Archimedes' work recovered in X-rays

It's the notebook of the gods. Researchers at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory are working, and succeeding at, recovering a 10th century manuscript that is said to be a transcription of the work of Archimedes, the father of engineering.

The document is a four-page 1,000 year old parchment made of that originally contained The Archimedes Palimpsest, a digest that explains the reasoning behind some of his treatises. (Archimedes lived 13 centuries earlier, and helped popularize levers and pi, but his work has been passed down by scribes.) With parchment a rare commodity, the goatskin was cleaned off with pumice and acid two centuries later and used again as a prayer book. Centuries later, forgers cleaned it off again, painted Byzantine figures on it and tried to pawn it off as an original.

Medieval monks, however, wrote in iron ink, and in2003 staff scientist Uwe Bergmann realized that remaining iron particles could be picked up by X-Rays. The remaining impression is weak--the original ink is only one to two microns deep--but it's there. The team has also employed optical scanners to recognize Greek characters.

A full translation will be made public in 2008.