O mecanismo Antikythera

Antikythera clockwork computer may be even older than thought.

New detective work suggests that the ancient mechanism for simulating planetary motions and predicting lunar eclipses was built in the 2nd century BC

The Antikythera mechanism had been well and truly exhausted – until last night. The puzzling instrument is a clockwork computer from ancient Greece that used a fiendishly complex assembly of meshed cogs to simulate the movement of the planets, predict lunar eclipses and indicate the dates of major sporting events.

The clockwork technology in the device was already known to be centuries ahead of its time, but new evidence suggests that the enigmatic machine is even older than scientists had realised. "It is the most important scientific artefact known from the ancient world," said Jo Marchant, who has written a compelling book on the find called Decoding the Heavens. "There's nothing else like it for a thousand years afterwards."

The Antikythera mechanism was discovered by sponge divers in 1901 who chanced upon the wreck of a Roman vessel off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera. The ship was filled with bronze statues, pottery and glassware – booty that had been plundered from across the ancient Greek world.

There is much still to learn about where the machine came from, who made it and what it was for, but the best guess seems to be that it was more must-have executive toy than useful gadget. It modelled the state-of-the-art astronomy of the time: a universe with the Earth at the centre with planets following circular orbits that included apparent wobbles called epicycles.

The mechanism was probably not used for navigation but perhaps served more as a beautiful representation of an ordered, clockwork universe.

The new data concerns the four-year Olympiad dial, which has the names of significant Greek games etched into it – Isthmia, Olympia, Nemea, Pythia and Naa (plus one other that hasn't been deciphered). The first four were major games known throughout the ancient world, but the Naa games, held near Dodona in northwest Greece, were a much more provincial affair that would only have been of local interest.

The highlight of Marchant's talk, though, was a new animation of the Antikythera device that brings it to life like nothing seen before.

An ancient Greek "computer" used to calculate the movements of the sun, moon and planets has been linked to Archimedes after scientists deciphered previously hidden inscriptions on the device.

The remarkably complex machine has been dated to around 150 BC.The device is thought to be the earliest known mechanism to use geared wheels, a feat of engineering that was not to reappear for at least another thousand years in the astronomical clocks of medieval Europe.

Writing in the latest issue of the journal Nature, researchers from Britain and the US describe how they used three-dimensional X-ray imaging to decipher previously unnoticed inscriptions on the back of the device, which was enclosed in a wooden casing the size of a large dictionary.

The images revealed the names of the different months, which were used only in certain parts of north western Greece and Sicily. Intriguingly, it is the same calendar that would have been used in Syracuse, the Sicilian city and home to the great mathematician Archimedes, who is known from ancient texts to have built astronomical machines.

Further images of the mechanism revealed a previously unknown sporting calendar that marked the times of the Olympiad cycle, naming the prominent Nemean, Isthmian, Pythian and Olympic games. The events were so popular that truces were often called in times of war to allow people safe passage to attend them.

The machine, which was probably driven by a hand-operated crank, used a collection of inter-meshing gears to calculate the positions of the sun and moon, the dates of eclipses, and possibly the positions of the five planets known about at the time.

O mecanismo Antikythera pode ser mais antigo do que se supõe.

Novos trabalhos de investigação sugerem que o antigo mecanismo de simulação de movimentos planetários e previsão de eclipses lunares foi construído no século 2 aC.

A tradução do restante do trecho está sendo feita e será adicionada aqui.