SAN FRANCISCO -- Blending "The Da V...

SAN FRANCISCO -- Blending "The Da Vinci Code" and Geraldo Rivera's "Al Capone" vault dwarf on live TV, scientists plan to use an X-ray beam to investigate writings by means of one of the ancient world's greatest geniuses -- and unveil what they find online in real time today.

Archimedes is best known to modernity as the ancient scarecrow who sat in a tub saw the water of the same height rise and leaped out shouting "Eureka!" because he had discovered displacement, a fundamental principle of hydraulics.

Copies of his voluminous writings upon science have found their way to Stanford Linear Accelerator Center thanks to the wealthy proprietor who insists on anonymity. And above the last year -- with more succes than Rivera had seeking Capone's plunder in 1986 -- scientists there have used the accelerator's X-ray beam to scan and reveal faded ink in the frail, ancient documents.

The documents, which date from the Middle Ages, are medieval transcribers' copies of Archimedes' scientific essays; the originals have prolonged since disappeared. Archimedes, a mathematician, engineer and scientist, lived from 287 to 212 BC in Syracuse, Sicily.

Since early 2005 the scientists have "illuminated" numerous pages by means of firing X-rays from a vast particle accelerator known as a synchrotron beam.

Until now, solely Latin translations of Archimedes' original hellene made by medieval scribes for the educated elite were available. Early this evening, the scientists plan to allow Web users to watch them investigate part of the document they haven't analyzed before.

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