How brain matter suddenly became glass in 79 AD

In a stunning archaeological find, scientists confirmed that the brain of a young man killed in the 79 CE eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Herculaneum was flash-heated and then rapidly cooled, turning it into a glass-like substance; an unprecedented natural case of organic vitrification. This discovery not only provides a chilling glimpse into the victim’s final moments but also offers rare biological, volcanic, and material science insights across multiple disciplines.

Read the article at https://www.paperleap.com/blog/articles/a-brain-turned-to-glass-how-the-vesuvius-eruption-preserved-a-human-miracle-0ccccy

Episode Transcript

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Speaker 2 (00:32):
Imagine drifting off to sleep in the seaside town of Herculaneum,
unaware that the mountain looming over you is about to
blast a superheated ash wave through your room. In the
split second it takes a lightning bolt to flash, your
brain soars past five hundred degrees celsius and then cools
at steel quenching speed, re emerging as a glossy, obsidian

(00:57):
black shard. It would probably be one of the worst
nightmares ever, wouldn't well. When Mount Vesuvius erupted in seventy
nine CE, it didn't just bury the Roman cities of
Pompeii and Herculaneum. Among the many tragic stories entombed in
volcanic ash one stands out for its sheer, almost cinematic strangeness,

(01:21):
the discovery of a human brain that turned to glass. Yes,
you got that right, not fossilized, not mommified. Glass. Archaeologists
first noticed something shiny in the victim's skull back in
the nineteen sixties. Still, the relics sat in museum drawers

(01:42):
for years, and only recently did anyone prove it was
truly vitrified brain tissue. The phenomenon was discovered by an
international team led by volcanologist Guido Durdanu of Roma Tree University,
materials scientist Joachim Dubener and Callie at Techniche Universitet klaus

(02:02):
Stahl in Germany, biomedical researcher Pierre Paolo Patron at the
University of Naples Federico the Second, and several others in
Italy's national research institutes, who presented their findings in a
paper published in Nature Scientific Reports. Nestled along the Bay
of Naples, the Roman seaside towns of Herculaneum and Pompeii

(02:26):
were thriving vacation spots for the Empires well healed when
Mount Vesuvius erupted in seventy nine, ce Pompeii, larger, busier,
and sprinkled with bustling markets, bathhouses and frescoed villas, was
smothered by hours of falling pumice and ash that froze
its streets exactly as they looked on an ordinary summer morning. Herculaneum,

(02:51):
a smaller but wealthier resort just a few miles to
the west, met a different fate. An avalanche of superheated
gas and n ash rushed in, first, carbonizing wood, food,
and even furniture, before entombing the town beneath up to
twenty meters of volcanic mud. The skull in question was

(03:12):
likely that of a young man around twenty years old,
found lying in his bed inside the Collegium Augustallium, a
building devoted to the cult of Emperor Augustus. In fact,
the victim probably was the live in custodian of the
Collegium Augustallium. When they discovered the remains, archaeologist had long

(03:33):
known that this site was close to the volcano's deadly
pyroclastic flows, but what they found inside the skull was
truly shocking. Black shiny fragments resembling obsidian. These fragments weren't
just unusual. They turned out to be the vitrified glassified

(03:53):
remains of his brain and spinal cord. Normally, glass forms
when a molten material cools so quickly that crystals don't
have time to grow. For instance, think of your kitchen
window panes. Organic tissue is different. It's mostly water, So
scientists only vitrify organs by plunging them into liquid nitrogen

(04:16):
at minus one hundred and ninety six degrees celsius. Warm
it up, and the glassy solid melts right back into
squishy flesh. In other words, you don't get room temperature
brain glass unless a volcano rewrites the rules. Jordano's team
reconstructed the horror movie timing. First, a superheated ash cloud

(04:40):
detached from Vesuvius's main plume and tore through herculaneum at
well above five hundred and ten degrees celsius. That is
hot enough to boil bodily fluids in an instant. Seconds later,
the cloud dissipated into open air temperatures around the victim's
skull plummeted at roughly one thousand degrees celsius per second,

(05:03):
locking the partially liquefied brain. Into a glassy state before
it could decompose. Minutes to hours later, Cooler yet still
deadly surges buried the city in ash measuring up to
four hundred and sixty five degrees celsius, hot but not
hot enough to remelt the newly formed organic glass. That

(05:25):
rapid fire and ice combo is why experts call this
the only confirmed case of natural human tissue vitrified and
preserved on Earth. Under an electron microscope, those midnight black
chips still show delicate neural networks, axons, cell bodies, and
even the ghostly shapes of neurons. Finding such microscopic detail

(05:49):
in a two thousand year old specimen is like opening
a time capsule far smaller than a grain of rice.
Beyond the wow factor, it offers bioarchaeologists a Christine's snapshot
of Roman era health and gives material scientists a brand
new carbon based glass to ponder. Indeed, the impact of

(06:10):
this discovery stretches across disciplines. For volcanologists, it offers new
clues about the dynamics and temperatures of ash clouds. For
forensic scientists, it challenges our assumptions about how the human
body responds to extreme environments and for archaeologists. It's a
hauntingly intimate look into one person's final moments in the

(06:32):
chaos of a historic disaster. If you want to learn more,
the original article titled unique formation of organic glass from
a human brain in the Vesuvius eruption of seventy nine
CE is available on Nature Scientific Reports. That's it for
this episode of the paperlely podcast. If you found it

(06:53):
thought provoking, fascinating, or just informative, share it with the
fellow science nerd.

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