Brain glass

There's been a lot of reporting on this odd story.  Here's part of the New York Time's version:

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.

This was, according to some reports, a controversial conclusion, but it's in the news because a new study appears to confirm it:

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.

Maybe it's still a bit controversial:

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.”

And why am I posting about it?   Because it reminded me of one of the more curious things to be found in the Buddha's Tooth Relic Temple in Singapore -  examples of Sarira, the pearl or jewel like beads claimed to have been recovered from the cremated remains of Buddhist spiritual masters.  I mentioned this in a previous post.

Now, the ones in Singapore are often very pretty, and I'm not saying that the apparent example of one brain apparently turned by the right kind of heat into something resembling black glass is a good explanation. But I am just surprised to learn that any sort of organic stuff can turn into something that looks glassy...