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New Technique Helps Archaeologists Decipher Ancient Languages

A conservationist works on a 1,500-year-old mosaic floor bearing Greek writing, discovered in Jerusalem's Old City. (Reuters)
A conservationist works on a 1,500-year-old mosaic floor bearing Greek writing, discovered in Jerusalem's Old City. (Reuters)
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New Technique Helps Archaeologists Decipher Ancient Languages

A conservationist works on a 1,500-year-old mosaic floor bearing Greek writing, discovered in Jerusalem's Old City. (Reuters)
A conservationist works on a 1,500-year-old mosaic floor bearing Greek writing, discovered in Jerusalem's Old City. (Reuters)

Developing an AI network can help scholars restore ancient Greek texts. Researchers at University of Oxford have recruited new deep learning techniques to decipher symbols of ancient languages.

The research team says there are many artifacts featuring important historical symbols and inscriptions that erode with time, noting that the clear inscriptions that archaeologists can read and understand are few.

In a test, where the AI attempted to fill the gaps in 2,949 damaged inscriptions, human experts managed to explain 30 percent of unclear symbols, whereas the network took two hours to decipher 50 inscriptions, reported the New Scientist website.

The team said the new network named "Pythia" is able to provide 20 different predictions to explain each eroded inscription, leaving the selection of the suitable hypothesis that correspond to the context of the ancient inscriptions to archaeologists.

In addition to providing various options, Pythia evaluates the reliability of each option or hypothesis it offers to archaeologists to help them reach the correct one.

"Pythia is the first electronic model used to restore ancient archaeological inscriptions by deciphering the eroded letters through deep learning networks," the study team wrote.

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Intuitive Machines' Athena Lander Closing in on Lunar Touchdown Site

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Launch Complex-39A carrying the Nova-C lunar lander Athena as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload initiative from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, US, February 26, 2025. REUTERS/Steve Nesius/File Photo
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Launch Complex-39A carrying the Nova-C lunar lander Athena as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload initiative from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, US, February 26, 2025. REUTERS/Steve Nesius/File Photo
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Intuitive Machines' Athena Lander Closing in on Lunar Touchdown Site

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Launch Complex-39A carrying the Nova-C lunar lander Athena as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload initiative from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, US, February 26, 2025. REUTERS/Steve Nesius/File Photo
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Launch Complex-39A carrying the Nova-C lunar lander Athena as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload initiative from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, US, February 26, 2025. REUTERS/Steve Nesius/File Photo

Intuitive Machines sent final commands to its uncrewed Athena spacecraft on Thursday as it closed in on a landing spot near the moon's south pole, the company's second attempt to score a clean touchdown after making a lopsided landing last year.

After launching atop a SpaceX rocket on Feb. 26 from Florida, the six-legged Athena lander has flown a winding path to the moon some 238,000 miles (383,000 km) away from Earth, where it will attempt to land closer to the lunar south pole than any other spacecraft.

The landing is scheduled for 12:32 pm ET (1732 GMT). It will target Mons Mouton, a flat-topped mountain some 100 miles (160 km) from the lunar south pole, Reuters reported.

Five nations have made successful soft landings in the past - the then-Soviet Union, the US, China, India and, last year, Japan. The US and China are both rushing to put their astronauts on the moon later this decade, each courting allies and giving their private sectors a key role in spacecraft development.

India's first uncrewed moon landing, Chandrayaan-3 in 2023, touched down near the lunar south pole. The region is eyed by major space powers for its potential for resource extraction once humans return to the surface - subsurface water ice could theoretically be converted into rocket fuel.

The Houston-based company's first moon landing attempt almost exactly a year ago, using its Odysseus lander, marked the most successful touchdown attempt at the time by a private company.

But its hard touchdown - due to a faulty laser altimeter used to judge its distance from the ground - broke a lander leg and caused the craft to topple over, dooming many of its onboard experiments.

Austin-based Firefly Aerospace this month celebrated a clean touchdown of its Blue Ghost lander, making the most successful soft landing by a private company to date.

Intuitive Machines, Firefly, Astrobotic Technology and a handful of other companies are building lunar spacecraft under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, an effort to seed development of low-budget spacecraft that can scour the moon's surface before the US sends astronauts there around 2027.