{"id":856743,"date":"2026-09-22T15:54:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T15:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/856743\/"},"modified":"2026-09-22T15:54:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T15:54:13","slug":"a-volcano-toasted-this-scroll-2000-years-ago-heres-how-scientists-read-it-without-ever-opening-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/856743\/","title":{"rendered":"A Volcano Toasted This Scroll 2,000 Years Ago. Here’s How Scientists Read It Without Ever Opening It"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Vesuvius Challenge<\/a> is a winner of the 2026 Gizmodo Science Fair for virtually deciphering an entire papyrus recovered from the charred library of Herculaneum and for creating an open forum for scientific discourse and experimentation.<\/p>\n

The question <\/p>\n

Can we salvage any valuable information from the \u201clost\u201d library of Herculaneum?<\/p>\n

The result <\/p>\n

Yes, we totally can<\/a>! In June 2026, scientists with the Vesuvius Challenge succeeded in virtually unwrapping and deciphering PHerc. 1667\u2014one of the many papyri charred and carbonized in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius 2,000 years ago. A team of papyrologists then worked out 22 columns of Greek written on roughly 4.6 feet (1.4 meters) of papyrus. The text appears to be a philosophical treatise on ethics, specifically a Stoic work on human nature, impulse, and the moral progress of human beings.<\/p>\n

\"ProjectThe Herculaneum scroll with red laser lines being scanned at Institut de France by Brent Seales and his team. Credit: EduceLab <\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t a one-time miracle but a long, steady flow of innovation that began with Brent Seales<\/a>, principal investigator of EduceLab<\/a>\u2018s Digital Restoration Initiative at the University of Kentucky. The achievement is the latest from a full-blown public competition<\/a>: the Vesuvius Challenge, which invites anyone to decipher the lost texts of Herculaneum. Since launching in 2023, the competition has blazed through key milestones\u2014restoring the first word<\/a>, the first paragraphs<\/a>, and so on\u2014and now the first full scroll.<\/p>\n

Why they did it <\/p>\n

The Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum was first discovered in the 18th century. To this day, it remains the only surviving library from the Roman and Greek eras with a preserved collection, according to Federica Nicolardi<\/a>, a papyrologist at the University of Naples Federico II. Libraries from antiquity are extremely rare, despite extensive records of their existence, added Nicolardi, who leads the Vesuvius Challenge\u2019s papyrology team.<\/p>\n

\"PhercA composite of images showing an attempt from 1998 at prying open the scroll PHerc. 118. Credit: Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. <\/p>\n

Naturally, there was much interest in accessing their contents, but the fragile scrolls would literally crumble to bits when researchers tried to pry them open. This would change with Seales, who was tasked with the digitization of manuscripts from antiquity in the 1990s. It was in 2004 that Herculaneum scrolls became a part of his work.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe internet very quickly became the largest digital library in human history,\u201d he recalled. \u201cI realized that damaged materials in libraries were going to get left behind. What quickly came onto my radar was Herculaneum\u2014the pinnacle of damage.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"SealesBrent Seales (right) and colleague Seth Parker (left) scanning a replica of the Herculaneum scroll. Credit: University of Kentucky <\/p>\n

Around this time, Seales crossed paths with a surgeon using X-ray computed tomography (CT), which got him seriously thinking about sticking a scroll in a CT scanner (the first mummy CT scan<\/a> was in the 1970s). After 15 years of development, Seales and colleagues pioneered a technique to virtually unwrap<\/a> a charred scroll from En-Gedi in 2015, using X-ray tomography and computer vision.<\/p>\n

Things took an unexpected turn during the pandemic when Seales was contacted by Silicon Valley investor Nat Friedman<\/a>. After a few meetings, Friedman pitched an idea: What if we made this a competition?<\/p>\n

Why they\u2019re a winner <\/p>\n

Seales\u2019s decision wasn\u2019t actually a no-brainer. Getting an extra hand or two (or many) would certainly help speed up progress. But it also meant that Seales and his team had to fully disclose all their work, know-how, and datasets to the entire world.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had to become comfortable with accepting that that was going to be the new reality,\u201d Seales admitted. It took a couple of months to discuss that reality. \u201cPart of the history was that we\u2019d spent great effort and time scanning the scrolls\u2014nothing could happen without that\u2014and that had nothing to do with Nat, or with the contest, or with anything,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\"HerculaneumSeales\u2019s team scanning a scroll at the Diamond Light Source, a synchrotron facility in the U.K. Credit: Christy Chapman, EduceLab <\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end, when we made the decision, we know it was right, and everyone agreed,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd then we just ran with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

And so did the hundreds of people that participated in the contest\u2014and, of those, a small cohort that ended up joining the internal research team. This was how Giorgio Angelotti<\/a> and Sean Johnson<\/a>, the tech team lead and a research scientist at Vesuvius Challenge, respectively, ended up as key contributors to the first reading of a full scroll. In fact, according to Angelotti, the entire technical team began as members of the community.<\/p>\n

The team adjudicates and verifies contestant submissions but is usually developing and refining tools to test them on scroll slices, according to Johnson. Intermittently, the team works toward a more solid deadline for a conference or presentation, which ushers the researchers \u201cout of \u2018research land\u2019\u201d and into \u201cproduction land\u201d for benchmarking, Johnson explained. The first scroll was one such milestone, he said.<\/p>\n

\"HerculaneumA micro-CT image of the slice section of a scroll dubbed PHerc. 172. Credit: Vesuvius Challenge <\/p>\n

The first fully unwrapped scroll truly represents a labor of love and ingenuity. First, the team takes some external photos of the scroll to 3D print a nylon mesh to transport the scroll to the synchrotron for X-ray microtomography. Because the papyri are made from plant fiber, the overall shape creates a \u201cperiodic tubular pattern\u201d with some identifiable cavities, Angelotti said.<\/p>\n

There is also a team of annotators who semi-automatically trace the fibers. This gives the team an idea of how to \u201cdeform\u201d a perfect reference scroll into the shape of the scan. As for detecting the ink, the models can partly reveal ink traces, but they lack the context to see a full letter\u00a0to exclude full letter memorization, Angelotti explained. That\u2019s where the papyrologists come in, to give feedback on reading the ink, as well as annotating the images and creating labels for detection training, Nicolardi added.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was during the holidays that I first received the data [for a portion of PHerc. 1667],\u201d she recalled. \u201cI thought, \u2018Okay, this is my Christmas present,\u2019 because I could see 10 columns from this papyrus\u2014and they were extremely well readable. Then [later] I received the image with the full length of the scroll, and Giorgio told me, \u2018You know, this is it. There\u2019s nothing else.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s next <\/p>\n

As Johnson puts it, the project is a cycle between \u201cresearch land\u201d and \u201cproduction land.\u201d While a huge achievement, the reading of PHerc. 1667 represents just one of hundreds of scrolls from the Villa of the Papyri. And maybe even more, since it technically hasn\u2019t been fully excavated yet.<\/p>\n

\"VillaThe Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum. \u00a9 Villa of the Papyri via Wikimedia Commons <\/p>\n

\u201cMost scholars believe we\u2019ve only scratched the surface on the [number] of scrolls that were actually there at the moment of the eruption,\u201d Seales said. \u201cAnd if we found more scrolls, it would probably be the largest discovery of classical material in human history.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s still a lot more work to do with the currently available scrolls, Angelotti noted. Scrolls like PHerc. 1667 are what he calls the \u201cnice\u201d scrolls, which are complicated (as they all are) but still have some fissures that the team can latch onto. Then there are some scrolls with tightly compressed regions, detached sections, and sometimes even signs of mud and other contaminants that leave them heavily deformed.<\/p>\n

Some of these scrolls we may never read, he said. But we can try\u2014even if it\u2019s just a tiny section. That will depend on improved automation and high-res scans of remaining scrolls, as well as enhancing the legibility and detectability of ink, Angelotti explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am not going to count out anybody else\u2019s innovation to be able to come at even the most badly damaged stuff and figure it out.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cI think all the information is still inside,\u201d Seales said. \u201cOf all the ones that have been opened and unwrapped, there\u2019s always visible ink whenever they crack them open. It\u2019s just a matter of the right way to scan it, the right resolution, and the right software to see the evidence that\u2019s not going to be visible always to the naked eye.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"NaplesVesuvius Challenge researchers, collaborators, and distinguished guests at the press conference to announce the full reading of a Herculaneum scroll in June 2026. Credit: Eric Sanders\/UK Pigman College of Engineering <\/p>\n

\u201cI am not going to count out anybody else\u2019s innovation to be able to come at even the most badly damaged stuff and figure it out,\u201d he said. \u201cBecause we already have evidence that, you know\u2014we did that the first time, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

The team <\/p>\n

Among the key contributors are Brent Seales, principal advisor; Giorgio Angelotti, project and technical lead; Federica Nicolardi, papyrology team lead; and Sean Johnson, research scientist. A full list of the team behind the Vesuvius Challenge, including research partners and sponsors, can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Click here<\/a> to see all of the winners of the 2026 Gizmodo Science Fair.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Vesuvius Challenge is a winner of the 2026 Gizmodo Science Fair for virtually deciphering an entire papyrus…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":856744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[18380,103783,79],"class_list":["post-856743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-archaeology","tag-gizmodo-science-fair","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=856743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/856744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=856743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=856743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=856743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}