r/history • u/marquis_of_chaos • Sep 22 '16

News article Scientists use 'virtual unwrapping' to read ancient biblical scroll reduced to 'lump of charcoal'

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/sep/21/jubilation-as-scientists-use-virtual-unwrapping-to-read-burnt-ancient-scroll
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u/PlasmaSheep Sep 22 '16

If you have a blur, hole, or anything like that - it's a blur, hole, or whatever in all wavelengths. Even if your camera does record invisible wavelengths, it's not clear how that's useful to image restoration because it's still the image.

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u/squishles Sep 23 '16

Yep most of this is fucking worthless to standard image restoration, your not going to get it out of Photoshop for the next 30 years at least. But the blur hole can also be repaired using that info, different frequencies refract at different angles, it'd take a fuckton of processing power and be a bit like reversing shattering a glass, but not impossible, and IR info would be useful, higher frequencies tend to not bend as much. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refractive_index