True or false? Eight hundred years ago, a monk did his best to erase a copy of some of Archimedes' most important work, putting some prayers on the parchment instead, and the words of the great Greek mathematician were then gone forever. False. At Stanford University in California, some scientists are using X-ray technology to make the older ink shine through the later scribbling, thereby recovering a remarkable piece of history and doing something else to boot. They are giving us an illustration among many of how a civilization made great in part by the Greeks of antiquity remains great...