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Yahoo
04-03-2025
- Yahoo
Scientists reveal process of ancient volcanic eruption that turned a victim's brain to glass
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.
Yahoo
02-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists Intrigued by Man Whose Brain Turned Into Glass
The cataclysmic eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 AD has fascinated researchers and historians for centuries. Since the early 1700s, engineers have been excavating the remnants of the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, flash frozen in mounds of volcanic ash. And of all the narratives pulled from the rubble, one about a 20 year old man whose brain seemingly melted into glass might be the most mystifying. A hunk of glass in the Herculaneum man's preserved skull was first uncovered in 2020, coming off the back of research that estimated temperatures in the two doomed cities exceeded 900 degrees Fahrenheit at some points during the cataclysm. Researchers were puzzled, because at that temperature brain matter ought to melt into goo, not solidify into glass. Of the roughly 2,000 bodies exhumed from the Vesuvian ruins, only this one's brain had been preserved this way. Courtesy of a paper published earlier this year in the New England Journal of Medicine, we can even see what this glassified brain looks like. This made the question of how this unfortunate soul's head came to hold a hunk of glass something of a flashpoint for archaeologists and scientists studying the volcanic event. A number of hypotheses have come forward, like one that posited the man's brain was slowly braised like osso buco. Now, a fresh analysis by a team of researchers at Roma Tre University has found "compelling evidence that these are human brain remains, composed of organic glass formed at high temperatures, a process of preservation never previously documented for human or animal tissue, neither brain or any other kind." The study is shedding new light on the process which preserved the man's brain for thousands of years, which Ars Technica notes is highly unusual. Researchers posit that the man was indeed flash-fried by a rush of superhot ash as he laid in his bed, which heated his brain to the temperature required to produce molten glass, fragmenting it into chunks. Though most of the brain fragments were badly damaged, some survived total devastation thanks to the unique position of the man's skull and spine at the time of his death — which also explains why he was the only Herculaneumian to win the glass lottery. As the air returned to an ambient temperature, it cooled rapidly by hundreds of degrees, which is when one of the young man's remaining brain chunks became a solid mass. From there, what remained of his body was buried by layers of molten ash, rock, and gas that flowed across Herculaneum at lower temps than in Pompei, preserving the poor guy's glass brain for researchers to ogle thousands of years in the future. It's a fascinating find with huge implications for a variety of fields, from forensic biology to volcanology to Roman history — and, let's face it, a ghoulish curiosity even by the standards of the horrors of Mt. Vesuvius. More on ancient geology: Rover Discovers Evidence of Giant Ocean on Mars
New York Times
02-03-2025
- Science
- New York Times
Vesuvius Turned One Victim's Brain to Glass
Five years ago Italian researchers published a study on the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79. that detailed how one victim of the blast, a male presumed to be in his mid 20s, had been found nearby in the seaside settlement of Herculaneum. He was lying facedown and buried by ash on a wooden bed in the College of the Augustales, a public building dedicated to the worship of Emperor Augustus. Some scholars believe that the man was the center's caretaker and was asleep at the time of the disaster. In 2018, one researcher discovered black, glossy shards embedded inside the caretaker's skull. The paper, published in 2020, speculated that the heat of the explosion was so immense that it had fused the victim's brain tissue into glass. Forensic analysis of the obsidian-like chips revealed proteins common in brain tissue and fatty acids found in human hair, while a chunk of charred wood unearthed near the skeleton indicated a thermal reading as high as 968 degrees Fahrenheit, roughly the dome temperature of a wood-fired Neapolitan pizza oven. It was the only known instance of soft tissue — much less any organic material — being naturally preserved as glass. On Thursday, a paper published in Nature verified that the fragments are indeed glassified brain. Using techniques such as electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and differential scanning calorimetry, scientists examined the physical properties of samples taken from the glassy fragments and demonstrated how they were formed and preserved. 'The unique finding implies unique processes,' said Guido Giordano, a volcanologist at the Roma Tre University and lead author of the new study. Foremost among those processes is vitrification, by which material is burned at a high heat until it liquefies. To harden into glass, the substance requires rapid cooling, solidifying at a temperature higher than its surroundings. This makes organic glass formation challenging, Dr. Giordano said, as vitrification entails very specific temperature conditions and the liquid form must cool fast enough to avoid being crystallized as it congeals. Dr. Giordano and his colleagues deduced that shortly after Vesuvius began belching up debris, a steaming toxic cloud of ash and white pumice flashed through Herculaneum, instantly killing its inhabitants. Claudio Scarpati, a volcanologist at the University of Naples Federico II, has proposed that this so-called pyroclastic density current was the third of 17 that spewed from Vesuvius. Pulses of colder volcanic debris followed, engulfing the area. 'The residents of Herculaneum were already dead by the time they were buried,' Dr. Giordano said. Although the short-lived ash cloud left only an inch or two of debris and little if any structural damage, it is said to have heated the caretaker's brain to well above 950 degrees, the glass transition temperature; this broke the soft tissue into smaller pieces without destroying it. Dr. Giordano said that the bones of the man's skull and spine probably gave some protection to the brain. As the ash cloud dissipated, temperatures quickly returned to normal. In the open air, at 950 degrees, the caretaker's brain fossilized into glass. Only body parts containing some liquid can vitrify, Dr. Giordano said, which is why the caretaker's bones remained intact. The 2020 study was met with some skepticism by other scientists, largely because the raw data was not available. Tim Thompson, a forensic anthropologist at Maynooth University in Ireland, was perhaps the most vocal doubter. This time around, the results excited him. 'I very much enjoy seeing new scientific methods applied to the archaeological context,' he said. But Dr. Thompson would like to see more evidence and more of the original data: 'The heating and cooling within Herculaneum following the eruption is likely to be complicated, and the results of the investigation certainly support their conclusions. It just depends on whether the material is brain.'
CNN
27-02-2025
- Science
- CNN
A young man's brain turned to glass during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Scientists say they have figured out how
Glass rarely forms naturally from organic materials. However, in 2020, researchers discovered a black, glassy substance inside the skull of a person killed during the eruption of Italy's Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. Now, the scientists say they have worked out the sequence of events that likely killed the victim and led to the formation of the unique and puzzling glass, thought essentially to constitute fossilized brain tissue. Recovered from the coastal town of Herculaneum, which along with Pompeii was wiped out by the eruption, the remains belonged to an individual, thought to be a young man, who was found lying face down on a bed buried by volcanic ash. A new analysis of samples of the glass found inside the skull and spinal cord suggests that the person's body tissue must have been heated to above 510 degrees Celsius (950 degrees Fahrenheit) before cooling rapidly to allow the glass to form in a process known as vitrification. 'The process of transformation of anything liquid into glass is the fast cooling, not the fast heating,' said Guido Giordano, a volcanologist at Roma Tre University in Rome and lead author of the study published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports. 'Obsidian glass, that is a volcanic glass, forms when lava is very quickly cooled, for example, where it enters into water,' Giordano added. However, the pyroclastic flows, composed of fast-moving volcanic material and toxic gas, that charged out of Vesuvius and buried Herculaneum could not have caused the brain tissues of this young man to turn into glass, he said. The temperatures of these flows did not reach higher than 465 C (869 F), the study said. Plus, they would have cooled slowly. Instead, based on observations of more recent eruptions, an extremely hot ash cloud that dissipated quickly could have created the conditions necessary for the vitrification of human brain tissue to occur, the study concluded. But the specific set of circumstances needed to vitrify soft tissue has raised some skepticism in the scientific community. Connecting ash to glass The young man's skull and spine likely protected the brain from 'complete thermal breakdown,' allowing fragments of the unique organic glass to form. Unlike pyroclastic flows, which hug the ground, an ash cloud is airborne. However, the two are linked, Giordano said. 'What is an ash cloud? It's a dilute part of the pyroclastic flow. It's usually formed at the edges, above and laterally, where most of the material is like an avalanche or landslide, but the peripheral part is of finer particle ash,' he explained. 'These clouds can be hot enough to kill you.' To reach the findings, Giordano and his colleagues systematically cooled and heated fragments of the glass sampled from inside the skull and spine to understand what degree of heat and subsequent cooling was necessary. They found that the brain tissue transformed into glass at a temperature of at least 510 C (950 F). 'The ash cloud basically instantly killed the people, because they were engulfed in a cloud that was probably about 510, maybe 600 degrees (Celsius),' he added. At the bottom of the layers of ash and rubble that buried Herculaneum is a layer of fine volcanic ash that may have been deposited by the ash cloud, Giordano said. Vitrification of soft tissue was 'incredibly unlikely,' said Alexandra Morton-Hayward, a forensic anthropologist at the UK's University of Oxford, adding that she was not convinced that the glassy substance was brain tissue. Morton-Hayward has compiled a unique archive of information about 4,405 brains unearthed by archaeologists. She was not involved in the research. She said organic tissues, which are mostly water, can only be vitrified by rapid cooling to extremely low temperatures, well below zero C (32 F) — a process known as cryopreservation. Cryopreservation involves cooling organs in liquid nitrogen to prevent ice formation, stabilizing them in a solid-like state while maintaining their molecular structure. 'I'm not convinced this (artifact) is the one and only exception to this rule.' Giordano said there was no doubt that the glass was organic in origin. Previous research has shown that neurons and proteins in the individual's brain were preserved, he noted.
CNN
27-02-2025
- Science
- CNN
A young man's brain turned to glass during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Scientists say they have figured out how
Glass rarely forms naturally from organic materials. However, in 2020, researchers discovered a black, glassy substance inside the skull of a person killed during the eruption of Italy's Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. Now, the scientists say they have worked out the sequence of events that likely killed the victim and led to the formation of the unique and puzzling glass, thought essentially to constitute fossilized brain tissue. Recovered from the coastal town of Herculaneum, which along with Pompeii was wiped out by the eruption, the remains belonged to an individual, thought to be a young man, who was found lying face down on a bed buried by volcanic ash. A new analysis of samples of the glass found inside the skull and spinal cord suggests that the person's body tissue must have been heated to above 510 degrees Celsius (950 degrees Fahrenheit) before cooling rapidly to allow the glass to form in a process known as vitrification. 'The process of transformation of anything liquid into glass is the fast cooling, not the fast heating,' said Guido Giordano, a volcanologist at Roma Tre University in Rome and lead author of the study published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports. 'Obsidian glass, that is a volcanic glass, forms when lava is very quickly cooled, for example, where it enters into water,' Giordano added. However, the pyroclastic flows, composed of fast-moving volcanic material and toxic gas, that charged out of Vesuvius and buried Herculaneum could not have caused the brain tissues of this young man to turn into glass, he said. The temperatures of these flows did not reach higher than 465 C (869 F), the study said. Plus, they would have cooled slowly. Instead, based on observations of more recent eruptions, an extremely hot ash cloud that dissipated quickly could have created the conditions necessary for the vitrification of human brain tissue to occur, the study concluded. But the specific set of circumstances needed to vitrify soft tissue has raised some skepticism in the scientific community. Connecting ash to glass The young man's skull and spine likely protected the brain from 'complete thermal breakdown,' allowing fragments of the unique organic glass to form. Unlike pyroclastic flows, which hug the ground, an ash cloud is airborne. However, the two are linked, Giordano said. 'What is an ash cloud? It's a dilute part of the pyroclastic flow. It's usually formed at the edges, above and laterally, where most of the material is like an avalanche or landslide, but the peripheral part is of finer particle ash,' he explained. 'These clouds can be hot enough to kill you.' To reach the findings, Giordano and his colleagues systematically cooled and heated fragments of the glass sampled from inside the skull and spine to understand what degree of heat and subsequent cooling was necessary. They found that the brain tissue transformed into glass at a temperature of at least 510 C (950 F). 'The ash cloud basically instantly killed the people, because they were engulfed in a cloud that was probably about 510, maybe 600 degrees (Celsius),' he added. At the bottom of the layers of ash and rubble that buried Herculaneum is a layer of fine volcanic ash that may have been deposited by the ash cloud, Giordano said. Vitrification of soft tissue was 'incredibly unlikely,' said Alexandra Morton-Hayward, a forensic anthropologist at the UK's University of Oxford, adding that she was not convinced that the glassy substance was brain tissue. Morton-Hayward has compiled a unique archive of information about 4,405 brains unearthed by archaeologists. She was not involved in the research. She said organic tissues, which are mostly water, can only be vitrified by rapid cooling to extremely low temperatures, well below zero C (32 F) — a process known as cryopreservation. Cryopreservation involves cooling organs in liquid nitrogen to prevent ice formation, stabilizing them in a solid-like state while maintaining their molecular structure. 'I'm not convinced this (artifact) is the one and only exception to this rule.' Giordano said there was no doubt that the glass was organic in origin. Previous research has shown that neurons and proteins in the individual's brain were preserved, he noted.
