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Conundrum

Tue Nov 04 2014, 07:44PM

Registered Member #96 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4059

Hi all.
Remember the furore about the Antikythera mechanism?

Seems that wootz steel in Damascus swords uses nanovanadium which acts as a carbon nanotube formation catalyst.
(edit: corrected) also samauri swords used a similar method to increase durability.

Wonder what other technologies were lost due to ignorance and fear?
Rumors that the Ancient Egyptians had access to electric lighting are plausible, Hg based vacuum lights etc.

EDIT: Original research done by myself having read previous articles suggests that very low intensity UV plasma discharges in a Dendera-type mercury vacuum lamp can in fact induce fluorescence in certain minerals at the sorts of current you would get from a crude Wimshurst influence generator, due to the presence of both nitrogen, water and mercury vapor in the lamp bulb.

The field would actually be quite weak (ie microamps) but steady and possible to generate from a simple hand wound device broadly similar to a flywheel, powering the light for several hours while the flywheel slowly wound down.
If the Egyptians did indeed have clockwork which is likely given the Antikythera mechanism then this does indeed represent lost technology and could explain a lot of the inconsistencies in historical records.

Interestingly there are references to similar devices being used for medical treatments which actually makes sense as UV light is germicidal in a way similar to sunlight but with fewer side effects.

Not convinced all of the arguments against this are valid, on the basis that mercury metal was isolated well before CE in fact possibly around the time of the Sumerians.

Even more intriguing, mercury metal if spun round in a glass tube emits light even at 1atm due to charge separation.
If such a tube was coated with a basic phosphor such as CaS:Cu then it would make for a convenient "flashlight" source
when shaken and this was certainly feasible.
It is brighter at lower pressures which could have been achieved by the previously mentioned techniques.

EDIT: In answer to the problem of how to make phosphors, I looked into making CaS:Cu and it is trivial to do even with 17th century methods (glass, CaO, excess sulphur, Cu powder) and in some places in the world CaSO4 is native.
Also Cd is a good nanoparticle source and can be made easily using a similar method to the gold nanoparticles, if mixed with glass under somewhat controlled conditions will indeed fluoresce under weak UV irradiation.

-A
#include "pinchofsalt.h"

Shrad

Tue Nov 04 2014, 09:18PM

Registered Member #3215 Joined: Sun Sept 19 2010, 08:42PM
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Posts: 780

have you watched the "ancient aliens" serie from history channel?

also, the book "the chronicles of the ghirkÃ»" is a quite interesting approach of the subject

dexter

Tue Nov 04 2014, 10:12PM

Registered Member #42796 Joined: Mon Jan 13 2014, 06:34PM
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the show ancient aliens it has no scientific value is only for entertainment...
although straight up lying, grossly over exaggerating and cherry picking facts is hardly entertainment

about the Antikythera mechanism it only involved math and allot of manual filing... to go from such a simple device to "ancient Egyptian florescent lights" seems to far fetch...

i agree many technologies were lost during the time and rediscovered later but please don't tell me that x ancient civilization had access to devices and technologies we have for 100-200 years

Conundrum

Wed Nov 05 2014, 07:32AM

Registered Member #96 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4059

Not all clockwork was implausible, don't forget that early kinetic clocks were actually gravity driven.
Thanks to the loss of the library at Alexandria we will probably never know just how far their technology advanced barring some archaeological discovery.
(had they never heard of off-site cold storage?!)

dexter

Wed Nov 05 2014, 08:19AM

Registered Member #42796 Joined: Mon Jan 13 2014, 06:34PM
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the lack of evidence doesn't give a free pass to wild theories unless made by a fiction writer a scandal media or a conspiracy theorist but in all those cases it carries no scientific value

by looking at how the article about gold nanoparticles in roman times was worded and how they exaggerated the facts put their work either in the fiction category for entertainment or worse in the scandal media category

Conundrum

Wed Nov 05 2014, 08:32AM

Registered Member #96 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4059

Hmm.
It occurs to me that since we know for a fact that acids were routinely made in Roman times as strong as battery acid (ph 1) due to presence of etched rocks.

Gold refining was being done as early as 2000BCE and we know now that mercury might have been the method due to presence of residue in the gold from that era.

Heating wine gives you acetic acid and many minerals when heated in a retort generate chlorine and other useful gases, so HCl is actually easy to make given the right knowledge.

Don't forget that catalysts such as MnO2 can be dug out of the ground in some places in the world and they will cause interesting reactions.

"Scientific value" .. how did alchemy become chemistry again? Hard work, insight and inventive steps by thousands of hard working scientists who were persecuted at every step for "practicing the dark arts" .

#include "$0.02.h"

Shrad

Wed Nov 05 2014, 08:48AM

Registered Member #3215 Joined: Sun Sept 19 2010, 08:42PM
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Posts: 780

dexter wrote ...

the lack of evidence doesn't give a free pass to wild theories unless made by a fiction writer a scandal media or a conspiracy theorist but in all those cases it carries no scientific value

It opens minds, and that's what counts for me... it also makes children dream, and make them want to study in some cases, and this is at least beneficial

And as far as ancient aliens as a series is concerned, I didn't hear an affirmation a single time, only questions and mentions of mythology etc..

Most of it is easy to debunk, but it opens the eyes about the fact that human history is far older than we think...

dexter

Wed Nov 05 2014, 11:47AM

Registered Member #42796 Joined: Mon Jan 13 2014, 06:34PM
Location:
Posts: 195

i didn't say that Romans Greeks or any ancient culture were club wielding troglodytes... i'm fully aware of their ability to obtain and work metals... and at no point i said that alchemists were frauds in fact i didn't even mentioned any of the above...

i'm just concerned how the media presents those "mysteries" by distorting the facts and carefully wording the articles so that it looks sensational and how easy people "open" their minds jump on with calling thrusts wild speculations

a physics professor once said regarding the new discoveries in particle physics:
Scientists are humans to they like to brag and want recognition for their accomplishments and the media that covers these discoveries also wants to make the stories sensational often in the detriment of the scientific value because the targeted public is untrained. Is our job to take what they said with a grain of salt and sometimes with a big block of salt...

Conundrum

Wed Nov 05 2014, 06:49PM

Registered Member #96 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4059

Interesting.

It may be worth seeing if any off the shelf chemical combinations can be used to make OLED as these need much less voltage than EL.
I know that carborundum can emit yellow light but AFAIK unless the Egyptians were fortunate enough to find just the right kind of meteorite (google "moissanite") and apply a weak electrical current ie from amber or other electrostatic material nothing would happen.

Turns out that there are a number of somewhat simple compounds that can glow when cracked, smash glow crystals come to mind.
Some plant resins can emit light in this way in their natural form but only briefly.

hen918

Wed Nov 05 2014, 07:13PM

Registered Member #11591 Joined: Wed Mar 20 2013, 08:20PM
Location: UK
Posts: 556

Conundrum wrote ...

...
The field would actually be quite weak (ie microamps) but steady and possible to generate from a simple hand wound device broadly similar to a flywheel, powering the light for several hours while the flywheel slowly wound down.
...

I don't think they had the bearing technology to allow flywheels to spin for any appreciable length of time (certainly not several hours)

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