From Particle Accelerator Used to Decipher Text:
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.
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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.
I don’t even know where to start. Erasing Archimedes? For a prayer book?