#vitrification

[autistobrat]

Infodump on Glass Brain of Pompeii

Have you ever heard of brain turned to glass? Well now you have :D

It's called 'vitrification', and yes, you guessed just right, it happened in Pompeii. It is the most metal forensic sentence in history.

Let me be crystal clear with the nerdy stuffs <3 (pun intended)

/The Nature of Volcanic Thermal Radiation + Heat Transfer

Mount Vesuvius didn’t politely warm things up. It delivered:

a. Pyroclastic Surges (300–600°C): Hyper-hot, turbulent gas and ash flows that move faster than your GPA declines during finals (100+ km/h). These deliver thermal radiation and conduction so fast biological tissue doesn’t even get time to char before it dies.

b. Thermal Radiation: Infrared photons slam into soft tissue → instantaneous energy absorption → protein denaturation and lipid liquefaction.

c. Thermal Shock: Temperature rise > 500°C in seconds → cell water flash-boils → tissues explode at the microscopic level.

/How a Brain Turns Into Glass (Vitrification)

When a pyroclastic surge hits, the brain experiences catastrophic thermal chemistry in seconds:

1. Rapid Heating (200–600°C):

Proteins denature (H-bond collapse, disulfide bond cleavage)

Lipids melt into liquid crystal phases

Cellular structures dissolve into viscous organic melt

2. Flash Boiling & Pyrolysis:

Water vaporizes explosively → tissue micro-fragmentation

Proteins decarboxylate/deaminate → CO₂ + NH₃

Lipids thermally crack → hydrocarbons + ketones + soot

Nucleic acids depurinate → phosphate fragments + carbon char

3. Silicate Glass Network Formation: Volcanic ash + dissolved brain minerals react:

SiO₂ + CaO → CaSiO₃ (calcium silicate glass)

SiO₂ + Fe₂O₃ → Fe₂SiO₄ (iron silicate glass)

Iron from blood acts as network modifier, lowering melting point and stabilizing the glassy matrix.

4. Rapid Cooling (Anti-Crystallization): As the surge moves past, temperature plummets >100°C/s:

Melted biomolecules freeze in disordered state

Amorphous SiO₄⁴⁻ network traps neuronal structures before they collapse

Result: A glassy, carbon-and-silica-rich solid preserving axons, dendrites, and vesicles :DD

/Chemical Composition of the Vitrified Brain

Analysis from Pompeii victims found:

a. High Silica Content: Borrowed from volcanic ash: essential for glass network formation.

b. Denatured Proteins → carbon-rich amorphous matrix Too cooked for function, too fast for decomposition.

c. Metal ions (Fe²⁺/Fe³⁺ from blood, Ca²⁺ from bone): Act as network modifiers → lower silica melting point → assists glass formation.

AP Chem flex: glass transition temperature (Tg) achieved via catastrophic barbecue.

/Why the Skull Helps

This is more “crockpot from hell” than this infodump I did

a. Thermal Containment: The skull acts like a ceramic crucible, trapping heat long enough for liquefaction.

b. Mechanical Mold: Maintains brain geometry so the post-boil goo doesn’t just drip out.

c. Pressure Vessel: Flash-steam increases internal pressure → greater tissue disruption.

/Anatomical Vulnerability

Brains = 60% lipid, 20% protein. Therefore,

melts easily (like butter)

carbonizes minimally if cooling is too quick

structurally collapses without support

Your liver might char into jerky. But your brain will turn into a ★ molten nerd pudding ★

Perfect candidate for vitrification :DD

/Evolutionary Context

Totally not something evolution planned for:

Skulls evolved for impact protection, communication acoustics, and looking hot in profile.

They incidentally provide a glass-kiln environment in extreme heat.

Natural selection: I meant protect from rocks… NOT THIS. Vesuvius: Oops?

did I just make a nerd joke

/The Physics of Why It Works

Heat transfer equation time, nerd: q = m c ΔT

For ~1.4 kg brain, ΔT from 37°C → ~500°C, Major heat absorption means complete colloidal meltdown.

Cooling rate > 100°C per second once flow passes, resulting in anti-crystallization.

/Bonus

Microscopy of the vitrified remains revealed:

Axons

Dendrites

Neuronal vesicles

Basically the world’s most cursed histology slide :D

[thesilicontribesman]

Vitrified Stone from Trusty's Hill Ancient Fort, Stewartry Museum, Kirkcudbright, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland

These stones came from the ramparts of a 5th to 6th Century fort at Trusty's Hill, Gatehouse-of-Fleet. In the 600s (CE) they were exposed to temperatures of + 1000 degrees centigrade for a prolonged period of time. The rock vitrified, causing them to look like molten wax in places.

Why did this happen? It is thought that Trusty's Hill was a royal stronghold in the Brittonic Kingdom of Rheghed, which once stretched from Cumbria to SW Scotland. Recent excavations uncovered this stone, as well as a 'rock cut basin' situated opposite a remarkable Pictish carved slab depicting a creature pierced by a sword. It is now thought that these flanked an entranceway to the fort where the kings of Rheghed were anointed. The fort was attacked by invading Northumbrians in the mid 600s (CE) and the fierce and prolonged burning of the royal fort sent a clear message to the surrounding people: the Kingdom of Rheghed was utterly defeated.

Vitrification does not happen accidentally. Archaeologists believe that timber superstructures were assembled around the ramparts, and loaded with fuel. These would have been kept burning constantly. Perhaps connected to this, is the poetry of Taliesin, affiliated in legend with the kingdom of Rheghed, who once sung of an early Northumbrian King called Fflamddwyn or the 'Flame Bearer'.

[argonautsoul]

Ancient History, Cyclic Catastrophism, Petroglyphs, Plasma Phenomena

This is what our ancestors saw in the sky.

This is not a human or even an animal. If one were on Earth when a massive solar erupted, plasma hitting the magnetosphere produces a definite pattern consistent with this image. Our ancestors must have been TERRIFIED.

It's a gigantic plasma discharge pattern and might have spawned legends of the wrath of God.

They were drawing what they saw when a massive plasma Arc struck Earth after a massive solar outburst; which is easily duplicated in plasma labs.

The winds from such an event would strip the surface clean of anything that wasn't polygonal masonry or dolmens and deposit it to low pressure areas or lower elevation. An amalgamation of sediment, artefacts, and the unfortunate.

Damage in the ancient and minimally excavated site of Tanis, Egypt.

If you want to dig further, look into the denisovans and any site with polygonal masonry (all over the globe). Seemingly, we build on top of old sites and are the descendants of the survivors.

Look for dendritic patterns (not fluvial) to get a good idea where some of the events may have occurred.

Mars might have seen similar or potentially greater devastation.

This explains the owl depictions:

No definitive answer exists, but a compelling theory by plasma physicist Anthony Peratt suggests these “squatter man” figures depict ancient high-energy auroral plasma discharges, seen globally due to intense solar events. Lab simulations match the motifs precisely, with surveys of millions of petroglyphs in 139 countries showing consistent southern orientations. Mainstream views cite cultural convergence or shamanic visions but lack such empirical backing.

In 2003, Anthony Peratt simulated plasma phenomena in a lab and found that under different stability-instability conditions, plasma would form specific shapes, some of them matching almost exactly what ancient people drew on rock.

The evidence is very compelling because it is the only thing in nature that actually resembles the specific shapes drawn by all those people, separated by the ocean and thousands of km, thousands of years ago.

So, how could they all have witnessed the same plasma formation?

The auroras we see close to the poles are basically plasma from the sun that penetrates down into the atmosphere. The more solar activity (like after a solar storm), the more plasma penetration, which generates more intense auroras that can be seen closer to the equator (last year we saw auroras in Spain after a solar storm). According to Peratt and others, if the solar wind had increased between one and two orders of magnitude, it could have produced those plasma formations in the atmosphere.

If this actually happened, it would have created serious climatic and biological disruptions, which would have given people a good reason to carve those specific shapes everywhere around the world.

And, indeed, evidence shows that about 12.000 years ago, there was a severe climatic disruption that ended the younger dryas. This event is associated with a geomagnetic excursion, a shifting of the magnetic poles and a weakening of the magnetic field, which would let solar energy penetrate into our atmosphere a lot more easily (meaning, you need less solar activity to create the same effect). There is also evidence to suggest that there was a major solar flare around that time and other times before that even left marks on the ground (vitrification).

Perratt’s paper:

Presentation by Peratt:

Also, look for the 'Thunderbolts Project' and 'Symbols of an Alien Sky.'

It's worth the dig.

[eucanthos]

Vitrified brain from Mount Vesuvius eruption, 79 AD

Researchers who examined a brain turned into glass say they have figured out what caused the phenomenon.

Spinal cord and skull samples determined that the victim, found face down in a bed under volcanic ash in Herculaneum, was exposed to temperatures exceeding 510°C, followed by quick cooling.

Vitrification: “The process of transformation of anything liquid into glass is the fast cooling, not the fast heating,” volcanologist Guido Giordano told CNN.

https://nypost.com/2025/02/28/science/scientists-reveal-how-mount-vesuvius-eruption-victims-brain-turned-to-glass/

[science-education-technology]

What is Cryogenic Transmission Electron Microscopy or Cryo-TEM?. This is an introductory lecture about Cryogenic Transmission Electron Microscopy (Cryo-TEM) to the interdisciplinary audience. Topics including, conventional TEM imaging, negative staining, supercritical drying, and single particle reconstruction are covered in this lecture.

[vampiremasochist]

Extreme Heat of Vesuvius Eruption Turned a Man's Brain to 'Glass'

“It’s the very first time that vitrified brain remains have been found,” Pier Paolo Petrone, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Naples Federico II, said.

A man who died in Herculaneum during the historic Vesuvius eruption was found with an exploded skull and glass-like brain tissue.

Nearly two millennia after that deadly eruption in A.D. 79, a team of Italian researchers has found that there’s more of him left than just his bones. The heat of the eruption, they said, turned the victim’s brain into glass.

Shards of solid black material found on his skull, they wrote in Thursday’s edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, underwent a process called vitrification: Extreme high temperatures from the volcano liquefied the man’s brain, which then cooled quickly and turned into bits of glass.

Fragment of glassy black material extracted from the cranial cavity of a victim of the volcanic eruption at Herculaneum in the year 79. (Image: © The New England Journal of Medicine 2019)

You can read the full article here

[archaeologicalnews]

Extreme heat of Vesuvius eruption turned a man's brain to 'glass'

When Mount Vesuvius erupted in the year 79, the volcano unleashed an avalanche of gas and rock hot enough to boil blood, vaporize flesh and even transform bits of brain tissue into glass, according to a new study.

Archaeologists rarely uncover human brains during their digs, and if they do, the organs feel soap-like and smooth. During a process called saponification, triglycerides in the fatty brain tissue react with charged particles in the surrounding environment, transforming into soap over time. Scientists found something very different, however, when they examined the remains of a man who perished in Herculaneum during the Vesuvius eruption.

Enveloped in a surge of hot ash, the victim's brain had been burned to twisted black bits through a process called vitrification. The glassy material "encrusted" the surface of the man's skull, according to a report published Jan. 22 in the The New England Journal of Medicine. Read more.

[bpod-bpod]

Preserved Nerves

This image shows the tendrils (axons) of nerve cells viewed under a powerful electron microscope, revealing the fine details of these delicate structures that are a fraction of the thickness of a human hair. But this is not just any nerve cell. It’s a cell from the brain of a young man who died nearly 2000 years ago in an ancient Roman town called Herculaneum, which was destroyed when Mount Vesuvius erupted in CE79. Although the man didn’t survive the blast, the hot ash and gases from the volcano turned some of his remains into glass – a process known as vitrification – perfectly preserving the structure of cells in his brain and spinal cord. These extraordinary cells allow researchers to look back into the past to understand more about the sequence of events at Herculaneum that unfolded as the volcano erupted and gain important insights into the people who lived there.

Written by Kat Arney

Image from work by Pierpaolo Petrone and colleagues

Dipartimento di Scienze Biomediche Avanzate, Università di Napoli Federico II, Naples, Italy

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in PLOS ONE, October 2020

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