The 2,000 year old mechanism that's often referred to as the "world's oldest computer" was originally retrieved from a Roman-era shipwreck in Greece in 1901.
The "Antikythera Mechanism" would have been hand-operated and is thought to have been used to predict eclipses and other astronomical events.
With only 1/3 of the device surviving to this day, researchers have long pondered exactly how it worked. Fortunately, they have recently managed to 3D scan the remaining mechanism, hoping to unlock its secrets.
The study lead Professor Tony Freeth enthusiastically described what they discovered as "absolutely amazing, it was like a new world really. It's almost like going to an unknown underwater world".
"What's remarkable is how much is crammed into such a small space in the main fragment. All the gears are packed together in layers almost touching each other. We found 27 gears, probably in the complete mechanism there were 50 or 60 gears"
"It upsets all our ideas about what the ancient Greeks were capable of, it re-writes the history of technology. It tells us that things were going on in second century BC Greece that we had absolutely no idea about".
[Read more here]
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The orbital greenhouse...
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Private space company Nanoracks has partnered up with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to build orbital greenhouses to grow extremely-resilient crops out in space.
Nanorocks believe any crops capable of surviving the extreme conditions of life in space could go a long way toward solving looming food security crises here on Earth.
Their vision isn’t necessarily to grow crops in space to feed people on Earth, but rather to breed new mutant varieties that would be able to flourish in uncharacteristically harsh conditions back on Earth.
The aim is to launch the first orbital StarLab Space Farming Centre later in 2021 as a greenhouse and research centre to breed these resilient mutants.
One of the big remaining questions though; will an orbital greenhouse breed hardier variants than geneticly engineered crops, created down here on Earth? It looks like we'll find out soon enough.
[Read more here]
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Known as the "Human Calculator", Shakuntala Devi managed to calculate the 23rd root of a 201 digit number in 50 seconds in her head back in 1977.
Her answer was later verified at the US Bureau of Standards by the UNIVAC 1101 computer, for which a special program had to be written to perform such a large calculation.
How do you even hold a 201 digit number in your head? let alone operate on it.
Here's what a 201 digit number looks like...
123,456,789,123,456,789,123,456,789,123,456,789,123,456,789,123,456,789,123,456,789,123,456,789,123,456,789,123,456,789,123,456,789,123,456,789,123,456,789,123,456,789,123,456,789,123,456,789,123,456,789,123,456,789,123,456,789,123,456,789,123,456,789,123,456,789,123
Her life and work have been immortalised in the self-titled movie Shakuntala Devi, currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
[Read more here]
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- Canada announces $2.75 billion investment in zero-emissions buses and charging infrastructure.
- Jeffrey Epstein's mansion sells for $51m with abused women to receive the money.
- President Biden to direct states to make all Americans eligible for vaccines by May 1.
- Mexico legalises recreational cannabis use as the lower house of Congress approves the bill.
- Indian Sikh community builds the countries largest free kidney dialysis hospital.
- Experimental Alzheimer's drug could slow cognitive decline in patients, early results suggest.
- ‘ Vaxxies’: vaccine selfies sweep the internet in hopes of curbing anti-vaxxer misinformation.
- Yale scientists successfully repair injured spinal cords using patients’ own stem cells. |
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Mind Bender Answer:
A polar bear’s skin is black. Interestingly, the polar bear’s coat has no white pigment, their hairs are hollow and scatter light of all colours, thus they appear white.
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Thanks
Thank you for reading today's Digital Caffeine.
If you learned something interesting share it with someone who'd find it cool!
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Have a great day, see you on Friday!
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