1 00:00:08,440 --> 00:00:11,400 Speaker 1: Hey, Katie, what was your favorite subject at school other 2 00:00:11,400 --> 00:00:15,920 Speaker 1: than of course biology. We'll firstly lunch, and then after 3 00:00:15,960 --> 00:00:20,279 Speaker 1: that maybe recess, and then I guess it's a tie 4 00:00:20,360 --> 00:00:25,680 Speaker 1: between English and art, and you think you remember those 5 00:00:25,720 --> 00:00:29,240 Speaker 1: subjects well enough to like, maybe help your future hypothetical 6 00:00:29,320 --> 00:00:32,480 Speaker 1: children with their homework. I guess it depends on when 7 00:00:32,479 --> 00:00:35,360 Speaker 1: those future children arrive. If it happens in the next 8 00:00:35,400 --> 00:00:39,440 Speaker 1: few years, maybe, Well, my son is sixteen and he's 9 00:00:39,440 --> 00:00:43,000 Speaker 1: taking chemistry right now, and it is a challenge for me. 10 00:00:43,280 --> 00:00:46,360 Speaker 1: Is that because chemistry is hard, because you've forgotten most 11 00:00:46,400 --> 00:00:50,839 Speaker 1: of it, or because of the explosions. I love the explosions. 12 00:00:51,000 --> 00:00:53,559 Speaker 1: The problem for me is that chemistry feels more like 13 00:00:53,880 --> 00:00:58,960 Speaker 1: memorization than actual conceptual understanding. Oof. Yeah, I hope our 14 00:00:59,440 --> 00:01:02,920 Speaker 1: former chemistry teachers are not listening in on this conversation. 15 00:01:03,120 --> 00:01:05,720 Speaker 1: I hope my former high school chemistry teacher has forgotten 16 00:01:05,760 --> 00:01:23,920 Speaker 1: as much about me as I've forgotten about chemistry. Hi. 17 00:01:24,120 --> 00:01:27,040 Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor at 18 00:01:27,120 --> 00:01:30,360 Speaker 1: UC Irvine, and I'm very glad I don't teach chemistry. 19 00:01:30,520 --> 00:01:34,760 Speaker 1: I'm Katie Golden. I have a podcast on animal biology 20 00:01:34,959 --> 00:01:38,440 Speaker 1: and whenever I have to talk about chemistry on that show, 21 00:01:38,880 --> 00:01:45,240 Speaker 1: it is rough. Hoof No, Well, it's interesting because you're 22 00:01:45,280 --> 00:01:48,200 Speaker 1: in biology and I'm in physics, and some people might say, 23 00:01:48,240 --> 00:01:51,160 Speaker 1: like chemistry is right in between them, so maybe between 24 00:01:51,280 --> 00:01:55,760 Speaker 1: us literally we should be able to understand chemistry in theory. Yes, 25 00:01:56,720 --> 00:02:01,840 Speaker 1: if knowledge worked that way, if knowledge worked like been diagram, yes, absolutely. 26 00:02:02,120 --> 00:02:04,320 Speaker 1: Well it's amazing to me how much I've learned and 27 00:02:04,360 --> 00:02:07,280 Speaker 1: how much I have forgotten along the way. But since chemistry, 28 00:02:07,280 --> 00:02:11,560 Speaker 1: in my view, is mostly memorization, it's basically all been forgotten. Yeah. 29 00:02:11,639 --> 00:02:16,160 Speaker 1: I don't do so well with memorizing things when it's 30 00:02:16,200 --> 00:02:20,400 Speaker 1: just this sort of wrote memorization, you know, like what's 31 00:02:20,400 --> 00:02:22,919 Speaker 1: it called. When you're trying to like come up with 32 00:02:22,960 --> 00:02:26,200 Speaker 1: some system to memorize something, it's like, oh, you know, 33 00:02:26,520 --> 00:02:30,280 Speaker 1: like maybe these letters mean something to me. I'm terrible 34 00:02:30,360 --> 00:02:33,040 Speaker 1: at that. I cannot do that. I think that's called biology. 35 00:02:33,320 --> 00:02:36,640 Speaker 1: Is biology mostly memorization. This part of the plant is 36 00:02:36,639 --> 00:02:38,720 Speaker 1: called this, This part of the plant is called that. 37 00:02:39,320 --> 00:02:42,040 Speaker 1: Oh I'm bad at that, yes, which is why I 38 00:02:42,080 --> 00:02:44,840 Speaker 1: write things down. Oh, I see, Well, it always seems 39 00:02:44,840 --> 00:02:47,400 Speaker 1: strange to me that we're testing kids on their ability 40 00:02:47,400 --> 00:02:50,840 Speaker 1: to memorize stuff. When nobody in the field memorizes anything. 41 00:02:50,919 --> 00:02:53,800 Speaker 1: I mean, we just use references. Like when I'm doing physics, 42 00:02:53,840 --> 00:02:55,919 Speaker 1: I never remember the values of any of the constants 43 00:02:55,960 --> 00:02:58,240 Speaker 1: I look them up, So I never understood the focus 44 00:02:58,320 --> 00:03:01,800 Speaker 1: on memorization. Yeah, I think goal tests should let your Google. 45 00:03:03,360 --> 00:03:06,480 Speaker 1: I've even seen doctors googling stuff. You're at their office 46 00:03:06,720 --> 00:03:09,440 Speaker 1: and you ask them question like, huh, I'm trying to 47 00:03:09,440 --> 00:03:11,640 Speaker 1: remember that, and then you see them on Google and 48 00:03:11,680 --> 00:03:13,720 Speaker 1: they think they're all slick about it. But I see 49 00:03:13,760 --> 00:03:16,760 Speaker 1: that all right. Well, before we start googling our symptoms, 50 00:03:16,919 --> 00:03:20,399 Speaker 1: let me welcome you to the podcast. Daniel and Jorge 51 00:03:20,480 --> 00:03:24,480 Speaker 1: explain the universe of production of iHeartRadio, in which we 52 00:03:24,600 --> 00:03:28,440 Speaker 1: do our best to mentally google the entire universe. We 53 00:03:28,480 --> 00:03:31,480 Speaker 1: want to understand how everything out there works. We want 54 00:03:31,480 --> 00:03:33,919 Speaker 1: to take you on the journey of building a human 55 00:03:34,040 --> 00:03:38,200 Speaker 1: understanding to describe the entire universe in our minds. That 56 00:03:38,280 --> 00:03:42,480 Speaker 1: includes physics and chemistry and biology and maybe even history 57 00:03:42,480 --> 00:03:46,560 Speaker 1: and psychology. We want to understand everything. And I just 58 00:03:46,680 --> 00:03:52,040 Speaker 1: remembered it's neumonic devices. That's that memory thing that I forgot, 59 00:03:52,080 --> 00:03:54,880 Speaker 1: but now I remember, So I need a nemonic device 60 00:03:55,080 --> 00:04:02,520 Speaker 1: for remembering pneumonic devices, superneumonics, orneumonic square. And of course 61 00:04:02,600 --> 00:04:05,560 Speaker 1: humans have been building knowledge about the world, not just 62 00:04:05,720 --> 00:04:09,200 Speaker 1: chemistry and biology and physics, but astronomy and geology and 63 00:04:09,240 --> 00:04:12,000 Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff. And it's tempting to think about 64 00:04:12,040 --> 00:04:14,400 Speaker 1: that journey a sort of a linear path. It's like 65 00:04:14,800 --> 00:04:17,200 Speaker 1: starting from not really knowing very much as we look 66 00:04:17,200 --> 00:04:20,240 Speaker 1: out into the world, and developing into our now very 67 00:04:20,320 --> 00:04:23,720 Speaker 1: sophisticated understanding of the nature of matter. We sometimes think 68 00:04:23,720 --> 00:04:27,279 Speaker 1: about that as like climbing steps towards understanding, but really 69 00:04:27,320 --> 00:04:30,120 Speaker 1: it's a very forked path. There are many many branches there, 70 00:04:30,160 --> 00:04:33,480 Speaker 1: and many times when knowledge has been lost. I mean, 71 00:04:33,520 --> 00:04:37,359 Speaker 1: this sounds like we're about to rediscover Atlantis or something, 72 00:04:37,400 --> 00:04:43,320 Speaker 1: a lost civilization full of like computers and robots made 73 00:04:43,320 --> 00:04:47,680 Speaker 1: out of rocks and twigs. I'm here for that. Well, 74 00:04:47,720 --> 00:04:49,960 Speaker 1: it's a very compelling idea to imagine that the ancients 75 00:04:50,200 --> 00:04:52,520 Speaker 1: may have known things that are now forgotten and have 76 00:04:52,600 --> 00:04:55,520 Speaker 1: been lost, and of course that it's fertile ground for 77 00:04:55,720 --> 00:04:59,320 Speaker 1: pop archaeology and frankly conspiracy theories. There are all these 78 00:04:59,320 --> 00:05:03,120 Speaker 1: shows about like ancient archeology and ancient aliens, and all 79 00:05:03,200 --> 00:05:06,520 Speaker 1: sorts of crazy stuff because history is lost to us, right, 80 00:05:06,600 --> 00:05:09,279 Speaker 1: because most of it is not available. Right, we don't 81 00:05:09,320 --> 00:05:12,680 Speaker 1: know what people were thinking and doing and talking about 82 00:05:12,720 --> 00:05:15,520 Speaker 1: at the time. We only know what we can find now. 83 00:05:15,720 --> 00:05:19,039 Speaker 1: I do like that it's so inconceivable to our modern 84 00:05:19,200 --> 00:05:23,520 Speaker 1: brains that ancient people could do something like move rocks 85 00:05:23,680 --> 00:05:27,320 Speaker 1: or figure out the sun, and so we just have 86 00:05:27,440 --> 00:05:29,880 Speaker 1: to come up with aliens came down and did it 87 00:05:29,920 --> 00:05:33,640 Speaker 1: for us. Yeah, and there's an unfortunate shadow of racism. 88 00:05:33,680 --> 00:05:36,760 Speaker 1: They're doubting that ancient peoples could not have done what 89 00:05:36,839 --> 00:05:39,839 Speaker 1: we imagine we could do. But there is also a 90 00:05:39,920 --> 00:05:42,880 Speaker 1: kernel of truth to this, because we know that there 91 00:05:42,960 --> 00:05:45,080 Speaker 1: is a lot that has been lost. You know, some 92 00:05:45,120 --> 00:05:47,760 Speaker 1: of the ancient writers we know about only because of 93 00:05:47,880 --> 00:05:50,680 Speaker 1: other ancient writers. You know, we all know about Plato 94 00:05:50,960 --> 00:05:53,800 Speaker 1: mostly because a lot of his writing survived, But his 95 00:05:53,960 --> 00:05:57,560 Speaker 1: famous teacher, Socrates, almost nothing of his has survived, and 96 00:05:57,600 --> 00:06:00,000 Speaker 1: we know mostly about him because of what other people 97 00:06:00,240 --> 00:06:03,080 Speaker 1: have written about him. Imagine if we could access the 98 00:06:03,160 --> 00:06:06,240 Speaker 1: writings of Socrates, like, what could we learn about the 99 00:06:06,279 --> 00:06:08,920 Speaker 1: way the Greeks thought about the world. This is why 100 00:06:08,920 --> 00:06:12,719 Speaker 1: it's really important to make friends and influence people, because 101 00:06:12,760 --> 00:06:15,880 Speaker 1: imagine if everything about you is lost except for what 102 00:06:15,960 --> 00:06:19,039 Speaker 1: people know about you, and what if they're like, yeah, 103 00:06:19,080 --> 00:06:23,440 Speaker 1: that's Socrates. He was a real jerk and a drama 104 00:06:23,880 --> 00:06:26,400 Speaker 1: and not just make friends, but also be careful with 105 00:06:26,440 --> 00:06:29,599 Speaker 1: your notes. I was reading about Aristotle, and though we 106 00:06:29,680 --> 00:06:32,479 Speaker 1: have some of Aristotle's works, it turns out that all 107 00:06:32,520 --> 00:06:34,680 Speaker 1: we have from Aristotle are the things he did not 108 00:06:34,880 --> 00:06:38,480 Speaker 1: intend to publish. Like everything he actually published is gone, 109 00:06:38,640 --> 00:06:41,159 Speaker 1: is lost. All we have are like his drafts and 110 00:06:41,200 --> 00:06:45,080 Speaker 1: his notes basically, you know, basically the draft unsent messages 111 00:06:45,320 --> 00:06:49,640 Speaker 1: from his email folder. I think that's everyone's literal nightmare, 112 00:06:51,800 --> 00:06:54,360 Speaker 1: essentially his diary, you know, like I got so mad 113 00:06:54,400 --> 00:06:56,920 Speaker 1: at Plato today because he said, blah blah blah, his 114 00:06:57,080 --> 00:07:00,760 Speaker 1: stupid solids. You don't want his story to see your 115 00:07:00,839 --> 00:07:04,320 Speaker 1: drafts folder. Never and on the podcast, we mostly focus 116 00:07:04,400 --> 00:07:06,600 Speaker 1: on what we do and don't know about the universe today, 117 00:07:06,640 --> 00:07:09,520 Speaker 1: but sometimes we do like to dive into the history 118 00:07:09,600 --> 00:07:13,520 Speaker 1: of knowledge to understand why we think things we think today. 119 00:07:13,560 --> 00:07:15,520 Speaker 1: How did we discover this, How do we actually know 120 00:07:15,640 --> 00:07:18,200 Speaker 1: photons are real? Why do we think this is the case? 121 00:07:18,240 --> 00:07:21,040 Speaker 1: Where did this idea come from? Because I think it's 122 00:07:21,080 --> 00:07:23,240 Speaker 1: important to understand that a lot of the way that 123 00:07:23,320 --> 00:07:26,600 Speaker 1: we think about the world has been shaped by the 124 00:07:26,600 --> 00:07:29,400 Speaker 1: ways other people have thought about the world. We sort 125 00:07:29,440 --> 00:07:32,120 Speaker 1: of have made a slow journey into this mental space, 126 00:07:32,160 --> 00:07:34,560 Speaker 1: but we could have taken other journeys. Right There are 127 00:07:34,600 --> 00:07:37,960 Speaker 1: lots of lost paths in the history of science, and 128 00:07:38,320 --> 00:07:40,320 Speaker 1: if we go back and try to uncover some of them, 129 00:07:40,320 --> 00:07:43,160 Speaker 1: we can understand the choices that we didn't make, or 130 00:07:43,320 --> 00:07:45,800 Speaker 1: some of the directions that we didn't take that we 131 00:07:45,920 --> 00:07:48,520 Speaker 1: might have taken that could have influenced the way we 132 00:07:48,560 --> 00:07:51,840 Speaker 1: think about the world. It's like a branching tree made 133 00:07:51,880 --> 00:07:56,240 Speaker 1: out of human brains over centuries, which, now, okay, it 134 00:07:56,320 --> 00:07:59,560 Speaker 1: sounds a little grosser than I intend it, but still exactly. 135 00:08:00,000 --> 00:08:03,240 Speaker 1: As we dig into what the ancients knew and didn't know, 136 00:08:03,360 --> 00:08:05,960 Speaker 1: we do find some surprises, some things that don't quite 137 00:08:06,000 --> 00:08:08,640 Speaker 1: make sense to us, that give us glimpses into how 138 00:08:08,680 --> 00:08:11,600 Speaker 1: they thought about the world and what they were capable of. 139 00:08:11,880 --> 00:08:15,040 Speaker 1: So there are so many lost things, like what are 140 00:08:15,120 --> 00:08:18,360 Speaker 1: some of these aspects of ancient life that we have 141 00:08:18,560 --> 00:08:23,239 Speaker 1: recovered that could guide our understanding of whether they knew 142 00:08:23,240 --> 00:08:26,800 Speaker 1: stuff that seems inconceivable to us that they would have 143 00:08:26,840 --> 00:08:30,000 Speaker 1: known things and that may have gotten lost to history. Well, 144 00:08:30,040 --> 00:08:32,480 Speaker 1: we're going to dig into exactly that question on the 145 00:08:32,520 --> 00:08:35,360 Speaker 1: podcast today when we talk about what people have referred 146 00:08:35,360 --> 00:08:39,880 Speaker 1: to as the world's first computer. So today on the podcast, 147 00:08:39,960 --> 00:08:48,680 Speaker 1: we'll be asking the question, what does the endicathera mechanism do? 148 00:08:49,000 --> 00:08:51,480 Speaker 1: Oh boy, are we actually going to talk about robots 149 00:08:51,520 --> 00:08:55,720 Speaker 1: made out of rocks? Robots made out of rocks? Is 150 00:08:55,760 --> 00:08:58,160 Speaker 1: that some video game that you're playing? No, No, it's 151 00:08:58,200 --> 00:09:01,160 Speaker 1: just how I imagine like the ancient law city of 152 00:09:01,200 --> 00:09:04,400 Speaker 1: Atlantis got you got all these high tech things, they're 153 00:09:04,440 --> 00:09:06,800 Speaker 1: just man out of rock. I see. It's like the 154 00:09:06,800 --> 00:09:12,120 Speaker 1: original steampunk, right, It's like the steampunk of steampunk, rock punk, 155 00:09:12,280 --> 00:09:19,800 Speaker 1: rock punk exactly, chek exactly. So this is a really 156 00:09:19,840 --> 00:09:23,520 Speaker 1: fascinating bit of archeology that intersects not only with the 157 00:09:23,640 --> 00:09:26,040 Speaker 1: history of science, but the history of physics and the 158 00:09:26,120 --> 00:09:29,680 Speaker 1: history of astronomy, and gives us a window into what 159 00:09:29,720 --> 00:09:32,640 Speaker 1: the Greeks were thinking about the world and the universe, 160 00:09:32,640 --> 00:09:35,360 Speaker 1: and also how they were able to calculate it and 161 00:09:35,600 --> 00:09:38,240 Speaker 1: predict it. So, as usual, I was curious if people 162 00:09:38,360 --> 00:09:42,480 Speaker 1: had heard about this particular archaeological object so I went 163 00:09:42,520 --> 00:09:45,199 Speaker 1: out there into the internet too as people if they 164 00:09:45,320 --> 00:09:48,280 Speaker 1: knew what this thing was. So thanks very much to 165 00:09:48,360 --> 00:09:51,520 Speaker 1: everybody who participates in this segment of the podcast. And 166 00:09:51,520 --> 00:09:54,400 Speaker 1: if you would like to answer weird and tough questions 167 00:09:54,440 --> 00:09:58,080 Speaker 1: for everybody else's educational amusement, please don't be shy right 168 00:09:58,160 --> 00:10:01,480 Speaker 1: to me to questions at Daniel and Jorge dot com. 169 00:10:01,600 --> 00:10:04,000 Speaker 1: So before you hear these answers, think to yourself, do 170 00:10:04,080 --> 00:10:08,520 Speaker 1: you know what the anticotheram mechanism actually does? Here's what 171 00:10:08,640 --> 00:10:12,200 Speaker 1: people had to say. I think this is a very 172 00:10:12,240 --> 00:10:16,120 Speaker 1: old mechanism. It's supposed to be one of the earliest 173 00:10:16,160 --> 00:10:19,880 Speaker 1: things that can be called a computer. Maybe I believe 174 00:10:19,960 --> 00:10:25,520 Speaker 1: it was used to predict celestial events, maybe like when 175 00:10:25,600 --> 00:10:28,840 Speaker 1: planets meet, stuff like that. Otherwise, I think it's not 176 00:10:28,920 --> 00:10:32,719 Speaker 1: fully understood and there are still some stuff we might 177 00:10:32,760 --> 00:10:35,320 Speaker 1: find out about it. Era A mechanism has been guarded 178 00:10:35,360 --> 00:10:39,360 Speaker 1: for thousands of years by a secret sisterhood of astronomers. 179 00:10:39,679 --> 00:10:42,640 Speaker 1: It is a defense against the of the Kai Theora, 180 00:10:43,200 --> 00:10:47,680 Speaker 1: a many headed planet eating space gorgan. Day by day, 181 00:10:47,720 --> 00:10:51,120 Speaker 1: the Kai Theora draws nearer and the anti Kai Theoram 182 00:10:51,160 --> 00:10:54,199 Speaker 1: mechanism has been guarded for thousands of years by a 183 00:10:54,280 --> 00:10:58,880 Speaker 1: secret sisterhood of astronomers. It is our only defense against 184 00:10:58,920 --> 00:11:02,920 Speaker 1: the coming of the Kai theory, a many headed planet 185 00:11:02,960 --> 00:11:06,880 Speaker 1: eating space gorgan. Day by day, the Kai Theora draws nearer, 186 00:11:07,240 --> 00:11:10,520 Speaker 1: and day by day her hunger grows. I honestly have 187 00:11:10,679 --> 00:11:12,800 Speaker 1: no clue. It sounds like something from magic to Gathering 188 00:11:12,880 --> 00:11:15,480 Speaker 1: or star Wars. I'm going to say it's anti magic, 189 00:11:17,000 --> 00:11:20,160 Speaker 1: just trolling. I have no clue. I guess the anticular 190 00:11:20,240 --> 00:11:24,880 Speaker 1: mechanism was the one found in the agene c which 191 00:11:25,000 --> 00:11:29,559 Speaker 1: was used to find the planets and the stars for 192 00:11:30,040 --> 00:11:33,640 Speaker 1: navigation purposes. So I've never seen this word before, and 193 00:11:33,760 --> 00:11:35,840 Speaker 1: so my first impression is that it's some sort of 194 00:11:35,880 --> 00:11:39,320 Speaker 1: medieval torture device. But given the context of this podcast, 195 00:11:40,000 --> 00:11:41,920 Speaker 1: I'm going to guess that it's some sort of mechanism 196 00:11:41,920 --> 00:11:46,480 Speaker 1: that describes the interaction between elementary particles. I do agree 197 00:11:46,520 --> 00:11:48,680 Speaker 1: with the person who said it sounds like an ancient 198 00:11:48,679 --> 00:11:52,720 Speaker 1: torture device, especially because there were so many weird torture 199 00:11:52,760 --> 00:11:56,480 Speaker 1: devices back in the day, like iron Maidens and the 200 00:11:57,240 --> 00:12:01,400 Speaker 1: Pair of Despair. It was pretty pretty messed up. But yeah, 201 00:12:01,440 --> 00:12:06,439 Speaker 1: I remember hearing about the antikatheram mechanism, and there was 202 00:12:06,480 --> 00:12:09,000 Speaker 1: a lot of buzz about just like what does this do? 203 00:12:09,280 --> 00:12:13,280 Speaker 1: Is this some kind of like doomsday prediction device? Is 204 00:12:13,320 --> 00:12:16,760 Speaker 1: it unlocking the secrets of the world. It felt like 205 00:12:16,800 --> 00:12:19,240 Speaker 1: a huge deal, like if we could figure out this 206 00:12:19,320 --> 00:12:24,240 Speaker 1: mechanism somehow, it would reveal some secret about the world. Well, 207 00:12:24,240 --> 00:12:26,800 Speaker 1: when I heard evil torture device, I thought, maybe this 208 00:12:26,840 --> 00:12:30,800 Speaker 1: is part of like ancient chemistry homework. This thing like 209 00:12:31,040 --> 00:12:35,840 Speaker 1: turns out chemistry problems or something organic chemistry homework. Yes, 210 00:12:36,000 --> 00:12:40,679 Speaker 1: that's right exactly, And you're right that this object really 211 00:12:40,720 --> 00:12:45,320 Speaker 1: has captured the imagination of a lot of historians and archaeologists. 212 00:12:45,720 --> 00:12:48,760 Speaker 1: And the object itself comes from ancient history and has 213 00:12:48,800 --> 00:12:52,640 Speaker 1: its own really fascinating history of how it was discovered 214 00:12:52,840 --> 00:12:55,000 Speaker 1: and how people started to figure out what it might 215 00:12:55,040 --> 00:12:58,480 Speaker 1: be and what it means about ancient Greek society. So 216 00:12:58,720 --> 00:13:03,520 Speaker 1: this was confirmed to be from ancient Greece, When was 217 00:13:03,559 --> 00:13:06,320 Speaker 1: it discovered? And then when did they think it was from? 218 00:13:06,559 --> 00:13:08,920 Speaker 1: So it's a really fascinating story. It was discovered just 219 00:13:09,000 --> 00:13:11,920 Speaker 1: over one hundred years ago, around nineteen oh one, and 220 00:13:11,960 --> 00:13:15,400 Speaker 1: it's called the Antikothera mechanism because it was found near 221 00:13:15,520 --> 00:13:18,480 Speaker 1: one of the Greek islands called Antikothera. They don't think 222 00:13:18,480 --> 00:13:20,760 Speaker 1: it's from that island. They found a wreckage of a 223 00:13:20,800 --> 00:13:24,280 Speaker 1: trading ship that sank more than two thousand years ago, 224 00:13:24,360 --> 00:13:26,680 Speaker 1: so that's where it was found. But it was sort 225 00:13:26,720 --> 00:13:29,400 Speaker 1: of found by accident. There was a ship that was 226 00:13:29,440 --> 00:13:32,960 Speaker 1: diverted near this island because of a storm, and when 227 00:13:32,960 --> 00:13:35,439 Speaker 1: the storm passed, they were in this protected bay and 228 00:13:35,440 --> 00:13:38,080 Speaker 1: they decided, hey, let's just do some diving here while 229 00:13:38,120 --> 00:13:41,120 Speaker 1: we're stopped. So the divers went down and they found 230 00:13:41,160 --> 00:13:45,079 Speaker 1: this crazy number of statues. That first divers that came 231 00:13:45,120 --> 00:13:47,520 Speaker 1: up said that they thought that the water was filled 232 00:13:47,559 --> 00:13:52,160 Speaker 1: with dead naked people. Oh god. It's interesting because it 233 00:13:52,200 --> 00:13:54,959 Speaker 1: feels so much like Kismet that they would find this place. 234 00:13:55,040 --> 00:13:58,040 Speaker 1: But if the storm drove them there, I wonder if 235 00:13:58,080 --> 00:14:01,920 Speaker 1: it's some kind of repeat, a sort of current that 236 00:14:02,400 --> 00:14:05,320 Speaker 1: brings things in that direction. So maybe it's not as 237 00:14:05,480 --> 00:14:10,480 Speaker 1: coincidental as it seems like it was. Yeah, perhaps maybe 238 00:14:10,480 --> 00:14:13,440 Speaker 1: it's like a ship graveyard or something. For thousands of years, 239 00:14:13,480 --> 00:14:18,559 Speaker 1: it's been like eating ships. It's certainly possible. The Antikathera quadrangle, 240 00:14:18,600 --> 00:14:22,440 Speaker 1: I don't know exactly exactly, And you have to cast 241 00:14:22,440 --> 00:14:24,880 Speaker 1: your mind back to like nineteen hundred when they were 242 00:14:24,880 --> 00:14:27,200 Speaker 1: exploring the water. They didn't have the kind of scuba 243 00:14:27,280 --> 00:14:29,560 Speaker 1: technology that we have now, so you have to imagine 244 00:14:29,560 --> 00:14:32,800 Speaker 1: people in like canvas diving suits with like these big 245 00:14:32,840 --> 00:14:35,880 Speaker 1: brass helmets, you know, going underwater. And it's actually a 246 00:14:35,960 --> 00:14:38,800 Speaker 1: bit tragic because they didn't understand the idea of water 247 00:14:38,880 --> 00:14:42,240 Speaker 1: pressure and coming up slowly to avoid the bends. So 248 00:14:42,280 --> 00:14:45,640 Speaker 1: some of the divers involved in this expedition actually suffered 249 00:14:45,720 --> 00:14:49,040 Speaker 1: quite badly. But they discovered this incredible wreckage. It's some 250 00:14:49,320 --> 00:14:53,480 Speaker 1: huge ship had sunk there and left coins and jewelry 251 00:14:53,520 --> 00:14:56,080 Speaker 1: and statues, and for a long time they thought that 252 00:14:56,240 --> 00:14:58,880 Speaker 1: was the most interesting thing about this discovery. It was 253 00:14:58,880 --> 00:15:02,160 Speaker 1: an incredible discover of all sorts of artifacts. But it 254 00:15:02,200 --> 00:15:04,280 Speaker 1: took them a long time to even notice that the 255 00:15:04,320 --> 00:15:08,400 Speaker 1: antiicotheram mechanism among the wreckage. Wow. Yeah, I mean, gosh, 256 00:15:08,400 --> 00:15:11,720 Speaker 1: it's such a spooky kind of visual I'm getting of 257 00:15:11,840 --> 00:15:15,560 Speaker 1: all these divers and these old diving suits with the 258 00:15:15,600 --> 00:15:19,920 Speaker 1: big heads and then just roaming among these sunken statues. 259 00:15:20,480 --> 00:15:23,600 Speaker 1: And of course that's going to be hard to spot 260 00:15:23,640 --> 00:15:26,120 Speaker 1: this mechanism because when you first look at it. It's 261 00:15:26,160 --> 00:15:30,640 Speaker 1: just kind of like a tray with some gizmos on it, 262 00:15:30,760 --> 00:15:35,040 Speaker 1: so it's not super noticeable, but I'm really glad they 263 00:15:35,400 --> 00:15:37,640 Speaker 1: ended up picking that up. Yeah. Fortunately they were a 264 00:15:37,720 --> 00:15:40,280 Speaker 1: thorough about it, and as you said, first they paid 265 00:15:40,280 --> 00:15:42,920 Speaker 1: most attention to the jewelry and the coins, and the 266 00:15:42,960 --> 00:15:45,720 Speaker 1: coins helped them date this ship back to around the 267 00:15:45,800 --> 00:15:49,200 Speaker 1: time of Julius Caesar, and the speculation is that this 268 00:15:49,280 --> 00:15:51,960 Speaker 1: was a really huge trade ship, too big for most 269 00:15:52,000 --> 00:15:54,480 Speaker 1: harbors to even take, and so they think it probably 270 00:15:54,560 --> 00:15:56,960 Speaker 1: was on its way to roam, maybe for all these 271 00:15:56,960 --> 00:16:00,720 Speaker 1: spoils to be displayed in some parade for season or himself. 272 00:16:00,960 --> 00:16:05,400 Speaker 1: So if this was sort of dated to Caesar, how 273 00:16:05,400 --> 00:16:08,600 Speaker 1: did we know that this was of Greek origin and 274 00:16:08,720 --> 00:16:11,480 Speaker 1: not of Roman origin. Yeah, it's a great question. And 275 00:16:11,520 --> 00:16:14,320 Speaker 1: for a while people weren't even sure that it belonged 276 00:16:14,320 --> 00:16:17,280 Speaker 1: with the ship. They thought it was so shockingly advanced 277 00:16:17,280 --> 00:16:21,600 Speaker 1: that maybe it fell overboard later and became intermingled with it. 278 00:16:21,840 --> 00:16:24,320 Speaker 1: But it has Greek letters on it, like, there is 279 00:16:24,400 --> 00:16:26,640 Speaker 1: Greek writing on it once you take the thing apart, 280 00:16:26,960 --> 00:16:29,800 Speaker 1: So they're pretty sure that it was made sometime between 281 00:16:30,000 --> 00:16:33,160 Speaker 1: one hundred and one hundred and fifty BC. Oh my god, 282 00:16:33,200 --> 00:16:37,160 Speaker 1: that's really old. It's really old. Is it completely impact 283 00:16:37,240 --> 00:16:41,160 Speaker 1: or is it kind of only partially impact. It's mostly lost, actually, 284 00:16:41,240 --> 00:16:43,760 Speaker 1: which makes it challenging to understand what it is and 285 00:16:43,960 --> 00:16:47,160 Speaker 1: what it did. And it's not even that obviously an 286 00:16:47,200 --> 00:16:50,240 Speaker 1: interesting thing. Like they gathered all of this stuff up 287 00:16:50,280 --> 00:16:52,080 Speaker 1: and there was one chunk that was just like a 288 00:16:52,120 --> 00:16:54,720 Speaker 1: big rock with like a piece of metal sticking out 289 00:16:54,720 --> 00:16:58,000 Speaker 1: of it. And you know, these archeological digs proceed pretty slowly, 290 00:16:58,280 --> 00:17:01,800 Speaker 1: and this thing actually went iced for two years. It 291 00:17:01,880 --> 00:17:04,760 Speaker 1: was just like a lump of stuff until somebody noticed 292 00:17:04,760 --> 00:17:06,439 Speaker 1: that it had a gear sticking out of it, and 293 00:17:06,440 --> 00:17:08,879 Speaker 1: they're like, wait a second, a gear. And you have 294 00:17:08,920 --> 00:17:13,240 Speaker 1: to understand, like gears, small precise metal gears had never 295 00:17:13,240 --> 00:17:15,920 Speaker 1: been seen before in antiquity, like we have seen them 296 00:17:15,920 --> 00:17:19,320 Speaker 1: in like the fourteenth century or fifteenth century in medieval Europe. 297 00:17:19,320 --> 00:17:22,160 Speaker 1: But archaeologists didn't believe that the Greeks could also make 298 00:17:22,200 --> 00:17:25,800 Speaker 1: these like very small gears thousands of years ago. Yeah, 299 00:17:25,800 --> 00:17:28,879 Speaker 1: because they didn't have wrist watch because they had wrist 300 00:17:29,080 --> 00:17:32,960 Speaker 1: sundials back then. But yeah, no, that is shocking. So 301 00:17:33,320 --> 00:17:35,920 Speaker 1: they just were basically using this thing as a paperweight, 302 00:17:36,040 --> 00:17:40,040 Speaker 1: and then they saw it had gear sticking out, and 303 00:17:40,440 --> 00:17:43,480 Speaker 1: so how did they proceed from there? Did they kind 304 00:17:43,480 --> 00:17:46,640 Speaker 1: of start to open up this rock and what fell 305 00:17:46,680 --> 00:17:48,760 Speaker 1: out of it? So the thing was basically ignored for 306 00:17:48,800 --> 00:17:50,240 Speaker 1: a couple of years as they were working on the 307 00:17:50,280 --> 00:17:54,159 Speaker 1: more obvious treasures, and because it wasn't treated very well, 308 00:17:54,320 --> 00:17:57,000 Speaker 1: it sort of fell apart, and as it fell apart, 309 00:17:57,040 --> 00:17:59,520 Speaker 1: you could see more inside of it, and it actually 310 00:17:59,560 --> 00:18:01,720 Speaker 1: helped them discover what it was, though it's a little 311 00:18:01,720 --> 00:18:04,080 Speaker 1: bit tragic because some damage was also done because it 312 00:18:04,119 --> 00:18:06,719 Speaker 1: wasn't being stored properly. But it was a challenge at 313 00:18:06,720 --> 00:18:08,719 Speaker 1: the time. Some people are like, oh, look at these gears, 314 00:18:08,760 --> 00:18:10,919 Speaker 1: this must be some sort of clock, some sort of 315 00:18:11,080 --> 00:18:14,840 Speaker 1: complicated astronomical clock. Was the original idea, but this idea 316 00:18:14,920 --> 00:18:18,040 Speaker 1: was dismissed by archaeologists at the time, right because they 317 00:18:18,040 --> 00:18:21,040 Speaker 1: thought it was impossible. Like the Greeks, they had things 318 00:18:21,119 --> 00:18:24,400 Speaker 1: like big wooden gears that you could use to turn 319 00:18:24,640 --> 00:18:28,320 Speaker 1: windmills like so the concept of like gears is rotating 320 00:18:28,359 --> 00:18:31,200 Speaker 1: circles that are meshing together and turning each other existed, 321 00:18:31,320 --> 00:18:33,520 Speaker 1: but not the ability to make these things very very 322 00:18:33,560 --> 00:18:36,280 Speaker 1: small so it sort of just sat in the museum 323 00:18:36,359 --> 00:18:40,000 Speaker 1: for decades while people were like, huh, nobody really understands 324 00:18:40,040 --> 00:18:44,399 Speaker 1: that question mark. So finally we must have decided to 325 00:18:45,520 --> 00:18:47,719 Speaker 1: look at it. More So, when did we do that? 326 00:18:47,760 --> 00:18:50,840 Speaker 1: And who basically decided, Hey, why don't we give this 327 00:18:50,840 --> 00:18:53,520 Speaker 1: thing a second look? So it wasn't until the fifties 328 00:18:53,560 --> 00:18:57,080 Speaker 1: when a British physicist and historian of science named Derek 329 00:18:57,160 --> 00:18:59,600 Speaker 1: Price started to look into this and they tried to 330 00:18:59,600 --> 00:19:02,680 Speaker 1: look inside of this thing, and they took these radiographic 331 00:19:02,720 --> 00:19:06,560 Speaker 1: images basically X rays, and what they saw inside this 332 00:19:06,680 --> 00:19:10,080 Speaker 1: thing shocked them. It wasn't just one corroded gear stuck 333 00:19:10,119 --> 00:19:12,359 Speaker 1: in a lump. This thing had a lot of gears 334 00:19:12,480 --> 00:19:15,280 Speaker 1: inside of it. There were at least thirty different gear 335 00:19:15,280 --> 00:19:18,159 Speaker 1: wheels in this lump. That's crazy because if you have 336 00:19:18,280 --> 00:19:21,000 Speaker 1: so many, and this is just part of it, that 337 00:19:21,119 --> 00:19:24,760 Speaker 1: implies this was an incredibly complicated thing. It was really 338 00:19:24,760 --> 00:19:27,439 Speaker 1: incredibly complicated, and it was really impressive because it was 339 00:19:27,480 --> 00:19:30,560 Speaker 1: so small. The size of this thing is inches like. 340 00:19:30,680 --> 00:19:33,680 Speaker 1: Reconstructions of what this thing might have looked like originally 341 00:19:34,000 --> 00:19:36,280 Speaker 1: suggest that it might have been like about the size 342 00:19:36,320 --> 00:19:39,159 Speaker 1: of a shoe box. So this is a very small, 343 00:19:39,280 --> 00:19:42,679 Speaker 1: very intricate device. It's really impressive and really confusing for 344 00:19:42,760 --> 00:19:45,080 Speaker 1: people how the Greeks were able to make this and 345 00:19:45,119 --> 00:19:47,320 Speaker 1: to understand exactly what it might have done for them, 346 00:19:47,560 --> 00:19:51,600 Speaker 1: because gears have to be somewhat precise, right for a 347 00:19:51,720 --> 00:19:54,920 Speaker 1: thing to function fluidly, especially if you have a small 348 00:19:55,560 --> 00:20:00,760 Speaker 1: precise object to produce those gears. To have technology to 349 00:20:00,920 --> 00:20:04,199 Speaker 1: create these really precise gears that work fluidly, that it 350 00:20:04,240 --> 00:20:06,359 Speaker 1: doesn't all just kind of jam and break down. That 351 00:20:06,440 --> 00:20:09,480 Speaker 1: seems really difficult, and it's not something I would have 352 00:20:09,560 --> 00:20:13,720 Speaker 1: expected people would be capable of doing at that time. Yeah, 353 00:20:13,800 --> 00:20:16,200 Speaker 1: and it's not something that's like molded. This is something 354 00:20:16,240 --> 00:20:19,680 Speaker 1: that's like stamped out of a bronze sheet. So imagine 355 00:20:19,680 --> 00:20:21,800 Speaker 1: putting this thing together. And as you say, it has 356 00:20:21,840 --> 00:20:24,040 Speaker 1: to be very very precise. If you're going to use 357 00:20:24,080 --> 00:20:27,120 Speaker 1: this to predict the eclipses or the phases of the moons, 358 00:20:27,440 --> 00:20:30,120 Speaker 1: then it can't be a sloppy piece of machinery, right. 359 00:20:30,240 --> 00:20:32,280 Speaker 1: It's essentially something that they're going to try to capture 360 00:20:32,680 --> 00:20:36,040 Speaker 1: your understanding of how the universe works so that you 361 00:20:36,040 --> 00:20:39,080 Speaker 1: could sort of run the universe forward in time. That's 362 00:20:39,080 --> 00:20:42,159 Speaker 1: why they call it potentially like the world's first computer, 363 00:20:42,400 --> 00:20:45,240 Speaker 1: because it's like a physical device that's supposed to be 364 00:20:45,280 --> 00:20:49,520 Speaker 1: representing the calculations you might otherwise make and do it 365 00:20:49,600 --> 00:20:51,720 Speaker 1: for you. They imagine that the thing might have had 366 00:20:51,800 --> 00:20:53,959 Speaker 1: like a hand crank on the front of it, and 367 00:20:54,040 --> 00:20:57,760 Speaker 1: as you crank this thing, various knobs and dials word 368 00:20:57,880 --> 00:21:00,520 Speaker 1: and pointed in various ways and told you think about 369 00:21:00,560 --> 00:21:03,720 Speaker 1: what might happen in the skies in the future, which 370 00:21:03,720 --> 00:21:06,360 Speaker 1: at the time was very powerful information if you were 371 00:21:06,560 --> 00:21:09,200 Speaker 1: hoping to like not attack your enemy on the date 372 00:21:09,240 --> 00:21:13,400 Speaker 1: of an eclipse, for example. That's really really interesting. So 373 00:21:13,640 --> 00:21:16,919 Speaker 1: let's take a break while I pick up the pieces 374 00:21:16,960 --> 00:21:19,359 Speaker 1: of my mind that have been blown off the floor, 375 00:21:19,640 --> 00:21:23,240 Speaker 1: and when we return, let's talk more about what it did. 376 00:21:23,400 --> 00:21:27,760 Speaker 1: Because I'm having trouble conceiving of something just made out 377 00:21:27,760 --> 00:21:43,639 Speaker 1: of gears being able to predict things like eclipses. All right, 378 00:21:43,720 --> 00:21:47,720 Speaker 1: So I have reassembled my mind, and now I'm ready 379 00:21:47,760 --> 00:21:51,040 Speaker 1: to learn how could this thing have done things like 380 00:21:51,240 --> 00:21:56,720 Speaker 1: predict the movement of celestial bodies just with these gears 381 00:21:56,800 --> 00:22:00,440 Speaker 1: and something that was made in ancient times that it's 382 00:22:00,520 --> 00:22:03,679 Speaker 1: hard for me to believe. Well, it's really fascinating to 383 00:22:03,720 --> 00:22:06,959 Speaker 1: sort of think about what the philosophy of a computer is, Like, 384 00:22:07,480 --> 00:22:12,120 Speaker 1: what do we use computers for. Computers are little physical machines, 385 00:22:12,160 --> 00:22:15,280 Speaker 1: and they can be digital or they can be analog whatever, 386 00:22:15,560 --> 00:22:19,719 Speaker 1: But essentially they're physical machines that carry out calculations, right, 387 00:22:19,760 --> 00:22:22,080 Speaker 1: that do things for us. And these days we have 388 00:22:22,320 --> 00:22:25,480 Speaker 1: very very flexible computers that can do all sorts of things. 389 00:22:25,920 --> 00:22:27,960 Speaker 1: But back on the early days, computers were designed to 390 00:22:28,000 --> 00:22:31,359 Speaker 1: do like one specific task. So you take the mathematics 391 00:22:31,400 --> 00:22:33,880 Speaker 1: problem you have. Maybe you want to predict where your 392 00:22:33,920 --> 00:22:36,879 Speaker 1: cannonball is going to fly or something, and you figure 393 00:22:36,920 --> 00:22:39,439 Speaker 1: out a way to represent it physically so that the 394 00:22:39,520 --> 00:22:42,560 Speaker 1: laws of physics how things move and touch each other 395 00:22:43,160 --> 00:22:46,200 Speaker 1: end up cranking out the answer for you. So why 396 00:22:46,200 --> 00:22:50,160 Speaker 1: do we think this was some form of astronomical calculator 397 00:22:50,640 --> 00:22:53,879 Speaker 1: rather than something like a music box or for fun? 398 00:22:56,040 --> 00:22:58,800 Speaker 1: There is I think a lot of room for skepticism there. 399 00:22:59,040 --> 00:23:01,200 Speaker 1: I don't know if you follow archaeology, but I feel 400 00:23:01,240 --> 00:23:04,440 Speaker 1: like when archaeologists don't know what something is, they're like, oh, 401 00:23:04,520 --> 00:23:07,520 Speaker 1: it's a religious symbol, or oh maybe it predicted the 402 00:23:07,560 --> 00:23:09,399 Speaker 1: sun and the moon. Right, it seems to be like 403 00:23:09,440 --> 00:23:12,879 Speaker 1: sort of their go to explanation for we don't know 404 00:23:12,920 --> 00:23:15,439 Speaker 1: what this was, and it makes me wonder about, like, 405 00:23:15,480 --> 00:23:17,680 Speaker 1: you know, stuff in our world. If they're going to 406 00:23:17,720 --> 00:23:19,880 Speaker 1: pick up like a Nintendo game bow and be like, oh, 407 00:23:19,880 --> 00:23:22,119 Speaker 1: this must have been the center of a religious ritual, 408 00:23:22,280 --> 00:23:26,800 Speaker 1: or maybe this predicted eclipses or something just a Greek 409 00:23:26,800 --> 00:23:30,919 Speaker 1: pinball machine exactly. And so in order to come to 410 00:23:30,960 --> 00:23:34,560 Speaker 1: this conclusion, you have to solve two puzzles simultaneously. One 411 00:23:34,880 --> 00:23:38,000 Speaker 1: is you have to understand what did the Greeks think 412 00:23:38,359 --> 00:23:42,120 Speaker 1: was going on in the sky, what was their cosmology, 413 00:23:42,280 --> 00:23:45,159 Speaker 1: how did they think the universe worked? And then the 414 00:23:45,200 --> 00:23:49,240 Speaker 1: second puzzle is how could this little bronze device represent 415 00:23:49,359 --> 00:23:53,040 Speaker 1: that or did it reflect their cosmology? Because you know, 416 00:23:53,080 --> 00:23:55,640 Speaker 1: the Greeks had a very very different view of what 417 00:23:55,680 --> 00:23:57,720 Speaker 1: was happening up there in the sky than we did. 418 00:23:57,840 --> 00:23:59,720 Speaker 1: So you can't look at this device and say, hey, 419 00:23:59,760 --> 00:24:03,560 Speaker 1: this just represent our understanding of the cosmos, how we 420 00:24:03,680 --> 00:24:06,480 Speaker 1: think the Moon moves and how we think Jupiter moves, 421 00:24:06,640 --> 00:24:09,000 Speaker 1: because that's not what they could have been calculating. They 422 00:24:09,000 --> 00:24:12,440 Speaker 1: didn't know our idea of the cosmos. They had their own. 423 00:24:12,600 --> 00:24:16,679 Speaker 1: Weird Obviously, now we understand to be wrong ideas for 424 00:24:16,720 --> 00:24:18,879 Speaker 1: how the universe worked. So we have to unravel what 425 00:24:18,920 --> 00:24:21,200 Speaker 1: they thought was happening and then figure out if this 426 00:24:21,240 --> 00:24:25,720 Speaker 1: thing is reflecting their sort of earthly understanding or misunderstanding 427 00:24:25,800 --> 00:24:28,280 Speaker 1: of the universe. Yeah, because they thought that guy like 428 00:24:28,400 --> 00:24:32,520 Speaker 1: Apollo pulled the sun in his chariot, right, So what 429 00:24:32,800 --> 00:24:36,520 Speaker 1: exactly other than the Greek mythology, what was their view 430 00:24:36,560 --> 00:24:39,280 Speaker 1: of the universe. So the Greeks believed that the Earth 431 00:24:39,400 --> 00:24:42,560 Speaker 1: was at the center of the Solar system, and basically 432 00:24:42,600 --> 00:24:44,400 Speaker 1: they were looking up at the sky and they were 433 00:24:44,440 --> 00:24:47,080 Speaker 1: trying to track like how the stars moved, and how 434 00:24:47,080 --> 00:24:49,399 Speaker 1: the planets moved, and how the moon moved. But it 435 00:24:49,440 --> 00:24:52,600 Speaker 1: was a geocentric theory of the way that the world worked. 436 00:24:52,840 --> 00:24:55,719 Speaker 1: So what we call the Ptolemaic system, it's really ancient, 437 00:24:56,240 --> 00:24:58,439 Speaker 1: the idea that the Earth is at the center of 438 00:24:58,480 --> 00:25:01,639 Speaker 1: everything and everything else moves around it. And to us 439 00:25:01,640 --> 00:25:04,640 Speaker 1: that seems sort of like obviously wrong now, but it's 440 00:25:04,640 --> 00:25:07,200 Speaker 1: easy to discard that in the light of history, right, 441 00:25:07,240 --> 00:25:08,800 Speaker 1: But if you go back to like who they were 442 00:25:08,920 --> 00:25:11,800 Speaker 1: and what they were seeing, it's not a totally bonker's 443 00:25:11,840 --> 00:25:14,520 Speaker 1: way to think about the universe. To think that the 444 00:25:14,560 --> 00:25:17,520 Speaker 1: Earth might have been at the center of everything, right, 445 00:25:17,520 --> 00:25:21,000 Speaker 1: because when you are tracking the night sky and you're 446 00:25:21,040 --> 00:25:25,440 Speaker 1: standing there from Earth, everything's rotating around you. So it 447 00:25:25,520 --> 00:25:28,360 Speaker 1: feels very much like you are at the center of 448 00:25:28,400 --> 00:25:31,440 Speaker 1: this rotation, right, It really does. Like that is our 449 00:25:31,480 --> 00:25:34,439 Speaker 1: perspective in the same sense that like, before you measure 450 00:25:34,440 --> 00:25:36,480 Speaker 1: the Earth's curvature, you might think, oh, yeah, sure, it 451 00:25:36,520 --> 00:25:38,679 Speaker 1: makes sense for the Earth to be flat. It's consistent 452 00:25:39,000 --> 00:25:41,520 Speaker 1: with what you see. So let's not like just dismiss 453 00:25:41,560 --> 00:25:44,760 Speaker 1: the ancient geniuses. Let's try to understand what they were thinking. 454 00:25:44,880 --> 00:25:47,399 Speaker 1: And you know, they considered the idea that maybe the 455 00:25:47,400 --> 00:25:49,840 Speaker 1: Earth was moving and maybe it was rotating around the Sun, 456 00:25:50,000 --> 00:25:52,359 Speaker 1: and so they considered that theory, but they thought they 457 00:25:52,359 --> 00:25:55,159 Speaker 1: had disproved it. They thought that if the Earth was 458 00:25:55,200 --> 00:25:57,920 Speaker 1: moving around the Sun, they would be able to tell. 459 00:25:58,440 --> 00:26:00,480 Speaker 1: They thought if you looked up at the night sky, 460 00:26:00,680 --> 00:26:02,800 Speaker 1: you would be able to tell that the Earth was 461 00:26:02,880 --> 00:26:06,800 Speaker 1: moving because the stars would be wiggling. Why would they 462 00:26:06,800 --> 00:26:09,040 Speaker 1: think the stars were wiggling in the same way that 463 00:26:09,160 --> 00:26:10,879 Speaker 1: like if you paint a bunch of stars on the 464 00:26:10,920 --> 00:26:13,680 Speaker 1: walls of your room and then walk around, your view 465 00:26:13,680 --> 00:26:17,240 Speaker 1: of the stars changes, right, Because as your perspective changes, 466 00:26:17,240 --> 00:26:20,080 Speaker 1: what you see changes, and they thought that the stars 467 00:26:20,119 --> 00:26:23,320 Speaker 1: were much much closer than they actually were. Right, they 468 00:26:23,359 --> 00:26:26,680 Speaker 1: didn't realize the stars were suns that were super bright 469 00:26:26,720 --> 00:26:29,639 Speaker 1: and super distant. They thought they were sort of in 470 00:26:29,720 --> 00:26:32,320 Speaker 1: their neighborhood, and so if the Earth was moving around 471 00:26:32,359 --> 00:26:34,520 Speaker 1: the Sun, then we would get a different view of 472 00:26:34,520 --> 00:26:37,280 Speaker 1: those stars. This is what we now know as like parallax. 473 00:26:37,640 --> 00:26:40,560 Speaker 1: And because they didn't have the technology to detect that 474 00:26:40,640 --> 00:26:43,320 Speaker 1: the stars actually did wiggle a little bit as the 475 00:26:43,400 --> 00:26:46,720 Speaker 1: Earth moved, and they thought the stars were much much closer. 476 00:26:46,920 --> 00:26:49,640 Speaker 1: They dismissed this idea. I mean, it makes sense, like 477 00:26:49,760 --> 00:26:51,760 Speaker 1: when you look at the stars they're so bright, the 478 00:26:51,880 --> 00:26:55,800 Speaker 1: idea that something is so many light years away from 479 00:26:55,840 --> 00:26:59,520 Speaker 1: you that could produce that light, that would be so 480 00:26:59,600 --> 00:27:03,240 Speaker 1: hard to speculate about them being so far away. Yeah, 481 00:27:03,280 --> 00:27:05,600 Speaker 1: And it's a really powerful lesson in sort of the 482 00:27:05,720 --> 00:27:08,480 Speaker 1: history of physics that you can hold onto one assumption. 483 00:27:08,560 --> 00:27:10,600 Speaker 1: In this case, they were assuming that the stars were 484 00:27:10,640 --> 00:27:13,440 Speaker 1: not super far away, and that led them to make 485 00:27:13,480 --> 00:27:16,960 Speaker 1: a second wrong conclusion, right, that the Earth was stable 486 00:27:16,960 --> 00:27:19,119 Speaker 1: and was at the center of everything, So you should 487 00:27:19,119 --> 00:27:22,000 Speaker 1: always be like on the lookout for these assumptions that 488 00:27:22,119 --> 00:27:25,600 Speaker 1: might have closed doors that have truth behind them, but 489 00:27:25,680 --> 00:27:27,680 Speaker 1: we can't blame them too much. It's a difficult thing 490 00:27:27,720 --> 00:27:31,520 Speaker 1: to observe. The stars are super duper far away, and 491 00:27:31,600 --> 00:27:34,359 Speaker 1: so their position in the sky does wiggle a little 492 00:27:34,359 --> 00:27:36,600 Speaker 1: bit as we go around the Sun, and we can 493 00:27:36,720 --> 00:27:39,120 Speaker 1: use that to measure the distance to the stars. It's 494 00:27:39,119 --> 00:27:41,240 Speaker 1: sort of like if you hold your finger in front 495 00:27:41,240 --> 00:27:42,640 Speaker 1: of you and you look at it with your left 496 00:27:42,680 --> 00:27:45,159 Speaker 1: eye and your right eye, you see a different picture. 497 00:27:45,440 --> 00:27:47,520 Speaker 1: And as your finger gets closer and closer, your left 498 00:27:47,520 --> 00:27:50,560 Speaker 1: eye and your right eye see more differences than if 499 00:27:50,600 --> 00:27:53,360 Speaker 1: your finger is further and further away. So the closer 500 00:27:53,480 --> 00:27:56,439 Speaker 1: something is, the more differences you'd see it from different 501 00:27:56,440 --> 00:27:59,160 Speaker 1: points of view. So as the Earth goes around the Sun, 502 00:27:59,520 --> 00:28:01,879 Speaker 1: we get different views of the stars, but mostly for 503 00:28:01,920 --> 00:28:03,880 Speaker 1: the closer stars. I used to do that a lot 504 00:28:03,920 --> 00:28:05,800 Speaker 1: as a kid, hold my finger right out in front 505 00:28:05,800 --> 00:28:07,960 Speaker 1: of my nose, close one eye, opened the other one 506 00:28:08,119 --> 00:28:10,920 Speaker 1: vice versa, because it felt like magic, like my finger 507 00:28:11,000 --> 00:28:13,800 Speaker 1: was jumping around. But yeah, that's I mean, it's so 508 00:28:13,880 --> 00:28:18,480 Speaker 1: interesting that they really got close right, had these correct ideas, 509 00:28:19,640 --> 00:28:22,920 Speaker 1: but they just because they had this assumption about the 510 00:28:22,960 --> 00:28:25,920 Speaker 1: stars being closer. They just missed it. But they were 511 00:28:26,000 --> 00:28:29,399 Speaker 1: right about other things too, like things being spears and 512 00:28:29,520 --> 00:28:32,960 Speaker 1: not flat, right, yeah, exactly. The Greeks understood that the 513 00:28:33,000 --> 00:28:35,560 Speaker 1: Earth was a sphere and the planets were spears and 514 00:28:35,680 --> 00:28:38,720 Speaker 1: all this kind of stuff. And it wasn't until Kepler 515 00:28:38,760 --> 00:28:41,840 Speaker 1: and Copernicus, you know, more than a thousand years later, 516 00:28:42,080 --> 00:28:45,480 Speaker 1: that we understood that things didn't move in circles around 517 00:28:45,520 --> 00:28:47,920 Speaker 1: the Earth, but instead that they moved in ellipses with 518 00:28:48,040 --> 00:28:50,640 Speaker 1: the Sun at the center. And then it wasn't until 519 00:28:50,680 --> 00:28:53,920 Speaker 1: the nineteenth century we were actually able to measure this 520 00:28:54,080 --> 00:28:58,000 Speaker 1: parallax effect to see that the stars really were wiggling 521 00:28:58,280 --> 00:29:01,120 Speaker 1: as we went around the Sun. And so, you know, 522 00:29:01,360 --> 00:29:03,680 Speaker 1: no shade on the Greeks for not having figured that out, 523 00:29:03,960 --> 00:29:06,719 Speaker 1: especially because you know, still there's a lot of folks 524 00:29:06,800 --> 00:29:10,680 Speaker 1: out there that don't seem to have absorbed this knowledge. 525 00:29:10,960 --> 00:29:13,160 Speaker 1: I was shocked to read that there was a survey 526 00:29:13,280 --> 00:29:16,880 Speaker 1: by the NSF in twenty fourteen that asked Americans whether 527 00:29:16,920 --> 00:29:19,320 Speaker 1: the Sun went around the Earth or the Earth went 528 00:29:19,360 --> 00:29:24,240 Speaker 1: around the Sun, and twenty six percent of Americans believed 529 00:29:24,400 --> 00:29:26,840 Speaker 1: that the Sun went around the Earth. Oh boy, well, 530 00:29:26,880 --> 00:29:30,120 Speaker 1: maybe they're time travelers from ancient Greece and they're just 531 00:29:30,240 --> 00:29:33,480 Speaker 1: trying to blend in. Maybe they are. So the key 532 00:29:33,600 --> 00:29:36,320 Speaker 1: concepts that the Greeks had that were wrong that we 533 00:29:36,400 --> 00:29:38,360 Speaker 1: need to have in our minds as we think about 534 00:29:38,400 --> 00:29:42,480 Speaker 1: the Antikothera mechanism is that things moved in circles and 535 00:29:42,560 --> 00:29:45,640 Speaker 1: that everything went around the Earth instead of around the Sun. 536 00:29:46,120 --> 00:29:49,640 Speaker 1: And these two concepts made their calculations actually much much 537 00:29:49,680 --> 00:29:53,160 Speaker 1: more complicated than they had to be. That's interesting. So 538 00:29:53,240 --> 00:29:55,720 Speaker 1: they were just making the work harder for themselves. So 539 00:29:56,280 --> 00:29:59,880 Speaker 1: do we see evidence of that on the Antikothera mechanism 540 00:30:00,160 --> 00:30:03,320 Speaker 1: of these weird views of the Earth being the center 541 00:30:03,520 --> 00:30:07,760 Speaker 1: and orbits being circles. We absolutely do, because gears are 542 00:30:07,760 --> 00:30:10,680 Speaker 1: actually a nice way to describe circles, because the gears 543 00:30:10,720 --> 00:30:14,040 Speaker 1: are themselves circles. But the problem is if you look 544 00:30:14,120 --> 00:30:15,840 Speaker 1: up it in the sky and try to describe the 545 00:30:15,920 --> 00:30:19,880 Speaker 1: motion of planets just using circles, it doesn't really work right. 546 00:30:19,920 --> 00:30:22,920 Speaker 1: Like Jupiter doesn't move around the Earth in a simple circle, 547 00:30:23,160 --> 00:30:25,640 Speaker 1: because what's actually happening is both of them are moving 548 00:30:25,680 --> 00:30:28,880 Speaker 1: around the Sun. Sometimes Jupiter appears to be going around 549 00:30:28,920 --> 00:30:31,360 Speaker 1: the Earth, and sometimes it sort of changes direction and 550 00:30:31,400 --> 00:30:34,160 Speaker 1: seems to go the other way. And you can see 551 00:30:34,200 --> 00:30:37,440 Speaker 1: this pretty clearly if you look at the heliocentric model 552 00:30:37,560 --> 00:30:39,960 Speaker 1: for the Solar System, where the Earth and Jupiter are 553 00:30:40,040 --> 00:30:42,360 Speaker 1: both moving around the Sun, and you think about what 554 00:30:42,440 --> 00:30:45,480 Speaker 1: happens from the Earth's point of view. Sometimes it looks 555 00:30:45,480 --> 00:30:47,880 Speaker 1: like Jupiter's going one way around the Earth, and sometimes 556 00:30:47,880 --> 00:30:50,120 Speaker 1: it looks like it's going the other way, because they're 557 00:30:50,160 --> 00:30:53,400 Speaker 1: both really moving in circles around the Sun. And so 558 00:30:53,440 --> 00:30:55,680 Speaker 1: the Greeks puzzled about this for a long time, and 559 00:30:55,720 --> 00:30:59,080 Speaker 1: what they decided was happening was that the planets were 560 00:30:59,120 --> 00:31:02,720 Speaker 1: embedded in these crystal spheres of ether. But there wasn't 561 00:31:02,760 --> 00:31:06,040 Speaker 1: just one crystal sphere. There was like several crystal spheres. 562 00:31:06,440 --> 00:31:09,280 Speaker 1: So like Jupiter was moving in this crystal sphere, but 563 00:31:09,320 --> 00:31:11,920 Speaker 1: then there was a second sphere that also moved it. 564 00:31:12,160 --> 00:31:15,120 Speaker 1: So instead of having one circle, they had two circles, 565 00:31:15,240 --> 00:31:18,080 Speaker 1: a big one and a little one, and those two 566 00:31:18,080 --> 00:31:21,280 Speaker 1: working together would explain the retrograde motion. So these are 567 00:31:21,280 --> 00:31:24,960 Speaker 1: called epicycles. That's really interesting also about like the fact 568 00:31:25,040 --> 00:31:28,280 Speaker 1: that they used these circular gears for the whole thing. 569 00:31:28,320 --> 00:31:31,000 Speaker 1: I guess it does make sense that you'd want to 570 00:31:31,040 --> 00:31:34,920 Speaker 1: be looking for something like a cam or some oblong shape, 571 00:31:34,920 --> 00:31:38,120 Speaker 1: because I know that for automatons that were made in 572 00:31:38,160 --> 00:31:41,600 Speaker 1: like the seventeen and eighteen hundreds, they would actually use 573 00:31:41,640 --> 00:31:45,160 Speaker 1: like these cams that had these like complex oblong shapes, 574 00:31:45,200 --> 00:31:48,800 Speaker 1: so they can make these movements that are not perfect circles. 575 00:31:48,880 --> 00:31:51,840 Speaker 1: So if you didn't see any of that, that's such 576 00:31:51,880 --> 00:31:55,239 Speaker 1: an interesting hint to like what their conception of the 577 00:31:55,360 --> 00:31:58,040 Speaker 1: universe was. Yeah, And one of the biggest clues that 578 00:31:58,120 --> 00:32:01,080 Speaker 1: confirmed that this thing might be an astronom o'clock, which 579 00:32:01,120 --> 00:32:03,800 Speaker 1: is counting the number of teeth on these gears. So 580 00:32:03,840 --> 00:32:07,120 Speaker 1: they found pairs of gears, big ones and small ones 581 00:32:07,240 --> 00:32:10,880 Speaker 1: that had gear reissues that lined up perfectly with the 582 00:32:10,920 --> 00:32:14,480 Speaker 1: Greeks concept of these cycles. So the Greeks, for example, 583 00:32:14,640 --> 00:32:18,120 Speaker 1: thought that Venus moved on two cycles, two different circles, 584 00:32:18,560 --> 00:32:21,720 Speaker 1: and these circles had a ratio of one one five 585 00:32:21,880 --> 00:32:25,120 Speaker 1: one to seven twenty. But it's like almost impossible to 586 00:32:25,200 --> 00:32:27,680 Speaker 1: make a gear with like a thousand and fifty one 587 00:32:27,760 --> 00:32:30,520 Speaker 1: teeth in it. But they found instead were other smaller 588 00:32:30,520 --> 00:32:34,000 Speaker 1: gears with almost exactly the same ratio, like an approximation. 589 00:32:34,280 --> 00:32:37,400 Speaker 1: So they found gears for example, with two hundred and 590 00:32:37,400 --> 00:32:40,080 Speaker 1: eighty nine and four hundred and sixty two teeth in it, 591 00:32:40,240 --> 00:32:43,400 Speaker 1: which has like almost the same ratio as what the 592 00:32:43,520 --> 00:32:46,480 Speaker 1: Greek thought was the exact ratio of seven twenty to 593 00:32:46,640 --> 00:32:49,960 Speaker 1: eleven fifty one. And so they found all of these 594 00:32:50,040 --> 00:32:53,080 Speaker 1: pairs of gears that reflect what the Greeks thought was 595 00:32:53,120 --> 00:32:56,600 Speaker 1: happening in the sky, these ratios of the size of 596 00:32:56,640 --> 00:32:59,880 Speaker 1: these crystalline spheres, and that was a very strong clue 597 00:33:00,160 --> 00:33:04,680 Speaker 1: that this thing was a computer for predicting astronomical locations. 598 00:33:04,960 --> 00:33:08,480 Speaker 1: That's really interesting. So instead of trying to make it 599 00:33:08,640 --> 00:33:11,960 Speaker 1: tinier and more precise, they just use that same ratio 600 00:33:12,520 --> 00:33:18,600 Speaker 1: with their still impressively delicate, but larger, more crude gears. Yeah, 601 00:33:18,600 --> 00:33:21,520 Speaker 1: that's exactly right. And this thing shows a really impressive 602 00:33:21,560 --> 00:33:25,640 Speaker 1: sort of engineering ethos because sometimes they would make these approximations, 603 00:33:25,640 --> 00:33:28,680 Speaker 1: and the approximations would let them use the same gear 604 00:33:28,760 --> 00:33:31,480 Speaker 1: for multiple things. Like if you could have a gear 605 00:33:31,520 --> 00:33:34,080 Speaker 1: with seventeen teeth in it, and seventeen appeared in two 606 00:33:34,120 --> 00:33:36,880 Speaker 1: of these ratios, then you only needed one of those 607 00:33:36,920 --> 00:33:39,400 Speaker 1: gears and it could drive two other gears, so you 608 00:33:39,400 --> 00:33:42,600 Speaker 1: could like do two calculations at the same time. So 609 00:33:42,640 --> 00:33:45,320 Speaker 1: as they take this thing apart and understand what the 610 00:33:45,360 --> 00:33:47,880 Speaker 1: gears are and try to understand what the gears can do, 611 00:33:48,280 --> 00:33:52,320 Speaker 1: they faced a big challenge and like actually reproducing Greek calculations, 612 00:33:52,360 --> 00:33:54,840 Speaker 1: like it's one thing to say, okay, it's got some 613 00:33:54,840 --> 00:33:57,240 Speaker 1: symbols of the moon on it and the sun on it, 614 00:33:57,320 --> 00:34:00,000 Speaker 1: and it's got some gears, but actually putting it together 615 00:34:00,160 --> 00:34:01,840 Speaker 1: to see how it works turned out to be a 616 00:34:01,960 --> 00:34:05,640 Speaker 1: huge challenge, and there are still puzzles today about what 617 00:34:05,720 --> 00:34:08,120 Speaker 1: this thing exactly did and how it worked. This is 618 00:34:08,160 --> 00:34:11,000 Speaker 1: why I never undo the Rubis cube when I get it. 619 00:34:11,040 --> 00:34:13,280 Speaker 1: I just leave it as it is, so people think 620 00:34:13,320 --> 00:34:15,279 Speaker 1: I know how to do it, but you know, it's 621 00:34:15,280 --> 00:34:17,120 Speaker 1: just like, oh yeah, I did that this morning. But 622 00:34:17,239 --> 00:34:19,640 Speaker 1: you leave it as it comes out of the box 623 00:34:19,680 --> 00:34:22,680 Speaker 1: and then you never have to redo it. Or what 624 00:34:22,800 --> 00:34:24,680 Speaker 1: if this whole thing was just like one of their 625 00:34:24,719 --> 00:34:30,120 Speaker 1: email drafts, it wasn't actually finished. We'll talk more about 626 00:34:30,160 --> 00:34:34,479 Speaker 1: whether we can reproduce the antikotheram mechanism after a quick 627 00:34:34,480 --> 00:34:48,720 Speaker 1: break where I'm totally going to do a Rubis cube. 628 00:34:50,760 --> 00:34:54,320 Speaker 1: All right, So just did a Rubis cube blindfolded behind 629 00:34:54,400 --> 00:34:57,200 Speaker 1: my back. No need to check my work. So let's 630 00:34:57,200 --> 00:35:01,279 Speaker 1: talk a little more about this antikothera mechani and why 631 00:35:01,320 --> 00:35:04,440 Speaker 1: it's so difficult to reproduce it. So some of the 632 00:35:04,480 --> 00:35:07,560 Speaker 1: puzzles were worked out by price in the middle of 633 00:35:07,560 --> 00:35:09,960 Speaker 1: the last century, some of the sort of easier ones, 634 00:35:10,320 --> 00:35:13,120 Speaker 1: you know, for example, there were gears that we notice 635 00:35:13,160 --> 00:35:16,000 Speaker 1: that had like two hundred and thirty five teeth or 636 00:35:16,280 --> 00:35:19,200 Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty seventeeth, and some of these things 637 00:35:19,280 --> 00:35:23,120 Speaker 1: you can understand based on the Greek understanding of how 638 00:35:23,160 --> 00:35:25,520 Speaker 1: things worked. So, for example, there's a bit of an 639 00:35:25,560 --> 00:35:29,160 Speaker 1: awkward disconnect between how the moon cycles and how the 640 00:35:29,239 --> 00:35:32,160 Speaker 1: sun cycles. Right, So for example, it takes like twenty 641 00:35:32,200 --> 00:35:35,000 Speaker 1: nine and a half days to go from new moon 642 00:35:35,120 --> 00:35:38,520 Speaker 1: to new Moon, which is like almost one twelfth of 643 00:35:38,560 --> 00:35:42,839 Speaker 1: a solar year, but not exactly right. Twelve times twenty 644 00:35:42,920 --> 00:35:45,120 Speaker 1: nine and a half gives you three hundred and fifty 645 00:35:45,160 --> 00:35:48,440 Speaker 1: four days, eleven days short of the solar year. So 646 00:35:48,480 --> 00:35:50,480 Speaker 1: if you have these two calendars, they sort of naturally 647 00:35:50,520 --> 00:35:53,120 Speaker 1: go out of SINC. But every nineteen years things sort 648 00:35:53,120 --> 00:35:56,440 Speaker 1: of come back into SINC. And every nineteen years there 649 00:35:56,440 --> 00:35:59,759 Speaker 1: are two hundred and fifty four orbits of the moon 650 00:36:00,040 --> 00:36:02,279 Speaker 1: around the Earth. Now, two hundred and fifty four, again 651 00:36:02,400 --> 00:36:04,880 Speaker 1: is a large number of years. Half of that is 652 00:36:04,880 --> 00:36:07,239 Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty seven. So these are the sort 653 00:36:07,239 --> 00:36:10,399 Speaker 1: of like mathematical puzzles that Price went through to figure out, 654 00:36:10,440 --> 00:36:13,400 Speaker 1: like what could this gear potentially mean? Where's the number 655 00:36:13,560 --> 00:36:16,840 Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty seven mean to the Greeks? So 656 00:36:16,960 --> 00:36:19,040 Speaker 1: in this case, we think maybe it was a way 657 00:36:19,080 --> 00:36:22,279 Speaker 1: to connect the solar year with the lunar year. Yeah, 658 00:36:22,280 --> 00:36:24,760 Speaker 1: I feel like I'm in a Dan Brown book right now. 659 00:36:24,840 --> 00:36:28,360 Speaker 1: All we need is some cult members to chase us 660 00:36:28,400 --> 00:36:32,319 Speaker 1: and try to kill us, so that, yeah, I mean, 661 00:36:32,320 --> 00:36:35,800 Speaker 1: that's they had such complex problems. They had to figure 662 00:36:35,840 --> 00:36:39,240 Speaker 1: out what this thing made out of all these gears. 663 00:36:39,360 --> 00:36:41,600 Speaker 1: You know, I'm not an engineer. I like to think 664 00:36:41,600 --> 00:36:44,160 Speaker 1: I'm somewhat crafty, but it is so hard for me 665 00:36:44,280 --> 00:36:48,080 Speaker 1: to imagine being able to figure out how to manage 666 00:36:48,120 --> 00:36:50,719 Speaker 1: these gears in a way that they're doing all these 667 00:36:50,760 --> 00:36:54,960 Speaker 1: calculations and things like making up for that difference between 668 00:36:55,480 --> 00:36:58,920 Speaker 1: the lunar and solar calendars. It's so hard for me 669 00:36:58,960 --> 00:37:01,880 Speaker 1: to understand how they would have done that. It's really tricky, 670 00:37:02,120 --> 00:37:03,640 Speaker 1: and for a long time it was sort of like 671 00:37:03,760 --> 00:37:07,640 Speaker 1: vaguely understood. But around twenty years ago people wanted to 672 00:37:07,680 --> 00:37:10,640 Speaker 1: dig in deeper. They wanted to like actually develop models 673 00:37:10,640 --> 00:37:14,160 Speaker 1: of this thing that lined up number one with like 674 00:37:14,280 --> 00:37:17,719 Speaker 1: what we had found archaeologically, that had pieces that represented 675 00:37:17,760 --> 00:37:21,560 Speaker 1: things we had actually found and predicted what we understood 676 00:37:21,560 --> 00:37:24,960 Speaker 1: the Greek cosmology to do. And it wasn't really successful. 677 00:37:25,000 --> 00:37:26,840 Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot of missing pieces. You know, 678 00:37:26,880 --> 00:37:29,560 Speaker 1: we think we've maybe discovered like a third of this thing, 679 00:37:29,719 --> 00:37:31,520 Speaker 1: So it's like trying to figure out how a game 680 00:37:31,560 --> 00:37:34,600 Speaker 1: boy worked if you only had a third of the pieces, right. 681 00:37:34,880 --> 00:37:37,239 Speaker 1: And also, the thing is like stuck inside of a 682 00:37:37,280 --> 00:37:39,719 Speaker 1: blob and you only really have fuzzy pictures of it, 683 00:37:39,800 --> 00:37:42,360 Speaker 1: and there's like an inscription that's saying blow in the 684 00:37:42,440 --> 00:37:45,279 Speaker 1: cartridge and you have no idea what that means. That's 685 00:37:45,360 --> 00:37:49,560 Speaker 1: right up up down down a b ab special goods. 686 00:37:50,200 --> 00:37:52,399 Speaker 1: And so around twenty years ago they decided to take 687 00:37:52,440 --> 00:37:54,799 Speaker 1: more data because now we had more advanced technology and 688 00:37:54,840 --> 00:37:57,400 Speaker 1: we had fancy computers, so you could do things like 689 00:37:57,480 --> 00:38:00,719 Speaker 1: basically put this thing in x CT scan. A CT 690 00:38:00,880 --> 00:38:03,520 Speaker 1: scan is like three D X rays. You put this 691 00:38:03,520 --> 00:38:06,120 Speaker 1: thing inside a powerful beam of X rays so you 692 00:38:06,160 --> 00:38:08,680 Speaker 1: can image the inside of it, and then you rotate. 693 00:38:08,719 --> 00:38:10,400 Speaker 1: It's like you put it on a turntable and you 694 00:38:10,520 --> 00:38:13,200 Speaker 1: spin it around, and you get all these three D 695 00:38:13,400 --> 00:38:16,560 Speaker 1: X ray images, and then the computer sifts them together 696 00:38:16,640 --> 00:38:19,840 Speaker 1: and makes like a three D model of what's inside 697 00:38:19,840 --> 00:38:22,839 Speaker 1: this thing. So instead of just having these like radiographic 698 00:38:22,880 --> 00:38:25,719 Speaker 1: images about twenty years ago, we got these like three 699 00:38:25,880 --> 00:38:28,960 Speaker 1: D tomography. It's like idea of what's really going on 700 00:38:29,080 --> 00:38:31,600 Speaker 1: inside of it. And that was a huge step forward. 701 00:38:31,640 --> 00:38:33,560 Speaker 1: I just had that done to my teeth. Takee a 702 00:38:33,640 --> 00:38:37,600 Speaker 1: mouth guard in Not so fancy, are you now? And 703 00:38:37,960 --> 00:38:42,279 Speaker 1: they're a mechanism. That's right. The mystery of what's going 704 00:38:42,280 --> 00:38:46,480 Speaker 1: on in Katie's teeth is just as deep a question science. 705 00:38:47,000 --> 00:38:51,919 Speaker 1: What happened here arguably more spooky. You've been chewing rocks 706 00:38:51,920 --> 00:38:55,920 Speaker 1: to get Katie, but this particular rock is very delicate. Right. 707 00:38:56,000 --> 00:38:57,600 Speaker 1: You don't just like take this thing out of the 708 00:38:57,680 --> 00:39:00,920 Speaker 1: museum in Athens and ship it over to the X 709 00:39:01,040 --> 00:39:03,440 Speaker 1: ray machine, right, Instead, what they had to do was 710 00:39:03,480 --> 00:39:07,520 Speaker 1: build a special, extra powerful machine and bring it to 711 00:39:07,680 --> 00:39:10,120 Speaker 1: Athens because they didn't want to move this thing at all, 712 00:39:10,440 --> 00:39:13,120 Speaker 1: So they built like an eight ton version of this 713 00:39:13,360 --> 00:39:15,799 Speaker 1: three D X ray machine and had to drive it 714 00:39:15,800 --> 00:39:18,759 Speaker 1: through the streets of Athens and like lower it down 715 00:39:18,800 --> 00:39:21,360 Speaker 1: into the basement and the museum with special cranes. The 716 00:39:21,360 --> 00:39:23,759 Speaker 1: whole thing was a big project, but it gives us 717 00:39:23,800 --> 00:39:26,120 Speaker 1: like a real glimpse of the interior of this thing. 718 00:39:26,800 --> 00:39:29,120 Speaker 1: And based on that, a bunch of different groups are 719 00:39:29,160 --> 00:39:33,319 Speaker 1: trying still to piece together what they think happened. And 720 00:39:33,360 --> 00:39:35,520 Speaker 1: there's like papers on this from like you know, a 721 00:39:35,560 --> 00:39:38,920 Speaker 1: couple of years ago. People are still speculating, oh, maybe 722 00:39:38,960 --> 00:39:40,880 Speaker 1: this gear went with that gear, or maybe there was 723 00:39:40,880 --> 00:39:44,400 Speaker 1: a missing piece here. Right, There's a lot of guessing involved, 724 00:39:44,600 --> 00:39:47,600 Speaker 1: a lot of people trying to develop theories that describe 725 00:39:47,600 --> 00:39:49,880 Speaker 1: what they thought this thing did and also that was 726 00:39:49,920 --> 00:39:53,200 Speaker 1: consistent with what they thought the Greeks could do, right, 727 00:39:53,520 --> 00:39:57,120 Speaker 1: Because I was thinking, like, is this just one genius 728 00:39:57,239 --> 00:40:02,239 Speaker 1: prodigy person making this thing or was this reflective of 729 00:40:02,600 --> 00:40:05,200 Speaker 1: the society at the time being able to make things 730 00:40:05,239 --> 00:40:08,839 Speaker 1: like this, Because it's odd to me how this mechanism 731 00:40:09,320 --> 00:40:12,920 Speaker 1: is such as standout among archaeological finds, Like it's not 732 00:40:12,960 --> 00:40:16,880 Speaker 1: like we're finding gears all over the place in ancient Greece, 733 00:40:17,560 --> 00:40:21,440 Speaker 1: So like, was this the work of the Einstein of Greece, 734 00:40:22,320 --> 00:40:26,360 Speaker 1: like the Manhattan Project of Greece, but less destructive. Or 735 00:40:26,560 --> 00:40:29,840 Speaker 1: was this something like is there a whole aspect of 736 00:40:29,880 --> 00:40:33,080 Speaker 1: ancient Greece we are completely missing. It's a great question. 737 00:40:33,480 --> 00:40:35,799 Speaker 1: We have some hints from ancient writings. There were some 738 00:40:35,880 --> 00:40:40,239 Speaker 1: descriptions of these kinds of machines, people describing the existence 739 00:40:40,280 --> 00:40:43,440 Speaker 1: of them, these boxes that could be used to predict 740 00:40:43,480 --> 00:40:45,879 Speaker 1: the motion of the moon and the sun. So there 741 00:40:45,880 --> 00:40:49,520 Speaker 1: are contemporarious writings that suggest they exist, but not lots 742 00:40:49,520 --> 00:40:52,439 Speaker 1: of them, write very few mentions, and so we don't 743 00:40:52,520 --> 00:40:56,000 Speaker 1: know how many other ways this kind of technology might 744 00:40:56,040 --> 00:40:58,760 Speaker 1: have been used in Greek society. We sort of should 745 00:40:58,760 --> 00:41:01,440 Speaker 1: have known about it from these but didn't even accept 746 00:41:01,440 --> 00:41:03,960 Speaker 1: it when we saw one because of our preconceived notions 747 00:41:04,000 --> 00:41:07,880 Speaker 1: of like primitive Greek technology. It does really require us 748 00:41:07,960 --> 00:41:11,040 Speaker 1: to reimagine what the Greeks might have done. The kind 749 00:41:11,040 --> 00:41:13,680 Speaker 1: of technology we're talking about here is really kind of impressive. 750 00:41:13,800 --> 00:41:17,120 Speaker 1: They've estimated that building this thing, according to one of 751 00:41:17,160 --> 00:41:20,520 Speaker 1: the models of how it works, requires complex and precise 752 00:41:20,600 --> 00:41:23,880 Speaker 1: machining to within millimeters. It's nothing compared to what we 753 00:41:23,880 --> 00:41:26,600 Speaker 1: can do today. But two thousand years ago. I mean, 754 00:41:26,600 --> 00:41:28,760 Speaker 1: we didn't see that kind of thing in Europe until 755 00:41:28,800 --> 00:41:32,800 Speaker 1: like the fourteen fifteen hundreds with very complex medieval clocks, 756 00:41:33,320 --> 00:41:35,200 Speaker 1: and so it is sort of shocking, and it does 757 00:41:35,360 --> 00:41:37,840 Speaker 1: make you wonder what else they might have used that 758 00:41:37,920 --> 00:41:41,640 Speaker 1: technology for. What else is out there waiting in shipwrecks 759 00:41:41,640 --> 00:41:43,880 Speaker 1: that we haven't yet uncovered. Yeah, I mean this is 760 00:41:43,880 --> 00:41:47,760 Speaker 1: a society that hadn't even invented but days yet, so 761 00:41:48,320 --> 00:41:51,800 Speaker 1: very very ancient, and it's a really fun archeological puzzle, 762 00:41:51,880 --> 00:41:53,879 Speaker 1: right not just to figure out what this thing might 763 00:41:53,880 --> 00:41:56,080 Speaker 1: have done, but to figure out how they might have 764 00:41:56,239 --> 00:41:59,080 Speaker 1: made it, Like what technology did they use to create 765 00:41:59,120 --> 00:42:01,640 Speaker 1: these things? The same way people like to ask questions 766 00:42:01,640 --> 00:42:05,319 Speaker 1: about how did the Egyptians build those pyramids? Like it 767 00:42:05,400 --> 00:42:08,839 Speaker 1: forces you to try to uncover their technology and their 768 00:42:08,880 --> 00:42:12,600 Speaker 1: strategies for solving these problems without our tools, and so 769 00:42:12,640 --> 00:42:15,480 Speaker 1: of course people speculate, you know, maybe this is the 770 00:42:15,560 --> 00:42:19,120 Speaker 1: signature of some advanced civilization that's been lost. I even 771 00:42:19,200 --> 00:42:22,080 Speaker 1: read this quote from a mechanical engineer that said, to quote, 772 00:42:22,239 --> 00:42:24,560 Speaker 1: unless it's from outer space, we have to figure out 773 00:42:24,560 --> 00:42:26,800 Speaker 1: a way in which the Greeks could have made it, 774 00:42:27,360 --> 00:42:30,320 Speaker 1: which is not to suggest that it's from outer space, 775 00:42:30,760 --> 00:42:33,359 Speaker 1: or that the Greeks were aliens or anything like that. 776 00:42:33,560 --> 00:42:35,640 Speaker 1: It's just a sign that we should keep our minds 777 00:42:35,680 --> 00:42:38,120 Speaker 1: open when we think about these ancient societies and what 778 00:42:38,160 --> 00:42:41,160 Speaker 1: they were capable of. We have a very very narrow 779 00:42:41,280 --> 00:42:43,719 Speaker 1: view of what happened there and what they were doing 780 00:42:43,760 --> 00:42:45,880 Speaker 1: and what they were capable of, and we shouldn't let 781 00:42:45,880 --> 00:42:48,960 Speaker 1: that narrow view close our minds to what else they 782 00:42:49,040 --> 00:42:52,040 Speaker 1: might have done. My theory is a secret race of giants, 783 00:42:52,200 --> 00:42:55,480 Speaker 1: and this is just some gears from their huge risk watches. 784 00:42:57,400 --> 00:42:59,320 Speaker 1: Maybe these were risk watches they used to cheat on 785 00:42:59,320 --> 00:43:03,040 Speaker 1: their chemistry. I think. To bring it all together, there's 786 00:43:03,080 --> 00:43:06,720 Speaker 1: a nice link between how this thing was originally lost 787 00:43:06,800 --> 00:43:09,120 Speaker 1: for us to discover and how this thing was then 788 00:43:09,280 --> 00:43:12,160 Speaker 1: later discovered. As you said, it's a story of sorts. 789 00:43:12,200 --> 00:43:15,400 Speaker 1: Two storms, one that sank this ship that had the 790 00:43:15,480 --> 00:43:18,560 Speaker 1: mechanism on it, and then one that diverted the ship 791 00:43:18,640 --> 00:43:21,400 Speaker 1: that later founded. And I don't know if storms are 792 00:43:21,480 --> 00:43:23,400 Speaker 1: likely or unlikely in that part of the world, but 793 00:43:23,440 --> 00:43:26,359 Speaker 1: if it hadn't been for those two storms, this thing 794 00:43:26,640 --> 00:43:29,279 Speaker 1: might still be on the bottom of the ocean. So 795 00:43:29,320 --> 00:43:33,759 Speaker 1: what you're saying is probably aliens caused the storms to 796 00:43:34,160 --> 00:43:39,880 Speaker 1: gently guide humanity in a journey of self discovery. You know, 797 00:43:39,960 --> 00:43:42,960 Speaker 1: I'm not saying it, but it's possible that alien contrails 798 00:43:43,040 --> 00:43:46,040 Speaker 1: in the atmosphere due to the advanced mechanisms of their 799 00:43:46,040 --> 00:43:50,040 Speaker 1: propulsion devices, might be causing storms that lead to great 800 00:43:50,080 --> 00:43:55,320 Speaker 1: archaeological fines. I'm definitely not saying that you've just started 801 00:43:55,360 --> 00:43:58,440 Speaker 1: a new doomsday could I hope you're happy? No, But 802 00:43:58,520 --> 00:44:01,480 Speaker 1: I do like digging into the history of technology and 803 00:44:01,520 --> 00:44:04,480 Speaker 1: the history of science and getting an understanding for how 804 00:44:04,520 --> 00:44:08,240 Speaker 1: people thought the universe worked. And remember that our concept 805 00:44:08,280 --> 00:44:12,319 Speaker 1: of the universe might also contain, like blindingly silly assumptions, 806 00:44:12,640 --> 00:44:15,360 Speaker 1: things we think are obvious that we don't even question, 807 00:44:15,560 --> 00:44:17,520 Speaker 1: and then lead us to make all sorts of other 808 00:44:17,560 --> 00:44:21,560 Speaker 1: mistaken assumptions and mistaken conclusions. Their history of physics is 809 00:44:21,640 --> 00:44:24,480 Speaker 1: filled with these moments when we peeled back the blinders 810 00:44:24,520 --> 00:44:27,080 Speaker 1: and saw the universe was very different from the way 811 00:44:27,080 --> 00:44:29,560 Speaker 1: we imagined it had been. So cast your mind back 812 00:44:29,600 --> 00:44:31,879 Speaker 1: to the ancient Greeks and think about how they saw 813 00:44:31,920 --> 00:44:34,880 Speaker 1: the universe and how things might have gone differently for 814 00:44:35,160 --> 00:44:39,200 Speaker 1: our science if so much of their knowledge hadn't been lost. Yeah, 815 00:44:39,239 --> 00:44:42,520 Speaker 1: I mean, if they just hadn't dumped their stuff overboard 816 00:44:42,560 --> 00:44:45,280 Speaker 1: in favor of the booze, you know, that's what happened. 817 00:44:46,600 --> 00:44:48,440 Speaker 1: We got to lose some ballast. It's got to be 818 00:44:48,640 --> 00:44:52,640 Speaker 1: this cool mechanism and not all of our wine. And 819 00:44:52,800 --> 00:44:55,280 Speaker 1: think about how close we came to not having any 820 00:44:55,320 --> 00:44:57,600 Speaker 1: of their knowledge, you know, so much of what the 821 00:44:57,680 --> 00:45:01,399 Speaker 1: Greeks did was only preserved because of the Islamic world 822 00:45:01,440 --> 00:45:04,880 Speaker 1: and Islamic scholars which recorded and captured and propagated and 823 00:45:04,920 --> 00:45:08,840 Speaker 1: build on all of this work, specifically these mechanical ideas. 824 00:45:09,160 --> 00:45:12,040 Speaker 1: There are writings that suggests that in the Arabic world 825 00:45:12,040 --> 00:45:14,719 Speaker 1: there were similar mechanical devices, sort of like in the 826 00:45:14,800 --> 00:45:17,719 Speaker 1: year five hundred or so, and that maybe this technology, 827 00:45:17,719 --> 00:45:20,239 Speaker 1: in this know how came back to Europe in the 828 00:45:20,280 --> 00:45:23,520 Speaker 1: thirteenth century when the Arab Morris came through Spain, and 829 00:45:23,560 --> 00:45:26,640 Speaker 1: that's what led to this flowering of these medieval clocks. 830 00:45:27,040 --> 00:45:29,840 Speaker 1: And so it's really only because of the Islamic world 831 00:45:29,840 --> 00:45:32,600 Speaker 1: that we even have any of this knowledge. Imagine if 832 00:45:32,600 --> 00:45:35,759 Speaker 1: it hadn't been right, Imagine how different the history of 833 00:45:35,760 --> 00:45:39,360 Speaker 1: at least Europe would be without preserving this ancient knowledge. 834 00:45:39,400 --> 00:45:42,560 Speaker 1: I mean, we'd probably still be using Roman numerals, which sucks. 835 00:45:42,680 --> 00:45:46,560 Speaker 1: So I am happy about the Arabic numerals for sure. 836 00:45:47,040 --> 00:45:51,080 Speaker 1: And yeah, I mean it is interesting because our history 837 00:45:51,120 --> 00:45:54,560 Speaker 1: of knowledge and technology is not a straight line. It's 838 00:45:54,680 --> 00:45:57,719 Speaker 1: kind of more like silly string strewn all over the place. 839 00:45:58,520 --> 00:46:02,080 Speaker 1: Absolutely it is. We are wering almost blind through a 840 00:46:02,160 --> 00:46:05,680 Speaker 1: room full of treasures, hoping to discover stuff, and it's 841 00:46:05,760 --> 00:46:08,200 Speaker 1: frustrating to think about how much work has been done 842 00:46:08,280 --> 00:46:11,120 Speaker 1: that has been lost, and to wonder how much of 843 00:46:11,120 --> 00:46:15,160 Speaker 1: what we've discovered will be lost, like our understanding of 844 00:46:15,280 --> 00:46:17,759 Speaker 1: particles and black holes and stuff. How long will that 845 00:46:17,800 --> 00:46:21,360 Speaker 1: preserve if society crumbles and our civilization falls apart the 846 00:46:21,360 --> 00:46:23,759 Speaker 1: way the Greeks and the Romans did. Will that be 847 00:46:23,800 --> 00:46:27,720 Speaker 1: preserved somehow in some caches of knowledge for later humans 848 00:46:27,760 --> 00:46:30,840 Speaker 1: to unpack from the wreckage, or will it be gone forever? 849 00:46:31,160 --> 00:46:33,759 Speaker 1: Or will later humans be surprised to discover what we 850 00:46:33,760 --> 00:46:35,920 Speaker 1: were capable of because they thought we were even more 851 00:46:35,920 --> 00:46:38,160 Speaker 1: primitive than we are. I mean, I think the main 852 00:46:38,239 --> 00:46:44,239 Speaker 1: takeaway is you've got to waterproof your devices, and will 853 00:46:44,280 --> 00:46:46,440 Speaker 1: future humans figure out a way to do chemistry and 854 00:46:46,440 --> 00:46:50,920 Speaker 1: biology without so much memorization. All right, thanks very much 855 00:46:50,960 --> 00:46:53,680 Speaker 1: for joining us on this journey into the history of 856 00:46:53,800 --> 00:46:57,840 Speaker 1: science and discovery and remembering that ancient peoples knew a 857 00:46:57,840 --> 00:47:00,480 Speaker 1: lot more about the universe than we often give credit 858 00:47:00,520 --> 00:47:03,920 Speaker 1: to and let's hope future humanity gives us some credit. 859 00:47:11,640 --> 00:47:14,520 Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and remember that Daniel and Jorge explained 860 00:47:14,520 --> 00:47:18,400 Speaker 1: the universe. Is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcast 861 00:47:18,560 --> 00:47:22,480 Speaker 1: from I heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, 862 00:47:22,600 --> 00:47:24,960 Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.