combined with one of the best trained armies in history. This allowed him to defeat Darius in 334 BCE, the first of 10 years worth of campaigns that finally gave him control in 323 BCE. In that time, he conquered Egypt, which had been under Persian rule on and off and founded Alexandria. And so what the Egyptians had given to Greece had come home. Alexander died in 323 BCE. He followed the path set out by philosophers before him. Like Thales, he visited Babylon and Egypt. But he went a step further and conquered them. This gave the Greeks more ancient texts to learn from but also more people who could become philosophers and more people with time to think through problems.  By the time he was done, the Greeks controlled nearly 5 million square miles of territory. This would be the largest empire until after the Romans. But Alexander never truly ruled. He conquered. Some of his generals and other Greek aristocrats, now referred to as the Diadochi, split up the young, new empire. You see, while teaching Alexander, Aristotle had taught two other future kings : Ptolemy I Soter and Cassander.  Cassander would rule Macedonia and Ptolemy ruled Egypt from Alexandria, who with other Greek philosophers founded the Library of Alexandria. Ptolemy and his son amassed 100s of thousands of scrolls in the Library from 331 BC and on. The Library was part of a great campus of the Musaeum where they also supported great minds starting with Ptolemy I's patronage of Euclid, the father of geometry, and later including Archimedes, the father of engineering, Hipparchus, the founder of trigonometry, Her, the father of math, and Herophilus, who codified the scientific method and countless other great hellenistic thinkers.  The Roman Empire had begin in the 6th century BCE. By the third century BCE they were expanding out of the Italian peninsula. This was the end of Greek expansion and as Rome conquered the Greek colonies signified the waning of Greek philosophy. Philosophy that helped build Rome both from a period of colonization and then spreading Democracy to the young republic with the kings, or rex, being elected by the senate and by 509 BCE the rise of the consuls.  After studying at the Library of Alexandria, Archimedes returned home to start his great works, full of ideas having been exposed to so many works. He did rudimentary calculus, proved geometrical theories, approximated pi, explained levers, founded statics and hydrostatics. And his work extended into the practical. He built machines, pulleys, the infamous Archimedes' screw pump, and supposedly even a deathly heat ray of lenses that could burn ships in seconds. He was sadly killed by Roman soldiers when Syracuse was taken. But, and this is indicative of how Romans pulled in Greek know-how, the Roman general Marcus Claudius Marcellus was angry that he lost an asset, who could have benefited his war campaigns. In fact, Cicero, who was born in the first century BCE mentioned Archimedes built mechanical devices that could show the motions of the planetary bodies. He claimed Thales had designed these and that Marcellus had taken one as his only personal loot from Syracuse and donated it to the Temple of Virtue in Rome.  The math, astronomy, and physics that go into building a machine like that was the culmination of hundreds, if not thousands of years of building knowledge of the Cosmos, machinery, mathematics, and philosophy. Machines like that would have been the first known computers. Machines like the first or second century Antikythera mechanism, discovered in 1902 in a shipwreck in Greece. Initially thought to be a one-off, the device is more likely to represent the culmination of generations of great thinkers and doers. Generations that came to look to the Library of Alexandria as almost a Mecca. Until they didn't.  The splintering of the lands Alexander conquered, the cost of the campaigns, the attacks from other empires, and the rise of the Roman Empire ended the age of Greek Enlightenment. As is often the case when there is political turmoil and those seeking power hate being challenged by the intellectuals, as had happened with Socrates and philosophers in Athens at the time, Ptolemy VIII caused The Library of Alexandria to enter into a slow decline that began with the expulsion of intellectuals from Alexandria in 145BC. This began a slow decline of the library until it burned, first with a small fire accidentally set by Caesar in 48 BCE and then for good in the 270s.  But before the great library was gone for good, it would produce even more great engineers. Heron of Alexandria is one of the greatest. He created vending machines that would dispense holy water when you dropped a coin in it. He made small mechanical archers, models of dancers, and even a statue of a horse that could supposedly drink water. He gave us early steam engines two thousand years before the industrial revolution and ran experiments in optics. He gave us Heron's forumula and an entire book on mechanics, codifying the known works on automation at the time. In fact, he designed a programmable cart using strings wrapped around an axle, powered by falling weights.  Claudius Ptolemy came to the empire from their holdings in Egypt, living in the first century. He wrote about harmonics, math, astronomy, computed the distance of the sun to the earth and also computed positions of the planets and eclipses, summarizing them into more simplistic tables. He revolutionized map making and the properties of light. By then, Romans had emerged as the first true world power and so the Classical Age. To research this section, I read and took copious notes from the following and apologize that each passage is not credited specifically but it would just look like a regular expressions if I tried: The Evolution of Technology by George Basalla. Civilizations by Filipe Fernández-Armesto, A Short History of Technology: From The Earliest Times to AD 1900 from TK Derry and Trevor I Williams, Communication in History Technology, Culture, Leonardo da vinci by Walter Isaacson, Society from David Crowley and Paul Heyer, Timelines in Science, by the Smithsonian, Wheels, Clocks, and Rockets: A History of Technology by Donald Cardwell, a few PhD dissertations and post-doctoral studies from journals, and then I got to the point where I wanted the information from as close to the sources as I could get so I went through Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences from Galileo Galilei, Mediations from Marcus Aurelius, Pneumatics from Philo of Byzantium, The Laws of Thought by George Boole, Natural History from Pliny The Elder, Cassius Dio's Roman History, Annals from Tacitus, Orations by Cicero, Ethics, Rhetoric, Metaphysics, and Politics by Aristotle, Plato's Symposium and The Trial & Execution of Socrates.

culture europe israel china science technology soul politics phd society africa chinese writing evolution italian western romans ideas greek rome turkey philosophy temple epic iran competition humanity laws ethics greece democracy babylon library spread egyptian bc pakistan vikings athens generations bias conscious iranians buddhism caesar buddha ethiopia machines virtue indians wheels cosmos forms syracuse plato classical roman empire aristotle persian persia boasting symposium smithsonian socrates nile rhetoric mecca metaphysics babylonians macedonia sanskrit pyramids canaanites timelines nebuchadnezzar natural history sparta bce marcus aurelius clocks mesopotamia ancient greece heron cicero assyria british museum panini antiquity gilgamesh daniel pink civilizations annals bronze age short history socratic median persians philo i ching pythagoras assyrians walter isaacson sumerian thales near east euclid shang hittites byzantium mesopotamian athenians phoenician athenian galileo galilei archimedes iron age confucianism urbanization scythians weakened solon thebes lyceum hammurabi samos sumerians tacitus ptolemy pythagorean miletus peloponnesian war sumeria macedon xenophon boolean roman history minoan mediations old kingdom antikythera archelaus indus valley ionia alcibiades magnesia pliny the elder thessaly critias confucious late bronze age david crowley armesto indus valley civilization anaximander hipparchus anaxagoras zhou dynasty neo assyrian cassius dio george boole lydians pythagoreanism cassander ionians king gilgamesh
The Star Love Podcast
Are We in the Age of Aquarius? Season 2, Episode 2

The Star Love Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 22, 2020


0-6:59-Introduction7:00-11:04 How Terry got into astrology11:05-14:11 Terry's spiritual pursuits14:12-19:41 The astrological ages and different zodiacsTo sponsor a future podcast or season of the Star Love podcast email Inner Makeup Astrology business manager James.19:42-31:21 Age of Aquarius and astrological divisions and subdivisions31:22-35:29 Reception of Terry's ideas35:30-41:49 Heliacal Rising, Hipparchus, and Visual Astrology41:50-50:44 Other astrological ages and overflow of ages50:45-57:17 Terry's astrological practice and the nature of astrology57:18-1:03:42 Fate and Free Will1:03:43-end ClosingTo sponsor a future episode of season of the Star Love Podcast, email Inner Makeup Astrology business manager James.Make a wish for yourself and donate to support to the continued production of the Star Love Podcast

Peter Hill Explains
Early Greek Astronomers

Peter Hill Explains

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 5, 2020


Hipparchus and Ptolmey in one breath this source marvels at the amazing lack of factual evidence for these two and then goes into intense detail and factual minutiae. I think there is real genius in just how many fixes where needed to fix the "its all bloody spheres you know" method. They can't see that this convience thinking used for the heavens is used by the authors to doctor history. Oh well, I think if you are picky about facts and logic you are going to wind up with few friends and be seen as not as entertaining as anyone who can create a good story. MP4 recording     MP3 recording Your browser does not support the audio element.

Gruntled
Gruntled 1: Hipparchus

Gruntled

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 22, 2020 18:42


Finding the lost star chart of a Greek astronomer in an unlikely place.

Math Science History with Gabrielle Birchak

If you think that you need a telescope to enjoy our gorgeous November night skies, think again! In 300 BCE Hipparchus invented the astrolabe. It was an all-purpose handy tool used to find the constellations in the night sky, as well as to measure rivers and buildings.  If you are interested in learning more about the astrolabe, please come visit me at www.MathScienceHistory.com. I'll have links to resources that can even assist you in building your own astrolabe! Thanks for listening! - Gabrielle Birchak

The History of Computing

Welcome to the History of Computing Podcast, where we explore the history of information technology. Because understanding the past prepares us for the innovations of the future! Todays episode is on the history of Wikipedia. The very idea of a single location that could store all the known information in the world began with Ptolemy I, founder of the Greek dynasty that ruled Egypt following the death of Alexander the great. He and his son amassed 100s of thousands of scrolls in the Library and Alexandria from 331 BC and on. The Library was part of a great campus of the Musaeum where they also supported great minds starting with Ptolemy I's patronage of Euclid, the father of geometry, and later including Archimedes, the father of engineering, Hipparchus, the founder of trigonometry, Her, the father of math, and Herophilus, who gave us the scientific method and countless other great hellenistic thinkers. The Library entered into a slow decline that began with the expulsion of intellectuals from Alexandria in 145BC. Ptolemy VIII was responsible for that. Always be weary of people who attack those that they can't win over especially when they start blaming the intellectual elite for the problems of the world. This began a slow decline of the library until it burned, first with a small fire accidentally set by Caesar in 48BC and then for good in the 270s AD. In the centuries since there have been attempts here and there to gather great amounts of information. The first known encyclopedia was the Naturalis Historiae by Pliny the Elder, never completed because he was killed in the eruption of Vesuvius. One of the better known being the Encyclopedia Britannica, starting off in 1768. Mass production of these was aided by the printing press but given that there's a cost to producing those materials and a margin to be made in the sale of those materials that encouraged a somewhat succinct exploration of certain topics. The advent of the computer era of course led to encyclopedias on CD and then to online encyclopedias. Encyclopedias at the time employed experts in certain fields and paid them for compiling and editing articles for volumes that would then be sold. As we say these days, this was a business model just waiting to be disrupted. Jimmy Wales was moderating an online discussion board on Objectivism and happened across Larry Sanger in the early 90s. They debated and became friends. Wales started Nupedia, which was supposed to be a free encyclopedia, funded by advertising revenue. As it was to be free, they were to recruit thousands of volunteer editors. People of the caliber that had been previously hired to research and write articles for encyclopedias. Sanger, who was pursuing a PhD in philosophy from Ohio State University, was hired on as editor-in-chief. This was a twist on the old model of compiling an encyclopedia and a twist that didn't work out as intended. Volunteers were slow to sign up, but Nupedia went online in 2000. Later in the year there had only been two articles that made it through the review process. When Sanger told Ben Kovitz about this, he recommended looking at the emerging wiki culture. This had been started with WikiWikiWeb, developed by Ward Cunningham in 1994, named after a shuttle bus that ran between airport terminals at the Honolulu airport. WikiWikiWeb had been inspired by Hypercard but needed to be multi-user so people could collaborate on web pages, quickly producing content on new patterns in programming. He wanted to make non-writers feel ok about writing. Sanger proposed using a wiki to be able to accept submissions for articles and edits from anyone but still having a complicated review process to accept changes. The reviewers weren't into that, so they started a side project they called Wikipedia in 2001 with a user-generated model for content, or article, generation. The plan was to generate articles on Wikipedia and then move or copy them into Nupedia once they were ready. But Wikipedia got mentioned on Slashdot. In 2001 there were nearly 30 million websites but half a billion people using the web. Back then a mention on the influential Slashdot could make a site. And it certainly helped. They grew and more and more people started to contribute. They hit 1,000 articles in March of 2001 and that increased by 10 fold by September, By And another 4 fold the next year. It started working independent of Nupedia. The dot-com bubble burst in 2000 and by 2002 Nupedia had to lay Sanger off and he left both projects. Nupedia slowly died and was finally shut down in 2003. Eventually the Wikimedia Foundation was built to help unlock the world's knowledge, which now owns and operates Wikipedia. Wikimedia also includes Commons for media, Wikibooks that includes free textbooks and manuals, Wikiquote for quotations, Wikiversity for free learning materials, MediaWiki the source code for the site, Wikidata for pulling large amounts of data from Wikimedia properties using APIs, Wikisource, a library of free content, Wikivoyage, a free travel guide, Wikinews, free news, Wikispecies, a directory containing over 687,000 species. Many of the properties have very specific ways of organizing data, making it easier to work with en masse. The properties have grown because people like to be helpful and Wales allowed self-governance of articles. To this day he rarely gets involved in the day-to-day affairs of the wikipedia site, other than the occasional puppy dog looks in banners asking for donations. You should donate. He does have 8 principles the site is run by: 1. Wikipedia's success to date is entirely a function of our open community. 2. Newcomers are always to be welcomed. 3. “You can edit this page right now” is a core guiding check on everything that we do. 4. Any changes to the software must be gradual and reversible. 5. The open and viral nature of the GNU Free Documentation License and the Create Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License is fundamental to the long-term success of the site. 6. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. 7. Anyone with a complaint should be treated with the utmost respect and dignity. 8. Diplomacy consists of combining honesty and politeness. This culminates in 5 pillars wikipedia is built on: 1. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. 2. Wikipedia is written from a neutral point of view. 3. Wikipedia is free content that anyone can use, edit, and distribute. 4. Wikipedia's editors should treat each other with respect and civility. 5. Wikipedia has no firm rules. Sanger went on to found Citizendium, which uses real names instead of handles, thinking maybe people will contribute better content if their name is attached to something. The web is global. Throughout history there have been encyclopedias produced around the world, with the Four Great Books of Song coming out of 11th century China, the Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity coming out of 10th century Persia. When Wikipedia launched, it was in English. Wikipedia launched a German version using the deutsche.wikipedia.com subdomain. It now lives at de.wikipedia.com and Wikipedia has gone from being 90% English to being almost 90 % non-English, meaning that Wikipedia is able to pull in even more of the world's knowledge. Wikipedia picked up nearly 20,000 English articles in 2001, over 75,000 new articles in 2002, and that number has steadily climbed wreaching over 3,000,000 by 2010, and we're closing in on 6 Million today. The English version is 10 terabytes of data uncompressed. If you wanted to buy a printed copy of wikipedia today, it would be over 2500 books. By 2009 Microsoft Encarta shut down. By 2010 Encyclopedia Britannica stopped printing their massive set of books and went online. You can still buy encyclopedias from specialty makers, such as the World Book. Ironically, Encyclopedia Britannica does now put real names of people on articles they produce on their website, in an ad-driven model. There are a lot of ads. And the content isn't linked to as many places nor as thorough. Creating a single location that could store all the known information in the world seems like a pretty daunting task. Compiling the non-copywritten works of the world is now the mission of Wikipedia. The site receives the fifth most views per month and is read by nearly half a billion people a month with over 15 billion page views per month. Anyone who has gone down the rabbit hole of learning about Ptolemy I's involvement in developing the Library of Alexandria and then read up on his children and how his dynasty lasted until Cleopatra and how… well, you get the point… can understand how they get so much traffic. Today there are over 48,000,000 articles and over 37,000,000 registered users who have contributed articles meaning if we set 160 Great Libraries of Alexandria side-by-side we would have about the same amount of information Wikipedia has amassed. And it's done so because of the contributions of so many dedicated people. People who spend hours researching and building pages, undergoing the need to provide references to cite the data in the articles (btw wikipedia is not supposed to represent original research), more people to patrol and look for content contributed by people on a soapbox or with an agenda, rather than just reporting the facts. Another team looking for articles that need more information. And they do these things for free. While you can occasionally see frustrations from contributors, it is truly one of the best things humanity has done. This allows us to rediscover our own history, effectively compiling all the facts that make up the world we live in, often linked to the opinions that shape them in the reference materials, which include the over 200 million works housed at the US Library of Congress, and over 25 million books scanned into Google Books (out of about 130 million). As with the Great Library of Alexandria, we do have to keep those who seek to throw out the intellectuals of the world away and keep the great works being compiled from falling to waste due to inactivity. Wikipedia keeps a history of pages, to avoid revisionist history. The servers need to be maintained, but the database can be downloaded and is routinely downloaded by plenty of people. I think the idea of providing an encyclopedia for free that was sponsored by ads was sound. Pivoting the business model to make it open was revolutionary. With the availability of the data for machine learning and the ability to enrich it with other sources like genealogical research, actual books, maps, scientific data, and anything else you can manage, I suspect we'll see contributions we haven't even begun to think about! And thanks to all of this, we now have a real compendium of the worlds knowledge, getting more and more accurate and holistic by the day. Thank you to everyone involved, from Jimbo and Larry, to the moderators, to the staff, and of course to the millions of people who contribute pages about all the history that makes up the world as we know it today. And thanks to you for listening to yet another episode of the History of Computing Podcast. We're lucky to have you. Have a great day! Note: This work was produced in large part due to the compilation of historical facts available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wikipedia

ASTRONOMY 209  PODCAST
ASTR209 - Lecture 4

ASTRONOMY 209 PODCAST

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 18, 2018 69:11


In this lecture we discuss the geocentric model of Ptolemy, the heliocentric model of Aristarchus and how Hipparchus tested it using the concept of parallax. We also saw how to use observations of parallax to measure the distance to celestial objects.

The History of Ancient Greece
026 The Tyranny of the Peisistratids

The History of Ancient Greece

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 19, 2016 65:30


In this episode, we discuss the ascension of Peisistratos as the first tyrant of Athens and the political maneuverings that he and his two sons, Hippias and Hipparchus, took in maintaining (and sometimes regaining) their position, which included armed warfare, trickery, political marriages, and the expulsion of many of their political enemies (who would go and found several colonies in Athens' name); the economic reforms that Peisistratos and his two sons undertook; their patronage of the arts and public works in the Agora and Acropolis, as well as at other religious sanctuaries in Attica; their encouragement of religious festivals, especially the Greater Panathenaia and the Dionysia; and the ultimate dissolution of the tyranny brought about by the assassination of Hipparchus, the susbsequent cruelty and expulsion of Hippias, and the ascendency of Cleisthenes (with the help of the Spartans) Show Notes: http://www.thehistoryofancientgreece.com/2016/12/026-tyranny-of-peisistratids.html   Intro by Doug Metzger of the Literature and History Podcast Website: http://literatureandhistory.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/literatureandhistory Twitter: https://twitter.com/lahpodcast

The Scientific Odyssey
Episode 3.7: Hellenistic Astronomy from Aristarchus to Hipparchus

The Scientific Odyssey

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 20, 2016 45:56


We look at the failure of the Eudoxian model of homocentric spheres and the models of Aristarchus of Samos, Apollonius of Perga and Hipparchus to proposed to replace it.  We also discuss the ideas of scientific realism and instrumentalism with respect to Hellenistic astronomy.

Philosophy Audiobooks
Hipparchus by Plato

Philosophy Audiobooks

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 30, 2015 22:27


Hipparchus (ΙΠΠΑΡΧΟΣ) may not have been written by Plato. The dialogue discusses whether iniquitous gain is really gain at all. Translated by George Burges. Painting: The Ransom by John Everett Millais.

Historical Astronomy
Early Astronomy - Hipparchus of Nicaea- Star Catalogs and Magnitudes

Historical Astronomy

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 1, 2013 12:44


3. Concepts and History of Astronomy and Physics

Transcript: Hipparchus was a major astronomer of the second century BC. He had an observatory on the island of Rhodes. From him we have the first use of celestial coordinates and the first star catalog. He also invented the magnitude system for measuring the relative brightness of objects in the sky, and he was aware of the delicate and subtle motion of precession.

Rosicrucian Podcasts
The Succession of World Ages — Jane B. Sellers, Ph.D.

Rosicrucian Podcasts

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 1, 2011


This podcast features an article from the December 2010 Mithraic Mysteries issue of the Rosicrucian Digest. In this selection, Jane B. Sellers discusses the precession of the equinoxes, vital to the understanding of the Mithraic Mysteries. Hipparchus may have rediscovered this astronomical phenomenon, however, it is clear that the Egyptians were aware of it centuries before. Running Time: 15:19 | 21 MB Podcast Copyright © 2011 Rosicrucian Order, AMORC. All Rights Reserved. Posted by Rosicrucian Park @ 04/01/2011

Podcasts
The Succession of World Ages — Jane B. Sellers, Ph.D.

Podcasts

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 1, 2011


This podcast features an article from the December 2010 Mithraic Mysteries issue of the Rosicrucian Digest.In this selection, Jane B. Sellers discusses the precession of the equinoxes, vital to the understanding of the Mithraic Mysteries. Hipparchus may have rediscovered this astronomical phenomenon, however, it is clear that the Egyptians were aware of it centuries before. Running […]

Ex-Christian Monologues
The Meaning of Life

Ex-Christian Monologues

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 8, 2009


Christianity brags that it holds the ultimate meaning and purpose for human life. It states most emphatically that the whole purpose of the human experience is to enjoy God and glorify Him forever. It boldly claims that any and all activity outside of the narrow path is worldly, of the devil, and ultimately worthless. While finding a valuable meaning for an individual life is something most people desire, to accuse all who reject the claims of Christianity to be living worthless lives, is arrogantly rude, and historically it’s been destructive. In 540 A.D. Christianity was given a unique opportunity to demonstrate the power of its worldview. Soon after the bubonic plague struck Byzantium that year, striking down 10,000 people a day until 100 million lives had been lost, the Roman Empire was destroyed. Christianity benefited immensely from the pandemic as droves of terrified people flocked into the Church.Christianity castigated secular medicine for failing to cure the plague. The Church subsequently declared all secular medicine heretical. For the next ten centuries, blood-letting, herbal remedies and prayer became the treatments of choice for every ailment. With medical advancement at a standstill, millions died, perhaps as many from the treatment as the malady. Developments in science and technology were abandoned. Extensive aqueduct and plumbing systems created by earlier generations disappeared. Since the sinful flesh was to be despised, even washing was discouraged. Disease of ever type ran rampant as hygiene and sanitation was forgotten. The vast network of roads that enabled transportation and communication fell into disrepair and remained that way until the 19th century. RefBook burning became commonplace. In the sixth century B.C.E., Pythagoras had already suggested that the Earth revolved around the Sun. By the third century B.C.E., Aristarchus had outlined heliocentricity while Eratosthenes had measured the circumference of the Earth. Hipparchus had invented longitude and latitude. After the onset of the Christian Dark Ages, it wouldn’t be until the 1500’s that Copernicus would reintroduce the forgotten theory that the Earth revolves around the Sun. When Galileo attempted to promote the theory, he was tried by the Inquisition in Rome for heresy. It’s untrue to assume only the Roman Catholic Church condemned heliocentricity, Calvin and Luther, the founders of the Protestant Reformation, also harshly condemned the idea, insisting that as it contradicted the Scriptures, it was therefore false. Even as early as the fourth century St. Augustine had written, ”It is impossible there should be inhabitants on the opposite side of the Earth, since no such race is recorded in Scripture among the descendents of Adam.”Historical research was nonexistent and what history there was, was rewritten to conform to the Bible. Modern archeology has proven that human history far exceeds 6000 years, but until very recent years, nearly all English Bibles placed a date on Genesis 1:1 at 4004 B.C. We now know that well before 4000 B.C., rich cultures already existed with well developed art,agriculture, architecture, city-planning, dance, drama, trade, writing, law, and even a few forms of democratic government. History is replete with significant forward development followed by major setbacks. While Christianity claims to have gradually lifted humanity out of dark ignorance of a dark pre-Christian world, the truth is opposite. The longest and darkest setback in the progression of western civilization lies at the feet of Christianity. Ignorance was crowned king when the great libraries in Alexandria in were burned in 391. Ancient academies were closed and education for anyone outside the clergy ended. The Fourth Council of Carthage, in canon 16, permits only Bishops to read the books of heretics in a time of need.. Jerome, a Church Father in the fourth century, reportedly rejoiced that the classical authors were being forgotten. St. John Chrysostom, a preeminent Greek Father of the Church said, “Every trace of the old philosophy and literature of the ancient world has vanished from the face of the Earth.”Whether medicine, art, science, history, music, reading, writing or math, everything was to be brought into conformity with the accepted doctrines of Christianity. The laity and the priest craft were kept ignorant of any ideas outside of a religiously Christian framework. Even the monasteries, filled with educated monkish scribes, were consigned to only preserving works of religious devotion. All other types of literature were consigned to oblivion, hidden away or destroyed, considered at best meaningless works of the flesh, or at worst distractions to lead astray the pious. Worldly writings were thought more suited for the flames, as their authors were destined for hell. Every thought was to be brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. I know that in my own life, while a youth, I believed there was no greater purpose in life than learning about, and serving, my Lord. I believed the Rapture would occur any day, and nothing could take priority over saving the lost. Prior to my conversion I was an A student, but in the following years I spurned secular academics and neglected my studies in exchange for what I considered more worthy, eternal pursuits. In my mind, higher learning and high paying jobs were vain. Temporal pursuits, I thought, were not worthy of an eternal resident of heaven. So what about purpose? While immersion in a religion may bring about a feeling of purpose, it is a false purpose, one that ultimately hampers all human creative expression and growth. Without religion, or belief in a God that is directing history, it becomes immediately apparent that our species and our lives are fragile, subject to being snuffed out without much notice by the rest of the Universe. Our sun and our planet are obviously not eternal, and our survival as a species is fraught with uncertainties. Great monsters, called dinosaurs, ruled this planet for an impossibly long time before extinction took them away. Without some god to guarantee our survival, extinction is a very real possibility for us. Without a promise of personal survival in some heaven, the only real immorality we can hope to achieve is through our children and grandchildren – the generations of humanity that follow in our footsteps. Pursuing personal enlightenment through religion may provide an appearance of purpose, but it is ultimately a selfish pursuit. Personal religion is about my salvation, my god, my jeweled crown, my holiness, my Bible, my prayer time, my church, my group, my denomination, my experience, my, my, my, my, my. I would say that a far higher purpose – a better purpose – than mindless obedience to religion, would be a life devoted to making the world a better place to live for all of us. By striving to better our neighborhoods, our communities, our nations, and our world, we have a better chance of ensuring a good future for everyone. Ultimately we each make and choose our own purpose. Jesus does not have a plan for my life; I have a plan for my life. It falls to me to take responsibility for my own life and bring my plan to pass. This has been the podcast of ExChristian.Net for April 9, 2006.Related article: Another, "The Meaning of Life."Technorati tags: ex-Christian | exchristian | podcasts

Is All About Math (Video Podcast)

Hipparchus explains how two numbers can describe the position of a point on a sphere. He then explains stereographic projection: how can one draw a picture of the Earth on a piece of paper?