Watch scientists decipher burnt scrolls without unrolling them

TL;DR - Researchers created and burned papyrus samples to develop a method that could help decipher text inside unopened Herculaneum scrolls. The approach may enable scholars to recover fragile ancient writings without physically unrolling and damaging them.

• The team studied experimentally produced charred papyrus as a proxy for the Herculaneum scrolls.
• Their method targets text that appears to glow under imaging, although the provided excerpt does not specify the imaging technique.
• The research supports non-destructive reading of scrolls too fragile to open conventionally.