Seriously, the Exploratorium at Stanford University is doing some of the most exciting public science I've ever seen. Last year they posted a webcast showing the summer solstice at Chichén Itzá; this year they conducted a live webcast of the recent imaging experiments on the Archimedes palimpsest. On August 4, 2006, the Exploratorium posted a live webcast on the work being accomplished by the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC). In this research, a team of scientists from several fields have brought an array of imaging techniques together to bring out the 9th century AD copies of several manuscripts of the Greek mathemetician Archimedes. These manuscripts have lain hidden for 800 years beneath the much-used and reused pages of a medieval book of prayers. The one-hour long webcast is now available and archived in both RealVideo and Windows Media Player formats, and includes interviews with several of the scholars in different fields who are working on the manuscript as well as images of a few of the pages as they are being made legible again. Amazing.
- Exploratorium: Ancient Writings Revealed!, where you can find the webcast for download
- The Archimedes Palimpsest, the official website of the project, which includes details of Archimedes' manuscripts, his importance to mathematics and science, the history of the manuscript and the efforts to conserve and read the manuscript, not to mention the images of the pages themselves as they come out of the scanner.
- Ancient Writing, a collection of links to other ancient manuscripts
- Archimedes, a brief biographical sketch from N.S. Gill, guide to Ancient History
- Ancient Observatories: Chichén Itzá, from the Exploratorium; watch the light of the solstice play on the monument, exposing a writhing snake
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