All language subtitles for Strangest.Things.S01E05.Ancient.Alien.Computer.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DD+2.0.H.264-playWEB_track3_eng

[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.