Mane Smelody Science Challenge · 11:33am Oct 22nd, 2023
Is anyone up for the latest writing endurance test: the Mane Smelody Science Challenge? You write a blog post about a bit of interesting science linked to Mane Smelody, and if you can get through it, you tag a friend and they have to do it…
Yeah, I’m not sure that this is going viral…
For inspiration, check out the YouTube series Nailing Science, where the amazing Michaela Livingstone Banks and Becky Smethurst talk about science while painting nails. Maybe I should do a series where Jazz and Pipp discuss particle physics research while doing hooficures?
Meanwhile, what can I do with this episode? Some interesting plant science? Some discussion about the importance of safety testing of cosmetic ingredients and the role of guinea ponies?
The B plot has more promising material. Sunny and Zipp’s quest to read an ancient scroll provides a tag to hang a similar story in the news this week about using particle physics technology to read ancient documents, specifically the Herculaneum scrolls.
[Side mystery – when it fell off the shelf, how did that scroll go from being tightly wound up, to a flat sheet, without the slightest curl at the edges, in under a second?]
In 79 AD the Roman town of Herculaneum was buried in ash by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Some 1700 years later, workmen excavated a building full of charcoal-like objects, which they later realized were carbonised scrolls. They had excavated a library, containing a unique collection of Greek and Latin literature.
This was particularly exciting to classicists because papyri don’t normally last long in the European climate, so our records from the Roman period are only from copies, or other media. However, to their great frustration, it was impossible to open up and read the scrolls without destroying them. For over two hundred years, archivists have kept these priceless, but unreadable, documents. Attempts to open the scrolls with ingenious mechanical devices have usually reduced them to piles of dust, making curators inclined to keep those remaining locked away to prevent any more damage. However, the dream is to x-ray the scrolls, and read the text using computed tomography—using software to ‘virtually unroll’ the text.
To do this, you first need to produce a 3D map of the burnt object, with micro-metre resolution and able to pick out the difference between the ink and papyrus. It is trying to read black writing on a black background in the middle of a stack of other black-on-black, rolled into a cylinder, and baked by a volcano. Depending on the level of degradation it may not be possible, but it looks like it is. Just very very difficult.
You need an intense, narrow-beam x-ray source, which needs a synchrotron light source (accelerate an electron beam and feed it into a wiggler, where the magnetic field makes them emit x-rays). Direct this onto your charcoal-papyrus. Then you need an array of high-resolution detectors to pick up all the x-rays deflected or emitted from the sample.
This is an ongoing quest, and progress is slow. Although the latest news, about a new word ("πορϕυρας") made visible by the latest AI technique, is presented as a major breakthrough, my feeling is that progress will be incremental, and driven mainly by improvements in the detectors. We like to believe you can use AI to pick out a signal from noisy data. But to make real progress, you need better data. Of course, once new instrumentation is available, and better data taken, the AI coders will do the final step take the credit for everything. (I’m a detector scientist, by the way).
And when we are finally able to read the remaining scrolls, what secrets will they reveal? Lost works by Greek philosophers? Documents on the early history of Christianity? First century fan fiction? Maybe a recipe for Roman nail polish?
why does "talking about science while painting nails" sound like such a good time c_c
The work on the Herculaneum scrolls is very exciting! I've also heard that there are projects in the works to use AI to read cuneiform tablets. The problem there isn't (primarily) degradation of the texts, but the fact that there are so many tablets yet untranslated and so few people who can do the job.
I hope I'll survive long enough to be able to point my phone at an old Assyrian text and get an instant translation! (
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Sign up for the MPhil in Cuneiform Studies and it only takes two years of intense study, or so I'm told. We have so much fascinating information about life in ancient Babylon because they took the trouble to record their laundry bills on clay tablets.
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Aaaaaargh!!! SO tempting! All I would need is an extra 10 hours in each day, or an extra decade or so of expected life span!
Surprisingly, (or not) I have a very basic grasp of Akkadian cuneiform already. A B Cs/Ash Ba Zus, simple vocab, and all the common logograms. Reading in French isn't a problem, but my German sucks... the Wife's is pretty good, so she could probably help me out there...
Aaaaaargh!!! I can't believe I'm actually considering this!
Yeah, not everything is Gilgamesh or Ashurbanipal's Egyptian campaign, but even a receipt for the donation of a lamb to the temple of Ishtar is still incredibly cool to read for the first time in 3000 years.
I know I can't... but I'm bookmarking the page, anyway!