[verditelabs]

30 scrolls, maybe? Something like that. I scanned Pherc Paris 4 and Pherc Paris 3 at Beam line 18 at ESRF back in March.

The team did "the campfire scroll" experiment a few years ago to replicate carbonization, unrolling, and ink detection. That is the only case I am aware of. It proved the method could work but it's not a source of say training data; it varies too much from the real scrolls.

The main limitation is time and cost. We have to scan on what is AFAIK the most powerful x-ray beam line in the world. It is not cheap

[CGMthrowaway]

You had to pay? I understand the machine cost many hundreds of millions of dollars, but I would have thought for academic researchers doing open science, the beamtime is free (funded by the govt / science trusts).

[verditelabs]

The beam time is unfortunately not free. I scanned Pherc Paris 4 and Pherc Paris 3 in March and had the final shift on the beam. As I was removing the scroll from the scanning pedestal the next team of scientists were already in the lab getting their samples ready. It's a well oiled machine and they've got customers.

[larkost]

The way these things normally work is that the project starts with some sort of a grant. Then that grant pays for all of the costs of the project: peoples' salary, materials used, time on equipment, plus money for the buildings and administration (overhead).

In this case the time on the equipment would need to be included, both a portion of the cost of building/maintaining it, and probably the energy needed to run it. Even where the government is providing the grant (likely here), it still needs to be accounted for.

[verditelabs]

We - the core challenge team anyway - get no money from any government. We paid for the beam time from our donations and internal funding.