How X-rays, geometry, and machine learning are reopening the Herculaneum scrolls
When Vesuvius destroyed Herculaneum in 79 CE, it preserved a library in a nearly unreadable form: papyrus scrolls burned, crushed, and sealed into brittle carbon. The central challenge has always been how to read these scrolls without physically opening and destroying them. The scrolls are not simply closed books. They are tangled three-dimensional structures of carbonized papyrus, and in many cases the ink is carbon-based too, which makes ordinary contrast between writing and support extremely weak.