UPSC Prelims Exam 2020 Test Series
Important Topics for UPSC Prelims and Mains Exam 2020
Particles Accelerator to reveal 2000 year old secrets
A bid to decipher Roman-era scrolls carbonized in the deadly eruption of Mount Vesuvius has led to the discovery of a Particle Accelerator to reveal 2000 year old secrets.
Researchers have turned to Diamond, Britain’s national synchrotron in did cot, Oxford shire, to examine the papyri, which are described as “fragile like butterfly wings“.
They hope the synchrotron—which harnesses the power of electrons to produce powerful scans—could now end a decades-long effort to read the historic artifacts owned by the Institute de France.
A normal idea of a scroll is that you can just unroll it and read it,
These scrolls can’t be unrolled because the carbonization makes them completely brittle and that brittle nature would damage it completely if you tried to bend it at all.
Instead, the Diamond facility acts like a giant microscope, producing light 10 billion times brighter than the sun that allows scientists to study anything from fossils and jet engines to viruses and vaccines.