Glass Lazarus update

VESUVIUS WATCH: Mystery of how man's brain turned to glass after Vesuvius eruption possibly solved. The new study on the "glass brain" from Herculaneum is the latest episode in a long-running academic dispute (Tom Metcalfe, Live Science).

In A.D. 79, a man who died in Mount Vesuvius' eruption near Pompeii had a rare transformation: His brain seemingly turned into glass. But scientists have long debated how it happened, because the pyroclastic flows of rock fragments, ash and gas that buried him would not have been hot enough, nor cooled quickly enough, to "glassify" or vitrify the man's brain.

Now, researchers have proposed a new explanation: the pyroclastic flows must have been immediately preceded by a superheated cloud of ash that first rapidly heated and then rapidly cooled the man's brain as it dissipated, turning it to glass.

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The new study also adds more evidence that the glass blob was originally a brain. Naturally, not everyone is convinced.

I noted the story in 2020 here and here, with some science-fictiony thoughts of my own about its implications.

For many PaleoJudaica posts on the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE and its destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and, notably, on the efforts to reconstruct and decipher the carbonized library at Herculaneum, start here and follow the links. For posts that are more archaeology and history related, see here and links.

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