Top 7 most complex machines ever built

...And we still can't rebuild the Great Pyramid. Smh

How can a submarine, a piston engine, and watch be considered more complex than an aircraft carrier?

reply to post by sdrawkcabII


Stacking stones is more complex than building skyscrapers?

reply to post by Illustronic


I gather you haven't studied much of the great pyramid? It's not just stacking stones...

We can rebuild it, but quite like and as precise as the one in Egypt? I don't know.

Yet still no substitue for oil.

Second line

reply to post by elevenaugust


Some amazing machines, although do you know that most cars are more complex than the original command module and have more computing power.... dont let all those dials impress you, its more analogue than digital and not sooo advanced.



i think there a machine that could go for number one in that list though. Although we didnt build it and it is organic i think it trumps everything else because without this machine none of your would have existed......

The Human Body and the brain are amazing and even more amazing that they are the outcome of evolution and natural selection.

Just stop and think of the complexity ofyour body and brain and what they are capable of.

reply to post by Illustronic


In a couple hundred years or less when the skyscrapers are falling apart or being torn down that stack of stones will still be there.

reply to post by sdrawkcabII


You are correct..even with all our technology nowadays we cannot re-create a pyramid with the same precision and craftmanship that the Great Pyramid of Giza possesses. Amazing isn't it?

Originally posted by blamethegreys
The Antikythera Mechanism completely solved, if you haven't seen it before

Thanks!
Very impressive video, I really would like to know who was the genius that built it!
I will edit my last post to add this video to the list.
Edit: Too late

As for the supercarrier, all of you that suggest it are absolutely right, oddly it doesn't came up in my mind while writing these lines.
So, I guess that a 13th complex machine will be added to the list, but at what level should it be? My guess is somewhere between the 3rd and the 5th place.

reply to post by zoso28


I take it you have never heard of hemp? It can be used as a fuel, plastic, cloth, rope, paper, etc. There used to be laws that required all farmers to grow a certain amount of hemp. The best thing about it is you can grow a decent size hemp plant from seed or clone in about 3 months. A very significant time difference compared to how long it takes a tree to grow. It has been used as a cloth and rope for many, many years and still is to this day. Cars have already been run on hemp oil and if I recall correctly you can get farther on a tank full of hemp oil than you can on a tank full of gasoline.(although I may be wrong on that one)

Of course the reason it isn't used is people could just grow it themselves and it is much harder for them to control hemp than oil, especially nowadays. I think they are just getting as much profit as they can before the oil runs out, than i'm sure hemp or some other fuel source will be introduced and it will be illegal for any citizen to grow it themselves.

Originally posted by sdrawkcabII
...And we still can't rebuild the Great Pyramid. Smh

Has anyone every REALLY tryed?

The 7 machines are excellent, as an IT 'guy' i know a bit about computers and my comment is that it should be removed, its not a single peice of hardware AT ALL it consists of thousands of CPUs in hunrdreds of server racks. Reason i say this is not a "great machine" is because one could just wheel over another row of servers and "OH WOW ITS NOW EVER MORE POWERFULER" added caps for the marketing aspect

That watch is just about the finest peice of craftsmanship ive ever seen, you can tell that not just machanical precision and a slave to mathamatics produced it, theres love and dedication in that time peice. If i had the money i still wouldnt buy it, thats a piece of a master craftsmans soul right there.

reply to post by elevenaugust


Now that i am on my home pc i can actually expand on why i think the Human Body is more amazing than of of those machines, although as i said in my first post i realise the point of your thread was to point out machines we had created, i still think it's worth a mention

oh and that watch awesome btw, have you heard of Montblanc watches they are amazing and all still handcrafted and built the same way since 1858.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/92e3d8a01905.jpg[/atsimg]




Back to the reason for my post -





Here are some interesting facts about your body:

The Human Body

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/3527e4b4bc8b.jpg[/atsimg]



* The average human brain has about 100 billion nerve cells.

* Nerve impulses to and from the brain travel as fast as 170 miles (274 km) per hour.

* Your stomach needs to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks or it would digest itself.


Human Body Facts

The Human Brain

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/e69ad86d5084.jpg[/atsimg]

* Your brain comes out to play at night: You’d think that your brain is more active during the day, when the rest of your body is. But it’s not. Your brain is more active when you sleep.

* Your brain operates on 10 watts of power: It’s true: The amazing computational power of your brain only requires about 10 watts of power to operate.

* Your brain can store everything: Technically, your brain has the capacity to store everything you experience, see, read or hear. However, the real issue is recall — whether you can access that information.

Brain Facts

“To put our findings in perspective, the 6.4*10 to the 18th power instructions per second that human kind can carry out on its general-purpose computers in 2007 are in the same ballpark area as the maximum number of nerve impulses executed by one human brain per second.”

Worlds Strangest


NatGeo - The Incredible Human Body




Then of course we can't forget about the building blocks of our body.... DNA

The total storage capacity of all computers in the world is on par with all the information stored in an adult human’s DNA. When you consider that there are nearly seven billion of us, I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to invent a machine that can compete with that. All in all, that makes me feel pretty good about being a human.

Also, the next time someone points out that our DNA is only 1% different than that of a chimpanzee, now I have some perspective on just what a giant amount of information that represents.

DNA

Everyday i look in the mirror i marvel at the human body and what it is capable of. At the same time its so sad the way some of us treat our bodies, the bad food or fuel, excess alcohol consumption, drugs, violence and the list could go on.

People talk about recreating the pyramids or other types of construction or technology but could you create a human body from scratch or any other complex organism for that matter?






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reply to post by Biigs



I see what point you are trying to make about the computer components but that is the same as saying the engine should be removed because it consists of 100's of different parts: induction systems, cyclinder assembly, exhuast systems etc etc.

I guess it's all the small parts that make up the whole. It does work as one computer doing billions of different task's.

What would happen if you removed one small part of the whole? It wouldn't work as planned right?


You could break it down even further and say the majority of computer components wouldnt work with out circuit boards or capacitors, diodes, LED's etc.

reply to post by SaberTruth


I guess for us to debate if intelligent design exists, we must establish what intelligent design is. If you're referencing biblical story, that's absurd. We didn't *poof* into existence.

If you mean that maybe something created all of the constants and laws of physics & the giant ball of mass that the universe started out as, then maybe you're onto something I can agree with. *If* there is an intelligent designer, he just set everything up to go. He caused the 'big bang' (or whatever theory you subscribe to) & put evolution into motion. Pretty much no one can disagree with the possibility, and it concedes with both sides of the argument.

The problem I have with the intelligent design idea, is that everything in human history that we don't understand, we assign to a higher power. How many times have humans been wrong about scientific things that were credited to God? Ancient people sacrificed children to create rain, people worshiped the sun and moon, and you can probably think of a million other examples. We simply don't understand the science of how life could appear 'out of thin air', so a higher being must have done it. These things happened just a couple hundred years ago, and probably are still happening now somewhere. We aren't above it - We're barely out of the jungle.

The analogy of the junkyard is a poor one IMO. When a giant mass explodes, whichever temperature it explodes, creates what density the atoms are (think table of elements). That temperature creates brand new atoms within the spectrum of density (I'm rough on my chemistry, forgive my vocabulary) We have no idea of all of the different chemical reactions between these atoms, maybe some of them could create the beginnings of life?

Infinity is a huge number that I don't think you're grasping. Simply saying that the odds are astronomical, does not discount a number like infinity. Astronomical odds aren't even 1 quadrillionth of infinity. (if that makes any sense) I think if you could grasp the idea of a never ending amount, you could see how there's a chance that somewhere, sometime, something could come from 'nothing', and we're just here to experience it - because the circumstances permit it.

nice post - we have certainly achieved some great things.

For those interested in disecting the Nasa Space Shuttle the Haynes manual may interest you;

www.amazon.com...
www.amazon.co.uk...

The Apollo 11 and Titanic versions were great so I'm sure as the shuttle's go eol this will be something for technical space boffins.

Originally posted by jessejamesxx
I guess for us to debate if intelligent design exists, we must establish what intelligent design is. If you're referencing biblical story, that's absurd. We didn't *poof* into existence.

Thank you for your opinion.

If you mean that maybe something created all of the constants and laws of physics & the giant ball of mass that the universe started out as, then maybe you're onto something I can agree with. *If* there is an intelligent designer, he just set everything up to go. He caused the 'big bang' (or whatever theory you subscribe to) & put evolution into motion. Pretty much no one can disagree with the possibility, and it concedes with both sides of the argument.

That's a start; the important thing is to agree that the First Cause as I mentioned is at least possible. An interesting question arises here as well: which came first, the laws of physics or the matter they act upon?

The problem I have with the intelligent design idea, is that everything in human history that we don't understand, we assign to a higher power.

People make this claim a lot, but anecdotal evidence is hardly comprehensive. We cannot assert that "everything" people don't understand is attributed to a higher power or magic etc. We can just as easily cite the many scientists of the past who were devout theists and set about their discoveries expressly because they believed God created an orderly universe, and it was left to them to discover the details. Usually this objection to ID is motivated by a desire to "poison the well" by consigning all theistic thought to superstition and fear before a debate even begins.

We simply don't understand the science of how life could appear 'out of thin air', so a higher being must have done it. These things happened just a couple hundred years ago, and probably are still happening now somewhere. We aren't above it - We're barely out of the jungle.

One presupposition is not superior to another; it is no better to put one's blind faith in future scientific discoveries that may or may not ever materialize, than it is to put it in God. In fact, some theoretical physics is barely distinguishable from what has always been called "magic", since it postulates that things really can appear "poof" out of nowhere and without even so much as an "abracadabra". All we have right now is the laws of physics as we know them, and more importantly, empirical science which is restricted to observation and experimentation.

The analogy of the junkyard is a poor one IMO. When a giant mass explodes, whichever temperature it explodes, creates what density the atoms are (think table of elements). That temperature creates brand new atoms within the spectrum of density (I'm rough on my chemistry, forgive my vocabulary) We have no idea of all of the different chemical reactions between these atoms, maybe some of them could create the beginnings of life?

Again I appeal to empirical science: what do we observe? Has any explosion ever created something that looked designed and performed some function the material could not perform before it blew up? The central question is how to recognize design or intelligence. The SETI project purported to have some way of telling the difference, but on what basis? If you remember the 60s film or book Andromeda Strain, that was the very question they sought to answer. Where is the line between life and non-life? What is design and what is accident or purposelessness? Can any process lacking an intelligence working toward a goal ever result in anything but zero net gain, since it literally doesn't know or care where it's going?

Infinity is a huge number that I don't think you're grasping...

Nobody truly grasps infinity. But if the odds mean nothing, then which of us is really the one who is willing to throw common sense out the window just to keep their faith, whichever faith it is? We both know we're in the realm of probability when it comes to origins, not provability. The way I see it, the odds of ID are at least 50/50, but the odds of non-ID to account for what we observe are infinitesimal. You're saying that even the tiniest odds are good enough to overcome 50/50, if I'm following you accurately. If so, then I think that's as far as we can go; there's little point in further debate when we have such widely divergent ideas of what constitutes "reasonable".

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Originally posted by Havick007
reply to post by Biigs

 

I see what point you are trying to make about the computer components but that is the same as saying the engine should be removed because it consists of 100's of different parts: induction systems, cyclinder assembly, exhuast systems etc etc.

i respectfully disagree.

A computer system is more like an irrigation system, the power of the system represented as operations per second for the computer and area of effect for irrigation. The system doesnt relay on a unified design of the end result, you add more watts and more computers you get more operations a second same as if you addd more water ways and more water the irrigation becomes larger.

Compare that with these other devices and machines, you would need to rethink /redesign the intire system if you added somthing else, the watch being a perfect example of this or the rocket engine.

Finite parameters to which the design yelds the best end result, rather than a 'stackable' system construct.

The first powered engine ever built was around 1700.
A lot change in only 300 years.

www.mgsteam.btinternet.co.uk...

reply to post by SaberTruth


No we don't

In fact "accident" is the exact opposite of evolution

Changes and adaptations happen all the time every day and with every birth of every living thing on this Earth.

It makes complete sense that those living things born differently in a positive way would be more likely to pass on their genes. For example we can all agree that the runt of the litter has less chance of passing on their genetic material than the pups born stronger and therefor get more milk. etc.