SAN FRANCISCO -- It isn't exactly the ancient siege of Syracuse, but rather a curious quest for scientific validation. According to sparse historical writings, the Greek mathematician Archimedes torched a fleet of invading Roman ships by reflecting the sun's powerful rays with a mirrored device made of glass or bronze.
More than 2,000 years later, two groups who believe they had reconstructed the fabled death ray set out to test them Saturday afternoon. The television show MythBusters, which sponsored the event, had tried before but failed.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor David Wallace and students planned to set fire to an old fishing boat from the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard using their own version of the device.
Mike Bushroe of the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory brought a mirrored system shaped like flower petals, about 100 square feet of mirrors in all.
"If this weapon had worked, it would have been the equivalent of a nuclear weapon in the ancient world," said Peter Rees, executive producer of the Discovery Channel's MythBusters.
Historical text describes Archimedes defeating a Roman fleet using the ray. In Epitome ton Istorion, John Zonaras wrote: "At last in an incredible manner he burned up the whole Roman fleet. For by tilting a kind of mirror toward the sun he concentrated the sun's beam upon it; and owing to the thickness and smoothness of the mirror he ignited the air from this beam and kindled a great flame, the whole of which he directed upon the ships that lay at anchor in the path of the fire, until he consumed them all."
The producers of the Discovery Channel's MythBusters haven't exactly been kind to seafaring vessels in the past. They rammed a boat with a fake shark weighing 3,000 pounds and lifted another vessel from the bottom of a bay using 23,000 ping pong balls.
