Why it's unlikely Mount Vesuvius really turned a brain to glass
In the ruins of Herculaneum, an Ancient Roman city on the west coast of Italy that was buried by Mount Vesuvius's catastrophic eruption in 79 A.D., researchers made a startling discovery: a human brain transformed into glass. It was the first documented case of a brain naturally preserved in such a shocking state.
The remains were found inside the skull of a seemingly male victim lying in a charred bed within the Collegium Augustalium, preserved in what the researchers describe as an "obsidian-like" material with a black, shiny appearance.
But exactly how the eruption would have caused such an unprecedented transformation remained a mystery when the ancient victim was found.
Now, the same scientists who discovered this glass, have published a study in Scientific Reports saying an extremely hot ash cloud swept through Herculaneum before an avalanche of ash and volcanic rock entombed the ancient city.
That ash cloud, study authors speculated, made possible the conditions that could theoretically turn brain to glass through a process called vitrification. But is it too good to be true?
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