It’s early morning in Jordan’s Wadi Rum and we’re loading our gear into the fleet of Infiniti QX80s, backed by only the sounds coming from doors opening and closing shut, and feet shuffling silently in the red sand. Despite the bright LED lights of our fleet SUVs, an observatory’s worth of glowing stars remain visible above, shining down in the pre-dawn desert. As I sit …
One of the most remote inhabited locations, Easter Island captivates because of the remnants of the ancient civilization it once housed: moai statues and “ahu” platforms, found predominantly along the island’s coast. Many of these iconic relics are actually tombs for the dead. Because of their placement, these artifacts are jeopardized by rising sea levels. More than just the loss of monuments, it may lead …
In a 2000-year-old shipwreck off the coast of the Greek island Antikythera, scientists discovered the oldest known example of a computer—a complex, computational device that predicted astrological events along a calendar year. This ancient hybrid clock/calculator, known as the Antikythera mechanism, featured brass gears and dials built from mathematical ratios. While discovered 115 years ago, it wasn’t until 1959 that Princeton science historian Derek J. …
