IF YOU WANTED to read an ancient Roman scroll, you might reach for a dictionary, and perhaps a magnifying glass. You would probably not think of using a particle accelerator. But that is what is required to unravel the papyrus scrolls found in Herculaneum, a Roman town buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD. Even then, success is far from guaranteed: since 2023, researchers attempting to unravel the scrolls have been stuck on the first few. Now, armed with more data and a more powerful particle accelerator, they expect to make more rapid headway.