Long-time readers know that I'm not real big on the "spin-off" argument for funding space exploration and technology. Still, when something like this happens, it's certainly a nice side effect.

Since it was unearthed more than a century ago, the hoard of documents known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri has fascinated classical scholars. There are 400,000 fragments, many containing text from the great writers of antiquity. But only a small proportion have been read so far. Many were illegible.

Now scientists are using multi-spectral imaging techniques developed from satellite technology to read the papyri at Oxford University's Sackler Library. The fragments, preserved between sheets of glass, respond to the infra-red spectrum - ink invisible to the naked eye can be seen and photographed.

Very cool, but my first question is...what took them so long to try multispectral imaging?

Very cool, but my first question is...what took them so long to try multispectral imaging?

Probably a combination of factors. First, I imagine the collection is under the control of a small number of scholars who may not understand (at least at first) this sort of technology (much like the Dead Sea Scrolls were). Second, there's probably very few people with the skills and technology to do this task. And finally there's a lot of material to go through. Most of it probably isn't that interesting.

Why, exactly, does the space program get credit for this "spinoff"? It's hard to tell from the article just what has been done here, but people have been looking at stuff with an infrared-sensitive camera since before the first satellite.

A good example of doing this is in the book "Red Dragon" by Thomas Harris (Hannibal Lecter's first appearance), and also in the two movie versions "Manhunter" and "Red Dragon".

This doesn't seem to be any more realistic than giving NASA credit for Tang or teflon.