OXFORDSHIRE, ENGLAND—BBC News reports that a charred scroll of papyrus measuring more than 30 feet long from Herculaneum, a Roman city buried in ash during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79, has been examined with a synchrotron at Diamond Light Source. The X-ray beam produced by the synchrotron can reveal minute details of the scroll without damaging it, said Adrian Mancuso of Diamond Light Source. “We have to work out which layer is different from the next layer so we can unroll that digitally,” Mancuso explained. Because the papyrus and the ink used to write on it both contain carbon, it is difficult to detect the presence of written words. Artificial intelligence is therefore being used to search for traces of ink, which are then added to the digital reconstruction. “We can tell the entire scroll is full of text,” said Stephen Parsons of the Vesuvius Challenge, an international competition to read Herculaneum’s burned scrolls. “Now we can work on making it show up more clearly,” he added. For more, go to “The Charred Scrolls of Herculaneum.”

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Source: archaeology.org