Scientists burn modern papyrus to unlock Herculaneum scrolls

Researchers deliberately burned modern Egyptian papyrus scrolls in a high-temperature furnace to replicate the conditions of the Mount Vesuvius eruption of 79 CE, in a paper published in PLOS One led by Berkeley SETI scientist Douglas Seiler. The experimental scrolls were inscribed with known texts — passages from the Bible, Star Wars and The Outer Limits — using reed pens and traditional Japanese ink, allowing the team to compare the original writing with what survives after carbonization and refine X-ray and AI techniques for reading the ancient, still-unreadable Herculaneum scrolls.