Stanford Accelerator Uncovers Archimedes' Text

AI Playground points to a Newsday.com report which reads in part "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."

I just hope ...

[vlad_petric]

The text is not going to be "partly censored" as the Dead Sea Scrolls were until the 90's.

Dead Sea scrolls [wikipedia.org]

Re:Being done

[jd]

Yes, similar techniques to the X-Ray fluorescence are being used on a wide range of archaeological finds, from illegible scrolls found in Italy to manuscripts found in various rubbish tips from the dark ages and before.

Actually, the idea seems to have started about 15-20 years ago, of using various attributes to read xsuch documents. A technique was developed in the UK - I believe it was called ESDA - which used magnetic fields and extremely fine iron dust to detect indentations left in paper when layers further up had been written on.

The technique hit the news during the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad fiasco, when it was demonstrated, by use of this technique, that "confessions" had been altered after they had been signed by the supposed confessee. It led to a lot of cases being thrown out on appeal, and a subsequent inquiry as to what had happened.

Other popular techniques include the use of various frequencies of light and/or UV, to reveal marks that wouldn't otherwise be visible, which is how some of the more "legible" parts of the palimpset of Archimedes were photographed prior to this.

Chemical techniques exist, but archaeologists are wary of anything that can damage an ancient find, unless it is so far beyond salvage that preservation of the original would be impossible anyway. Even then, they don't like it and try to avoid it.

NOVA torrent

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a good documentary of this on Nova [pbs.org] called "Infinite Secrets of Archimedes".

You can grab a torrent from digitaldistractions [digitaldistractions.org].

Re:Could it really have been that important...

[Vreejack]

To add irony to the story, it was covered by a simple prayerbook. The discoverer was only able to make a tantalizing transcription of some of the text before it was lost. Before it was recovered some con-artist had painted fake devotional paintings over some of the pages in order to increase the value. Then I believe it was bought by a collector who did not understand what it was and taken to France, where his heirs made the re-discovery.

A website with detailed information

[djplurvert]

http://www.thewalters.org/archimedes/frame.html [thewalters.org]

Re:So if I understand right...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a small correction here. Modern mathematics didn't "survive" the Dark Ages as such. Mathematical though continued to progress after the time of Archimedes, this time in the hands of the Arab empire in places thoughout North Africa, Arabia and Central Asia. Contributions from the Hindus to the east were also extremely significant (For example the number notation we use today, 1, 2, 3 etc)

In fact one can easily argue that mathematics flourished during the dark ages - just not in Europe. Those crazy Europeans still thought the earth was flat even though Eratosthenese (A Lybian) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes [wikipedia.org] had accurately measured the size of the earth sphere at the time Archimedes was writing.It's also worth checking out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Shatir [wikipedia.org] for a quick comment on how the renaisance got kick started through the likes of Copernicus

Mod Parent UP!

[feronti]

Not only was a lot of the knowledge preserved, much of what was lost was destroyed by secular forces. Archimedes was killed by a Roman soldier who grew impatient when the inventor didn't come quickly enough. The Library of Alexandria was burned down by the Romans.

I must say, if the Church ever did anything right, it was preserving the works of the great masters. Sure, they may not have been complete, and they may have destroyed some other works that they disagreed with, but all in all, it was the Church that made the Renaissance possible.

I think the grandparent poster was really just taking advantage of Slashdot's antireligious bias to score some karma.

a 12th century recipe for parchment

[westlake]

To put this in perspective, traditonal goatskin parchment currently sells for about $17 USD a square foot. Pergamena [pergamena.net]

Take goatskins ( 1 ) and stand them in water for a day and a night. Take them and wash them till the water runs clear ( 2 ). Take an entirely new bath and place therein old lime (calcem non recentem) and water mixing well together to for a thick cloudy liquor. Place the skins into this, folding them on the flesh side. Move them with a pole two or three times each day, leaving them for eight days (and twice as long in winter) ( 3 ). Next you must withdraw the skins and unhair them ( 4 ). Pour off the contents of the bath and repeat the process using the same quantities, placing the skins in the lime liquor, and moving them once each day over eight days as before ( 5 ). Then take them out and wash them well until the water runs quite clean ( 6 ). Place them in another bath with clean water and leave them for two days ( 7 ). Then take them out, attach the cords and tie them to the circular frame ( 8 ). Dry, then shave them with a sharp knife, after which, leave for two days out of the sun...( 9 ) moisten with water and rub the flesh side with powdered pumice ( 10 ). After two days wet it again by sprinkling with a little water and fully clean the flesh side with pumice so as to make it quite wet again ( 11 ). Then tighten up the cords, equalise the tension so that the sheet will become permanent. Once the sheets are dry, nothing further remains to be done ( 12 ). Parchment, the recipe [dedas.com]

Re:Coverup

[dbIII]

Why would scraped and dried animal skins be rare and costly in the 12th Century farming economy where these monks lived?

Because it took a lot a scraping, tanning treatments and required specific animals (freshly born lambs for vellum). Anything less would be of the quality of something written on the inside of an ug boot.

Looking at today's antiscience crusade by religious powermongers

Once again it's really just politics - the medieval church was not under the delusion that Aristotle was a Christian, but directly challenging what church officials taught, no matter what it was, was undermining their authority so was punished. The roman church was the only major force for higher education in europe for a long time.

Re:Big Toys for Big Boys

[ddimas]

I've never been able to find out if the Roman soldier who killed him was punished or had anything to say.

That soldier was tortured to death over three days by being flayed alive and rubbed with salt, with the entire legion watching. The commander was FURIOUS!

Re:Being done

[RWerp]

I suppose they use other wavelengths, longer ones (they're not trying to tell the position of each atom in their artefact, just the density variations -- I suppose). Longer wavelengths -- lower frequencies -- lower energy of the photons -- less damage.

NOT Diffraction

[Anonymous Coward]

This is X-Ray Fluorescence, NOT X-Ray Diffraction.

Photon hits atom.
Atom absorbs photon, promotes electron to higher energy level.
Electron drops into core level vacancy left by promoted electron.
A fluorescent photon is emitted (or another electron is emitted).

This has nothing to do with any nucleus. I am a physicist. Bow to my knowledge.

Re:Will it contain the complete documentation on..

[Captain Lobotomy]

Perhaps not, but there's an excellent chance it will reveal more of what little we now know of his anticipation of Integral Calculus by 1,000 years. For the Physics and Mathematics communities, this is *huge*.

Re:So if I understand right...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. On capturing the library of Alexandria, they used the contents to wipe their heathen asses on. Or to fuel the hot tub, or something. Wogs.

Re:Being done

[eimerkopf]

I'm not a protein crystallographer, but I do work at a synchrotron and do lots of x-ray absorption and diffraction experiments. I've never had a problem with x-ray damage to my samples (mostly inorganic solids). Susceptibility to radiation damage varies from material to material. From my understanding, protein crystals are particularly bad, presumably because they not respond well (in a chemical sense) to the large numbers of electrons generated after an x-ray absorption event. This basically causes impurities in the crystal (local changes in the structure factor) that degrade the diffraction measurement. Also, in your typical protein diffraction experiment, you irradiate a particular spot on the crystal for a very long time. I would guess that this is not so much an issue in this case, because (1) no one is really interested in the chemical structure of the parchment itself, and (2) a particular spot on the sample is exposed only for a very short time. Incidentally, there's a better write-up of this at Stanford: http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/may25/a rchimedes-052505.html [stanford.edu]

Re:Coverup

[cruachan]

Whoever rated this post as insightful? It's just ignorant. Vellum was a highly costly resource in medieval society because it's obtain from the skin of a young, animal - usually a calf. As generally speaking a cow would only produce one calf per year the cost of producing a calf's worth of vellum is the cost of keeping a cow alive over the winter needed to produce the calf - which was more difficult at the time because in the abscence of root feeds most cattle were slaughtered and salted in the autumn, plus the loss of revenue from allowing the calf to grow.

Although it's true that there does appear to have been periods when medieval society was relatively affluent - the 12th Century in particular - famine was never far away and the grinding poverty should not be underestimated. There are even accounts of periods where it is remarked by chroniclers that it was not uncommon for peasants to own just a single garment or even none at all. This cannot have been the norm as otherwise the chroniclers would not have remarked upon it, but nevertheless, in a society which is living as close to the edge as medieval europe managed to do it is not suprising that vellum for books was a costly and rare resource

Re:Damn those Christians

[DingerX]

First, the concept of monastic "order" really begins in the beginning of the twelfth century with the military orders, the cistercians, and the premonstratensian canons.

Second, you're assuming this is a western manuscript, when some of the other contextual marks suggest that in fact it was produced in Constantinople. Basilean monks did know Greek. And in the west, it depends on where you're talking about. Spain was an active center for Greek/Arabic/Hebrew -> Latin translation of texts, especially scientific ones. Southern Italy had large communities of Greek speaking peoples. Hell, even the bishop of Lincoln and not a bad scientist in his own right, Robert Grosseteste, knew and translated ancient Greek.

Something abstract such as "The Church" is not an historical agent; individual churchmen can be.

Re:Translating now... hold on....

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, idiot! He was multiplying SIX * NINE, not NINE * SIX. So it becomes 1 + 5 * 8 + 1 = 42. Get it? (In case you don't, look up HGTTG and 42 on goober.)

Re:So if I understand right...

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact one can easily argue that mathematics flourished during the dark ages - just not in Europe.

True; Europeans were too busy inventing insignificant things like books and punctuation.

Those crazy Europeans still thought the earth was flat

Bullshit. Nobody thought the earth was flat. The cosmology of the "Dark Ages" called for a spherical Earth at the centre of a series of other spheres (which held the moon, sun, planets, and stars), the outermost sphere being Heaven. It was further believed that the poles of the Earth were too cold for life to survive there, and that the equator was too hot to pass through, the black skins of Africans being taken as proof that anyone attempting to travel too far south would burn to death.

These "dark ages" you speak of saw the flourishing of art and literature, the invention of many things we take for granted, and, among other things, the first attempts to translate scientific texts into the language of the common people (rather than classical Latin, Greek, or Arabic, none of which were ever similar to any spoken dialect), and the discovery of America by the Vikings. The myth of the decline of learning and descent into ignorant savagery only arose later.

Re:Translating now... hold on....

[Dun Malg]

but its a kind of joke typical for america ... no knowledge of other world parts and mixing different cultures! go back in time to archimedes and tell him (who was a slave under romans for some time) that you think he writes in latin

OK genius, let's hear your super-enlightened, non-american rendition of the joke. Latin is generally the only ancient language well known enough that one can appropriate a couple word endings, apply them to modern language, and still get the point across. Yes, it would have been more accurate if he'd had Archimedes writing ancient greek, you pedantic troll, but due to lack of greek characters on our keyboards, and the fact that almost nobody would be able to read it, it would no longer be an effective joke because no one would get it.

Dark Ages, Renaissance

[antizeus]

These "dark ages" you speak of saw the flourishing of art and literature, the invention of many things we take for granted, and, among other things, the first attempts to translate scientific texts into the language of the common people (rather than classical Latin, Greek, or Arabic, none of which were ever similar to any spoken dialect)

It seems that you are confusing the Dark Ages (roughly 500-1000 CE) with the Renaissance (roughly 1300-1500 CE). The monk erased the text during the former, and that cool stuff you mentioned happened during the latter. Good job getting modded up, though.

Physics behind the technique

[cocoamix]

The technique being used sounds like an Electron Probe, or Wavelength Dispersive Spectroscopy. Here is a nice Java application demonstrating Bragg's Law, on which the techniques are based. [stonybrook.edu]

Re:At the very least...

[Harish Rallapali]

RTFA.

The article plainly states that the parchment was reused because parchments were hard to come by and archimedes' work wasn't in demand. It's the simple issue of supply and demand and a monk that made a rather careless mistake, not some evil church cabal trying to quash all knowledge.

Christians, as stupid as they are sometimes, don't have anything against mathematics anyways.

Re:NOVA torrent

[sickofthisshit]

PBS pays for the creation of their shows with tax dollars

PBS doesn't produce NOVA, WGBH Boston does. According to their annual report [wgbh.org], only about 11% of WGBH's funding is from government grants and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which could vaguely be called "tax dollars." 21% comes from corporations, 12% comes from individuals, and 21% comes from other PBS stations.

Re:Big Toys for Big Boys

[Anonymous Coward]

Well attributed by whom? I'm not saying you made it up (and it certainly sounds plausible... Roman punishments were quite harsh)

I can't find it either. Livy 25.31 reads:

• "It is recorded that amidst all the uproar and terror created by the soldiers who were rushing about the captured city in search of plunder, he was quietly absorbed in some geometrical figures which he had drawn on the sand, and was killed by a soldier who did not know who he was. Marcellus was much grieved and took care that his funeral was properly conducted; and after his relations had been discovered they were honoured and protected by the name and memory of Archimedes.

Plutarch's account can be found here [uchicago.edu] it's chapter 19, and, giving slightly different accounts of the death, gives essentially the same account of Marcellus' reaction:

• it is generally agreed that Marcellus was afflicted at his death, and turned away from his slayer as from a polluted person, and sought out the kindred of Archimedes and paid them honour.

So no reward, perhaps, but no other punishment. Treated as polluted != tortured to death. Where is the other source? And don't be childish about it either, I don't have RE in front of me right now