Powerful X-Ray To Unravel Fragile Dead Sea Scrolls
Posted by Anthony Martin Mon, 24 Sep 2007 17:14:00 GMT
New x-ray techniques will be used on some of the Dead Sea Scrolls that are too fragile to unravel.
They will look at the texts using x-rays produced at the £360m ($722m US) Diamond Light Source in Didcot, Oxfordshire. The machine works by propelling electrons at great speeds around a giant tunnel. As they corner, they emit x-rays 100bn (100,000,000bm US) times brighter than a medical x-ray.
Researchers led by Tim Wess have developed computer software that can “unravel” x-ray images of rolled up parchment documents to reveal the writing, even if the parchment has text on either side, according to Guardian.