A certain poetry

An early transcription of Archimedes' mathematical theories has been brought to light through the probing of high-intensity X-rays.

The text contains part of the Method of Mechanical Theorems, one of Archimedes' most important works, which was probably copied out by a scribe in the tenth century. The parchment on which it was written was later scraped down and reused as pages in a thirteenth century prayer book, producing a document known as a palimpsest (which comes from the Greek, meaning 'rubbed smooth again').

Scholars discovered the text concealed in this book as early as 1906. Since then, much of the text has been read, using everything from magnifying glasses to ultraviolet light, which highlights the hidden ink.

But some of the text has been solidly obscured by some twentieth-century forgeries of medieval art that were slapped on top of a few pages. So researchers at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory in Menlo Park, California, decided to use X-rays to peer through this modern ink. Iron pigment in the original ink fluoresced when hit by the X-rays, allowing researchers to see the text for the first time.

— from X-rays illuminate ancient writings in today's Nature

Back in the ancient writings file, this is really something. Follow the link for the ver' cool image of what the original writing comes up as under the synchrotron radiation.

Beyond the mere marvellousness of being able to read pieces of so significant a work for the first time in many centuries, I find a certain poetry in this. As in: someone eight centuries or so ago decided, apparently, that a prayer book (read, in this commentor's opinion: a set of incantations to an invisible sky fairy) was more worth keeping on this manuscript than Archimedes' methods (after which the insult was, apparently, repeated and magnified by a buncha mangy art forgers). But, even after all of that, some smart folk with the know-how to build such devices can win the text back anyway. Chalk one more up for enlightenment thinking.

Synchrotron radiation, by the way, as a general topic, is pretty neat stuff. Among other curiosities (including the fact that synchrotron sources don't follow a normal black body curve when you plot wavelength versus intensity), they're actually emitted by supernova remnants. Including, somewhat famously, the lovely Crab nebula (M1) remnant. Larger topic, tho', and there's lots on this elsewhere on the web anyway.