Antikythera mechanism explained by LEGO

The Antikythera mechanism is impressive on its own means. If you don’t know or are too bored to check Wikipedia, the Antikythera mechanism is one of the most important archeological artifacts ever found, so mind-blowing that it could very well headline an Indiana Jones adventure.

Discovered in 1901 in the Antikythera ship wreck (in the first instance of underwater archeology) and dating back to Ancient Greece (150-100 BC), it is a very complex calculator for astronomical events, with impressive accuracy. In fact, it precedes any other known clockwork mechanism of similar complexity by more than a millennium! Figuring out what the mechanism does was no piece of cake either. It took almost 100 years and impressive technology.

And it simply takes 3 minutes and a reconstruction made of LEGOs to explain its logic, in this great video that won Best Nature Video, as voted by Nature Network readers.

via GOOD.IS

See also:

• A tale of twins (or how to explain relativity theory)
• Strange things that do exist: Computational Origami at MIT
• 3D geopolitical maps out of LEGO

Counting moons

Time passes by. And we are always counting. Hours, days, months, moons. Dimitre Lima’s calendar for 2011 is, actually, a lunar calendar, which depicts the different phases of the lunar month.

See full image of the lunar calendar after the jump.

Moon, eclipsed

via topleftpixel