The Antikythera clock/calendar

Humans, unlike any animal, make calendars, record history and try to decode earth history. Every civilization had calendars, often several parallel models. One Egyptian calendar used the heliacal rise of Sothis to predict the Nile’s flood. A fixed length calendar was useful for astronomy and a lunar calendar for timing feasts. When Alexander conquered Babylon, he ordered the translation of the Babylonian astronomical tablets. The Greeks soon adopted the Babylonian Metonic intercalation system where 235 lunar months = 19 tropical years = 6940 days. The Greeks also adopted Babylonian mathematical techniques, sexagesimal angles and even used Babylonian eclipse records. We only know some of the construction details of their instruments, such as the dioptra. Ptolemy used the dioptra to measure the diameter of the moon and planets. His planet angular diameters are several times our angular sizes. Over the centuries astronomers measured with angles an expanding solar system which continues to this day.

In 1901, sponge divers discovered an ancient shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera. The wreck was loaded with booty, apparently headed for Rome after the Greeks lost their wars. The ship’s cargo included a strange box encrusted with marine growth. The Antikythera Mechanism contained bronze gears, differentials, planetary gears and slotted gears. (The slotted gears apparently compensated for the varying speed of the sun and moon against the background stars). One dial gave the position of the sun and moon in reference to the background ecliptic stars. A hand crank advanced the astronomical clock one day for each turn - useful for predicting eclipses. X-ray tomography reveals the engraving on the dials and the number of teeth on the 29 surviving gears. One back dial has four sectors and records the Olympiad cycle, a calendar used to number the year. They had four Panhellenic games at Isthmis, Olympia, Nemea and Pythia. Inscriptions for months used Corinthian month names. It is likely that Archimedes, from Syracuse, used Corinthian month names since that was a colony of Corinth. Cicero mentioned a mechanism Archimedes built that could calculate the position of the sun, moon and planets. (Archimedes was killed in 212 BC when the Romans took Syracuse.) He wrote a book on astronomical mechanisms, which is no longer extant. The Corinthian month names suggest that the Antikethera Mechanism may be a copy of his devise, constructed about 140 BC.

Solomon explained the cyclical nature of life in Ecclesiastes. He made a profound statement about longtime (Hebrew `owlam). It emphatically prevents us from understanding “all that God has made from beginning to the end.” Why can’t modern Christians reconcile the history of the earth and universe with the six thousand years of biblical history? Western people try to make everything in the universe fit their creed “that all things remain the same in being.” The presupposition that the properties of matter are not emergent is the foundation for scientific definitions of time and even scientific methods and formulas. Yet can see with our eyes the ancient universe and compare it to the present. The biblical distinctions between ancient time and later time are visibly confirmed. We can see that every clock, atomic and orbital, always accelerates. We can compare the galaxies at many ranges all the way back to the creation age. No perpetual motion atoms gleam from distant galaxies. The Hebrew verbs that describe how God formed the starry heavens are visibly confirmed. Galaxies grew from tiny globs packed with stars to huge spiral growth structures. Look at the heavens. It is there that you can see how completely and totally God vanquishes science, the system of reasoning and measuring based on the assumption of a pagan Greek. This assumption is especially significant in modern ideas about time used to construct scientific stories about earth and cosmic history.

Mars was Warm and Wet for Vast Eons.

The CRISM spectrometer on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter can identify minerals on the surface better than any previous satellite. MRO also has other instruments to complement the spectral and radar data. According to a study from the July 17 issue of Nature, the highlands of Mars contain clay deposits that could only have formed from liquid water. In some areas lava flows later buried the clays. Even later, impact craters punched through the lava and expose the clay layers. Water on ancient Mars was not just an occasional drizzle. In some locations water gushed out of the ground leaving behind minerals. The rover Spirit dug up pure powdered silicates with its non functional wheel in the Home Plate bowl. On earth pure silica comes from super hot water interacting with silicate rocks. This suggests hydrothermal vents were active in the past. Mars atmosphere today is so thin that liquid water, at least if it was not a thick slurry of salts and acids, would evaporate very rapidly.

Clays are not normally formed overnight. Yet river channels have transported clays from the highlands and deposited them in a crater lake. This suggests that water stood in the crater for long ages. Mars today is bitter cold. Phoenix landed on the surface of what seems to be a frozen sea. When Phoenix dug down and exposed the ice layers, the ice sublimated away.

The vast water based geology on Mars is clear evidence that it once was warm and wet and these wet conditions existed for a great long time. Doesn’t that contradict the 6,000 years of biblical history? Only if one tries to twist the Bible to make it fit science. No author of the Bible could have intended a scientific interpretation of their words. Western science did not begin until a mendicant friar convinced the scholastics to adopt Aristotle’s metaphysics. Aristotle was a pagan. His metaphysics (that the properties of matter are not emergent) is contradicted and even predicted by the words of the Bible. When we use biblical physics, instead of science, the evidence that supports the words of the Bible is simple and extensive. We can see how the galaxies formed long, long ago. We can see that every clock, atomic and orbital, and every atom continually change with age. We can see that ancient orbits took vast ages for a single cycle because we can observe how atoms and galactic orbits always accelerate as the stars come out and spread out to form growth spirals. What we see is precisely what the Hebrew words state about how God formed the heavens. We see creation as it occurred in real time. What we see with sight violates every law and principle of science. However, the laws of science presuppose that matter does not change itself, change relationally. Even the scientific system of measuring and mathematics presupposes that matter is not right now changing relationally. The God of the Bible says He will make foolish the wisdom of the world.

Look at Mars, not with preconceptions about clock like orbits and clock like atoms. Look at the universe with sight instead of an atomic perpetual motion creed. You will be able to cleans your mind from all the myths about invisible matter and vacuum processes. You will be able to accept the universe as it really is with sight. What we see with sight is a biblical cosmos, as described by the words of the Bible. Look.