Rick E. Martin / Mercury News
Senior Conservator Abigail Quandt prepares to load a goatskin
parchment bearing the work of Archimedes to be scanned.
Posted on 08/04/2006 7:39:30 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
SAN FRANCISCO – Previously hidden writings of the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes are being uncovered with powerful X-ray beams nearly 800 years after a Christian monk scrubbed off the text and wrote over it with prayers.
Over the past week, researchers at Stanford University's Linear Accelerator Center in Menlo Park have been using X-rays to decipher a fragile 10th century manuscript that contains the only copies of some of Archimedes' most important works.
The X-rays, generated by a particle accelerator, cause tiny amounts of iron left by the original ink to glow without harming the delicate goatskin parchment.
“We are gaining new insights into one of the founding fathers of western science,” said William Noel, curator of manuscripts at Baltimore's Walters Art Museum, which organized the effort. “It is the most difficult imaging challenge on any medieval document because the book is in such terrible condition.”
Following a successful trial run last year, Stanford researchers invited X-ray scientists, rare document collectors and classics scholars to Menlo Park to take part in the 11-day project.
It takes about 12 hours to scan one page using an X-ray beam about the size of a human hair, and researchers expect to decipher up to 15 pages that resisted modern imaging techniques. After each new page is decoded, it is posted online for the public to see.
On Friday, members of the public watched the decoding process via a live Web cast arranged by the San Francisco Exploratorium.
“We are focusing on the most difficult pages where the scholars haven't been able to read the texts,” said Uwe Bergmann, the Stanford physicist heading the project. “We are filling in the missing texts.”
Born in the 3rd century B.C., Archimedes is considered one of ancient Greece's greatest mathematicians, perhaps best known for discovering the principle of buoyancy while taking a bath.
The 174-page manuscript, known as the Archimedes Palimpsest, contains the only copies of treatises on flotation, gravity and mathematics. Scholars believe a scribe copied them onto the goatskin parchment from the original Greek scrolls.
Three centuries later, a monk scrubbed off the Archimedes text and used the parchment to write prayers at a time when the Greek mathematician's work was less appreciated.
“The parchment was a rare commodity,” said Neil Calder of the linear accelerator center. “You needed a whole flock of sheep to produce enough parchment for a book of this size.”
In the early 20th century, forgers tried to boost the manuscript's value by painting religious imagery on some of the pages.
In 1998, an anonymous private collector paid $2 million for the manuscript at an auction, then loaned it to the Walter Arts Museum for safekeeping and study.
Over the past eight years, researchers have used ultraviolet and infrared filters, as well as digital cameras and processing techniques, to reveal most of the buried text, but some pages were still unreadable.
After reading about the Archimedes text, Stanford's Bergmann proposed using the U.S. Energy Department's Menlo Park particle accelerator to detect the iron in the hidden ink. Electrons speeding along the circular accelerator emit X-rays that can penetrate the parchment's paint and grime and illuminate the iron.
“We will never recover all of it,” Noel said. “We are just getting as much as we can, and we are going to the ends of the earth to get it.”
Senior Conservator Abigail Quandt prepares to load a goatskin
parchment bearing the work of Archimedes to be scanned.
Eureka!
I find it frightening that more knowledge exists than can be studied in a lifetime. Great secrets are stored away in archives worldwide, but it's impossible to sort through everything.
further proof that Christians don't get science? /sarc (for the people in Loma Linda).
wikipedia: orwell's history book.
Cool, does this mean we can now fire up the cold fusion device?
drink your ovaltean...???
I don't think that Archimedes was THAT advanced for his time.
GGG Ping Candidate.
Thanks, adding, but no ping:
X-rays reveal Archimedes secrets
BBC News | 2 August 2006 | Jonathan Fildes
Posted on 08/02/2006 4:45:46 PM EDT by my_pointy_head_is_sharp
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1676614/posts
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Inventor of the rubber duckie?
That's more along the lines of Rambaldi, I think.
I don't think it was bouyancy he discovered. It was mass and volume.
Suppose you're in a boat, in a pool, with a load of scrap iron in the boat. If you dump the scrap iron into the pool, will the water level of the pool rise, fall, or stay the same?
Archimedes would know the answer, based on the principle of buoyancy.
"Other than gaining insights into mathematics, physics, and astronomy not equaled within 500 more years I'm sure you're right (wink)."
Actually, he didn't really have any insights. He merely wrote down all those equations and theories that were integral to the plots of all those forgotten plays and epics by Homer, and which have been resurrected in the TV series 'Numb3rs'.
;^D
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