In reading this article [below] from the ASSociated press, my mind is going 90 miles an hour. How can a monk scrub the text clean off of paper? There is just no way of getting an ink stain off of parchment paper without using acid or something of the like to have it removed and weakening the paper in the process. WHY did the monk choose that paper to write on instead of getting a fresh new piece of paper? I don't want to hear the excuse of how paper was scarce or expensive back then because that's bullshit. If that was the case, there would have been no novels, newspapers or telegrams in print back then.
Archimedes was not just a mathematician. He was a scientist as well. He did experiments first before coming up with the math to explain it. It makes me wonder what was in those manuscript pages that SOMEONE was desperate to hide. I know the article says it was a Christian monk who did the damage, but I have doubts about it. I'm betting that it was Rome that had gotten their mitts on the script, read it and shit a load in their togas over what Archimedes discovered. Whatever Archimedes had written in those manuscript pages would have benefited the public in terms of improving the quality of life. Quality of life is something that Rome can't tolerate because if they did, it would mean the end of their reign of terror.
Anyway, read the article yourself and decide.....
Beaming Up Archimedes Hidden Text
Associated Press 09:08 AM Aug, 05, 2006
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 are generated by a particle accelerator. They 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 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.
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. 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.
"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."
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