Science and art. Two subjects I struggled with at school but put them together and hot damn I love what you get. Such as this news story, and the paper published by the scientists involved.
Scientists Joris Dik and Koen Janssens used high-intensity X-rays from a particle accelerator to scan the painting and reveal the face beneath. The powerful X-ray bombardment caused atoms in the picture's layers of paint to emit "fluorescent" X-rays of their own, which indicated the chemicals they originated from. That enabled a colour map of the hidden picture to be produced.
Now, how cool is that?
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6 comments:
Pretty freaking cool, I say. It's things like this that make up for all the impositions technology make into our lives, like the damned scanners at airports that can look through your clothing.
Hi, KC! Great to see you here. I guess if they looked through your clothes and found an old master..!
I too love the mix of science and art, don't know why they wouldn't let me mix them when I was at school... it was either one or the other. But now, the times they are more enlightened. I love this article, thanks for linking to it. Why did Vince hide it in the first place?
Tania, you head straight for the story here, like a true writer! Why did he hide it? And who was the portrait of??
Interesting stuff, Sarah. There's a pretty good video that talks in some detail about the process used here:
http://video.scientificblogging.com/item/LZMWSV61VFXR2WD5/theater#theater_title
It's worth listening to the commentary.
Cheers,
Rob
Oops. The link didn;t paste very well, sorry. Reassemble the following:
http://video.scientificblogging.com/
item/LZMWSV61VFXR2WD5/
theater#theater_title
That'll teach me to preview before posting.
Cheers,
Rob
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