Unlocking Scrolls Preserved in Vesuvius' Eruption

In case you missed this, I thought it was potentially exciting:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/21/science/more-progress-made-toward-learning-con...

Fascinating. Will be a huge job just deciding which letters belong to which layer, so I don't expect any results really fast. But wow!

Let's hope for the best.

Now, that really is exciting. I wonder how long it will take them to advance the technology far enough.

ETA - Piso sounds quite serious and intellectual - I wonder what are the chances of him having had a copy of the Telegony - always wanted to read that.

From http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-21/ancient-scrolls-scorched-by-vesuvius-may-b...

""It's always hard to make a precise prediction, but with resources, the scrolls should be readable within the next decade," lead scientist Vito Mocella said.
...
Mr Mocella said the key to deciphering this extraordinary haul of literature was not so much technology as funding.

"The work we did was voluntary, it was done virtually in our spare time," he said.

Technology was fast advancing to enable scientists to read the scrolls, Mr Mocella said, and pointed to the potential of another non-invasive tool called tomo fluorescence.

But using it "depends on getting the means," he said."

I'd send 'em a few quid if they had an appeal.

This is truly amazing. Essentially what they are doing is detecting the increased thickness where the ink sits on top of the papyrus. One of the major problems they had was that the fibers in the papyrus run horizontally and vertically which interferes with detecting the ink so they were mostly able to detect curved and diagonal marks. If you want to see the images of some of the letters they found you can look in the paper describing the work at http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150120/ncomms6895/full/ncomms6895.html