International contest seeks to unlock secrets of Herculaneum scrolls

After proving that an artificial intelligence algorithm can extract letters and symbols from high-resolution X-ray photographs of the delicate, unrolled sheets, researchers are announcing a global competition to decipher the burned papyri, The Guardian reports. Led by computer scientist Prof. Brent Seales of the University of Kentucky, researchers could read the ink on the surface and hidden layers of scrolls by training a machine-learning algorithm to spot subtle differences in the papyrus structure captured by the X-ray images. "We've shown how to read the ink of Herculaneum. That gives us the opportunity to reveal 50, 70, maybe 80 percent of the entire collection," said Seales. Now we want everybody to get on and sail it with us."