Strangest Things (2021–2022): Season 1, Episode 4 - The Ancient Computer, the Pigeon and the Roman Nanotechnology - full transcript
A look at an ancient Greek device built to contain the knowledge of the cosmos and a color-changing Roman cup.
[Corey] Is this
2,000-year-old lump
of corroded metal
the world's oldest
analog computer?
[Tamar] There are over
30 gears inside
and some gears
have up to 65 teeth on them.
[Corey]
Could this world war two bomb
really have been piloted
by pigeons?
[Sascha] If you are worried
about pigeons
going to the bathroom
on your car,
now you've got a pigeon piloting
a thousand-pound bomb.
[Corey] And how can this
ancient Roman cup
change color?
[Andrew]
It's not an optical illusion.
It really does change color
from red to green.
[Corey]
These are the most remarkable
and mysterious objects on Earth,
hidden away in museums,
laboratories,
and storage rooms.
Now, new research and technology
can get under their skin
like never before.
We can rebuild
them, pull them apart...
and zoom in to reveal
the unbelievable,
the ancient, and
the truly bizarre.
These are the world's
strangest things.
[suspenseful music playing]
In a museum in Athens
sits a misshapen lump
of corroded metal.
In all
of archaeological history,
no other object like it
has ever been found.
It has blown our ideas
of the ancient world
clean out of the water
and it's still doing it today.
[Philip] It's an utterly
extraordinary object.
There is nothing
remotely like this
that is that old.
[Corey] Now, using cutting
edge imaging technology,
it's been restored
to its original state.
This is the
Antikythera mechanism,
a 2,000-year-old machine
just 13 inches tall.
Inside is an astonishing network
of interconnected cogs
and dials.
[Abigail] The level of precision
of all the different gears
and the mechanisms,
it's incredible.
It's almost stultifying.
[Corey] This is technology
for understanding the heavens
that's over a thousand years
ahead of its time.
[Abigail]
It's a portable cosmos.
[Corey] For 100 years,
archeologists have been
grappling with its secrets.
Now, new research
can finally reveal them.
Who made it?
Where does it come from?
How does it work?
And what exactly is it?
[suspenseful music playing]
[Corey] The mystery begins
over 100 years ago,
40 miles off
the southern tip of Greece.
[Tamar] It's 1900
and we're in the island
of Antikythera.
There are some sponge divers
who take shelter in a cove
and they go diving
and they discover bronzes
and marbles, and they realize
they've stumbled
on an ancient wreck.
[Corey] Using coins
recovered from the seabed,
archaeologists date the wreck
to around 60 BCE.
The incredible hoard
of treasures they find
hits the headlines.
The small block
of corroded metal
barely makes a ripple.
[Tamar] So local archaeologist
is looking at the finds
and little piece
actually falls off
and he notices a cog inside.
And that's unexpected.
[Corey] But many
archaeologists believe
the presence of gears and cogs
means this is a relatively
modern object
that's ended up on the wreck
by accident.
Generally, when you find
intricate metal objects
like that,
it could look like
it had just fallen in there.
[Corey] For 40 years,
the metal curiosity is ignored.
It can't be genuine or can it?
In 1951, it catches
the eye of a scholar
from Cambridge University.
[Tamar] Derek de Solla Price,
a physicist,
begins to study this mechanism
and he realizes
that actually this is
an advanced clockwork mechanism.
[Corey]
Based on a detailed study
and the presence of some
ancient Greek letters,
Price makes a radical claim.
This is not modern.
It really is 2,000 years old.
It's an extraordinary theory.
[Abigail]
It's almost inconceivable
that this kind of object
could have been made
in the ancient world.
[Corey] Price analyzes
other fragments
and further faint characters
that are barely visible.
And he makes an even more
astonishing claim.
It's a celestial computer.
[Philip] When he suggested this,
it was considered outrageous.
Nothing like this was known
or thought to be possible
from that period of history.
[Corey] 20 years later,
Price destroys
any remaining doubts.
He uses a combination
of x-rays and gamma rays
to peer through
millennia of corrosion.
What he finds
is even more astonishing
than his most
outlandish suggestions.
[Tamar] You can see that
there are over 30 gears inside.
Some of these are made
of flat sheet bronze
and some of the gears
have up to 65 teeth on them.
The complexity of that
was unexpected.
[Corey] And
in the last few years,
our understanding
of the Antikythera mechanism
has been transformed
by new research.
Experts ship in a cutting edge
3D x-ray tomographic scanner
with a resolution far beyond
anything Price has in the 1970s.
[Philip]
Tomography basically means
you take a series of slices
that you can see
through the device
that you can see
- buried structures.
- [Corey] And it turns out
that Price barely scratched
the surface.
[Philip]
We now know that there are
37 or 38 of these gears involved
in making the movement
of this device.
[Corey]
The scans reveal a machine
vastly more complex
than Price imagined.
And in the last decade,
computerized image
analysis of these scans
has resolved buried writing,
writing that hasn't been seen
by a human eye for 2, 000 years.
[Abigail] The inscriptions
not only fill in
missing pieces
that don't survive,
but they also give us
a much greater idea
of how this was used.
[Corey]
Experts are even able to read
parts of an instruction manual
that explain
what the mechanism is.
Price has been right all along.
[Philip] What this device
is basically designed to do
is to show you the positions
of the celestial bodies.
So that's the five planets,
the sun, and the moon
at any point in the year.
Five planets
because that was all
that were known at the time,
so it was Mercury, Venus,
Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Corey] This is what
experts now believe
the Antikythera mechanism
originally looked like.
It can predict the positions
of the sun, moon, and planets
years into the future.
No other clockwork celestial
calendar will appear
until 1348, 1,400 years later.
And that one is like a toy
in comparison.
Because this isn't just
the world's first known
analog computer,
it's also
extraordinarily accurate.
How did its creator build in
such astonishing precision
using technology
we didn't even know existed
2,000 years ago?
[suspenseful music playing]
[suspenseful music playing]
[Corey] How does this
2,000-year-old device
accurately predict the movements
of our solar system?
It was originally housed
in a wooden case
about the size
of a shallow shoe box.
The mechanism inside is driven
by complicated combinations
of gear sets,
including a spur gear
designed to turn
the rotary system 90 degrees,
technology that isn't seen again
until the middle ages,
1,400 years later.
[Philip]
On the front, there's a dial
that shows 365 days of the year.
And if you turn the handle
of the device,
the pointers that represent
the different celestial bodies,
the planets and so forth,
move around to show you
where they would be in the sky
at any day during the year.
But also throughout
different years
because, you know,
the outer planets
take much more longer
than a year
to complete their orbit.
[Corey] There are separate
pointers for the sun,
Mars, Venus, Jupiter,
Mercury, Saturn, and the moon.
Each dial and clock face
serves a unique purpose,
such as counting down
to athletic games
like the Olympics,
or indicating which sign
of the zodiac the sun is in,
while tables record
annual events
like the summer
and winter solstices.
[Philip] It captures
with great accuracy
throughout the entire year.
You know,
the fine details of the...
For example,
the trajectory of the moon.
[Corey] The tomographic scans
revealed that the moon pointer
has a tiny rotating moon
on its end.
Experts believe it was painted
half white and half black.
[Philip] You see the little ball
that represented
the moon rotates
so that you can see the
different phases of the moon.
[Corey] Experts also notice
that the speed
of the moon pointer
changes as it turns.
But it's not a mistake.
It's genius.
[Maggie] If you go outside
and measure the moon
as it passes through the sky,
it seems to speed up
and slow down.
This is because the moon
is going around the Earth,
not in a circular orbit,
but in what we call an ellipse,
a squashed circle.
So, when the moon
is closer to the Earth,
it seems to speed up.
And when the moon is further
away from the Earth,
it seems to slow down.
[Philip] It's an incredibly
difficult thing
to realize with circular gears,
but there's a mechanism
for doing that.
[Corey] The changing speed
of the moon pointer works
using two gears
slightly out of alignment
with each other.
The drive gear has a peg
that fits in a slot
on the moon gear.
As it goes around, it's fastest
when the peg is at either end
of the slot,
but slows down as the peg
slides along the slot.
[Philip] The kind of precision
with which you had
to make these gears
was extraordinary.
[Corey] Research
in the last 15 years reveals
that the Antikythera mechanism
can even predict solar eclipses.
[Maggie] The mechanism
isn't just extraordinary
because it's complex.
But it condenses
all the knowledge
of Greek astronomy into one
very small convenient box.
It is quite breathtaking.
It's the universe in a box.
[Corey]
No other machine like this
will appear for another
1,400 years.
Its inventor must be a genius.
So who is it?
[dramatic music playing]
[Philip]
One of the first people that
one might think of
from this period
is Archimedes.
Archimedes was not just someone
who was incredibly
knowledgeable about
how the world worked
and about the physics
of the heavens.
He was also an inventor.
[Corey] Archimedes creates
large war machines
with levers and pulleys.
He designs intricate devices
such as the world's
first odometer,
a portable machine
for measuring distance.
And the Archimedes screw,
a water pump still used
across the world today.
[Abigail] He was really
the first port of call
when people thought
who could have invented
this incredible object,
who could have encapsulated
so many different aspects
of Greek science into one thing,
into one place.
[Corey] So, is this another
of Archimedes' inventions?
There's one problem
with this theory.
The creator
of the Antikythera mechanism
knows that the moon speed
seems to vary.
[Maggie]
The first person we know of
that was aware
of the apparent speeding up
and slowing down of the moon
was Hipparchus of Nicaea
around 170 BC.
[Corey] By that time,
Archimedes has been dead
for more than 40 years.
So if not the great
Archimedes, who else?
Inscriptions on one
of the dials provide
a tantalizing clue.
[Abigail]
One set of dials tells about
the Olympic Games,
which we all might expect,
but also lesser known
really more locally based
festivals like the Halia.
[Corey]
The Halia, a regional games
that only take place
on the Island of Rhodes.
[Tamar] It's thought that
this might be
a special calling card
as if to say,
"Made in Rhodes,"
because it's a very
localized game.
[Abigail] And Rhodes
had a long standing tradition
of metalworking, most famously,
the Colossus of Rhodes
which was a massive
bronze statue
that framed the entrance
to the harbor.
[Corey] So if the mechanism
came from Rhodes,
did its creator as well?
A prime candidate
is the man who discovers
the changing speed of
the moon, Hipparchus.
[Philip] Hipparchus lived
and worked around
the right time,
about 170 BC
and are in the right place,
he worked in Rhodes.
And it's thought
to be likely that
that's where this device
came from.
[Corey] It could be Hipparchus
but he died 60 years
before the Antikythera
ship sinks,
meaning the mechanism
would be very old already
when it's lost.
And there is
one other candidate.
He also lived in Rhodes
and at exactly the right time...
the astronomer, Posidonius.
[Philip]
One very enticing reason
why it's thought that he might
have had something to do
with this device
is that at one stage
he was visited
by the Roman writer, Cicero
who wrote about it in his diary.
And Cicero said that
this man Posidonius
told him about a device
that he'd made
to represent the motions
of the planets.
[Corey] Archimedes, Hipparchus,
or Posidonius, we may
never know for sure.
Whoever makes
it is clearly a genius
because he envisions
the universe
as a clockwork mechanism.
[Philip] It suggests
a kind of thinking
that really we don't get
familiar with
until the age of Newton,
mechanical age,
the idea that you can think
about the universe
as a kind of clockwork system
as a mechanical device.
Clearly someone at that time
in ancient Greece
already was thinking
that perhaps nature works
that way.
[Corey] If not for a group
of sponge divers
100 years ago,
the secrets of this
strange thing
might have remained lost
at the bottom of the Aegean
forever.
[suspense music playing]
[Corey] At the National Museum
of American History
in Washington, DC,
is the nose cone
of a World War II bomb,
but this is no ordinary bomb.
On the front are tiny windows
for its tiny pilots.
[Tim] The aim of this technology
was to guide
a 1,000-pound bomb...
with a pigeon.
[Corey] Now, using state
of the art digital imaging...
we can reveal it
in all its glory.
This is the pigeon bomb.
[Sascha] In some ways,
it might be
one of the smarter bombs
that we've ever invented.
[Corey] Measuring 25 inches long
and 23 inches wide,
it's just large enough
to carry three
tiny kamikaze pilots.
Could this bizarre contraption
really work?
Who came up with it?
And why on Earth
does anyone need
a pigeon-guided bomb
in the first place?
[suspense music playing]
[suspenseful music playing]
[Corey] This is a bomb
designed to be flown
by a pigeon.
Why would anyone do that?
Most of the history
of modern aerial bombing
has been a history of bombs
missing their targets.
And now if you're thinking
about naval bombing,
it becomes an even
dicier proposition
because you're trying to drop
a large piece of metal
unguided onto a moving object
that is going to be pretty small
relative to where you are.
[Corey] It's estimated
that during World War II,
as few as one percent of bombs
dropped on ships
hit their targets.
[explosion]
[Corey] The need for more
accurate bombing strategies
becomes top priority.
There's a couple of different
possible solutions.
One is, use torpedoes,
drop torpedoes from planes
because torpedoes
are actually meant to hit ships.
Another is, use a guidance
system of some sort,
something to make
these dumb bombs
at least a little bit smarter.
[Corey] As an alternative
to simply dropping a bomb
and hoping it would plummet
to its target,
both sides developed
glide bombs.
[Tim]
The intent of the glide bomb
is that there's enough control,
so as opposed to just
doing a free fall,
you can do some adjustments
and increase the probability
that you're gonna hit
your target.
[Sascha]
The Germans have some success
with the first glide bomb,
the Fritz X.
[suspense music playing]
[Sascha] However,
the Fritz X has a weakness,
it's radio-controlled.
And this creates
two potential problems.
Number one, you have to keep
the plane that launched it
flying at the same time
so it can steer it
and that puts the plane
and its crew in danger.
And two, as a radio-guided bomb,
the radio signal can be jammed
and later on in the war,
the Allies were able to jam
that signal
quite successfully.
[Corey] The perfect glide bomb
would not only
need to be unjammable,
it would also need
to be autonomous,
able to guide itself to a target
without the need
for external control.
[Sascha] So how do you create
a guided bomb
without radio guidance?
Well, you wanna put
the guidance package
inside the bomb itself
and make something
that's not dependent
upon a radio signal.
Hence, the pigeon bomb.
[Corey] But of all the animals
in the world, why pigeons?
[suspense music playing]
[Philip] Pigeons
have been useful to us
for sending messages
for centuries
because they have
this incredible ability
to navigate in particular
to home to navigate back
from where they were
sent out from.
And so they've been used
for this purpose for millennia.
The ancient Egyptians use them.
The ancient Greeks use them.
In fact, one of the messages
the Greek trusted to pigeons
was the results of the Olympics.
[suspense music playing]
[Sascha] The use
of pigeons in warfare
really came into its own
in the modern age.
World War I,
half a million pigeons
were used to send messages
back and forth.
And one pigeon
even became a hero.
This was a pigeon
that served the French
and was named Cher Ami,
and it delivered its message
despite the fact
that it lost an eye
and was severely wounded
in the process.
It was actually given
a military commendation
for its heroic service
in wartime.
Pigeons also saw
very important uses
in the Second World War.
The Allies dropped
homing pigeons
with requests for information
over German-occupied territory,
and the pigeons
had little cards on them
that resistance fighters
could use,
fill out the information,
put it back in the pigeon,
and then the pigeon of course
would fly straight home.
[Corey] And there is one
other pigeon characteristic
that would be essential
to becoming a bomb
guidance system.
[Philip] Birds generally
are actually a lot smarter
in many ways
that they're given credit for,
you know, this notion
of birdbrain is really unfair.
But even among birds, pigeons
are among the smartest.
Pigeons are very good
it seems at learning a task.
[Corey] So pigeon pilots
do make a strange sort of sense.
But that still leaves
one big question.
How on Earth do you teach them
to fly this bomb?
[suspenseful music playing]
[Corey] The pigeon bomb,
one of the strangest inventions
in the history of warfare.
Who could have come up
with such a bizarre idea?
Enter pigeon fancier,
BF Skinner.
[Sascha] BF Skinner
is one of the fathers
of modern psychology
and he's particularly famous
for developing various methods
of what we now call
behavior psychology.
Really trying to understand
the basic impulses
by which
thinking creatures operate,
how they respond to stimuli.
[Philip] This idea
that you can get a response
according to some
particular stimulus,
that goes back at least
to the experiments
that Pavlov did,
famously with dogs.
He found that, you know,
dogs would start to salivate
if they were shown food.
[Sascha] Pavlov was much
more interested in very,
very simple responses to stimuli
and physical responses
whereas Skinner is taking it
a bit farther.
He's actually trying to,
in some ways,
control the way you respond
consciously to various signals.
[Philip] Skinner devised
this apparatus.
It was really just a box.
It's often now called
a Skinner Box.
So the animal is put inside it
and then given
a particular stimulus,
and once it happens to make
the response you're after,
then the animal gets a reward,
food for example.
And quite quickly,
relatively intelligent
creatures like pigeons
will figure out what it is
that's being expected of them.
They will remember the behavior
that created the reward
and they'll do it again
and again and again.
[Corey] In initial tests,
the pigeons respond
even better than expected.
[Philip] Skinner found that
you can actually train pigeons
to do some pretty
complicated things,
things that certainly
you'd never find birds
doing normally. So for example,
he trained them
to play ping pong.
[playful music playing]
[Corey]
Encouraged by the results
of his pigeon training
experiments,
Skinner goes to the government
seeking money
to develop his pigeon bomb.
[Sascha] BF Skinner
comes to the US military
with what on the surface
would seem like
an utterly absurd idea.
But you have to understand
that World War II
is a time
of great experimentation
and it is hardly
the craziest idea
that is tried out.
Amongst those crazy ideas
are bats carrying napalm.
And my personal favorite
which was
the Soviet-trained dogs
carrying anti-tank bombs.
They were trained to climb
underneath the German tanks
to set off their bombs.
Just one tiny miscalculation,
they were trained
on Russian tanks
so as soon as these dogs
were let loose,
the first thing they did
with their bombs was dive
right under the Russian tanks
so not...
not going as according to plan
with the whole bomb dog thing.
[Corey] Using animals
as bomb delivery systems
clearly has a poor track record.
But BF Skinner is convinced
his pigeon bomb concept
is... Well, bombproof.
But how would it actually work?
[suspense music playing]
[Tim] The idea was
to take a glide bomb
and at the front
add a pressure-sealed nose cone
where the pigeon
could actually be mounted.
[Sascha] There's a little screen
in front of the pigeon
onto which
an image of their target
is being projected,
and the pigeon is trained
to peck at the image,
and then the steering system
responds
to the pigeons movements
and aims the bomb at the target.
[Corey] To minimize
the chance of one pigeon
guiding the bomb off course,
each bomb would carry
three pigeon pilots.
[Tim] The three pigeons
would actually operate
so that the majority vote
would always end up
controlling the trajectory
of the glide bomb.
[Corey] Understandably,
the idea of putting
a high explosive bomb
under the control
of three pigeons does not
initially go down well
with the US military.
But Skinner is adamant
it can work.
[Sascha] So in 1943,
Skinner receives $25,000
to explore his idea,
which was a princely sum
at the time.
[Corey] Skinner is given
basic details
of the glide bomb.
It's known as a Pelican.
His experiment is given
the perfect code name.
Project Pigeon.
Having settled on the idea
of projecting the image
from a lens
onto a tilting screen
that could sense
where the bird was pecking,
Skinner begins testing them
on realistic images,
and the results are startling.
[Sascha] When someone
describes the pigeon bomb to you,
it just sounds ludicrous.
But when you see footage
of these pigeons
pecking at the image of the ship
projected on the screen
in front of you,
you see, no,
this is actually working.
[Corey] But as far as we know,
the pigeon bomb
never takes flight.
So what goes wrong?
[Corey] This is a bomb
piloted by pigeons.
Its creator,
BF Skinner is convinced
it's a viable weapon
in the war against the Nazis.
[Sascha] In 1944,
Skinner turns up
to demonstrate his solution
to a team of scientists
and he's ready to go.
He's got the film,
he's got his little
pigeon pilots,
he's got the mock up
of the capsule,
and it worked.
He has solved the problem.
He has created
an unjammable guidance system,
assuming no one
has breadcrumbs handy.
[Corey] But convincing
the skeptical scientists
proves impossible.
[Tim] In fact, the meeting ended
by someone pulling Skinner aside
and suggesting to him
that he just go out
and get drunk,
which he interpreted accurately
as a very bad sign.
[Corey] Unknown to Skinner,
while he's busy
training pigeons,
a rival project is developing
an alternative solution
to the problem.
Skinner's solution works.
He has the guidance system
all set up.
The problem is by the time
he's perfected it,
the other solution
that was being explored,
the radar guidance system
has also advanced considerably,
and that's the one
that the military goes with,
and they end up
making 2,600 of these bombs,
which are known
as the bat bombs.
And you can say this about
the radar-guided system is,
is there's a lot
less cleanup afterwards.
[Corey] The pigeon bomb
never takes flight.
And despite all that training,
it's brave feathered pilots
are never given the chance
to prove
they have the right stuff.
It's tough being a war pigeon.
In the depths of the
British Museum in London,
is one of the strangest
Roman artifacts
ever discovered.
At first glance,
this 1,700-year-old cup
looks decorative,
but otherwise unremarkable.
Now, carefully reconstructing it
with the latest
digital imaging technology
reveals its secrets,
standing roughly
six and a half inches tall,
this is the Lycurgus Cup.
It's an ancient relic
with a mystifying party trick.
It changes color.
[Andrew] This is such
an incredible artifact.
It's not an optical illusion,
it really does change color
from red to green
as you move around in the light.
[Corey] How does it work?
How was it made?
And what exactly is it?
[Mark] The Lycurgus Cup is a cup
from about 1,700 years ago
from around 300 AD,
so late Roman period,
a time when glass technologies
have been fairly
well developed at this point
and getting more complex.
[Corey]
Mythical figures seem to float
above the inner glass chalice.
Archeologists call this
a cage cup.
[Mark] In fact, it's the most
well-preserved cage cup
in the ancient world.
Even in the Roman days
in the Fourth Century,
when this cup was actually
made and used, uh,
this would have been
a rare piece.
[Corey] Microscopic
examination shows the cup
and its floating cage
are made from a single
piece of glass.
[Anna] Glass is a really brittle
and breakable material.
So the delicacy involved
is quite incredible.
They would have used tiny tools
to file away very carefully
the areas of glass
that they didn't want.
They actually undercut
the design
so that there's areas
under the person
where there's air gaps
and just little legs
that attach it to the cup.
The terrifying thing about this,
is one slipup or one sneeze
from the person
that was doing this
would have meant
melting the whole thing down
and starting again from scratch.
[Corey]
But it's the glass itself
that is truly spectacular.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Mark] What's remarkable
about this glass
is the fact
that it changes colors
and that I've never seen
outside of this cup.
[Andrew] If you look at the cup
just under normal light,
then the cup appears green.
But if you put the cup
in front of the light,
the light shining through it
appears red.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Mark] No one would have
really seen these things
even in the Roman days
a cup changing color,
it would have been
an extremely rare piece.
Most people would have just
been completely amazed.
[Corey] Possession
of such a unique object
would broadcast
the owner's status.
[Mark] This is the kind of piece
you really wanna show off.
Here you are,
you've built your fancy house,
you have your fancy parties,
but finally,
the sort of center showpiece
would be this cup.
[dramatic music playing]
[Corey] It's known
as dichroic glass,
which means two-colored.
For centuries, its secrets
remained a mystery.
Studying the cup under
a normal microscope reveals...
nothing.
It appears to be
like any other Roman glass.
So how can a 1,700-year-old cup
change color?
[dramatic music playing]
[Corey] An ancient Roman cup
with a color-changing
party trick.
For centuries,
this unique ability
defies explanation.
[Anna] In 1990, scientists used
an electron microscope
to have a look
at what was going on
inside the glass itself.
[Corey] They discovered
tiny particles of gold,
silver, and copper
suspended in the glass.
[Anna] These are nanoparticles,
so they're about a thousandth
of the width of a human hair.
It's these tiny
metallic particles
that hold the secret
to the amazing
color-changing effects
that we see in this glass.
And it's all because
of quantum effects
which happen down
at the subatomic level.
[Corey] The effect works
because white light
is not just one color.
[Andrew] White Light
is actually a mixture
of all the colors
of the rainbow,
red, orange, green,
blue, indigo, violet.
[Corey] The smallest particles
of light are called photons.
And each color of light
is caused by photons
of a different energy.
The magic happens
when these photons
enter the glass and hit
the nanoparticles of metal.
[Daniel] Because
they're metal particles,
they've got like a cloud
of electrons
around the outside of them.
And when the photon
hits the cloud of electrons,
it's absorbed, and it sets up
a sort of vibration
in the cloud of electrons.
It's like a jumper
hitting a trampoline,
the whole thing flexes
and a wave runs around it.
And then when it flexes
back out again,
it spits out the photon
back the way it came.
[Corey] Scientists discovered
that the precise diameter
of the nanoparticles
in the glass
causes only green photons
to bounce back.
[Andrew] By very carefully
varying the quantities,
the ingredients,
when you're making this glass,
you can make these particles
exactly the right size
to scatter the green light,
allow the other colors through
and create this
beautiful effect.
[Corey] When you look
at the light
reflected by the cup,
you see green.
[Daniel] The rest of the light
goes right through the cup.
And white light minus green
is that kind of
plummy red color.
[Corey] So when the light
is shining through the glass,
you see red.
[Anna] What's incredible
about this glass is that
in order to produce
these nanoparticles,
the maker would have had
to have ground up
the metals into a really,
really fine powder,
much, much finer than talcum
powder, for example,
and then embedded that
into the glass
and dispersed it evenly
so it's evenly distributed
throughout, in a very,
very specific amount.
[Corey] The effect is caused
by a minute amount
of the metals.
[Anna] We think
that the amount of silver
and gold in this cup is about
300 parts per million
for the silver and about
40 parts per million
for the gold.
So if you were to clump
all of that silver
and gold together,
it would still be
a particle that is too small
for the naked eye to see.
[Corey] Scientists
call the quantum effect
that causes the color change,
surface plasmon resonance.
This is nanotechnology,
the manipulation of matter
at an atomic
or near-atomic scale.
[Anna] It's probably
pretty safe to say
that the Romans
didn't understand
the quantum effects
of what was going on
inside their glass.
But clearly,
someone knew enough to know
that if you added these metals
in these quantities
into this material,
then you could create
these amazing
color-changing effects.
[Corey] With its extraordinary
quantum glass,
the Lycurgus Cup may well be
the most spectacular cage cup
ever created.
Who is this unique object
made for?
[dramatic music playing]
[Mark] You'd have been certainly
an extremely wealthy individual,
a high-class individual,
maybe even someone
associated with the emperor
or the emperor's family.
[Corey] The cup is probably made
in the early Fourth Century AD,
when the Roman Empire is divided
between two warring emperors,
Constantine and Licinius.
Crucially, Licinius
is based in Thrace
in the eastern empire.
[Mark] The cup shows
the mythical king, Lycurgus,
who is a Thracian king,
battling Dionysus, God of Wine.
[Corey] In the myth,
Lycurgus of Thrace
is defeated by Dionysus.
Also known as the Roman God,
Bacchus.
[Mark] And it could be
symbolic for Licinius,
the western Roman emperor
who moved to Thrace.
During this time,
the emperor Constantine,
who was the ruler
of the eastern Roman Empire,
did defeat Licinius
and this may be
a kind of symbolism,
if you will.
[Corey] So it's possible
the cup's decoration
is symbolic of Licinius' defeat
by Constantine.
If it is made
to celebrate his victory,
Emperor Constantine
may have drunk
from this very cup.
Whoever owned it, the survival
of this extraordinarily
fragile ancient wonder
through 2,000 years of turmoil
is nothing short of a miracle.
[dramatic music playing]
[Corey] Today, our understanding
of the cup's unique
color-changing ability
is helping develop
pioneering new technology.
[Andrew] Inspired by these
beautiful brightly-colored
nanoparticles
in the Lycurgus Cup,
scientists at the University
of Illinois
have been able to develop
incredibly sensitive sensors.
So in the Lycurgus Cup,
all of those little gold
and silver nanoparticles
are surrounded by glass,
but instead of glass,
you put these nanoparticles
in something like water,
you can detect tiny changes
in the concentration
of different things
dissolved in the water
by looking at the changes
in the color of the sensor.
This means this technology
has applications
for medicine
where you can detect
tiny quantities of things
in people's bodily fluids,
to setting explosives
where you can detect
trace amounts
of signature chemicals
that give away the presence
of a bomb.
[Corey] It seems that sometimes
discovering the secrets
of the ancient world
may unlock the secrets
of our own future.
2,000-year-old lump
of corroded metal
the world's oldest
analog computer?
[Tamar] There are over
30 gears inside
and some gears
have up to 65 teeth on them.
[Corey]
Could this world war two bomb
really have been piloted
by pigeons?
[Sascha] If you are worried
about pigeons
going to the bathroom
on your car,
now you've got a pigeon piloting
a thousand-pound bomb.
[Corey] And how can this
ancient Roman cup
change color?
[Andrew]
It's not an optical illusion.
It really does change color
from red to green.
[Corey]
These are the most remarkable
and mysterious objects on Earth,
hidden away in museums,
laboratories,
and storage rooms.
Now, new research and technology
can get under their skin
like never before.
We can rebuild
them, pull them apart...
and zoom in to reveal
the unbelievable,
the ancient, and
the truly bizarre.
These are the world's
strangest things.
[suspenseful music playing]
In a museum in Athens
sits a misshapen lump
of corroded metal.
In all
of archaeological history,
no other object like it
has ever been found.
It has blown our ideas
of the ancient world
clean out of the water
and it's still doing it today.
[Philip] It's an utterly
extraordinary object.
There is nothing
remotely like this
that is that old.
[Corey] Now, using cutting
edge imaging technology,
it's been restored
to its original state.
This is the
Antikythera mechanism,
a 2,000-year-old machine
just 13 inches tall.
Inside is an astonishing network
of interconnected cogs
and dials.
[Abigail] The level of precision
of all the different gears
and the mechanisms,
it's incredible.
It's almost stultifying.
[Corey] This is technology
for understanding the heavens
that's over a thousand years
ahead of its time.
[Abigail]
It's a portable cosmos.
[Corey] For 100 years,
archeologists have been
grappling with its secrets.
Now, new research
can finally reveal them.
Who made it?
Where does it come from?
How does it work?
And what exactly is it?
[suspenseful music playing]
[Corey] The mystery begins
over 100 years ago,
40 miles off
the southern tip of Greece.
[Tamar] It's 1900
and we're in the island
of Antikythera.
There are some sponge divers
who take shelter in a cove
and they go diving
and they discover bronzes
and marbles, and they realize
they've stumbled
on an ancient wreck.
[Corey] Using coins
recovered from the seabed,
archaeologists date the wreck
to around 60 BCE.
The incredible hoard
of treasures they find
hits the headlines.
The small block
of corroded metal
barely makes a ripple.
[Tamar] So local archaeologist
is looking at the finds
and little piece
actually falls off
and he notices a cog inside.
And that's unexpected.
[Corey] But many
archaeologists believe
the presence of gears and cogs
means this is a relatively
modern object
that's ended up on the wreck
by accident.
Generally, when you find
intricate metal objects
like that,
it could look like
it had just fallen in there.
[Corey] For 40 years,
the metal curiosity is ignored.
It can't be genuine or can it?
In 1951, it catches
the eye of a scholar
from Cambridge University.
[Tamar] Derek de Solla Price,
a physicist,
begins to study this mechanism
and he realizes
that actually this is
an advanced clockwork mechanism.
[Corey]
Based on a detailed study
and the presence of some
ancient Greek letters,
Price makes a radical claim.
This is not modern.
It really is 2,000 years old.
It's an extraordinary theory.
[Abigail]
It's almost inconceivable
that this kind of object
could have been made
in the ancient world.
[Corey] Price analyzes
other fragments
and further faint characters
that are barely visible.
And he makes an even more
astonishing claim.
It's a celestial computer.
[Philip] When he suggested this,
it was considered outrageous.
Nothing like this was known
or thought to be possible
from that period of history.
[Corey] 20 years later,
Price destroys
any remaining doubts.
He uses a combination
of x-rays and gamma rays
to peer through
millennia of corrosion.
What he finds
is even more astonishing
than his most
outlandish suggestions.
[Tamar] You can see that
there are over 30 gears inside.
Some of these are made
of flat sheet bronze
and some of the gears
have up to 65 teeth on them.
The complexity of that
was unexpected.
[Corey] And
in the last few years,
our understanding
of the Antikythera mechanism
has been transformed
by new research.
Experts ship in a cutting edge
3D x-ray tomographic scanner
with a resolution far beyond
anything Price has in the 1970s.
[Philip]
Tomography basically means
you take a series of slices
that you can see
through the device
that you can see
- buried structures.
- [Corey] And it turns out
that Price barely scratched
the surface.
[Philip]
We now know that there are
37 or 38 of these gears involved
in making the movement
of this device.
[Corey]
The scans reveal a machine
vastly more complex
than Price imagined.
And in the last decade,
computerized image
analysis of these scans
has resolved buried writing,
writing that hasn't been seen
by a human eye for 2, 000 years.
[Abigail] The inscriptions
not only fill in
missing pieces
that don't survive,
but they also give us
a much greater idea
of how this was used.
[Corey]
Experts are even able to read
parts of an instruction manual
that explain
what the mechanism is.
Price has been right all along.
[Philip] What this device
is basically designed to do
is to show you the positions
of the celestial bodies.
So that's the five planets,
the sun, and the moon
at any point in the year.
Five planets
because that was all
that were known at the time,
so it was Mercury, Venus,
Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Corey] This is what
experts now believe
the Antikythera mechanism
originally looked like.
It can predict the positions
of the sun, moon, and planets
years into the future.
No other clockwork celestial
calendar will appear
until 1348, 1,400 years later.
And that one is like a toy
in comparison.
Because this isn't just
the world's first known
analog computer,
it's also
extraordinarily accurate.
How did its creator build in
such astonishing precision
using technology
we didn't even know existed
2,000 years ago?
[suspenseful music playing]
[suspenseful music playing]
[Corey] How does this
2,000-year-old device
accurately predict the movements
of our solar system?
It was originally housed
in a wooden case
about the size
of a shallow shoe box.
The mechanism inside is driven
by complicated combinations
of gear sets,
including a spur gear
designed to turn
the rotary system 90 degrees,
technology that isn't seen again
until the middle ages,
1,400 years later.
[Philip]
On the front, there's a dial
that shows 365 days of the year.
And if you turn the handle
of the device,
the pointers that represent
the different celestial bodies,
the planets and so forth,
move around to show you
where they would be in the sky
at any day during the year.
But also throughout
different years
because, you know,
the outer planets
take much more longer
than a year
to complete their orbit.
[Corey] There are separate
pointers for the sun,
Mars, Venus, Jupiter,
Mercury, Saturn, and the moon.
Each dial and clock face
serves a unique purpose,
such as counting down
to athletic games
like the Olympics,
or indicating which sign
of the zodiac the sun is in,
while tables record
annual events
like the summer
and winter solstices.
[Philip] It captures
with great accuracy
throughout the entire year.
You know,
the fine details of the...
For example,
the trajectory of the moon.
[Corey] The tomographic scans
revealed that the moon pointer
has a tiny rotating moon
on its end.
Experts believe it was painted
half white and half black.
[Philip] You see the little ball
that represented
the moon rotates
so that you can see the
different phases of the moon.
[Corey] Experts also notice
that the speed
of the moon pointer
changes as it turns.
But it's not a mistake.
It's genius.
[Maggie] If you go outside
and measure the moon
as it passes through the sky,
it seems to speed up
and slow down.
This is because the moon
is going around the Earth,
not in a circular orbit,
but in what we call an ellipse,
a squashed circle.
So, when the moon
is closer to the Earth,
it seems to speed up.
And when the moon is further
away from the Earth,
it seems to slow down.
[Philip] It's an incredibly
difficult thing
to realize with circular gears,
but there's a mechanism
for doing that.
[Corey] The changing speed
of the moon pointer works
using two gears
slightly out of alignment
with each other.
The drive gear has a peg
that fits in a slot
on the moon gear.
As it goes around, it's fastest
when the peg is at either end
of the slot,
but slows down as the peg
slides along the slot.
[Philip] The kind of precision
with which you had
to make these gears
was extraordinary.
[Corey] Research
in the last 15 years reveals
that the Antikythera mechanism
can even predict solar eclipses.
[Maggie] The mechanism
isn't just extraordinary
because it's complex.
But it condenses
all the knowledge
of Greek astronomy into one
very small convenient box.
It is quite breathtaking.
It's the universe in a box.
[Corey]
No other machine like this
will appear for another
1,400 years.
Its inventor must be a genius.
So who is it?
[dramatic music playing]
[Philip]
One of the first people that
one might think of
from this period
is Archimedes.
Archimedes was not just someone
who was incredibly
knowledgeable about
how the world worked
and about the physics
of the heavens.
He was also an inventor.
[Corey] Archimedes creates
large war machines
with levers and pulleys.
He designs intricate devices
such as the world's
first odometer,
a portable machine
for measuring distance.
And the Archimedes screw,
a water pump still used
across the world today.
[Abigail] He was really
the first port of call
when people thought
who could have invented
this incredible object,
who could have encapsulated
so many different aspects
of Greek science into one thing,
into one place.
[Corey] So, is this another
of Archimedes' inventions?
There's one problem
with this theory.
The creator
of the Antikythera mechanism
knows that the moon speed
seems to vary.
[Maggie]
The first person we know of
that was aware
of the apparent speeding up
and slowing down of the moon
was Hipparchus of Nicaea
around 170 BC.
[Corey] By that time,
Archimedes has been dead
for more than 40 years.
So if not the great
Archimedes, who else?
Inscriptions on one
of the dials provide
a tantalizing clue.
[Abigail]
One set of dials tells about
the Olympic Games,
which we all might expect,
but also lesser known
really more locally based
festivals like the Halia.
[Corey]
The Halia, a regional games
that only take place
on the Island of Rhodes.
[Tamar] It's thought that
this might be
a special calling card
as if to say,
"Made in Rhodes,"
because it's a very
localized game.
[Abigail] And Rhodes
had a long standing tradition
of metalworking, most famously,
the Colossus of Rhodes
which was a massive
bronze statue
that framed the entrance
to the harbor.
[Corey] So if the mechanism
came from Rhodes,
did its creator as well?
A prime candidate
is the man who discovers
the changing speed of
the moon, Hipparchus.
[Philip] Hipparchus lived
and worked around
the right time,
about 170 BC
and are in the right place,
he worked in Rhodes.
And it's thought
to be likely that
that's where this device
came from.
[Corey] It could be Hipparchus
but he died 60 years
before the Antikythera
ship sinks,
meaning the mechanism
would be very old already
when it's lost.
And there is
one other candidate.
He also lived in Rhodes
and at exactly the right time...
the astronomer, Posidonius.
[Philip]
One very enticing reason
why it's thought that he might
have had something to do
with this device
is that at one stage
he was visited
by the Roman writer, Cicero
who wrote about it in his diary.
And Cicero said that
this man Posidonius
told him about a device
that he'd made
to represent the motions
of the planets.
[Corey] Archimedes, Hipparchus,
or Posidonius, we may
never know for sure.
Whoever makes
it is clearly a genius
because he envisions
the universe
as a clockwork mechanism.
[Philip] It suggests
a kind of thinking
that really we don't get
familiar with
until the age of Newton,
mechanical age,
the idea that you can think
about the universe
as a kind of clockwork system
as a mechanical device.
Clearly someone at that time
in ancient Greece
already was thinking
that perhaps nature works
that way.
[Corey] If not for a group
of sponge divers
100 years ago,
the secrets of this
strange thing
might have remained lost
at the bottom of the Aegean
forever.
[suspense music playing]
[Corey] At the National Museum
of American History
in Washington, DC,
is the nose cone
of a World War II bomb,
but this is no ordinary bomb.
On the front are tiny windows
for its tiny pilots.
[Tim] The aim of this technology
was to guide
a 1,000-pound bomb...
with a pigeon.
[Corey] Now, using state
of the art digital imaging...
we can reveal it
in all its glory.
This is the pigeon bomb.
[Sascha] In some ways,
it might be
one of the smarter bombs
that we've ever invented.
[Corey] Measuring 25 inches long
and 23 inches wide,
it's just large enough
to carry three
tiny kamikaze pilots.
Could this bizarre contraption
really work?
Who came up with it?
And why on Earth
does anyone need
a pigeon-guided bomb
in the first place?
[suspense music playing]
[suspenseful music playing]
[Corey] This is a bomb
designed to be flown
by a pigeon.
Why would anyone do that?
Most of the history
of modern aerial bombing
has been a history of bombs
missing their targets.
And now if you're thinking
about naval bombing,
it becomes an even
dicier proposition
because you're trying to drop
a large piece of metal
unguided onto a moving object
that is going to be pretty small
relative to where you are.
[Corey] It's estimated
that during World War II,
as few as one percent of bombs
dropped on ships
hit their targets.
[explosion]
[Corey] The need for more
accurate bombing strategies
becomes top priority.
There's a couple of different
possible solutions.
One is, use torpedoes,
drop torpedoes from planes
because torpedoes
are actually meant to hit ships.
Another is, use a guidance
system of some sort,
something to make
these dumb bombs
at least a little bit smarter.
[Corey] As an alternative
to simply dropping a bomb
and hoping it would plummet
to its target,
both sides developed
glide bombs.
[Tim]
The intent of the glide bomb
is that there's enough control,
so as opposed to just
doing a free fall,
you can do some adjustments
and increase the probability
that you're gonna hit
your target.
[Sascha]
The Germans have some success
with the first glide bomb,
the Fritz X.
[suspense music playing]
[Sascha] However,
the Fritz X has a weakness,
it's radio-controlled.
And this creates
two potential problems.
Number one, you have to keep
the plane that launched it
flying at the same time
so it can steer it
and that puts the plane
and its crew in danger.
And two, as a radio-guided bomb,
the radio signal can be jammed
and later on in the war,
the Allies were able to jam
that signal
quite successfully.
[Corey] The perfect glide bomb
would not only
need to be unjammable,
it would also need
to be autonomous,
able to guide itself to a target
without the need
for external control.
[Sascha] So how do you create
a guided bomb
without radio guidance?
Well, you wanna put
the guidance package
inside the bomb itself
and make something
that's not dependent
upon a radio signal.
Hence, the pigeon bomb.
[Corey] But of all the animals
in the world, why pigeons?
[suspense music playing]
[Philip] Pigeons
have been useful to us
for sending messages
for centuries
because they have
this incredible ability
to navigate in particular
to home to navigate back
from where they were
sent out from.
And so they've been used
for this purpose for millennia.
The ancient Egyptians use them.
The ancient Greeks use them.
In fact, one of the messages
the Greek trusted to pigeons
was the results of the Olympics.
[suspense music playing]
[Sascha] The use
of pigeons in warfare
really came into its own
in the modern age.
World War I,
half a million pigeons
were used to send messages
back and forth.
And one pigeon
even became a hero.
This was a pigeon
that served the French
and was named Cher Ami,
and it delivered its message
despite the fact
that it lost an eye
and was severely wounded
in the process.
It was actually given
a military commendation
for its heroic service
in wartime.
Pigeons also saw
very important uses
in the Second World War.
The Allies dropped
homing pigeons
with requests for information
over German-occupied territory,
and the pigeons
had little cards on them
that resistance fighters
could use,
fill out the information,
put it back in the pigeon,
and then the pigeon of course
would fly straight home.
[Corey] And there is one
other pigeon characteristic
that would be essential
to becoming a bomb
guidance system.
[Philip] Birds generally
are actually a lot smarter
in many ways
that they're given credit for,
you know, this notion
of birdbrain is really unfair.
But even among birds, pigeons
are among the smartest.
Pigeons are very good
it seems at learning a task.
[Corey] So pigeon pilots
do make a strange sort of sense.
But that still leaves
one big question.
How on Earth do you teach them
to fly this bomb?
[suspenseful music playing]
[Corey] The pigeon bomb,
one of the strangest inventions
in the history of warfare.
Who could have come up
with such a bizarre idea?
Enter pigeon fancier,
BF Skinner.
[Sascha] BF Skinner
is one of the fathers
of modern psychology
and he's particularly famous
for developing various methods
of what we now call
behavior psychology.
Really trying to understand
the basic impulses
by which
thinking creatures operate,
how they respond to stimuli.
[Philip] This idea
that you can get a response
according to some
particular stimulus,
that goes back at least
to the experiments
that Pavlov did,
famously with dogs.
He found that, you know,
dogs would start to salivate
if they were shown food.
[Sascha] Pavlov was much
more interested in very,
very simple responses to stimuli
and physical responses
whereas Skinner is taking it
a bit farther.
He's actually trying to,
in some ways,
control the way you respond
consciously to various signals.
[Philip] Skinner devised
this apparatus.
It was really just a box.
It's often now called
a Skinner Box.
So the animal is put inside it
and then given
a particular stimulus,
and once it happens to make
the response you're after,
then the animal gets a reward,
food for example.
And quite quickly,
relatively intelligent
creatures like pigeons
will figure out what it is
that's being expected of them.
They will remember the behavior
that created the reward
and they'll do it again
and again and again.
[Corey] In initial tests,
the pigeons respond
even better than expected.
[Philip] Skinner found that
you can actually train pigeons
to do some pretty
complicated things,
things that certainly
you'd never find birds
doing normally. So for example,
he trained them
to play ping pong.
[playful music playing]
[Corey]
Encouraged by the results
of his pigeon training
experiments,
Skinner goes to the government
seeking money
to develop his pigeon bomb.
[Sascha] BF Skinner
comes to the US military
with what on the surface
would seem like
an utterly absurd idea.
But you have to understand
that World War II
is a time
of great experimentation
and it is hardly
the craziest idea
that is tried out.
Amongst those crazy ideas
are bats carrying napalm.
And my personal favorite
which was
the Soviet-trained dogs
carrying anti-tank bombs.
They were trained to climb
underneath the German tanks
to set off their bombs.
Just one tiny miscalculation,
they were trained
on Russian tanks
so as soon as these dogs
were let loose,
the first thing they did
with their bombs was dive
right under the Russian tanks
so not...
not going as according to plan
with the whole bomb dog thing.
[Corey] Using animals
as bomb delivery systems
clearly has a poor track record.
But BF Skinner is convinced
his pigeon bomb concept
is... Well, bombproof.
But how would it actually work?
[suspense music playing]
[Tim] The idea was
to take a glide bomb
and at the front
add a pressure-sealed nose cone
where the pigeon
could actually be mounted.
[Sascha] There's a little screen
in front of the pigeon
onto which
an image of their target
is being projected,
and the pigeon is trained
to peck at the image,
and then the steering system
responds
to the pigeons movements
and aims the bomb at the target.
[Corey] To minimize
the chance of one pigeon
guiding the bomb off course,
each bomb would carry
three pigeon pilots.
[Tim] The three pigeons
would actually operate
so that the majority vote
would always end up
controlling the trajectory
of the glide bomb.
[Corey] Understandably,
the idea of putting
a high explosive bomb
under the control
of three pigeons does not
initially go down well
with the US military.
But Skinner is adamant
it can work.
[Sascha] So in 1943,
Skinner receives $25,000
to explore his idea,
which was a princely sum
at the time.
[Corey] Skinner is given
basic details
of the glide bomb.
It's known as a Pelican.
His experiment is given
the perfect code name.
Project Pigeon.
Having settled on the idea
of projecting the image
from a lens
onto a tilting screen
that could sense
where the bird was pecking,
Skinner begins testing them
on realistic images,
and the results are startling.
[Sascha] When someone
describes the pigeon bomb to you,
it just sounds ludicrous.
But when you see footage
of these pigeons
pecking at the image of the ship
projected on the screen
in front of you,
you see, no,
this is actually working.
[Corey] But as far as we know,
the pigeon bomb
never takes flight.
So what goes wrong?
[Corey] This is a bomb
piloted by pigeons.
Its creator,
BF Skinner is convinced
it's a viable weapon
in the war against the Nazis.
[Sascha] In 1944,
Skinner turns up
to demonstrate his solution
to a team of scientists
and he's ready to go.
He's got the film,
he's got his little
pigeon pilots,
he's got the mock up
of the capsule,
and it worked.
He has solved the problem.
He has created
an unjammable guidance system,
assuming no one
has breadcrumbs handy.
[Corey] But convincing
the skeptical scientists
proves impossible.
[Tim] In fact, the meeting ended
by someone pulling Skinner aside
and suggesting to him
that he just go out
and get drunk,
which he interpreted accurately
as a very bad sign.
[Corey] Unknown to Skinner,
while he's busy
training pigeons,
a rival project is developing
an alternative solution
to the problem.
Skinner's solution works.
He has the guidance system
all set up.
The problem is by the time
he's perfected it,
the other solution
that was being explored,
the radar guidance system
has also advanced considerably,
and that's the one
that the military goes with,
and they end up
making 2,600 of these bombs,
which are known
as the bat bombs.
And you can say this about
the radar-guided system is,
is there's a lot
less cleanup afterwards.
[Corey] The pigeon bomb
never takes flight.
And despite all that training,
it's brave feathered pilots
are never given the chance
to prove
they have the right stuff.
It's tough being a war pigeon.
In the depths of the
British Museum in London,
is one of the strangest
Roman artifacts
ever discovered.
At first glance,
this 1,700-year-old cup
looks decorative,
but otherwise unremarkable.
Now, carefully reconstructing it
with the latest
digital imaging technology
reveals its secrets,
standing roughly
six and a half inches tall,
this is the Lycurgus Cup.
It's an ancient relic
with a mystifying party trick.
It changes color.
[Andrew] This is such
an incredible artifact.
It's not an optical illusion,
it really does change color
from red to green
as you move around in the light.
[Corey] How does it work?
How was it made?
And what exactly is it?
[Mark] The Lycurgus Cup is a cup
from about 1,700 years ago
from around 300 AD,
so late Roman period,
a time when glass technologies
have been fairly
well developed at this point
and getting more complex.
[Corey]
Mythical figures seem to float
above the inner glass chalice.
Archeologists call this
a cage cup.
[Mark] In fact, it's the most
well-preserved cage cup
in the ancient world.
Even in the Roman days
in the Fourth Century,
when this cup was actually
made and used, uh,
this would have been
a rare piece.
[Corey] Microscopic
examination shows the cup
and its floating cage
are made from a single
piece of glass.
[Anna] Glass is a really brittle
and breakable material.
So the delicacy involved
is quite incredible.
They would have used tiny tools
to file away very carefully
the areas of glass
that they didn't want.
They actually undercut
the design
so that there's areas
under the person
where there's air gaps
and just little legs
that attach it to the cup.
The terrifying thing about this,
is one slipup or one sneeze
from the person
that was doing this
would have meant
melting the whole thing down
and starting again from scratch.
[Corey]
But it's the glass itself
that is truly spectacular.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Mark] What's remarkable
about this glass
is the fact
that it changes colors
and that I've never seen
outside of this cup.
[Andrew] If you look at the cup
just under normal light,
then the cup appears green.
But if you put the cup
in front of the light,
the light shining through it
appears red.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Mark] No one would have
really seen these things
even in the Roman days
a cup changing color,
it would have been
an extremely rare piece.
Most people would have just
been completely amazed.
[Corey] Possession
of such a unique object
would broadcast
the owner's status.
[Mark] This is the kind of piece
you really wanna show off.
Here you are,
you've built your fancy house,
you have your fancy parties,
but finally,
the sort of center showpiece
would be this cup.
[dramatic music playing]
[Corey] It's known
as dichroic glass,
which means two-colored.
For centuries, its secrets
remained a mystery.
Studying the cup under
a normal microscope reveals...
nothing.
It appears to be
like any other Roman glass.
So how can a 1,700-year-old cup
change color?
[dramatic music playing]
[Corey] An ancient Roman cup
with a color-changing
party trick.
For centuries,
this unique ability
defies explanation.
[Anna] In 1990, scientists used
an electron microscope
to have a look
at what was going on
inside the glass itself.
[Corey] They discovered
tiny particles of gold,
silver, and copper
suspended in the glass.
[Anna] These are nanoparticles,
so they're about a thousandth
of the width of a human hair.
It's these tiny
metallic particles
that hold the secret
to the amazing
color-changing effects
that we see in this glass.
And it's all because
of quantum effects
which happen down
at the subatomic level.
[Corey] The effect works
because white light
is not just one color.
[Andrew] White Light
is actually a mixture
of all the colors
of the rainbow,
red, orange, green,
blue, indigo, violet.
[Corey] The smallest particles
of light are called photons.
And each color of light
is caused by photons
of a different energy.
The magic happens
when these photons
enter the glass and hit
the nanoparticles of metal.
[Daniel] Because
they're metal particles,
they've got like a cloud
of electrons
around the outside of them.
And when the photon
hits the cloud of electrons,
it's absorbed, and it sets up
a sort of vibration
in the cloud of electrons.
It's like a jumper
hitting a trampoline,
the whole thing flexes
and a wave runs around it.
And then when it flexes
back out again,
it spits out the photon
back the way it came.
[Corey] Scientists discovered
that the precise diameter
of the nanoparticles
in the glass
causes only green photons
to bounce back.
[Andrew] By very carefully
varying the quantities,
the ingredients,
when you're making this glass,
you can make these particles
exactly the right size
to scatter the green light,
allow the other colors through
and create this
beautiful effect.
[Corey] When you look
at the light
reflected by the cup,
you see green.
[Daniel] The rest of the light
goes right through the cup.
And white light minus green
is that kind of
plummy red color.
[Corey] So when the light
is shining through the glass,
you see red.
[Anna] What's incredible
about this glass is that
in order to produce
these nanoparticles,
the maker would have had
to have ground up
the metals into a really,
really fine powder,
much, much finer than talcum
powder, for example,
and then embedded that
into the glass
and dispersed it evenly
so it's evenly distributed
throughout, in a very,
very specific amount.
[Corey] The effect is caused
by a minute amount
of the metals.
[Anna] We think
that the amount of silver
and gold in this cup is about
300 parts per million
for the silver and about
40 parts per million
for the gold.
So if you were to clump
all of that silver
and gold together,
it would still be
a particle that is too small
for the naked eye to see.
[Corey] Scientists
call the quantum effect
that causes the color change,
surface plasmon resonance.
This is nanotechnology,
the manipulation of matter
at an atomic
or near-atomic scale.
[Anna] It's probably
pretty safe to say
that the Romans
didn't understand
the quantum effects
of what was going on
inside their glass.
But clearly,
someone knew enough to know
that if you added these metals
in these quantities
into this material,
then you could create
these amazing
color-changing effects.
[Corey] With its extraordinary
quantum glass,
the Lycurgus Cup may well be
the most spectacular cage cup
ever created.
Who is this unique object
made for?
[dramatic music playing]
[Mark] You'd have been certainly
an extremely wealthy individual,
a high-class individual,
maybe even someone
associated with the emperor
or the emperor's family.
[Corey] The cup is probably made
in the early Fourth Century AD,
when the Roman Empire is divided
between two warring emperors,
Constantine and Licinius.
Crucially, Licinius
is based in Thrace
in the eastern empire.
[Mark] The cup shows
the mythical king, Lycurgus,
who is a Thracian king,
battling Dionysus, God of Wine.
[Corey] In the myth,
Lycurgus of Thrace
is defeated by Dionysus.
Also known as the Roman God,
Bacchus.
[Mark] And it could be
symbolic for Licinius,
the western Roman emperor
who moved to Thrace.
During this time,
the emperor Constantine,
who was the ruler
of the eastern Roman Empire,
did defeat Licinius
and this may be
a kind of symbolism,
if you will.
[Corey] So it's possible
the cup's decoration
is symbolic of Licinius' defeat
by Constantine.
If it is made
to celebrate his victory,
Emperor Constantine
may have drunk
from this very cup.
Whoever owned it, the survival
of this extraordinarily
fragile ancient wonder
through 2,000 years of turmoil
is nothing short of a miracle.
[dramatic music playing]
[Corey] Today, our understanding
of the cup's unique
color-changing ability
is helping develop
pioneering new technology.
[Andrew] Inspired by these
beautiful brightly-colored
nanoparticles
in the Lycurgus Cup,
scientists at the University
of Illinois
have been able to develop
incredibly sensitive sensors.
So in the Lycurgus Cup,
all of those little gold
and silver nanoparticles
are surrounded by glass,
but instead of glass,
you put these nanoparticles
in something like water,
you can detect tiny changes
in the concentration
of different things
dissolved in the water
by looking at the changes
in the color of the sensor.
This means this technology
has applications
for medicine
where you can detect
tiny quantities of things
in people's bodily fluids,
to setting explosives
where you can detect
trace amounts
of signature chemicals
that give away the presence
of a bomb.
[Corey] It seems that sometimes
discovering the secrets
of the ancient world
may unlock the secrets
of our own future.