
The Quest to Unlock an Ancient Library - diodorus
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/16/the-invisible-library
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NickHaflinger
"In trying to read the scrolls, scholars and curators have invariably damaged
or destroyed them. The Herculaneum papyri survived only because all the
moisture was seared out of them—uncharred papyrus scrolls in non-desert
climates have long since rotted away. In each scroll, the tightly wrapped
layers of the fibrous pith of the papyrus plant are welded together, like a
burrito left in the back seat of a car for two thousand years. But, because
the sheets are so dry, when they are unfurled they risk crumbling into dust."

..

"Brent Seales, a software engineer .. gave a talk about the possibility of
“virtually unwrapping” the scrolls, using a combination of molecular-level
X-ray technology, spectral-imaging techniques, and software designed by him
and his students at the university."

..

"In 2010, at a digital-restoration conference in Helsinki, Seales met Uwe
Bergmann, a physicist at Stanford. Seales was familiar with Bergmann’s work on
the Archimedes Palimpsest."

..

"When Bergmann read about the palimpsest, in an article in GEO that his mother
had given him, he immediately thought of employing a synchrotron"

..

'Once he obtained access to the palimpsest, Bergmann used X-ray fluorescence
imaging, or XRF, in the synchrotron to get pictures of the iron-based
molecules in the ink. Unlike MSI, XRF is sensitive to individual elements.
Different elements emit characteristic wavelengths of light when the X rays
hit them; by zeroing in on iron, Bergmann was able to see the letters. “What
had been invisible for centuries was made, right before our eyes, visible,” he
said, in an interview published by the Department of Energy. “Line by line,
Archimedes’ original writings began to come to life, literally glowing on our
screens. It was the most amazing thing.”'

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It _is_ the newyorker, why use a single sentence when a whole paragraph - with
endless digressions - will do :)

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themartorana
This is one of those stories that makes me so amazed and angry at the same
time. That we can unlock absolutely ancient mysteries and read into a
forgotten past is mind bending.

That politics won't let it happen is earth-shattering.

~~~
simplicio
It was pretty unclear what the actual reason for not releasing the scrolls
was. The article mumbles something about 'power', but doesn't really explain
what that means. It's sort of a weird end to a lengthy (and pretty wordy)
article, that builds at great length towards the development of a technique to
read the scrolls, and then sort of tosses in the fact that they can't use the
technique without really exploring why outside of a single ambiguous sentence.

Its hardly clear why locking the scrolls in the basement for another few
decades would increase the Institutes power. Having a bunch of unreadable
papayri sitting in a box doesn't do much for the Institute, while having them
revealed to be the only copies of works by Epicures (or whomever) could only
increase their prestige/power/monetary value.

~~~
WildUtah
Well, at the current rate, it won't be too long before copyright extends 2000
years and then the Institute can claim it and demand a royalty from everyone
who wants to know what they say.

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userbinator
At least this "data" was still somewhat readable after almost 2k years... I'm
not so optimistic about a future in which everything will be (very strongly)
encrypted by default due to security paranoia, making such attempts at
recovery truly impossible. I can almost imagine an article appearing sometime
in the future with the same title, but the subject being about DRM'd ebook
files to which the keys have been long lost.

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tokenadult
Wow. What a great article. How tantalizing to be only inches away from reading
lost ancient literature, but unable to unroll it to read it.

