https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-24/mount-vesuvius-eruption-victim-brain-glass-study/11895368

Huh, how bout that?

Madness.

Bubblecar said:

Madness.

Not sure about that, but he would certainly have been feeling a little queer.

Baggy trousers

I’m unconvinced. Vitrification likely needs quite a reasonable silica content.

“Vitrification refers to tissue that has been burned at high heat and turned into glass or a glaze.” This is an odd definition.

I think more likely the water within the cranium was flash-boiled through the eye sockets, and the remaining residue partly burnt until it ran out of oxygen. So we’d end up with a plastic-like mixture.

Not much detail in the original paper:

https://sci-hub.tw/10.1056/NEJMc1909867

Michael V said:

I’m unconvinced. Vitrification likely needs quite a reasonable silica content.

“Vitrification refers to tissue that has been burned at high heat and turned into glass or a glaze.” This is an odd definition.

I think more likely the water within the cranium was flash-boiled through the eye sockets, and the remaining residue partly burnt until it ran out of oxygen. So we’d end up with a plastic-like mixture.

Not much detail in the original paper:

https://sci-hub.tw/10.1056/NEJMc1909867

Thanks for the clarification, Michael.