Lost Technologies
Greek Fire, an Imperial Secret and the Formula That Died
An emperor told his son the recipe came from an angel, and that anyone who gave it away would burn.
Old maps · lost machines · strange signals
Strange claims.
Real records.
Ancient maps, lost technologies and unexplained signals, traced to the documents, artifacts and accounts behind them: what supports each claim, what challenges it, and what is still unknown.
- 16 investigations
- 6 hubs
- Every source named
Three open questions
- The Shape of the WorldA Turkish admiral's map of 1513 shows a southern coast. Is it Antarctica, or South America bent to fit the sheet?Follow the record →
- Lost TechnologiesCarvings in an Egyptian temple crypt look to some like giant light bulbs. What did the people who carved them say they were?Follow the record →
- The Shape of the WorldA French map of 1531 draws a great southern continent, almost three centuries before anyone saw Antarctica.Follow the record →
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Featured investigation · The Shape of the World
The Piri Reis Map and the Coast That Runs Off the Edge
A 1513 Ottoman chart, the coast along its bottom edge, and the 1960 Air Force letter that called it Antarctica.
In 1513 the Ottoman sea captain Piri Reis drew a chart of the Atlantic on gazelle skin, and along its bottom edge a coastline turns east and runs off the sheet. In the 1960s the historian Charles Hapgood read that coast as Antarctica drawn before the ice, and an Air Force squadron he wrote to called it reasonable. Map historians read it another way. This is what the map shows, what each reading rests on, and what is still unknown.
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Lost Technologies
The Antikythera Wheels and the Thousand-Year Gap
Sponge divers raised it by accident in 1900. Nothing else geared like it survives for more than a millennium.
The Watchlist
Oumuamua and the 2018 Measurement of a Push Nobody Saw
An interstellar visitor left the solar system faster than gravity alone allows, and the tail never showed up.
Signals
Tesla's Colorado Springs Receiver and a Signal That Counted
He built the most sensitive instrument of its kind, pointed it at the sky, and reported pulses that arrived in order.
Signals
Three Dots From Eindhoven and an Echo Fifteen Seconds Late
In 1928 a mathematician in Oslo and a physicist in Eindhoven timed a signal that refused to come straight home.
Signals
The Wow! Signal, Six Characters and a Note in Red Ink
On 15 August 1977 a telescope that could not turn wrote down something loud on the quietest frequency there is.
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Dendera Crypt No. 4: Auguste Mariette's 1871 Drawing of the "Light Bulb" Relief | Digital Download, Printable Wall Art
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