A new experiment attacks a specific failure mode in virtual unrolling: carbon ink and carbonized papyrus can look almost identical in X-rays. Researchers made modern papyrus samples with very small amounts of lead in the ink, scorched them, then combined X-ray fluorescence, tomography and machine learning to recover the writing. Study report, September 17
The caveat is central: this worked on modern equivalents, not yet on an unopened ancient scroll. Nor will it help manuscripts written only with carbon ink. But some Herculaneum inks do contain lead, so the method could supply a much stronger signal for a subset of the library and better training data for the software that separates letters from layers. After two millennia, even a selective improvement is allowed to count as good news.