Unearthing Mysteries Ep 1/3
Tuesday 12 December 2006
11.00-11.30am BBC RADIO 4
Aubrey Manning travels to Athens to find out about the secrets of the Antikythera Mechanism, an intricate bronze mechanism of wheels and dials which was created in 80 BC and has baffled researchers for over a century.
The Antikythera Mechanism was discovered, damaged and fragmented, on the wreck of a cargo ship off the tiny Greek island of Antikythera in 1900. Aubrey joins the joint British-Greek research team that has found a hidden ancient Greek inscription on the device and believes that the mechanism could actually be the world's oldest computer, used by the Greeks to predict the motion of the planets. If they are right, this means that the Greeks could have known that the planets revolved round the Sun 1,400 years before Copernicus and Galileo caused great controversy with their grand declarations.
Presenter: Aubrey Manning. Producer: Pamela Rutherford.
Listen again to this programme.
For more about X-Tek's inspection of the Antikythera Mechanism please email antikythera@xtekxray.com.
Further information can be found on the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project website.
The Antikythera Research Project is a joint programme between Cardiff University, Athens University, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, X-Tek Systems UK and Hewlett-Packard USA, funded by the Leverhulme Foundation.
For more information please contact:
Professor M.G. Edmunds
Cardiff University
E: mge@astro.cf.ac.uk
T: +44 (0)29 2087 4043