Eventlist

THIS SPECIAL LECTURE IS ON MONDAY. ALSO NOTE THE EARLY START: 6:30PM.

Lecturer: Professor Xenophon Moussas
Entry: FREE

Synopsis

Antikythera Mechanism is the oldest known computer, even originally named tablet in Greek (PINAKIDION, little table, i.e. tablet), a realistic clockwork Cosmos, a Planetarium, most probably an astronomical clock.
Made during the 2nd century BC somewhere in the Greek world. It has been found by sponge divers from Syme, in a huge shipwreck of the 1st century BC in the island of Antikythera. It was a floating museum probably larger than 50 m full of Greek treasures transported to Rome. It works with carefully designed bronze gears that perform appropriate mathematical operations to predict astronomical phenomena.
It displays the position of the Sun and the Moon in a map of the sky, the phase of the Moon, the time of solar and lunar eclipses and the places these are visible on Earth. It probably worked like a cuckoo clock, with a system of weights and counterweights and a water clock as regulator.

Bio

Professor Xenophon Moussas (University of Athens) is one of the protagonists of the study of the oldest known computer and clockwork cosmos of the 2nd century BC, the Antikythera Mechanism. A space physicist, with research interests including space and solar physics, planetology, Ulysses mission, WIND/WAVES and STEREO space mission, Solar Orbiter.
He has supervised 25 PhDs. Awards include: NASA group achievement, Ulysses Mission, 2009, Geophysical Research Letters excellence in refereeing, American Geophysical Union2001, Hipparchus award, Arcadia, Athens, 2010. Created exhibitions about the Antikythera Mechanism around the world.

Sponsors

We'd like to thank the following donors: Anonymous, Christos Tsirkas, Panagiota Stamatopoulou.

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