A recent study published in the journal Scientific Reports described how a young man’s brain was transformed into glass during the cataclysmic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE. Scientists believe that a cloud of ash as hot as 510 degrees Celsius enveloped the brain and then cooled rapidly, turning it into glass, according to BBC News.
Glass forms when a liquid, usually molten sand, is quickly cooled. In this case, the extreme heat caused the brain tissue to vitrify—a process that rarely occurs naturally—and then solidify into a glass-like material as it cooled. The process of forming glass can also occur naturally, such as when lightning strikes a sandy desert, forming lumps of glass called fulgurites.
Pier Paolo Petrone, a forensic archaeologist at the University of Naples Federico II, was studying remains first excavated in the 1960s of what is believed to be a 20-year-old man. Petrone was documenting the man’s charred bones under a lamp when he noticed something unusual. “I suddenly saw small glassy remains glittering in the volcanic ash that filled the skull,” Petrone said in an email to MIT Technology Review. When Petrone and his colleagues studied bits of the material with microscopes, they were even able to see neurons.
The man was found lying face down on a wooden bed inside a building thought to have been a place of worship in Herculaneum. Archaeologists believe he may have been guarding the building. Scientists believe the skull protected the brain against direct contact with the ash cloud, according to Science News.
“The heating stage would not have been long. Otherwise, the material would have been… cooked, and disappeared,” explained Guido Giordano, a volcanologist at Roma Tre University in Rome who was involved in the research, according to MIT Technology Review. To investigate how the vitrification occurred, Giordano and his colleagues subjected tiny pieces of the glass brain fragments—measuring millimeters wide—to extreme temperatures in the lab. They used a technique called differential scanning calorimetry to study the brain shards. The goal was to identify the material’s glass transition state—the temperature at which the material changed from brittle to soft.
Giordano added that this is probably what happened to the brains of the other people whose remains were found at Herculaneum, which were not preserved. “We believe that the very specific conditions that we have reconstructed for the vitrification of the brain make it very difficult for there to be other similar remains, although it is not impossible,” Giordano said.
Petrone described the glassy remains as having “a black appearance and shiny surfaces quite similar to obsidian.” However, he added, “Unlike obsidian, the glassy remains were extremely brittle and easy to crumble.”
“I was very excited because I understood that the preserved brain was something very unique, never seen before in any other archaeological or forensic context,” Petrone said.
“It’s an extraordinary finding. It tells us how brain preservation can work… extreme conditions can produce extreme results,” commented Matteo Borrini, a forensic anthropologist at Liverpool John Moores University in the UK who was not involved in the research, according to MIT Technology Review.
“No other parts of the man’s body are believed to have turned to glass,” according to BBC News.
The article was written with the assistance of a news analysis system.
This article was originally published at www.jpost.com
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