Monday was our seventh wedding anniversary. Mary and I celebrated by going to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk. Our favorite rides are the Giant Dipper (roller coaster) and the Space Race (bumper cars mounted on large inner tubes so they really bounce). We also went on the Haunted House ride, and we played a round of miniature golf, which Mary said she really hates, but only when it becomes competitive. So we didn't even keep score, which is probably just as well because she would have beat my pants off.
Then we went to Logos, my favorite Santa Cruz used bookstore. We didn't find any books, but I did buy a relaxing CD of Laurence Juber playing Beatles tunes, and another CD by Martin Simpson, which I haven't listened to yet.
We ended our day at the Crow's Nest, our favorite restaurant in Santa Cruz. They always do a fantastic job of accomodating our food allergies. And they have creme brûlée for dessert, which meant we had no room left to make our usual stop at Marianne's for ice cream on the way out of town.
Oh, well. I think Mary is going to sign us both up for Weight Watchers soon anyway ...
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Sunday, August 6, 2006
Stanford Scholars use x-rays to read hidden text in Archimedes manuscript
After more than 1,000 years in obscurity, the last unreadable pages of the works of mathematician Archimedes are being deciphered, thanks to the X-ray vision at Stanford University's Linear Accelerator Center.
Letter by letter, ancient Greek that was hidden for centuries by neglect, damage and abuse is being revealed by a powerful X-ray light emitted by the synchrotron at SLAC, then transmitted to computer screens for analysis by an international team of scholars.
The discovery is giving researchers the most complete record since the Middle Ages of the works of the legendary mathematician, who famously exclaimed "Eureka!" upon discovering how to measure volume while sitting in his bathtub.
Only faint outlines of Archimedes' words and diagrams can be seen by the unaided eye. First copied in 975 A.D. by a Christian monk onto goatskin parchment, the work has barely survived fire, water, acid, mold, wax, glue and even forgery.
But the synchrotron's X-ray is able to detect the iron in the ancient ink, causing it to fluoresce. In work guided by Stanford physicist Uwe Bergmann, the X-ray creates patterns of electronic signals, which are converted by computer into shades of gray, readily recognizable as Greek characters.
Preliminary interpretation of the text offers several new insights into the mind of Archimedes, who lived in the 3rd century B.C.
For instance, it suggests that he understood and set rules for infinity, previously considered a problem too difficult for ancient Greek mathematicians. It also contains a treatise on combinatorics, a field of problem-solving now used in computer science.
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