The texts of Archimedes have been decoded.

n a real-world back-to-the-future scenario Friday, researchers at Stanford University used the Internet to broadcast across the world the decoding of an ancient mathematics text, written by one of the founding fathers of calculus -- without which there would be no Internet.

The focus of all the attention was a manuscript -- written by ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes -- called "The Method of Mechanical Theorems," and it included as many diagrams as it did words. New letters, words and partial equations were discovered in the text Friday by researchers at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in Menlo Park by zapping the fragile 10th century parchment with a high-powered X-ray beam.

"Archimedes would have thought this was very cool," said Abigail Quandt, senior conservator at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. "How wonderful it would have been for him to look into the future and see that his own theories would be used to review his ancient text."

webacst at http://www.exploratorium.edu/archimedes/index.html

This is soooo fucking cool....

http://news.com.com/2300-11397_3-6039554-1.html?part=rss&tag=6039554&subj=news

I remember getting up at dark fucking thirty on the morning to watch the launches. from John Glenn to today, watching liftoff is exhilarating, inspirational and, for me proof of the Divine. Oh, yeah....