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First glimpse inside burnt scroll after 2k years

bbc.co.uk

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Re: First glimpse inside burnt scroll after 2k years

#4
> The document, which looks like a lump of charcoal, was charred by the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD and is too fragile to ever be physically opened.

> But now scientists have used a combination of X-ray imaging and artificial intelligence to virtually unfurl it, revealing rows and columns of text.

"scientists"

They talked to the head of the vesuvius challenge, which is the actual project that figured out how to read the scrolls, the head of the library that holds the scrolls, and the guy who runs the xray machine. But the people who solved this weren't scientists. They were largely college kids.

This has a lot more interesting detail. https://scrollprize.org/

Re: First glimpse inside burnt scroll after 2k years

#7

> The document, which looks like a lump of charcoal, was charred by the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD and is too fragile to ever be physically opened. > But now scientists have used a combination of X-ray imaging and artificial intelligence to virtually unfurl it, revealing rows and columns of text. "scientists" They talked to the head of the vesuvius challenge, which is the actual project that figured…

College kids can be scientists. Anyone doing science is a scientist.

There are even middle-school kids doing science. Or random adults with non-STEM jobs collecting data as a hobby for Citizen Science.

We should be careful not to gatekeep the words science or scientist. The more mad scientists we have throwing spaghetti on the wall to see what sticks, the more things we can discover.

Re: First glimpse inside burnt scroll after 2k years

#8
post #7

> The document, which looks like a lump of charcoal, was charred by the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD and is too fragile to ever be physically opened. > But now scientists have used a combination of X-ray imaging and artificial intelligence to virtually unfurl it, revealing rows and columns of text. "scientists" They talked to the head of the vesuvius challenge, which is the actual project that figured…

College kids can be scientists. Anyone doing science is a scientist. There are even middle-school kids doing science. Or random adults with non-STEM jobs collecting data as a hobby for Citizen Science. We should be careful not to gatekeep the words science or scientist. The more mad scientists we have throwing spaghetti on the wall to see what sticks, the more things we can discover.

I absolutely agree, and the (possibly badly said) intention was to highlight that credit is not being given where credit is due. "scientists" being a way to obscure the actual people who pulled this off.

Re: First glimpse inside burnt scroll after 2k years

#10
post #2

[flagged]

You may, or may not be asking in jest. In any case, I think you are alluding to the fact that Luke Farritor, winner of the Vesuvius challenge in 2023 and former SpaceX intern, is now employed by Elon Musk in the Department of Government Efficiency, ostensibly to find waste, fraud, and abuse in government spending.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpflT8XuSyg&t=11s

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