Particle accelerator deciphers Archimedes

[Orion1]

BALTIMORE -- A particle accelerator is being used to reveal the long-lost writings of the Greek mathematician Archimedes, work hidden for centuries after a Christian monk wrote over it in the Middle Ages.

Highly focused X-rays produced at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center were used last week to begin deciphering the parts of the 174-page text that have not yet been revealed. The X-rays cause iron in the hidden ink to glow.

Scholars believe the treatise was copied by a scribe in the 10th century from Archimedes' original Greek scrolls, written in the third century B.C.

It was erased about 200 years later by a monk who reused the parchment for a prayer book, creating a twice-used parchment book known as a "palimpsest." In the 12th century, parchment -- scraped and dried animal skins -- was rare and costly, and Archimedes' works were in less demand.

The palimpsest was bought at auction for $2 million in 1998 by an anonymous private collector who loaned it to the Baltimore museum and funded studies to reveal the text. About 80 percent of the text has been uncovered so far.

While reading an article on the text, Stanford physicist Uwe Bergmann realized he could use a particle accelerator to detect small amounts of iron in the ink. The electrons speeding along the circular accelerator emit X-rays that can be used to cause the iron to fluoresce, or glow.

The so-called Archimedes Palimpsest includes the only copy of the treatise "Method of Mechanical Theorems," in which Archimedes explains how he used mechanical means to develop his mathematical theorems. It is also the only source in the original Greek for the treatise "On Floating Bodies," in which Archimedes deals with the physics of flotation and gravity.

Three of the undeciphered pages were imaged last week, and the rest are expected to take three to four years to complete, Noel said.

Reference:
http://www.thewalters.org/archimedes/frame.html
http://archive.harktheherald.com/

 

[vanesch]

Reference:
http://www.thewalters.org/archimedes/frame.html
http://archive.harktheherald.com/

Hi,

can I ask you where you got the quote from ? I didn't find it in your references... Thanks.

Cheers,
Patrick.

 

[Orion1]

The specific link is too long to post here, just click:
http://archive.harktheherald.com/

And type 'Archimedes' in the search engine, the exact article is listed there.

Also note that the quote listed here is not complete, rather just highlights of the article.

Contrary to what scholars had thought, the ancient Greeks, who invented mathematics, did explore the concept of infinity.

Mathematicians have long thought that the concept of infinity wasn't studied in any detailed way until the Scientific Revolution.

But Reviel Netz, an assistant professor of classics at Stanford University, recently examined an ancient text called the Archimedes Palimpsest, which was authored by Archimedes and is currently housed at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.

Netz and some colleagues were shocked to discover a reference to a proof that Archimedes had worked on comparing two infinitely large sets.

"We could hardly believe our eyes, " Netz wrote in the Nov. 1 Science. "It has always been thought that modern mathematicians were the first to be able to handle infinitely large sets. "

Reference:
http://archive.harktheherald.com/