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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. Re:Too cool! by thePig · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Check out the article -
    It was probably the only reason we got these writings in our hand.
    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, and now we have the data.

    Every action has consequences, and some of them are inconcieveable

    --
    rajmohan_h@yahoo.com
  2. Re:Too cool! by jellomizer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I would say to put any Anti-Religious Zealotry aside, and think about it this way. How many files have you deleted from your hard-drive that perhaps in a couple hundred years would allow archeologist to get better insight on your generation, or the previous ones. Parchment was not as cheap as it was today. It took considerable amount of work just to create it, and Rubbing out the Old stuff for the New stuff seems like best situation, for the times. This period was well in the dark ages, saving old stuff wasn't the goal or even seemed that valuable. And besides as far as most were concerned at the time, this is old stuff from a dead civilization, make room for our new more modern method.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.