<story><title>Researchers home in on possible “day zero” for Antikythera mechanism</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/04/researchers-home-in-on-possible-day-zero-for-antikythera-mechanism/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>dotancohen</author><text>&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  &amp;gt; “This is a very specific and unique date,” Voulgaris said. “In one day, there occurred too many astronomical events for it to be coincidence. This date was a new moon, the new moon was at apogee, there was a solar eclipse, the Sun entered into the constellation Capricorn, it was the winter solstice.”
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
That&amp;#x27;s not a lot of coincidences, some of them are dependent. For instance, a solar eclipse can _only_ happen during a new moon. And the Sun enters a new constellation every month, the winter solstice defines the first day of a new month. The fact that a solar eclipse occurred exactly during the winter solstice is about 100:1 (there are at least two solar eclipses every year), and exactly the fact that a solar eclipse happened at a lunar inflection is about 15:1 (twice per month). So it&amp;#x27;s still a once in 500 year event, but not nearly as outstanding as the article makes it seem. Every day some once-in-500-year event or another occurs in astronomy.</text></comment>
<story><title>Researchers home in on possible “day zero” for Antikythera mechanism</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/04/researchers-home-in-on-possible-day-zero-for-antikythera-mechanism/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>TheBlight</author><text>&amp;gt;He concluded that the device was specifically designed to model &amp;quot;epicyclic&amp;quot; motion in keeping with the ancient Greek notion that celestial bodies moved in circular patterns, called epicycles. (This was pre-Copernicus, so the fixed point around which they moved was believed to be the Earth.)&lt;p&gt;Slightly tangential, but the whole pre&amp;#x2F;post-Copernicus narrative seems unlikely to be true to me. At least I find it difficult to believe it wasn&amp;#x27;t until the 16th century that someone worked this out and everyone prior was of some woefully mistaken (yet suspiciously Christian-aligned) view that the Earth was the center of the universe.</text></comment>