Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Eureka! Archimedes Revealed

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the old-school dept.

pin_gween writes "The Mercury News has an AP wire that shows science uncovering history. 800 years ago a monk scrubbed the text off a goatskin parchment to write prayers. Nothing unusual there, except the parchment contained writings from a copy of Archimedes' Palimpsest. Now scientists are using x-rays, generated by a particle accelerator, to cause tiny amounts of iron left by the original ink to glow without harming the delicate goatskin parchment. It takes 12 hours to scan one page, then the information is posted online."

2 of 244 comments (clear)

  1. Explain those "dark" ages by mangu · · Score: 1, Flamebait
    If it was just the text of archimedes, then it would have been destroyed during the dark ages...
    Since it was a prayer book, nobody dared


    Well, why do you think those ages were "dark" in the first place? It was because they destroyed scientific writings to record prayers. You are inverting cause and effect here.


    Dark ages will cease to exist when people have more respect for scientific works than for prayer books.

    1. Re:Explain those "dark" ages by maxwell+demon · · Score: 1, Flamebait

      You know that atheism was one of the building blocks of communism?

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.