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New insights into the function of the world's oldest analog computer, the famous Antikythera mechanism, have been made with help from an unlikely source: technology developed for the study of gravitational waves...Roughly the size of a shoebox, the device features an array of intricately tooled gears that are surprisingly complex for any innovation from the second century BCE. Over the decades, studies of the device have revealed that it likely functioned as a hand-operated computer that would have allowed its operator to predict the arrival of eclipses, as well as calculate the positions of planets over time.Fast forward to 2020,...

1 of 4 | The last blue moon rises behind One World Trade Center and the Manhattan skyline shorty after sunset on October 31, 2020. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo The last full moon of summer will be the best of the entire season as stargazers witness a rare celestial sight -- one that hasn't been seen in nearly three years. A blue moon will appear Wednesday night with moonlight so bright that it may cast shadows. Despite its nickname, the moon will not emit a blue glow. Instead, the nickname means that it is the second...

Researchers from Durham University have decoded the meaning of markings found in Ice Age drawings, providing evidence of early writing at least 20,000 years ago.The team were studying cave art, found in at least 400 European caves such as Lascaux, Chauvet and Altamira, which contains a series of lines and dots found alongside drawings of animals...The team has revealed that the lines and dots indicate the mating and birthing seasons of animals. A "Y" sign formed by adding a diverging line to another has also been determined to mean "giving birth".By using the birth cycles of equivalent animals today as...

I had the day off today and I noticed that all the news programs are calling it Lunar New Year rather than Chinese New Year.

SAN FRANCISCO, - A San Francisco-based computer scientist says he has solved the mystery of dating Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. Year 5771 begins at sundown Wednesday. Steve Morse's interest in the Jewish calendar began when he was a teenager, more than 50 years ago, The Denver Post reported. He tried to figure out his grandmother's birth date in the Gregorian calendar -- the one commonly used in most of the world now -- from the one in the Jewish calendar used on her records from Europe. The Jewish calendar is a difficult one, based on the movements of...

The Jews as a people receive their first commandment in today's Torah portion. The few preceding commandments were given to individuals, Abraham for example was given the mitzvah of circumcision. The reckoning of the calendar according to lunar cycles introduces Israel to formal Judaism. The lunar calendar must obviously have a special quality beyond its specific function, a pervasive characteristic to merit its beginning Jewry's service of G-d. The moon has phases of growth, decline, disappearance, and rebirth. The sun is relatively constant, not appreciably different from day to day. The lunar calendar rather than the solar governs the religious...