A Light 10 Billion Times Brighter Than the Sun is About to Reveal History’s Greatest Mysteries

Many of the world’s precious historic parchment manuscripts, such as most of the Dead Sea Scrolls, cannot be read simply because they are too fragile to be unfolded. However, a revolutionary new scanning technique that relies on the world’s brightest light, is poised to change that.

The Diamond Light Source is a £370 million facility near Oxfordshire, England that shines 10 billion times more brilliantly than the Sun (but without the heat), to decipher the contents of ancient parchment documents without having to unfold them.

The research team, led by Professor Tim Wess of Cardiff University, is now preparing to use the technique for the first time to read documents that are so damaged that curators have never dared handle them. The National Archives have given Wess access to several 18th century documents damaged by fire at the Drury Lane records office in London, the contents of which are unknown as the parchment is too fragile to be opened.

Eventually the technology will be used to decipher the many unopened parts of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the collection of about 900 ancient Hebrew parchment texts discovered in 11 caves.

Within just a few years, the technique should even become capable of imaging the pages of unopened books. This will allow the team to make facsimiles of documents such as original scores by Mozart and Beethoven, which have been seriously damaged by the ink in which they are written.

“We use X-ray tomography to see what’s inside the document. It allows us to unravel secrets in documents too scarred to open or beyond the skills of conservation. When we see this working, it is a revelatory moment.”

It works by first placing the target manuscript under the Diamond beam, and turning it on slowly so that the images taken can be built up into a three-dimensional scan. The ink, particularly iron gall ink, which was widely used for writing on parchment, scatters light in a different pattern to the parchment itself.

The Diamond Light Source, which became operational in January, is a synchrotron that can generate X-rays 100 billion times brighter than those produced in standard laboratory machines. It is the largest British investment in any science project over the last 40 years. But if it can be used to rediscover even just a fraction of our planet’s rich past, it will have been well worth the investment.

Posted by Rebecca Sato

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Story Links:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2441840.ece
http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/13/powerful-light-scope-used-to-unearth-ancient-texts/