Althouse: “Scientists hope to digitally unravel scrolls charred by Vesuvius with light 10 billion times brighter than the sun.”

October 5, 2019

“Scientists hope to digitally unravel scrolls charred by Vesuvius with light 10 billion times brighter than the sun.”

CNN reports.

19 comments:

john said...: Seales, a Christian, says he hopes they might end up reading a early Christian text, which could have been written in the same time period as the eruption of Vesuvius. Regardless, he says the overall academic effort to "remain educated" motivates the quest.

What a bizarre bit of writing.; 10/5/19, 8:42 PM
Crimso said...: "olives
fish
figs
toilet paper (the good kind, not that flimsy stuff"; 10/5/19, 9:03 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: Why do only scientists hope this? Why doesn't, for example, Prof. Althouse hope this?

The idea "light 10 billion times brighter than the sun" is a sentence that could be written with anyone reading being able, capable indeed, is very wrong.

The game of poker teaches many simple things that added up, in the proper order, sure do end up meaning a lot.

I wonder why they didn't conclude based on their extrapolations of data they consider reliable, on such a suspect number as 10?

Surely scientists know, and our own ferndandygalnowowhighiq soon to be Deidra Mclasky? McCulsky? McCluskeY?

I won't look it up because those who know know and those who don't don't wanna know. Maybe because Capote was such a horrible person.

God knows.

Anyway Iowahawk had linked her, the great prof.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deirdre_McCloskey; 10/5/19, 9:08 PM
David Begley said...: Could be the Roman equivalent of the NYT. Impeach Cesar!; 10/5/19, 9:13 PM
Temujin said...: They will find naked pictures of Trump.; 10/5/19, 9:14 PM
FullMoon said...: Better wear dark glasses.; 10/5/19, 9:28 PM
D 2 said...: The article says it is being led by Kentucky scientists, but they are using a U.K. Lab, because that is where the, uh, light of a thousand suns is at. James Bond must have captured the baddie from Diamonds are Forever alive, and brought him back to Oxfordshire.

I mean, who doesn't need a light that is millions of time brighter than the sun?

I know Euros are in no way uniform in their thought anymore than any other continental people of several hundred million, but you do wonder sometimes why someone wealthy put a Swedish kid on a sailboat to lecture the world in NY when they are also paying other dudes to use what is a (presumed) crapload of energy to push very bright electrons through a roman scroll.

For all the effort of Kentucky & Oxford scientists and historians I hope the scroll has something interesting, like maybe the secret to cooking good calamari. It would be sad if all it had was political bullshittery.; 10/5/19, 9:30 PM
Narayanan said...: James P. Hogan definitely a foreseer in his tales.

Gentle Giants of Ganymede.

Etc.; 10/5/19, 9:40 PM
traditionalguy said...: Books from Julius Caesar’s house could be interesting. But we demand the best evidence rule be applied.; 10/5/19, 9:47 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: The guy who told me "hey you wanna try Oxy?" and I was like what?

Yeah, Hillbilly heroin.

OH, NO, NO I AM NOT INTERESTED.

No, no man, it's my uncles prescription, like from a Doctor, it's a pain medication. Makes you feel like Vicadin times 10"

NO, THANKS THOUGH MAN.

Moral? If he would have said, hey you wanna Vicadin or Percacet I would have said yes. Might not be here to type this had that happened. I hate to confirm my elitist better sterotypes more than neccesary, but it is for this reason I avoided Dr's for decades.

Couple gout visits, okay Nap Sod okay. Less red meat and fish.; 10/5/19, 9:54 PM
Ambrose said...: Based on the prior post, what if what they find are pictures of a naked Trump?; 10/5/19, 10:08 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: If they would have called it the Smoggy Way not the Milky Way Hollywood scions wouldn't have faced so much, so so much, hatred.

The poor but very rich dears.

God bless. It is really all Wisconsin-folk fault. What with their focus on milky ways, of the dairy. And other.

How dare them! Millwaukee 2020 will show these stupif cukss who ther WILL VOTE FOR!!!!

MOTHERFUCKER!!!; 10/5/19, 10:13 PM
Darrell said...: But could they do that with the Lightbringer's real birth certificate?; 10/5/19, 10:25 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: Look it's tough being slow: what Althouse was requesting has been delivered 7 ways times 7 styles times 7 timeframes.

So let's, starting, here now, with the greatest of them all, The Great Betamax3000, start.

But how?

Need a business man for that. Trump is in office.

Be illegal though.

Can't profit a man for the people like potUS.

So what can we do?

Write The Big Lebowski Too.

My conditions are: $8,000,000 for a 90 second camio of unbelievably raw HEART OF AMERICA Lee Greewood-style, or $60,000,000 we all just shut up as you do what you do observing your son Boulen or Boulyn or named after Anne Boulyn the great ya know, and Boulyn Lebowski ends up like Bob Dylan on his best day showing appreciation for the American bowling alley.

WE GOTTA STAY TRUE TO THE SPRIRT OF THE '98 RELEASE OR FUCK US.; 10/5/19, 10:44 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: Having been diagnosed by a Dr. or Medicine, a real MD, against eating red meat I feel in a transcendendant sense I can't be red meat, upon the conscious of good-doorers.

You can't use me as red meat if red meat causes me problems to begin with, lest we subject ourself's future to process/system/method* errors-ought-have-been-forseen.

*No thanks to De Niro, who really almost ruined Godfather 2 except they didn't allow dumb Bobby any lines in English.; 10/5/19, 10:50 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: All we know: Everybody dies.

So why the Fredo hate?

Fredo just had him some questions, he never got any respect, and in the end everybody died.

So why was Fredo the jerk?

Michael was the fucking jerk you goddamn narcissists.

Jesus Christ.

Ohh ohh, but the cinematagraphy was ground-breakinly dark (fuck off Kane broke the fucking stage to get the low shot) and ...

Everybody dies. Not so if Fredo would have offed Mikey for being a younger brother disrespecting an older brother.; 10/5/19, 11:05 PM
Fernandinande said...: CNN's "light" = X-rays, and two sentences from the Wiki have more info than the CNN article:

"Following the pioneering results of Dr. Mocella et al., in 2016 another team led by Dr. G. Ranocchia and Dr. A. Cedola announced encouraging results by means of the non-destructive Synchrotron X-ray phase-contrast tomography (XPCT) technique.
...
The same year he demonstrated readability success of another Herculaneum scroll, with help of the particle accelerator Diamond Light Source, through a powerful x-rays imaging technique, letter ink which contains trace amounts of lead were detected."

Smithsonian article; 10/6/19, 7:00 AM
Christy said...: Equally accurately CNN could have written that a lab in the UK was using electromagnetic radiation 10 times more powerful than the sun. Wonder if we'd see protest riots in the streets from the scarier words?; 10/6/19, 11:16 AM
Paul Doty said...: Well, if they weren't burnt before...; 10/6/19, 7:58 PM