Today scientists will be revealing the original words on a manuscript written by Archimedes.
A medieval monk had scraped away the text and diagrams by Archimedes and created a prayer book instead.
Thanks to technology, we’ll now be able to see some of the original writings by Archimedes.
The process will be as follows:
an intense X-ray, produced in a particle accelerator, will be scanned across a page of the document, causing the iron in the original ink to glow, or fluoresce. A detector will record the fluorescent glow, producing a digital image of the original letters and diagrams in the 1000-year-old manuscript onto a computer screen.
Watch it unfold today on the live webcast (starting at 4:00 p.m. PDT) .
Via Yahoo! Picks.
Posted by Amy as Classical, Science & Nature at 11:11 AM EDT