Story highlights Scrolls were in Herculaneum

Ancient town was destroyed by volcanic eruption

Rome (CNN) For over two millennia, scrolls from the ancient Roman town of Herculaneum eluded analysis. Left buried under the ashes when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, the scrolls were preserved -- but in a charred and illegible state.

But thanks to modern science, researchers are now able to read what's on the scrolls without even opening them up.

They'll do this with a new process that allows them to unroll the Herculaneum scrolls -- virtually.

The process is called X-ray phase-contrast tomography. It virtually unwraps the scrolls and flattens out digital sheets of the physical carbonized document.

That's a major development because the scrolls, which were buried in a Herculaneum library and excavated 260 years ago, are extremely fragile and could potentially be ruined by unwrapping using older, more invasive methods.

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