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An article about a new hypothesis regarding the Antikythera machine:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/04/antikythera-mechanism/

The article's title says it had a "surprising Sun tracker". But when you read further, it turns out that they're apparently talking about a variable scale as a means of dealing with the Sun's changing speed during the year. Interesting, but not quite a "sun tracker" and, honestly, not all that "surprising" either.

And if you haven't seen it yet, here's a really wonderful video offering one plausible model of the construction of the Antikythera machine:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqhuAnySPZ0

It's an amazing device, no doubt about it, but I have to say that I worry that these reconstructions may be overly optimistic. In effect, they're imagining "what might have been" based on the remnants of the machine and there's not much incentive to scale back the extrapolations.

-FER

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