Wednesday, October 19, 2011

The Archimedes Palimpsest and Lenox Laser


Lenox Laser, as mentioned in the previous post, is involved and relevant to current events such as the recent Nobel Prize in Physics and the James Webb Telescope.

Photo from the Walter's Flickr site, part of the Lost and Found exhibit about the Archimedes Palimpsest

Another example is the Archimedes Palimpsest at Baltimore's Walters Art Museum. It is on a special exhibit right now until January 2012, and, believes it or not, Lenox Laser was involved with this as well! Lenox Laser was involved in the key science that allowed them to see past the monk's writings and read Archimedes' instead. SLAC was the organization that was heading up the research to better read the obscured text, and they contacted Lenox Laser for the special tungsten part.

From our earlier blog post about the Archimedes Palimpsest from 2006- it explains Lenox Laser's key role.

The Archimedes Palimpsest writings lingered unseen for centuries, seemingly purged from the documents forever, until Professor Heiburg began to review small scrawls beneath the visible text. At SLAC, a revolutionary modern analysis of the writing medium has been made - revealing they do contain historically important information left behind by Archimedes, Hidden from the naked eye.When confronted with an engineering challenge involving their Synchrotron X-Ray source, SLAC issued a request to Lenox Laser to produce microscopic laser-drilled holes in thin Tungsten film. These small apertures would prove critical to the team's success in uncovering the Palimpsest's "hidden treasure".

Here is the website about the ancient text: www.archimedespalimpsest.org
and the Walters Art Museum: thewalters.org