Ancient Babylonians Used Geometry to Track Jupiter (3 of 3) (IMAGE)

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Ancient Babylonians Used Geometry to Track Jupiter (3 of 3)

Caption

This image shows Left: Cuneiform tablet with calculations involving a trapezoid. Right: The distance traveled by Jupiter after 60 days, 10º45', is computed as the area of the trapezoid. The trapezoid is then divided into two smaller ones in order to find the time (tc) in which Jupiter covers half this distance. This material relates to a paper that appeared in the Jan. 29, 2016 issue of Science, published by AAAS. The paper, by M. Ossendrijver at Excellence Cluster TOPOI in Berlin, Germany, and colleagues was titled, "Ancient Babylonian astronomers calculated Jupiter's position from the area under a time-velocity graph."

Credit

Trustees of the British Museum/Mathieu Ossendrijver

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