The University of Sharjah hosted an astrolabe workshop in which western scientists showed participants how an astronomical instrument made by an ancient Muslim scholar nearly 1,000 years ago measured ...

It may not seem as exciting as the record for the longest fingernails or largest collection of dinosaur poo, but a recent verification by Guinness World Records is a big deal for history buffs. As ...

There’s something enchanting about ancient tools and instruments. The idea that our forebears were able to fashion precision mechanisms with nothing but the simplest hand tools is fascinating. And ...

In the early 17th century, during the golden age of the Mughal Empire, two engineering brothers in present-day Pakistan created a prodigious brass astrolabe for a powerful nobleman. More than 400 ...

Sometimes a little modern technology can help turn up an ancient treasure — even if that technology is nothing more than a computer screen and a simple web search. That's what happened to Federica ...

While modern humans tend to think of science in terms of innovations made during the past 100 to 200 years, mankind has always had great scientific thinkers. Over 2,000 years ago, one or more such ...

The identification of an eleventh-century Islamic astrolabe bearing both Arabic and Hebrew inscriptions makes it one of the oldest examples ever discovered and one of only a handful known in the world ...

Its renown in the last of these fields was tied to the Lahore School, which blended Islamic and Sanskritic astronomical methods and produced peerless astrolabes—brass instruments with interlocking ...

A mariner’s astrolabe recovered from the wreck of one of Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama’s ships is now officially the oldest known such artifact, according to a new paper in the International ...

The Warwick Manufacturing Group, an academic department at the University of Warwick, is usually concerned with the future. Its researchers use high-resolution lasers and 3D visualizations to create ...

An Islamic astrolabe from medieval Spain, discovered in a museum in Verona, Italy, has been found to contain multiple layers of Hebrew engravings, thought to be additions by various Jewish owners of ...