

Herculaneum scrolls unlocked using photon beams - diodorus
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31087746

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troymc
Here's the paper in _Nature Communications_ :

[http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150120/ncomms6895/full/nco...](http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150120/ncomms6895/full/ncomms6895.html)

"Revealing letters in rolled Herculaneum papyri by X-ray phase-contrast
imaging"

It's bizarre that BBC calls X-rays "photon beams," like something out of Star
Trek. Maybe using X-rays to read rolled-up scrolls doesn't sound so amazing?
(The details of how they did it _are_ amazing; this is not your grandpa's
X-ray imaging system.)

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gone35
Well; as you point out, X-ray phase-contrast tomography and conventional X-ray
photography are (nearly) totally different things, so their phrasing seems
justifiable to me, if only on editorial grounds --think "the full name of the
technique is too long, would cause viewers to get mixed up with conventional
X-ray imaging, _etc_.".

Quibbles aside though, it's hard to overstate how significant this finding is:
not only this is (apparently) the _only_ extant library left from classical
antiquity, but also these are freaking _charred scrolls_ from a volcanic
eruption that were considered beyond repair! I found ScienceDaily's article
much more informative in this regard:

[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150122114405.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150122114405.htm)

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toyg
_> it's hard to overstate how significant this finding is_

Let's not get too excited here, it's not like they've magically retrieved all
texts; they've retrieved small fragments from a handful of scrolls and the
process involved some luck and guesswork, not just software. For the technique
itself to work, the scroll has to be slightly bumpy, and not all of them are
like that.

It's a great step forward, but still, it will likely take decades to retrieve
significant portions of text from a small number of scrolls -- and this
assuming efforts will always be fully funded (Italy has a lot of _old stuff_
to look after, and they're not exactly swimming in cash right now -- they're
even thinking of re-burying several large archeological sites because they
simply cannot protect them at this time).

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JacobAldridge
If you ever get a chance to visit Pompeii, I definitely recommend also making
the trip to nearby Herculaneum. Pompeii is grand and impressive in its size;
Herculaneum (which was an upmarket, beachside town in 79AD) is boutqiue,
compact, less touristy, and for mine a much better experience and view into
both life in 79AD and life the day of the eruption.

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phreeza
'photon beams' seams like an unnecessarily complicated way of saying x-ray?

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skywhopper
Yes. At first I thought it was a joke article, wherein someone had the
brilliant idea of turning on a light in order to see a scroll previously
unreadable because it was hidden in a dark cave. "How did you manage to read
the scroll?" "Photon beams!" "Whoaaaa"

~~~
aswanson
I thought the same thing, a joke. Then I read it as 'proton beam' for a few
milliseconds...the brain does funny things when it's trying to make sense of
something.

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morehatsthantf2
Man I wish they told me what they said.

~~~
nonnatus
Exactly! I was hoping to at least hear what those two words were, no matter
how insignificant.

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asciimo
I thought Indiana Jones already did that.

