After more than a century, the secret of the planetary model of Antikythera mechanism has finally been unraveled

A team of London scientists created a virtual model of the Antiküthera structure, the first analog computer. The 2100-year-old, complex device has been employing archaeologists and scientists for 120 years.

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“There is no evidence that the ancient Greeks could have made anything like this. It’s really a mystery, ”said Adam Wojcik, a materials scientist at University College London, to Live Science about the Antiküthera structure. The intricate bronze device was heavily corroded, in its incomplete form in 1901, sponge fishermen found it in the sea at a depth of 45 meters near the island of Antiküthera between Küthéra and Crete in an of the so It sank in a Roman shipwreck in the 1st century. The surviving fragment is only a third of the original structure, which, hand-operated, showed the movement of the five planets known to the ancient Greeks, the lunar phases, the solar and lunar eclipses as the celestial bodies move in the Zodiac, all timed for events such as the Olympics. However, the structure remained so damaged that even the most persistent research so far has not been able to show exactly what it might have been like, how it actually worked.

However, scientists at University College London in an article in the Scientific Reports say they have been able to fully decipher the details of how the device works with 3D and computer modeling. Using previous research and the knowledge of Parmenides, a computer model of the motion of the planets was created, the complexity of which rivals that of an old clock. Theirs is the first attempt, they claim, which is entirely consistent with the physical evidence and the inscriptions left on the parts.

As the maker of the structure, Archimedes, who lived at the time and was killed by the Romans during the siege of Syracuse, which he failed to defend with his miraculous military structures, is most likely to emerge. Others say Poseidonius of Rhodes may have been his inventor. In any case, it was known, even Cicero mentions it.

The find currently consists of 82 fragments, once containing about 37 bronze gears, the largest being 13 centimeters with 223 teeth. In 2005, CT scans revealed its internal structure, but what its front panel might have been like was a complete mystery. Michael Wright, curator of the London Museum of Science, had already made a workable model a few years ago, and several have since tried to perfect it, but none of this knowledge matched the astronomical knowledge of the ancients, according to available data. According to Wright, his maker may have built several other similar structures, as the construction without modifications suggests, and it took at least a year to complete. In any case, studies have shown that the Antiküthera structure consists of tiny gears as well as special “differentials” that even mapped the special, uneven velocity of the Moon (Archimedes could not yet know) and the lunar phases. The gears could be moved using an arm that moved clockwise arms over the front panel. By entering future or past dates, he accurately determined the location of the Sun, Moon, and the five planets known at the time, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, at a given time. Scientists will create the real structure based on the virtual model.