logo
Scientists reveal process of ancient volcanic eruption that turned a victim's brain to glass

Scientists reveal process of ancient volcanic eruption that turned a victim's brain to glass

Yahoo04-03-2025

The young man was found dead in a small room near the entrance to the Hall of the Augustales, a civic order of freedmen, a bit like a freemason lodge. Perhaps he was a security guard. He's been nicknamed the Guardian for that reason. Alternatively, he might also have come from outside, running panicked through the city of Herculaneum as it was overtaken by black ash and poisonous fumes following the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE, with no idea where he was but seeking shelter in a place everyone else had evacuated, finally collapsing face down on the wooden bed.
The last mortal remains of his fellow residents of Herculaneum were found mostly where they fell, several hundred crowded onto the beach and in beach-front chambers, presumably in hopes of escaping the pyroclastic currents that soon engulfed them, preserving them and the details of their life 2,000 years ago: papyrus scrolls, bread, olives, bronze pitchers, furniture, fresh and dried fruit — all under an avalanche of volcanic deposits.
The mostly charred, bony remains of the young man who stayed were found in 1960 by the superintendent of the archeological site that is what's left of the ancient city. Along with volcanic ash, his brain and spinal cord were found to contain a mysterious archeological treasure: tiny, gleaming shards of black glass.
Not till 2020, around 1,941 years after he breathed he breathed his last, did scientists demonstrate that the unfortunate volcano victim's brain, or parts of it, had literally turned to a glass-like material — vitrified — in a truly unique example of natural alchemy. As described last week in Nature Scientific Reports, the so-called guardian of Herculaneum continues to offer up his secrets, providing us with not just an image, but a mental movie of how the Vesuvius disaster may have gone down.
'We demonstrate experimentally that the process of vitrification occurred [as a result of ] the very early arrival of a dilute ash cloud that invaded Herculaneum leaving just a few centimeters of ash and very little to no structural damages, but at temperatures higher than 510° C that killed instantaneously all inhabitants. The ash cloud then dissipated and the brain could cool down quickly to ambient temperature, transforming into glass,' Dr. Guido Giordano, lead author of the new study and adjunct professor in the department of science at Roma Tre University in Rome, told Salon in an email.
After demonstrating that the glass-like substance found in the guardian's brain was organic in origin and in fact was vitrified brain tissue, Dr. Pierpaolo Petrone and others used scanning electron microscopy and image processing tools to visualize the man's actual brain cells, incredibly well-preserved, even as the rest of him was charred to mostly ash.
In the skull, they found fatty acids suggestive of brain triglycerides (proteins typical of brain tissue) and fatty acids typical of human hair fat — all vitrified. None of these substances were found outside the skull, in the volcanic ash in which the carbonized, skeletal remains were buried. The rest of the skeleton, other than the tibia, which was partly vitrified and generally preserved, was 'completely charred and burst from being subjected to the intense heat of the pyroclastic ash surge, a high-speed turbulent cloud rich in hot gases, ash and steam,' as Petrone eloquently described it.
The shards, or clasts, have a glassy luster, making them look a lot like obsidian, a glass formed from lava when it cools very quickly. Like obsidian, in fact, their edges are sharp but the shards have an almost twirly shape and lack the crystalline structure of black-colored minerals like augite or tourmaline. Whatever process occurred to do this preserved the original brain tissue so well that individual neurons can actually be seen using a scanning electron microscope. It certainly looks like glass. But is it really?'To demonstrate that a material is really a glass,' Giordano told Salon, 'you need to demonstrate first that it was formed across a 'glass transition temperature' and then investigate what physical processes were involved. Both the glass transition and the processes responsible are the focus of this new paper, which is then an absolute 'prémiere.''
He's not kidding. Giordano and his colleagues describe an entirely unique, never-before-seen process that could indeed have resulted in glass being formed from a human brain. The temperature of the pyroclastic flows that buried Herculaneum and Pompeii was several hundreds of degrees Celsius, hot enough to easily burn and destroy soft tissue. This new analysis is both experimental and analytical, attempting to explain how you could possibly have achieved the quick cooling, or quenching, required to turn brain tissue into glass, when the environment was one of extremely hot volcanic activity.
Nothing so evocative usually happens. Other human remains found elsewhere in Herculaneum had iron oxide deposits in the skull, suggesting that the fluids in the skull were vaporized by the heat, leaving only traces of degraded heme proteins.
Even less poetically, if cerebral tissue is ever found in archeological finds, it's usually not vitrified, but saponified — that is, the brain triglycerides are transformed into glycerol and fatty acids. Most of us know this as soap.
Based on their experimental work, heating samples of shards from the skull to different temperatures to determine how the material changed and exactly where the glass transition occurred. Their temperature must be higher than the ambient temperature, and the faster the cooling takes place, the higher the glass transition temperature.
The researchers propose that very early on that terrible day, a dilute ash cloud invaded Herculaneum. It would have left just a few centimeters of ash and caused little or perhaps no structural damage. But this brief invader brought with it incredibly high temperatures, above 510° C, perhaps higher even 600° C, killing everybody in an instant. The odd bit of tissue, protected by bone, may have survived though. In the case of the guardian, his skull provided enough protection to prevent the destruction of that tissue, the researchers suggest.
'The ash cloud then dissipated and the brain could cool down quickly to ambient temperature, transforming into glass,' Giordano told Salon. Although there is no way to experimentally verify the rate at which cooling actually occurred, the volcanic deposits that ultimately buried the remains must have been much cooler than the glass fragments, or they would have returned to a soft tissue state, and disintegrated.
So the researchers posit that the only possible scenario is that fast dissipation of the ash cloud allowed for very quick cooling, ensuring that the shards were vitrified before being buried. Only later, perhaps after some hours had passed, were the town and the bodies of all of its inhabitants buried by the hot pyroclastic flow deposits, more physically destructive but not as hot as that quick and deadly cloud of ash.
Is there any other possible explanation? 'Really do not think so,' Giordano wrote to Salon.
Even though we're talking about human tissue, the physical principles that turn brain to glass are not different from those that create glass anywhere else. The quenching that occurred inside the skull of a single human victim of Vesuvius may be unique and have required an extraordinarily rare set of conditions, but the process itself is used routinely in glassmaking, when a sheet of glass is heated to around 620 degrees Celsius in a tempering oven, then quickly cooled with high-pressure blasts of air. The outside cools much faster than the inside, creating compressive stress on the material and tempering it — making it stronger — by creating a structure in which the center is in tension but the exterior is being compressed.
Dr. Robert Mann, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Hawaii, has examined somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 human skulls and skeletons over a storied career, mostly focusing on modern remains. This has included the first victim of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and victims of Apichai Ongwisit, the so-called Thai Ted Bundy; the Unknown Soldier from the Vietnam War, ultimately identified as Air Force 1st Lt. Michael Joseph Blassie; and victims of 9/11. But he has a keen interest in ancient skeletons as well, and last summer examined skeletal remains from Pompeii, the ancient Roman city more famously buried and preserved under volcanic ash, like Herculaneum, when Vesuvius erupted. Mann is fascinated by the finding that brains could be vitrified and identification of the complex set of conditions needed to cause the phenomenon — and cautions that it's always possible that there's some other factor or possible scenario we haven't thought of — yet.
"The histology, the microscopy work, indicates that there is brain matter in there that's turned into glass but I guess what people would wonder about, and may speculate about and come up with their own scenarios. And maybe this is not the right explanation. What is the formation itself? Not what the findings are, but how did it come to be, and these are really difficult things to figure out," Mann told Salon in a video interview, after exhibiting an orange 3D-printed model of his own skull. (He also currently trying to figure out what conditions resulted in certain little bony formations stuck like barnacles to the inside of the skull, a previously unrecorded phenomenon he's now found in just seven people.)
Once we know that vitrified brain tissue is a thing we can look out for, it's possible that we'll start finding more examples of this currently unique process, Mann said. And then there's always a possibility that some other scenario, beyond the admittedly convincing quick ash cloud one, might then come to mind that is supported by other evidence.
"I always marvel that we've been doing human anatomy and gross anatomy for hundreds of years, and we still stumble on something, even today, we go 'Well, we've never seen this before,' and before you stumble upon it, there's no way to know that it even exists, right?" Mann explained.
Giordano's research is not only relevant to colleagues like volcanologists, but also materials and forensics scientists, he said. It might also be valuable to emergency planners. As Petrone wrote in a 2019 review of the effects of the eruption on Herculaneum residents, there are 'crucial implications for the present-day risk of a similar outcome to around three million people living close to the volcano, including metropolitan Naples.'
This is not all doom (or boom!) and gloom though.
'By understanding the process of formation I think there is a great lesson also for the present,' Giordano said. 'In active volcanic areas while it is essential to evacuate all people possibly in the way of pyroclastic flows, it is also essential to fit houses as shelters able to resist heat, such as is done for wildfires. This way, should anyone be caught in a dilute hot ash cloud, [as] was the case of the unfortunate ancient Roman in Herculaneum, there could be a possibility to survive and wait for rescue.'
It does sound magical that a human being could turn into glass, but far better if studying the Guardian can prevent vaporizing, volatilization and vitrification — or saponification — of anyone else.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Company linked to Baroness Mone must pay back £121m for ‘faulty' PPE, court told
Company linked to Baroness Mone must pay back £121m for ‘faulty' PPE, court told

Yahoo

time7 hours ago

  • Yahoo

Company linked to Baroness Mone must pay back £121m for ‘faulty' PPE, court told

A company linked to Tory peer Michelle Mone should pay back more than £121 million for breaching a Government contract for 25 million surgical gowns during the coronavirus pandemic, the High Court has heard. The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) is suing PPE Medpro for allegedly breaching a deal for the gowns, with lawyers for the Government telling the court they were 'faulty' because they were not sterile. The company, a consortium led by Baroness Mone's husband, businessman Doug Barrowman, was awarded Government contracts by the former Conservative administration to supply PPE during the pandemic, after she recommended it to ministers. Both have denied wrongdoing. The Government is seeking to recover the costs of the contract, as well as the costs of transporting and storing the items, which amount to an additional £8,648,691. PPE Medpro said it 'categorically denies' breaching the contract, and its lawyers claimed the company has been 'singled out for unfair treatment'. Opening the trial on Wednesday, Paul Stanley KC, for the DHSC, said: 'This case is simply about whether 25 million surgical gowns provided by PPE Medpro were faulty. 'It is, in short, a technical case about detailed legal and industry standards that apply to sterile gowns.' Mr Stanley said in written submissions the 'initial contact with Medpro came through Baroness Mone', with discussions about the contract then going through one of the company's directors, Anthony Page. Baroness Mone remained 'active throughout' the negotiations, Mr Stanley said, with the peer stating Mr Barrowman had 'years of experience in manufacturing, procurement and management of supply chains'. But he told the court Baroness Mone's communications were 'not part of this case', which was 'simply about compliance'. He said: 'The department does not allege anything improper happened, and we are not concerned with any profits made by anybody.' In court documents from May this year, the DHSC said the gowns were delivered to the UK in 72 lots between August and October 2020, with £121,999,219.20 paid to PPE Medpro between July and August that year. The department rejected the gowns in December 2020 and told the company it would have to repay the money, but this has not happened and the gowns remain in storage, unable to be used. In written submissions for trial, Mr Stanley said 99.9999% of the gowns should have been sterile under the terms of the contract, equating to one in a million being unusable. The DHSC claims the contract also specified PPE Medpro had to sterilise the gowns using a 'validated process', attested by CE marking, which indicates a product has met certain medical standards. He said 'none of those things happened', with no validated sterilisation process being followed, and the gowns supplied with invalid CE marking. He continued that 140 gowns were later tested for sterility, with 103 failing. He said: 'Whatever was done to sterilise the gowns had not achieved its purpose, because more than one in a million of them was contaminated when delivered. 'On that basis, DHSC was entitled to reject the gowns, or is entitled to damages, which amount to the full price and storage costs.' In his written submissions, Charles Samek KC, for PPE Medpro, said the 'only plausible reason' for the gowns becoming contaminated was due to 'the transport and storage conditions or events to which the gowns were subject', after they had been delivered to the DHSC. He added the testing did not happen until several months after the gowns were rejected, and the samples selected were not 'representative of the whole population', meaning 'no proper conclusions may be drawn'. He said the DHSC's claim was 'contrived and opportunistic' and PPE Medpro had been 'made the 'fall guy' for a catalogue of failures and errors' by the department. He said: 'It has perhaps been singled out because of the high profiles of those said to be associated with PPE Medpro, and/or because it is perceived to be a supplier with financial resources behind it. 'In reality, an archetypal case of 'buyer's remorse', where DHSC simply seeks to get out of a bargain it wished it never entered into, left, as it is, with over £8 billion of purchased and unused PPE as a result of an untrammelled and uncontrolled buying spree with taxpayers' money.' He also said there was a 'delicious irony' that Baroness Mone was mentioned in the DHSC's written submissions, when she had 'zero relevance to the contractual issues in this case'. Neither Baroness Mone nor Mr Barrowman is due to give evidence in the trial, and Baroness Mone did not attend the first day of the hearing on Wednesday. A PPE Medpro spokesperson said the company 'categorically denies breaching its obligations' and will 'robustly defend' the claim. The trial before Mrs Justice Cockerill is due to last five weeks, with a judgment expected in writing at a later date.

From Gaza prisoner to ‘the Israeli agent': how rise of Abu Shabab could ignite new phase of war
From Gaza prisoner to ‘the Israeli agent': how rise of Abu Shabab could ignite new phase of war

Yahoo

time8 hours ago

  • Yahoo

From Gaza prisoner to ‘the Israeli agent': how rise of Abu Shabab could ignite new phase of war

On 7 October 2023, Yasser abu Shabab was languishing in a Hamas-run jail in Gaza on charges of drug trafficking. With the outbreak of the conflict, the Palestinian from Rafah managed to leave prison, though the circumstances of his release remain unclear to this day. For a while, Abu Shabab vanished from sight. That changed last week when Israeli defence officials acknowledged they had begun arming a clan that calls itself the Anti-Terror Service. It consists of about 100 armed men who operate in eastern Rafah under the command of Abu Shabab, whose nickname is 'the Israeli agent' and who is described as a 'traitor' on social media in the territory. The officials said the Israel Defense Forces' goal was 'reducing Israeli military casualties' while systematically undermining Hamas. But critics have warned that the Israeli-backed criminal gang could push Gaza to the brink of civil war. Abu Shabab, 32, has emerged as a powerful figure, exerting control over aid routes near the strategically vital Kerem Shalom crossing, while members of his group are accused of looting trucks carrying food, and of having ties to jihadist groups. Last month Jonathan Whittall, the head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in occupied Palestinian territories, said: 'Theft of aid since the beginning of the war has been carried out by criminal gangs, under the watch of Israeli forces, and they were allowed to operate in proximity to the Kerem Shalom crossing point into Gaza.' When contacted by the Guardian, Whittall said he was 'referring to gangs such as Abu Shabab'. In a written interview with the Guardian, Abu Shabab blamed Hamas for the war in Gaza, defended himself from the accusations of looting and insisted his clan was providing security to aid trucks passing from the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza. 'My activities are humanitarian and it's for my people only,' Abu Shabab said. 'We are providing security in areas controlled by our national forces and providing support to hundreds of families, with hundreds of people flocking to our areas every day.' Several videos circulating on social media in Gaza from his Facebook profile, verified by the Guardian with his associates, show members of Abu Shabab's group operating alongside Israeli soldiers in IDF-controlled areas in southern Gaza. Asked if his group was acting in coordination with Israeli forces, Abu Shabab said: 'We do not work directly with the Israeli army.' The Times of Israel cited defence sources who said Israel had provided members of Abu Shabab's faction with Kalashnikov assault rifles, including some weapons seized from Hamas. Since Israel eased its blockade on aid to Gaza, dozens of lorries carrying food have been entering the territory each day, crossing through Kerem Shalom and moving towards Rafah, where Abu Shabab has set up a series of checkpoints. A diplomatic official told CNN that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the new US-backed organisation tasked by Israel with distributing supplies in the territory, had contact with Abu Shabab, 'whether directly or indirectly'. Asked if he had a collaboration with the GHF, which is distributing food at three sites in Rafah, Abu Shabab declined to comment. Reached by the Guardian, a spokesperson for GHF said: 'We provide our own security and do not have any local security. Our trucks have never been protected by Abu Shabab or anyone else.' Without providing any evidence supporting his claims, Abu Shabab – whose responses appeared contradictory and were often undermined by his previous statements or by verifiable evidence – blamed Hamas for looting trucks carrying food into Gaza. 'We do not take anything from the aid trucks,' said Abu Shabab, who did not respond to calls or texts but corresponded through an email address provided to international news outlets and confirmed by his associates. 'Aid is stolen in areas controlled by Hamas.' However, in an interview in November 2024 with the New York Times, Abu Shabab admitted that his men had raided half a dozen aid trucks since the start of the war. 'We are taking trucks so we can eat, not so we can sell,' he told the paper, saying he was feeding his family. Coverage of the war in Gaza is constrained by Israeli attacks on Palestinian journalists and a bar on international reporters entering the Gaza Strip to report independently on the war. Israel has not allowed foreign reporters to enter Gaza since 7 October 2023, unless they are under Israeli military escort. Reporters who join these trips have no control over where they go, and other restrictions include a bar on speaking to Palestinians in Gaza. Palestinian journalists and media workers inside Gaza have paid a heavy price for their work reporting on the war, with over 180 killed since the conflict began. The committee to protect journalists has determined that at least 19 of them 'were directly targeted by Israeli forces in killings which CPJ classifies as murders'. Foreign reporters based in Israel filed a legal petition seeking access to Gaza, but it was rejected by the supreme court on security grounds. Private lobbying by diplomats and public appeals by prominent journalists and media outlets have been ignored by the Israeli government. To ensure accurate reporting from Gaza given these restrictions, the Guardian works with trusted journalists on the ground; our visual​​ teams verif​y photo and videos from third parties; and we use clearly sourced data from organisations that have a track record of providing accurate information in Gaza during past conflicts, or during other conflicts or humanitarian crises. Emma Graham-Harrison, chief Middle East correspondent Since Abu Shabab's name began appearing in the media, Hamas has publicly declared it is intent on killing him. Abu Shabab has reasons to loathe Hamas. The militant group killed his brother last year and has already tried to kill Abu Shabab at least twice. 'The war will not end as long as Hamas insists on its position,' Abu Shabab said. On Wednesday the Israeli news channel i24 reported that Israeli soldiers clashed with Hamas members in order to protect Abu Shabab from being killed, which resulted in deaths on both sides. Although the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, did not name Abu Shabab, he has admitted to having 'activated' clans in Gaza that he says oppose Hamas. Netanyahu's comments sparked a row in Israel, with opposition leaders accusing the government of transferring weapons to a group of thugs and criminals 'who identify with [Islamic State]'. Abu Shabab's links with Israeli forces were confirmed by his family, which issued a statement last week formally disowning him. 'We will not accept Yasser's return to the family. We have no objection to those around him liquidating him immediately,' they said. The rise of Abu Shabab as the first openly acknowledged Palestinian collaborator with Israeli forces since the start of the Gaza war could, according to many analysts, ignite a dangerous new phase of the conflict. In addition to clashes with Hamas, his clan may soon face violent confrontations with rival gangs and members of Gaza's popular committees, Israeli media report. They say it is the kind of environment where civil wars often take root – and where civilians, once again, are likely to bear the heaviest cost.

Nazi guards shot prisoners for fun at Channel Islands camp, research says
Nazi guards shot prisoners for fun at Channel Islands camp, research says

Yahoo

timea day ago

  • Yahoo

Nazi guards shot prisoners for fun at Channel Islands camp, research says

Guards at a prison camp on one of the Channel Islands entertained themselves at weekends by using prisoners for target practice, according to new evidence of Nazi atrocities committed there in the second world war. On Sundays, the SS would regularly pick about a dozen men incarcerated in Sylt, the camp they ran on Alderney, transporting them to a nearby light-gauge railway, where they tied them to tipper trucks and amused themselves by shooting them. Over the course of an hour or two, they would take aim at specific parts of a prisoner's body, wounding them repeatedly until they died. This was regular entertainment for the SS, according to research. It is among accounts of atrocities that will be revealed in Ghosts of Alderney, a forthcoming documentary about victims of the Nazi occupation of the island between 1940 and 1945. Among those interviewed by the documentary's director, Piers Secunda, are two daughters of Giorgi Zbovorski, a Ukrainian imprisoned on Alderney in 1942 for 18 months. Long before his death in 2006, he told them of the horrors he had witnessed as the SS forced prisoners to watch the target practice. Ingrid Zbovorski recalled her father's account: 'Prisoners were made to stand in formation. The guards were acting out of boredom. They would select 12 or 15 of the prisoners. They were put upside down, bound to the train wagons. The guards then started shooting at random, for their amusement. A bullet in your head or your heart and you were dead. A shot in your arm and in your leg, and you would suffer for hours.' Secunda spent five years researching the slave labourers sent to Alderney, where they endured shootings, beatings and starvation. He said: 'Zbovorski personally watched the target practice exercises happening on Sundays for the duration of the time that he was in Sylt camp. That's probably why the Germans sent a delegation from Berlin to Alderney, to find out why the death rate was so high. The head of the SS guards on Alderney, Otto Hogelow, incentivised the SS on the island to shoot prisoners. He offered 10 days' leave, extra food and cigarettes for every five prisoners shot.' Gilly Carr, a professor in conflict archaeology and Holocaust heritage at the University of Cambridge, told the Guardian: 'There are sadly so many stories from Alderney of atrocities and brutal treatment against prisoners. The wealth of evidence, of which this is a part, confirms the horrific nature of the German occupation of the island. 'While a trained historian should note this account, further questions should be asked, which cannot now be answered, before using this account to calculate the number of deaths. For example: for how long did this practice continue? Was it the same number of prisoners every time? Was Giorgi a witness every single time? This is not to dispute the account, but to interrogate it properly and to consider how it can be used.' She was also the coordinator and a member of the Lord Pickles Alderney expert review, which concluded last year that more than 1,000 slave labourers are likely to have died on British soil at the hands of the Nazis, hundreds more than were officially recorded in historical archives. Zbovorski was taken to Alderney after trying to flee forced labour in Austria. In 1944, he was sent to Belgium to work on V1 missile sites, but was among Ukrainians who persuaded a German soldier of Polish nationality not to shoot them if they ran into the forest. Secunda said: 'The Pole duly fired his machine-gun into the air, but a German guard shot three of them in the back, killing them. Giorgi and two other prisoners were able to find a place to hide in the house of a Belgian farmer. When Belgium was liberated by the Allies a few weeks later, Giorgi weighed only 40 kilos.' Zbovorski remained in Belgium, employed by the farmer. Ghosts of Alderney – Hitler's Island Slaves, a production from Wild Dog, a British independent company, will be released in the UK later this year.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store