On the heels of yesterday’s When the rocks sing “I got rhythm” (my December 18, 2023 posting), I received (via email) a media notice/reminder/update about a Northwestern University (Chicago, Illinois, US) app that allows you to listen,
As seismic activity intensifies ahead of an impending eruption of a fissure near Iceland’s Fagradalsfjall volcano, the island’s Reykjanes Peninsula is experiencing hundreds of earthquakes per day.
Now, listeners can follow along through Northwestern University’s Earthtunes app. Developed in 2019, the app transforms seismic frequencies into audible pitches. Whereas a classic seismometer records motions in the Earth’s surface as squiggly lines scratched across a page, Earthtunes enables users to hear, rather than see, activity.
So far, Iceland’s recent, ongoing seismic activity sounds like a jarring symphony of doors slamming, hail pelting against a tin roof or window and people cracking trays of ice cubes.
By listening to activities recorded by the Global Seismographic Network station (named BORG), located to the north-northeast of Reykjavik, people can hear how the seismic activity has changed around the Fagradalsfjall area.
In this audio clip, listeners can hear 24 hours of activity recorded from Friday, Nov. 10, into Saturday, Nov. 11. Peppered with a cacophony of sharp knocking noises, it sounds like someone is insistently banging on a door.
“The activity is formidable, exciting and scary,” said Northwestern seismologist Suzan van der Lee, who co-developed Earthtunes. “Iceland did the right thing by evacuating residents in nearby Grindavik and the nearby Svartsengi geothermal power plant, one of the world’s oldest geothermal power plants, which was the first to combine electricity generation with hot water for heating in the region.”
Van der Lee is the Sarah Rebecca Roland Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. In her research, she applies data science to millions of records of seismic waves in order to decode seismic signals, which harbor valuable information about the Earth’s interior dynamics.
As hundreds of earthquakes shake the ground, Van der Lee says the impending eruption is reminiscent of the 1973 eruption of Heimaey on Iceland’s Vestmannaeyjar archipelago.
“This level of danger is unprecedented for this area of Iceland, but not for Iceland as a whole,” said van der Lee, who hiked Fagradalsfjall in June. “While most Icelandic volcanoes erupt away from towns and other infrastructure, Icelanders share the terrible memory of an eruption 50 years ago on the island Vestmannaeyjar, during which lava covered part of that island’s town, Heimaey. The residents felt very vulnerable, as the evacuated people of Grindavik feel now. In a few days or weeks, they might no longer have their jobs, homes and most possessions, while still having to feed their families and pay their mortgages. However, partially resulting from that eruption on Vestmannaeyjar, Icelanders are well prepared for the current situation in the Fagradallsfjall-Svartsengi-Grindavik area.”
Accelerated audio
This audio clip presents the same data, with the pitch increased by 10 octaves. Listeners will hear a long, low rumbling sound, punctuated by an occasional slamming door.
“What you’re hearing is 24 hours of seismic data — filled with earthquake signals,” van der Lee said. “The vast majority of these quakes are associated with the magma intrusion into the crust of the Fagradallsfjall-Svartsengi-Grindavik area of the Reykjanes Peninsula. Seismic data are not audible; their frequencies are too low. So, the 24 hours of data are compressed into approximately 1.5 minutes of audio data. You can hear an unprecedented intensity of earthquakes during the night from last Friday into Saturday and related to a new magma intrusion into the crust area.”
In a third audio clip, the same data is less compressed, with the pitch increased by just seven octaves
“One can hear frequent earthquakes happening at this point,” van der Lee said. “Icelandic seismologists have been monitoring these quakes and their increasing vigor and changing patterns. They recognized similar patterns to earthquake swarms that preceded the 2021-2023 eruptions of the adjacent Fagradallsfjall volcano.”
Earthtunes is supported by the American Geophysical Union and Northwestern’s department of Earth and planetary sciences. Seismic data is obtained from the Earthscope Consortium. The app was designed and developed by van der Lee, Helio Tejedor, Melanie Marzen, Igor Eufrasio, Josephine Anderson, Liam Toney, Cooper Barth, Michael Ji and Leonicio Cabrera.
Jennifer Ouellette’s November 16, 2023 article for Ars Tecnica draws heavily from the news release while delving into the topic of data sonification (making sounds from data), Note: Links have been removed,
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Sonification of scientific data is an area of growing interest in many different fields. For instance, several years ago, a project called LHCSound built a library of the “sounds” of a top quark jet and the Higgs boson, among others. The project hoped to develop sonification as a technique for analyzing the data from particle collisions so that physicists could “detect” subatomic particles by ear. Other scientists have mapped the molecular structure of proteins in spider silk threads onto musical theory to produce the “sound” of silk in hopes of establishing a radical new way to create designer proteins. And there’s a free app for Android called the Amino Acid Synthesizer that enables users to create their own protein “compositions” from the sounds of amino acids.
One last thing, there are a number of postings about data sonification here; many but not all scientists and/or communication practitioners think to include audio files.
So James Joyce included some physics in his novel, Ulysses (serialized in The Little Review from March 1918 to December1920 and published as a novel in February 1922)?
That’s not the only surprise. Apparently, penguins perform some interesting feats from a physics perspective. I have two stories about penguin physics with the latest research being published in June 2023.
Let’s start with literature.
James Joyce, Ulysses, and 19th century physics
This article came to my attention in April 2023 but the material is from 2021/22. Thankfully, since it’s a literature topic, timing doesn’t matter quite as much as it does for other topics. From a December 22, 2021 American Institute of Physics news release highlights an intriguing article in The Physics Teacher,
James Joyce’s book “Ulysses” is widely considered a 20th-century literary masterpiece. It also contains a surprising amount of 19th-century classical physics, according to Harry Manos, faculty member at Los Angeles City College.
“Ulysses” chronicles the ordinary life of the protagonist Leopold Bloom over a single day in 1904. In The Physics Teacher, by AIP Publishing, Manos reveals several connections that have not been analyzed before in the Joycean literature between classic physics prevalent during that time and various passages of the book.
“‘Ulysses’ exemplifies what physics students and teachers should realize — namely, physics and literature are not mutually exclusive,” Manos said.
Manos shows how Joyce uses the optics of concave and convex mirrors to metaphorically parallel “Ulysses” with Homer’s “Odyssey,” and how Joyce uses physics to show Bloom’s strengths and weaknesses in science.
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Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
Physics in James Joyce’s Ulysses by Harry Manos. The Physics Teacher 60, 6–10 (2022) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1119/5.0028832 Published online: January 1, 2022
This paper is behind a paywall but there is a freely available abstract
Ulysses by James Joyce (1882–1941) has a surprising amount of 19th-century, classical physics. The physics community is familiar with the name James Joyce mainly through the word “quark” (onomatopoeic for the sound of a duck or seagull), which Murray Gell-Mann (1929-2019 – Physics Nobel Prize 1969) sourced from Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake. Ulysses, however, was ranked number one in 1998 on the Modern Library “100 Best Novels” list and is, in whole or in part, in the literature curriculum in university English departments worldwide. The fact that Ulysses contains so much classical physics should not be surprising. Joyce’s friend Eugene Jolas observed: “the range of subjects he [Joyce] enjoyed discussing was a wide one … [including] certain sciences, particularly physics, geometry, and mathematics.” Knowing physics can enhance everyone’s understanding of this novel and enrich its entertainment value. Ulysses exemplifies what physics students (science and non-science majors) and physics teachers should realize, namely, physics and literature are not mutually exclusive.
In addition to the December 22, 2021 American Institute of Physics news release which provides some detail about the physics in Ulysses, there’s Jennifer Ouellette’s April 2, 2023 article for Ars Technica where in addition to the material in the news release, she adds some intriguing information, Note: Links have been removed,
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In Chapter 15 (“Circe”), one of the characters says, “You can call me up by sunphone any old time”—a phrase that also appears in Joyce’s handwritten notes for the chapter. While Manos was unable to trace a specific source for this term, there was a similar device that had been invented some 20 years earlier: Alexander Graham Bell’s photophone, co-invented with his assistant Charles Sumner Tainter.
Unlike the telephone, which relies on electricity, the photophone transmitted sound on a beam of light. Bell’s voice was projected through the instrument to a mirror, causing similar vibrations in the mirror. When he directed sunlight into the mirror, it captured and projected the mirror’s vibrations via reflection, which were then transformed back into sound at the receiving end of the projection. Bell’s device never found immediate application, but it’s arguably the progenitor to modern fiber-optic telecommunications.
There are several other instances of physics (both correct and incorrect/outdated) mentioned in Ulysses, per Manos, including Bloom misunderstanding the science of X-rays; his confusion over parallax; trying to figure out the source of buoyancy in the Dead Sea; ruminating on Archimedes’ “burning glass”; seeing rainbow colors in a water spray; and pondering why he hears the ocean when he places a seashell to his ear. Manos believes introducing literature like Ulysses into physics courses could be a boon for non-majors, as well as encouraging physics and engineering students to learn more about literature.
In fact, Manos notes that an earlier 1995 paper introduced a handy introductory physics problem involving distance, velocity, and time. Ulysses opens with Stephen Dedalus and his roommate, Buck Mulligan, standing at the Martello tower overlooking a bay at Sandy Cove. …
Now onto …
Penguin physics
Two stories, two research teams, and six months separate their papers.
A February 7, 2023 news item on phys.org features work from a team of Japanese scientists studying how penguins turn in the water, Note: A link has been removed,
Penguins constitute a fascinating family of flightless birds, that although somewhat clumsy on land, are extremely talented swimmers. Their incredible maneuverability in water has captivated biologists for decades, with the first hydrodynamic studies on their swimming dating back to the 1970s.
Although a rare few studies have clarified some of the physics behind penguins’ dexterity, most of them have focused on forward swimming rather than turning. While one may argue that existing studies on the turning mechanisms of flying birds could shed some light on this topic, water is 800 hundred times denser than air, and thus the turning mechanisms employed are presumably very different between these media.
In an effort to bridge this knowledge gap, a pair of Japanese scientists from Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech), including Associate Professor Hiroto Tanaka, recently conducted a study. The main goal of this work, which was published in Journal of Experimental Biology, was to gain a better understanding of the three dimensional (3D) kinematics and hydrodynamic forces that enable penguins to turn underwater.
The researchers recorded two sessions of gentoo penguins (Pygoscelis papua) free swimming in a large water tank at Nagasaki Penguin Aquarium, Japan, using a dozen or more underwater cameras. Then, thanks to a technique called 3D direct linear transformation, they were able to integrate data from all the footage and conduct detailed 3D motion analyses by tracking various points on the penguins’ bodies and wings.
Armed with these data, the researchers then established a mathematical 3D body model of the penguins. This model covered the orientation and angles of the body, the different positions and motions of the wings during each stroke, the associated kinematic parameters and hydrodynamic forces, and various turning metrics. Through statistical analyses and comparisons with the experimental data, the researchers validated the model and gained insight into the role of the wings and other body movements during turning.
The main findings of the study were related to how penguins generate centripetal force to assist their turns. They achieve this, in part, is by maintaining outward banking, which means that they tilt their bodies such that their belly faces inward. In powered turns—those in which the penguin flaps its wings—the majority of changes in direction occur during the upstroke, whereas the forward thrust occurs during the downstroke. In addition, it turns out that penguins flap their wings with a certain asymmetry during powered turns. “We found contralateral differences in wing motion; the wing on the inside of the turn becomes more elevated during the upstroke than the other,” explains Assoc. Prof. Tanaka, “Quasi-steady calculations of wing forces confirmed that this asymmetry in wing motion with the outward banking contributes to the generation of centripetal force during the upstroke. In the following downstroke, the inside wing generates thrust and counter yaw torque to brake the turning.”
Overall, these findings contribute to a greater understanding of how penguins turn when swimming, which is relevant from both biological and engineering standpoints. However, Assoc. Prof. Tanaka remarks that these findings bring but one piece to the puzzle: “The mechanisms of various other maneuvers in penguins, such as rapid acceleration, pitch up and down, and jumping out of the water, are still unknown. Our study serves as the basis for further understanding of more complex maneuvers.”
Let us hope future research helps fully clarify how penguins achieve their mesmerizing aquatic prowess!
Penguins are the fastest swimming birds and this team published a paper about their propulsion six months after the ‘turning’ team according to a June 20, 2023 news item on phys.org,
Penguins aren’t just cute: they’re also speedy. Gentoo penguins are the fastest swimming birds in the world, and that ability comes from their unique and sophisticated wings.
Researchers from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang [KMITL or KMIT Ladkrabang; Thailand] developed a model to explore the forces and flow structures created by penguin wings underwater. They determined that wing feathering is the main factor for generating thrust. Their findings have been published in the journal Physics of Fluids.
Penguin wings, aka flippers, bear some resemblance to airplane wings covered with scaly feathers. To maximize efficiency underwater instead of in the air, penguin wings are shorter and flatter than those of flying birds.
The animals can adjust swimming posture by active wing feathering (changing the angle of their wings to reduce resistance), pitching, and flapping. Their dense, short feathers can also lock air between the skin and water to reduce friction and turbulence.
“Penguins’ superior swimming ability to start/brake, accelerate/decelerate, and turn swiftly is due to their freely waving wings. They allow penguins to propel and maneuver in the water and maintain balance on land,” said author Prasert Prapamonthon. “Our research team is always curious about sophisticated creatures in nature that would be beneficial to mankind.”
The hydrodynamic model takes in information about the flapping and feathering of the wings, including amplitude, frequency, and direction, and the fluid parameters, such as velocity and viscosity. Using the immersed boundary method, it solves for the motion of the wing and the thrust, lift, and lateral forces.
To establish the movement of wings across species, researchers use the ratio of wing flapping speed to forward speed. This value avoids any differences between air and water. Additionally, the authors define an angle of thrust, determined by the angle of the wings. Both of these parameters have a significant impact on the penguin’s thrust.
“We proposed the concept of angle of thrust, which explains why finned wings generate thrust: Thrust is primarily determined by the angle of attack and the relative angle of the wings to the forward direction,” said Prapamonthon. “The angle of thrust is an important concept in studying the mechanism of thrust generated by flapping motion and will be useful for designing mechanical wing motion.”
These findings can guide the design of aquatic vehicles by quickly estimating propulsion performance without high experimental or computational costs.
In the future, the team plans to examine a more realistic 3D penguin model. They will incorporate different wing properties and motion, such as starting, braking, turning, and jumping in and out of water.
The ancient Romans were masters of engineering, constructing vast networks of roads, aqueducts, ports, and massive buildings, whose remains have survived for two millennia. Many of these structures were built with concrete: Rome’s famed Pantheon, which has the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome and was dedicated in A.D. 128, is still intact, and some ancient Roman aqueducts still deliver water to Rome today. Meanwhile, many modern concrete structures have crumbled after a few decades.
Researchers have spent decades trying to figure out the secret of this ultradurable ancient construction material, particularly in structures that endured especially harsh conditions, such as docks, sewers, and seawalls, or those constructed in seismically active locations.
Now, a team of investigators from MIT, Harvard University, and laboratories in Italy and Switzerland, has made progress in this field, discovering ancient concrete-manufacturing strategies that incorporated several key self-healing functionalities. The findings are published in the journal Science Advances, in a paper by MIT professor of civil and environmental engineering Admir Masic, former doctoral student Linda Seymour, and four others.
For many years, researchers have assumed that the key to the ancient concrete’s durability was based on one ingredient: pozzolanic material such as volcanic ash from the area of Pozzuoli, on the Bay of Naples. [emphasis mine] This specific kind of ash was even shipped all across the vast Roman empire to be used in construction, and was described as a key ingredient for concrete in accounts by architects and historians at the time.
Under closer examination, these ancient samples also contain small, distinctive, millimeter-scale bright white mineral features, which have been long recognized as a ubiquitous component of Roman concretes. These white chunks, often referred to as “lime clasts,” originate from lime, another key component of the ancient concrete mix. “Ever since I first began working with ancient Roman concrete, I’ve always been fascinated by these features,” says Masic. “These are not found in modern concrete formulations, so why are they present in these ancient materials?”
Previously disregarded as merely evidence of sloppy mixing practices, or poor-quality raw materials, the new study suggests that these tiny lime clasts gave the concrete a previously unrecognized self-healing capability. [emphasis mine] “The idea that the presence of these lime clasts was simply attributed to low quality control always bothered me,” says Masic. “If the Romans put so much effort into making an outstanding construction material, following all of the detailed recipes that had been optimized over the course of many centuries, why would they put so little effort into ensuring the production of a well-mixed final product? There has to be more to this story.”
Upon further characterization of these lime clasts, using high-resolution multiscale imaging and chemical mapping techniques pioneered in Masic’s research lab, the researchers gained new insights into the potential functionality of these lime clasts.
Historically, it had been assumed that when lime was incorporated into Roman concrete, it was first combined with water to form a highly reactive paste-like material, in a process known as slaking. But this process alone could not account for the presence of the lime clasts. Masic wondered: “Was it possible that the Romans might have actually directly used lime in its more reactive form, known as quicklime?”
Studying samples of this ancient concrete, he and his team determined that the white inclusions were, indeed, made out of various forms of calcium carbonate. And spectroscopic examination provided clues that these had been formed at extreme temperatures, as would be expected from the exothermic reaction produced by using quicklime instead of, or in addition to, the slaked lime in the mixture. Hot mixing, the team has now concluded, was actually the key to the super-durable nature.
“The benefits of hot mixing are twofold,” Masic says. “First, when the overall concrete is heated to high temperatures, it allows chemistries that are not possible if you only used slaked lime, producing high-temperature-associated compounds that would not otherwise form. Second, this increased temperature significantly reduces curing and setting times since all the reactions are accelerated, allowing for much faster construction.”
During the hot mixing process, the lime clasts develop a characteristically brittle nanoparticulate architecture, creating an easily fractured and reactive calcium source, which, as the team proposed, could provide a critical self-healing functionality. As soon as tiny cracks start to form within the concrete, they can preferentially travel through the high-surface-area lime clasts. This material can then react with water, creating a calcium-saturated solution, which can recrystallize as calcium carbonate and quickly fill the crack, or react with pozzolanic materials to further strengthen the composite material. These reactions take place spontaneously and therefore automatically heal the cracks before they spread. Previous support for this hypothesis was found through the examination of other Roman concrete samples that exhibited calcite-filled cracks.
To prove that this was indeed the mechanism responsible for the durability of the Roman concrete, the team produced samples of hot-mixed concrete that incorporated both ancient and modern formulations, deliberately cracked them, and then ran water through the cracks. Sure enough: Within two weeks the cracks had completely healed and the water could no longer flow. An identical chunk of concrete made without quicklime never healed, and the water just kept flowing through the sample. As a result of these successful tests, the team is working to commercialize this modified cement material.
“It’s exciting to think about how these more durable concrete formulations could expand not only the service life of these materials, but also how it could improve the durability of 3D-printed concrete formulations,” says Masic.
Through the extended functional lifespan and the development of lighter-weight concrete forms, he hopes that these efforts could help reduce the environmental impact of cement production, which currently accounts for about 8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Along with other new formulations, such as concrete that can actually absorb carbon dioxide from the air, another current research focus of the Masic lab, these improvements could help to reduce concrete’s global climate impact.
The research team included Janille Maragh at MIT, Paolo Sabatini at DMAT in Italy, Michel Di Tommaso at the Instituto Meccanica dei Materiali, in Switzerland, and James Weaver at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. The work was carried out with the assistance of the archeological museum of Priverno, Italy.
For the really curious, Jennifer Ouellette’s January 6, 2023 article (Ancient Roman concrete could self-heal thanks to “hot mixing” with quicklime) for Ars Technica provides a little more detail.
Here’s a link to and a citation for the latest paper,
One last note, DMAT is listed as Paolo Sabatini’s home institution. It is a company for which Sabatini is a co-founder and CEO (chief executive officer). DMAT has this on its About page, “Our mission is to develop breakthrough innovations in construction materials at a global scale. DMAT is at the helm of concrete’s innovation.”
Starting with the new Antikythera program at the Berggruen Institute before moving onto the Antikythera itself, one of my favourite scientific mysteries.
Antikythera program at the Berggruen Institute
An October 5, 2022 Berggruen Institute news release (also received via email) announces a program exploring the impact of planetary-scale computation and invites applications for the program’s first ‘studio’,
Antikythera is convening over 75 philosophers, technologists, designers, and scientists in seminars, design research studios, and global salons to create new models that shift computation toward more viable long-term futures: https://antikythera.xyz/
Applications are now open for researchers to join Antikythera’s fully-funded five month Studio in 2023, launching at the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles: https://antikythera.xyz/apply/
Today [October 5, 2022] the Berggruen Institute announced that it will incubate Antikythera, an initiative focused on understanding and shaping the impact of computation on philosophy, global society, and planetary systems. Antikythera will engage a wide range of thinkers at the intersections of software, speculative thought, governance, and design to explore computation’s ultimate pitfalls and potentials. Research will range from the significance of machine intelligence and the geopolitics of AI to new economic models and the long-term project of composing a healthy planetary society.
“Against a background of rising geopolitical tensions and an accelerating climate crisis, technology has outpaced our theory. As such, we are less interested in applying philosophy to the topic of computation than generating new ideas from a direct encounter with it.” said Benjamin Bratton, Professor at the University of California, San Diego, and director of the new program. “The purpose of Antikythera is to reorient the question “what is computation for?” and to model what it may become. That is a project that is not only technological but also philosophical, political, and ecological.”
Antikythera will begin this exploration with its Studio program, applications for which are now open atantikythera.xyz/apply/. The Studio program will take place over five months in spring 2023 and bring together researchers from across the world to work in multidisciplinary teams. These teams will work on speculative design proposals, and join 75+ Affiliate Researchers for workshops, talks, and design sprints that inform thinking and propositions around Antikythera’s core research topics. Affiliate Researchers will include philosophers, technologists, designers, scientists, and other thinkers and practitioners. Applications for the program are due November 11, 2022.
Program project outcomes will include new combinations of theory, cinema, software, and policy. The five initial research themes animating this work are:
• Synthetic Intelligence: the longer-term implications of machine intelligence, particularly as seen through the lens of artificial language
• Hemispherical Stacks: the multipolar geopolitics of planetary computation
• Recursive Simulations: the emergence of simulation as an epistemological technology, from scientific simulation to VR/AR
• Synthetic Catallaxy: the ongoing organization of computational economics, pricing, and planning
• Planetary Sapience: the evolutionary emergence of natural/artificial intelligence, and its role in composing a viable planetary condition
The program is named after the Antikythera Mechanism, the world’s first known computer, used more than 2,000 years ago to predict the movements of constellations and eclipses decades in advance. As an origin point for computation, it combined calculation, orientation and cosmology, dimensions of practice whose synergies may be crucial in setting our planetary future on a better course than it is on today.
Bratton continues, “The evolution of planetary intelligence has also meant centuries of destruction; its future must be radically different. We must ask, what future would make this past worth it? Taking the question seriously demands a different sort of speculative and practical philosophy and a corresponding sort of computation.”
Bratton is a philosopher of technology and Professor at the University of California, San Diego, and author of many books including The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty (MIT Press). His most recent book is The Revenge of the Real: Politics for a Post-Pandemic World (Verso Books), exploring the implications for political philosophy of COVID-19. Associate directors are Ben Cerveny, technologist, speculative designer, and director of the Amsterdam-based Foundation for Public Code, and Stephanie Sherman, strategist, writer, and director of the MA Narrative Environments program at Central St. Martins, London. The Studio is directed by architect and creative director Nicolay Boyadjiev.
In addition to the Studio, program activities will include a series of invitation-only planning salons inviting philosophers, designers, technologists, strategists, and others to discuss how to best interpret and intervene in the future of planetary-scale computation, and the historic philosophical and geopolitical force that it represents. These salons began in London in October 2022 and will continue in locations across the world including in Berlin; Amsterdam; Los Angeles; San Francisco; New York; Mexico City; Seoul; and Venice.
The announcement of Antikythera at the Berggruen Institute follows the recent spinoff of the Transformations of the Human school, successfully incubated at the Institute from 2017-2021.
“Computational technology covering the planet represents one of the largest and most urgent philosophical opportunities of our time,” said Nicolas Berggruen, Chairman and Co-Founder of the Berggruen Institute. “It is with great pleasure that we invite Antikythera to join our work at the Institute. Together, we can develop new ways of thinking to support planetary flourishing in the years to come.”
Applications were opened on October, 4, 2022, the deadline is November 11, 2022 followed by interviews. Participants will be confirmed by December 11, 2022. Here are a few more details from the application portal,
Who should apply to the Studio?
Antikythera hopes to bring together a diverse cohort of researchers from different backgrounds, disciplines, perspectives, and levels of experience. The Antikythera research themes engage with global challenges that necessitate harnessing a diversity of thought and expertise. Anyone who is passionate about the research themes of the Antikythera program is strongly encouraged to apply. We accept applications from every discipline and background, from established to emerging researchers. Applicants do not need to meet any specific set of educational or professional experience.
Is the program free?
Yes, the program is free. You will be supported to cover the cost of housing, living expenses, and all program-related fieldwork travel along with a monthly stipend. Any other associated program costs will also be covered by the program.
Is the program in person and full-time?
Yes, the Studio program requires a full-time commitment (PhD students must also be on leave to participate). There is no part-time participation option. Though we understand this commitment may be challenging logistically for some individuals, we believe it is important for the Studio’s success. We will do our best to enable an environment that is comfortable and safe for participants from all backgrounds. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you may require any accommodations or have questions regarding the full-time, in-person nature of the program.
Do I need a Visa?
The Studio is a traveling program with time spent between the USA, Mexico, and South Korea. Applicable visa requirements set by these countries will apply and will vary depending on your nationality. We are aware that current visa appointment wait times may preclude some individuals who would require a brand new visa from being able to enter the US by January, and we are working to ensure access to the program for all (if not for January 2023, then for future Studio cohorts). We will therefore ask you to identify your country of origin and passport/visa status in the application form so we can work to enable your participation. Anyone who is passionate about the research themes of the Antikythera program is strongly encouraged to apply.
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For those who like to put a face to a name, you can find out more about the program and the people behind it on this page.
Antikythera, a 2000 year old computer & 100 year old mystery
As noted in the Berggruen Institute news release, the Antikythera Mechanism is considered the world’s first computer (as far as we know). The image below is one of the best known illustrations of the device as visualized by researchers,
Briefly, the Antikythera mechanism was discovered at the turn of the twentieth century in 1901 by sponge divers off the coast of Greece. Philip Chrysopoulos’s September 21, 2022 article for The Greek Reporter gives more details in an exuberant style (Note: Links have been removed),
… now—more than 120 years later—the astounding machine has been recreated once again, using 3-D imagery, by a brilliant group of researchers from University College London (UCL).
Not only is the recreation a thing of great beauty and amazing genius, but it has also made possible a new understanding of how it worked.
Since only eighty-two fragments of the original mechanism are extant—comprising only one-third of the entire calculator—this left researchers stymied as to its full capabilities.
Until this moment [in 2020 according to the copyright for the image], the front of the mechanism, containing most of the gears, has been a bit of a Holy Grail for marine archeologists and astronomers.
Professor Tony Freeth says in an article published in the periodical Scientific Reports: “Ours is the first model that conforms to all the physical evidence and matches the descriptions in the scientific inscriptions engraved on the mechanism itself.”
“The sun, moon and planets are displayed in an impressive tour de force of ancient Greek brilliance,” Freeth said.
The largest surviving piece of the mechanism, referred to by researchers as “Fragment A,” has bearings, pillars, and a block. Another piece, known as “Fragment D,” has a mysterious disk along with an extraordinarily intricate 63-toothed gear and a plate.
The inscriptions—just discovered recently by researchers—on the back cover of the mechanism have a description of the cosmos and the planets, shown by beads of various colors, and move on rings set around the inscriptions.
By employing the information gleaned from recent x-rays of the computer and their knowledge of ancient Greek mathematics, the UCL researchers have now shown that they can demonstrate how the mechanism determined the cycles of the planets Venus and Saturn.
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Evaggelos Vallianatos, author of many books on the Antikythera Mechanism writing at Greek Reporter said that it was much more than a mere mechanism. It was a sophisticated, mind-bogglingly complex astronomical computer, he said “and Greeks made it.”
They employed advanced astronomy, mathematics, metallurgy, and engineering to do so, constructing the astronomical device 2,200 years ago. These scientific facts of the computer’s age and its flowless high-tech nature profoundly disturbed some of the scientists who studied it.
A few Western scientists of the twentieth century were shocked by the Antikythera Mechanism, Vallianatos said. They called it an astrolabe for several decades and refused to call it a computer. The astrolabe, a Greek invention, is a useful instrument for calculating the position of the Sun and other prominent stars. Yet, its technology is rudimentary compared to that of the Antikythera device.
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In 2015, Kyriakos Efstathiou, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and head of the group which studied the Antikythera Mechanism said: “All of our research has shown that our ancestors used their deep knowledge of astronomy and technology to construct such mechanisms, and based only on this conclusion, the history of technology should be re-written because it sets its start many centuries back.”
The professor further explained that the Antikythera Mechanism is undoubtedly the first machine of antiquity which can be classified by the scientific term “computer,” because “it is a machine with an entry where we can import data, and this machine can bring and create results based on a scientific mathematical scale.
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In 2016, yet another astounding discovery was made when an inscription on the device was revealed—something like a label or a user’s manual for the device.
It included a discussion of the colors of eclipses, details used at the time in the making of astrological predictions, including the ability to see exact times of eclipses of the moon and the sun, as well as the correct movements of celestial bodies.
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Inscribed numbers 76, 19 and 223 show maker “was a Pythagorean”
On one side of the device lies a handle that begins the movement of the whole system. By turning the handle and rotating the gauges in the front and rear of the mechanism, the user could set a date that would reveal the astronomical phenomena that would potentially occur around the Earth.
Physicist Yiannis Bitsakis has said that today the NASA [US National Aeronautics and Space Adiministration] website can detail all the eclipses of the past and those that are to occur in the future. However, “what we do with computers today, was done with the Antikythera Mechanism about 2000 years ago,” he said.
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The stars and night heavens have been important to peoples around the world. (This September 18, 2020 posting highlights millennia old astronomy as practiced by indigenous peoples in North America, Australia, and elsewhere. There’s also this March 17, 2022 article “How did ancient civilizations make sense of the cosmos, and what did they get right?” by Susan Bell of University of Southern California on phys.org.)
I have covered the Antikythera in three previous postings (March 17, 2021, August 3, 2016, and October 2, 2012) with the 2021 posting being the most comprehensive and the one featuring Professor Tony Freeth’s latest breakthrough.
However, 2022 has blessed us with more as this April 11, 2022 article by Jennifer Ouellette for Ars Technica reveals (Note: Links have been removed)
The mysterious Antikythera mechanism—an ancient device believed to have been used for tracking the heavens—has fascinated scientists and the public alike since it was first recovered from a shipwreck over a century ago. Much progress has been made in recent years to reconstruct the surviving fragments and learn more about how the mechanism might have been used. And now, members of a team of Greek researchers believe they have pinpointed the start date for the Antikythera mechanism, according to a preprint posted to the physics arXiv repository. Knowing that “day zero” is critical to ensuring the accuracy of the device.
“Any measuring system, from a thermometer to the Antikythera mechanism, needs a calibration in order to [perform] its calculations correctly,” co-author Aristeidis Voulgaris of the Thessaloniki Directorate of Culture and Tourism in Greece told New Scientist. “Of course it wouldn’t have been perfect—it’s not a digital computer, it’s gears—but it would have been very good at predicting solar and lunar eclipses.”
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Last year, an interdisciplinary team at University College London (UCL) led by mechanical engineer Tony Freeth made global headlines with their computational model, revealing a dazzling display of the ancient Greek cosmos. The team is currently building a replica mechanism, moving gears and all, using modern machinery. The display is described in the inscriptions on the mechanism’s back cover, featuring planets moving on concentric rings with marker beads as indicators. X-rays of the front cover accurately represent the cycles of Venus and Saturn—462 and 442 years, respectively.
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The Antikythera mechanism was likely built sometime between 200 BCE and 60 BCE. However, in February 2022, Freeth suggested that the famous Greek mathematician and inventor Archimedes (sometimes referred to as the Leonardo da Vinci of antiquity) may have actually designed the mechanism, even if he didn’t personally build it. (Archimedes died in 212 BCE at the hands of a Roman soldier during the siege of Syracuse.) There are references in the writings of Cicero (106-43 BCE) to a device built by Archimedes for tracking the movement of the Sun, Moon, and five planets; it was a prized possession of the Roman general Marcus Claudius Marcellus. According to Freeth, that description is remarkably similar to the Antikythera mechanism, suggesting it was not a one-of-a-kind device.
Voulgaris and his co-authors based their new analysis on a 223-month cycle called a Saros, represented by a spiral inset on the back of the device. The cycle covers the time it takes for the Sun, Moon, and Earth to return to their same positions and includes associated solar and lunar eclipses. Given our current knowledge about how the device likely functioned, as well as the inscriptions, the team believed the start date would coincide with an annular solar eclipse.
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“This is a very specific and unique date [December 22, 178 BCE],” 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.”
Others have made independent calculations and arrived at a different conclusion: the calibration date would more likely fall sometime in the summer of 204 BCE, although Voulgaris countered that this doesn’t explain why the winter solstice is engraved so prominently on the device.
“The eclipse predictions on the [device’s back] contain enough astronomical information to demonstrate conclusively that the 18-year series of lunar and solar eclipse predictions started in 204 BCE,” Alexander Jones of New York University told New Scientist, adding that there have been four independent calculations of this. “The reason such a dating is possible is because the Saros period is not a highly accurate equation of lunar and solar periodicities, so every time you push forward by 223 lunar months… the quality of the prediction degrades.”
Read Ouellette’s April 11, 2022 article for a pretty accessible description of the work involved in establishing the date. Here’s a link to and a citation for the latest attempt to date the Antikythera,
I can’t believe that October 24, 2011 was the last time the Dance Your Ph.D. competition was featured here. Time flies, eh? Here’s the 2018 contest winner’s submission, Superconductivity: The Musical!, (Note: This video is over 11 mins. long),
Swing dancing. Songwriting. And theoretical condensed matter physics.
It’s a unique person who can master all three, but a University of Alberta PhD student has done all that and taken it one step further by making a rollicking music video about his academic pursuits — and winning an international competition for his efforts.
Pramodh Senarath Yapa is the winner of the 2018 Dance Your PhD contest, which challenges scientists around the world to explain their research through a jargon-free medium: dance.
The prize is $1,000 and “immortal geek fame.”
Yapa’s video features his friends twirling, swinging and touch-stepping their way through an explanation of his graduate research, called “Non-Local Electrodynamics of Superconducting Wires: Implications for Flux Noise and Inductance.”
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Jennifer Ouelette’s February 17, 2019 posting for the ars Technica blog offers more detail (Note: A link has been removed),
Yapa’s research deals with how matter behaves when it’s cooled to very low temperatures, when quantum effects kick in—such as certain metals becoming superconductive, or capable of conducting electricity with zero resistance. That’s useful for any number of practical applications. D-Wave Systems [a company located in metro Vancouver {Canada}], for example, is building quantum computers using loops of superconducting wire. For his thesis, “I had to use the theory of superconductivity to figure out how to build a better quantum computer,” said Yapa.
Condensed matter theory (the precise description of Yapa’s field of research) is a notoriously tricky subfield to make palatable for a non-expert audience. “There isn’t one unifying theory or a single tool that we use,” he said. “Condensed matter theorists study a million different things using a million different techniques.”
His conceptual breakthrough came about when he realized electrons were a bit like “unsociable people” who find joy when they pair up with other electrons. “You can imagine electrons as a free gas, which means they don’t interact with each other,” he said. “The theory of superconductivity says they actually form pairs when cooled below a certain temperature. That was the ‘Eureka!’ moment, when I realized I could totally use swing dancing.”
John Bohannon’s Feb. 15, 2019 article for Science (magazine) offers an update on Yapa’s research interests (it seems that Yapa was dancing his Masters degree) and more information about the contest itself ,
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“I remember hearing about Dance Your Ph.D. many years ago and being amazed at all the entries,” Yapa says. “This is definitely a longtime dream come true.” His research, meanwhile, has evolved from superconductivity—which he pursued at the University of Victoria in Canada, where he completed a master’s degree—to the physics of superfluids, the focus of his Ph.D. research at the University of Alberta.
This is the 11th year of Dance Your Ph.D. hosted by Science and AAAS. The contest challenges scientists around the world to explain their research through the most jargon-free medium available: interpretive dance.
“Most people would not normally think of interpretive dance as a tool for scientific communication,” says artist Alexa Meade, one of the judges of the contest. “However, the body can express conceptual thoughts through movement in ways that words and data tables cannot. The results are both artfully poetic and scientifically profound.”
Yapa describes his video, filmed in Victoria where he earned his master’s degree, as a “three act, mini-musical.”
“I envisioned it as talking about the social lives of electrons,” he said. “The electrons starts out in a normal metal, at normal temperatures….We say these electrons are non-interacting. They don’t talk to each other. Electrons ignore each other and are very unsociable.”
The electrons — represented by dancers wearing saddle oxfords, poodle skirts, vests and suspenders — shuffle up the dance floor by themselves.
In the second act, the metal is cooled.
“The electrons become very unhappy about being alone. They want to find a partner, some companionship for the cold times,” he said
That’s when the electrons join up into something called Cooper pairs.
The dancers join together, moving to lyrics like, “If we peek/the Coopers are cheek-to-cheek.
In the final act, Yapa gets his dancers to demonstrate what happens when the Cooper pairs meet the impurities of the materials they’re moving in. All of a sudden, a group of black-leather-clad thugs move onto the dance floor.
“The Cooper pairs come dancing near these impurities and they’re like these crotchety old people yelling and shaking their fists at these young dancers,” Yapa explained.
Yapa’s entry to the annual contest swept past 49 other contestants to earn him the win. The competition is sponsored by Science magazine and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
I find it easy to miss how much science there is in the movies and on television even though I’m looking for it. Here are a few recent examples of science in popular culture.
Inside Science of Iron Man 2, an article by Emilie Lorditch on physorg.com explains some of the background work needed to create a giant particle accelerator with a new way to power the reactor pumping Iron Man’s heart. From the article,
“I went to Marvel Studios to meet with one of the film’s producers (Jeremy Latcham) and even brought a graduate student along,” said Mark Wise, a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena who served as a technical consultant for the film. “There was a specific set of scenes that I was consulting on; the story had to get from this point to that point.”
Wise was surprised by Latcham’s and the film crew’s interest in the actual science, “I attempted to present the science in a way to the help the movie, but still get a little science in,” said Wise. “They wanted the scenes to look good, but they also wanted elements of truth in what they did, it was nice.”
The producers for the film found their scientist through The Science and Entertainment Exchange (which is a program of the US National Academy of Sciences). From Lorditch’s article,
“Scientists can offer more than just simple fact-checking of scripts,” said Jennifer Ouellette, director of the Science and Entertainment Exchange. “Get them involved early enough in the production process and their input can be invaluable in developing not just the fundamental scientific concepts underlying a scene, but also — since film and TV are a visual mediums — scientists can help filmmakers more fully realize their visions on screen.”
I have blogged before about Hollywood’s relationship with science here although my focus was largely on mathematics and the Canadian scene.
Dave Bruggeman at the Pasco Phronesis blog regularly highlights science items on television. Much of his focus is on late night tv and interviews with scientists. (The first time I saw one of his posts I was gobsmacked in the best way possible since I’d taken the science element of these talk show interviews for granted.) There’s another Pasco Phronesis posting today about the latest Colbert Report and a series Colbert calls, Science Cat Fight.
All of this is interesting fodder for thinking about how scientists (and by extension science) are perceived and Matthew C. Nisbet at the Framing Science blog has some interesting things to say about this in his posting ‘Reconsidering the Image of Scientists in Film & Television‘,
Contrary to conventional wisdom that entertainment media portray science and scientists in a negative light, research shows that across time, genre, and medium there is no single prevailing image and that both positive and negative images of scientists and science can be found. More recent research even suggests that in contemporary entertainment media, scientists are portrayed in an almost exclusively positive light and often as heroes.
Nisbet goes on to offer four ‘archetypes’ and ask for feedback, (Note: I have removed some of the text from these descriptions.)
Scientists as Dr. Frankenstein: … Examples of this image include Gregory Peck as Dr. Mengele in Boys from Brazil, Marlon Brando as Dr. Moreau in The Island of Dr. Moreau, and Jeff Goldblum as the scientist in The Fly.Scientists as powerless pawns: … Examples include Robert Duvall as Dr. Griffin Weir in the 6th Day and several of the scientists in Jurassic Park who work for Richard Attenborough’s character John Hammond, CEO of InGen.
Scientists as eccentric and anti-social geeks: … Examples of this image include Christopher Loyd as Doc in Back to the Future, the nerdy boys in John Hughes 1985 film Weird Science who use science to create the perfect woman, and Val Kilmer and his fellow grad students in the 1985 film Real Genius who serve as graduate students to a professor who is determined to master a Star Wars-like satellite technology. [my addition: The characters in The Big Bang Theory.]
Scientists as Hero: … Examples include Dr. Alan Grant as the main protagonist in Jurassic Park, Spock in the new version of Star Trek who takes on leading man and action hero qualities to rival Captain Kirk, Jody Foster’s character in Contact, Sigourney Weaver’s character in Avatar, Denis Quaid as the climate scientist hero in The Day After Tomorrow, Chiwetel Ejiofor as the geologist hero in 2012, Morgan Freeman in the Batman films as inventor Lucious Fox and CEO of Wayne Industries, and Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark in the Iron Man films.
Serendipitously, I’ve returned to where I started: Iron Man. As for all this science in the media, I think it’s a testament to its ubiquity in our lives.
