The only known case of a human brain
being turned to glass, that of a man caught in the 79 AD
eruption of Vesuvius at the Roman town of Herculaneum near
Pompeii, has been solved.
The man's brain turned to glass due to the extremely rapid
cooling that ensued after a white-hot cloud of ash engulfed him,
according to a study by an Italo-German research group led by
volcanologist Guido Giordano of the University of Roma Tre and
published in Scientific Reports.
Years ago, at the Collegium Augustalium site in Herculaneum,
vitrified organic material was discovered inside the skull of
one of the bodies, a previously unseen oddity - the only example
of its kind known in the world - whose formation had so far been
an enigma.
"To understand the vitrification process, we conducted
experimental analyses by reporting the brain fragments to the
temperatures at which they transformed into glass with heating
and cooling cycles at variable speeds with very sophisticated
equipment," said Pier Paolo Petrone, of the University Federico
II of Naples, one of the authors of the study that also involved
the Institute of Science, Technology and Sustainability for the
Development of Ceramic Materials of the National Research
Council and the Clausthal Polytechnic in Germany.
"The analyses have thus allowed us to reconstruct what happened
that day in 79 AD, on August 24 or October 24, after the first
pyroclastic flows began, a sort of cloud of gas and incandescent
materials at the ground level, which destroyed Herculaneum. "The
first of them - explained Giordano - reached the city only with
its part of a cloud of diluted but very hot ash, well over 510
degrees Celsius.
"It left a few centimeters of very fine ash on the ground, but
the thermal impact was terrible and deadly, even if brief enough
to leave brain remains still intact".
The cloud then disappeared very quickly, allowing the remains to
cool rapidly, a lightning fast dive in temperatures that
triggered the vitrification process, Giordano said.
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