Scientists Intrigued by Man Whose Brain Turned Into Glass

Don't worry, he probably didn't feel it. 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 Medi ... Read full article.