Leonardo Da Vinci Masterpiece May Have Been Found Behind Fresco In Florence

Awesome to some of the work I'm ( indirectly ) part of on HackerNews! I'm part of Dr. Seracini's group here at UCSD, so if anyone has any questions feel free to ask and I'll pass it around to my colleagues if I can't answer it myself.

If there's a 3cm air gap, why don't they just go in from the top/bottom/sides?<p>And did they really drill <i>holes</i> in Vasari's fresco, or just use a neutron thingy, like the NY Times articles says? If there are holes, can't they just shove a small camera inside?

This story definitely has a "Dan Brown"-type of intrigue to it: a small flag within an existing painting contains the words, "Cerca Trova" (or "seek and you shall find").<p>Those words lead Dr. Seracini, an engineering professor[1], to investigate whether or not Leonardo Da Vinci's unfinished masterpiece is hidden behind by that painting (containing the words, "Cerca Trova") using some very technological advanced equipment and techniques.<p>1. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/science/06tier.html?_r=2&#38;no_interstitial=&#38;pagewanted=all" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/science/06tier.html?_r=2&#...</a>

Some cautionary comments from Kemp: <a href="http://martinkempsthisandthat.blogspot.com/2012/03/leonardo-battle.html" rel="nofollow">http://martinkempsthisandthat.blogspot.com/2012/03/leonardo-...</a>