Grazie allo studio del travertino di cui è composto, e del calcare accumulato su di esso, è stato possibile calcolare la portata di questo maestoso acquedotto imperiale!

“For hundreds of years, the Anio Novus aqueduct carried water 87 km (54 miles) from the Aniene River of the Apennine Mountains down into Rome. Built between AD 38 and 52, scholars continue to struggle to determine how much water the Anio Novus supplied to the Eternal City—until now.

By studying limestone deposits that formed from the flowing water within the aqueduct, called travertine, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign researchers reported in the Journal of Archaeological Science an actual estimate for the aqueduct’s flow rate of 1.4 m3/s (± 0.4).

“At this rate, the aqueduct would have supplied the city with 370 gallons of water each second,” said lead author Bruce Fouke, a professor of geology and microbiology and a member of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at Illinois. “That’s enough water, per second, to take a three-hour shower or to take 7 baths.””

Articolo originale:
http://phys.org/news/2015-06-travertine-reveals-ancient-roman-aqueduct.html