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To say the environment on the surface of Venus is extreme might be viewed as an understatement by some: the hottest planet in the Solar System’s air cooks at a scorching 462ºC (864ºF), under crushing atmospheric pressure that is 92 times greater than Earth’s — and that’s not counting the corrosive effects of the sulphuric acid lacing the clouds. The result is an environment that severely limits the lifespan of manmade probes sent there, that are typically measured in timescales of mere hours, as opposed to the years-long missions enjoyed by Mars rovers.
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Recovered from a 1st-century Roman shipwreck in 1901, the Antikythera Mechanism is the world’s oldest known analog computer, at an estimated 2,200 years old. While the device’s mechanism has long since been known to have involved astronomical calculations, its full nature has been shrouded in mystery, with the mechanism’s approximately 30 bronze gears having corroded into a single lump over the millennia that it lay on the seafloor. However, new examinations by a multi-national research team have deciphered nearly all of the surviving text that had been inscribed on the device by its builder from ancient Greece.
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