Eureka at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory

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As of today (26th of July) scientists are trying to read the final pages of the oldest known manuscript of Archimedes's work, the Archimedes palimpsest (click on the image).

Archimedes lived in the third century BC. In the tenth century AD, his works were copied by a scribe. This book of 90 pages was then reused in the twelfth century to produce a volume of 174 pages on which Christian prayers were inscribed. Forgers added religious images sometime after 1930. Today, much of the text has already been read, but ca. 15% of it remains indeciphered.

X-ray fluorescence imaging may help scientists to read this missing part. The ink contains iron, and traces of iron can be highlighted when bombarded with X-rays. The Stanford synchrotron has been used for this kind of work since 2005.

With some luck, we should be able to know what Archimedes wrote in those hidden pages of "The Method of Mechanical Theorems". Eureka indeed.

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