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> ... scientists have discovered that his brain was preserved when it turned to glass in an extremely hot cloud of ash. > The pea-sized chunks of black glass w
by bell-cot 2y ago
> ... scientists have discovered that his brain was preserved when it turned to glass in an extremely hot cloud of ash.
> The pea-sized chunks of black glass were found inside the skull of the victim, aged about 20, who died when the volcano erupted in 79 AD near modern-day Naples.
> ... a cloud of ash as hot as 510C enveloped the brain ...
I don't think I'd use the word "preserved" to describe there being a few glassy cinders left over, after someone's brain was incinerated.
- iuyhtgbd 2y agoIt was preserved in the sense a fossil is preserved. The object was destroyed but some of it's structure remains. (Which is ludicrously cool. The world is so strange and wonderful. Though it's also a world where a volcano can erupt in your vicinity.)
- yard2010 2y agoAlso, it's a great lesson in randomness - that day when that mountain erupted, the wind was blowing away from Naples, essentially sparing the disaster for its residents. Imagine if it was the other way around?
- bhickey 2y agoWould wind direction have made the difference for pyroclastic flows? I thought flow direction was largely driven by local topology.
- bell-cot 2y agoNot a volcanologist, and vastly simplified, but... After the collapse of the eruption column, when it's roaring down the volcano's flanks and incinerating/burying everything in its path, it is driven by the local topography. But before that collapse - especially toward the end, when it's getting seriously unstable - the wind can have huge effects on the direction in which it "fall down". And the wind (at altitude) pretty much controls which way the ash fall goes. That's technically not pyroclastic flows - but often just as deadly for a major eruption. EDIT: Add Wikipedia's account of the eruption - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eruption_of_Mount_Vesuvius_in_79_AD#Nature_of_the_eruption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eruption_of_Mount_Vesuvius_in_... - And note that descriptive terms for volcanic eruptions (Plinean, Pelean, Vesuvian, etc.) are subject to "it's all constantly-changing shades of gray" caveats.
- bhickey 2y agoThanks for the explanation. The wind _positions_ the ash cloud and then the terrain channels it once it falls. I suppose I'd been thinking of a Mount St Helens style flow where the mountain gave way.
- csomar 2y agoLots of glass brains?
- stronglikedan 2y agoLPT: A volcano can only erupt in your vicinity if you're in the vicinity of a volcano.
- glenstein 2y agoI don't think that phrasing implying there was a whole brain instead of a part fares any better by tying it to a definition of fossil. It's not essential to the definition of fossil that what is recovered is a smaller subset of the whole thing. A fossil can be a fossil of an entire organism. I think the that commenter's point is that the article makes numerous unqualified references to "the brain" which on a most natural reading would imply the whole brain when it's some (albeit very interesting) individual shards.
- qingcharles 2y agoI would have said the same if I discovered those scrolls charred to a crisp too, but here we are reading them like it wasn't sci-fi. So, can we start an X Prize to read the contents of this brain?
- Talanes 2y agoA key difference is that we did know how to read non-burnt scrolls before that.
- intrasight 2y agoIn 1000 years perhaps we will understand how the mind works and scientists will take out this glass brain and read it.
- deadbabe 2y agoWhat an incredible journey it would be if it were possible for a man’s glass brain to yield enough data to reconstruct his consciousness and awaken him in the far future! There must be some sci-fi story like this.
- intrasight 2y agoAlmost every week there's a discussion on hacker news that leads to a great idea for a sci-fi story and this is one of them.
- deadbabe 2y agoAny compilations of such ideas?
- intrasight 2y agoI have jotted some of them down over the years. But I bet searching the full catalog of hacker news comments would yield a bunch of entries.
- MadnessASAP 2y ago> The scientists believe the skull gave some protection to the brain. I don't think we're on the same page about the word protection either.
- GTP 2y agoIt did provide some protection, as it wasn't burned like the rest of the body. They're not saying that it provided perfect protection, only some protection.
- ineedasername 2y agoIt would lend to some very FAA-style euphemisms. Civilization-Scale Cold Storage Archival Backup == nuclear winter
- yndoendo 2y agoThere some life forms on earth that will never become preserved. Squids for example are a high ammonium based life form. The Ammonium prevents fossilization. If humans didn't exist while they do, we would have never known about them. [0] There would have been no preserved record. [0] https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/squid-empire-danna-staaf/1125995365 https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/squid-empire-danna-staaf/11...
- moondrek 2y agoBeing entirely naive to squid prehistory, the wikipedia page for squid shows two apparent-to-me squid fossils [0]. Is there some nuance here that I'm not aware of? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squid#Evolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squid#Evolution
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- fermisea 2y agoNot sure about squids in particular, but the easiest way isn't necessarily to find remains, but to see negative prints on sediments.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y agoTons of fossils are "negative prints on sediments". GP's assertion that "If humans didn't exist while they do, we would have never known about them" is clearly wrong.
- justinclift 2y agoIs there a marine equivalent of amber that things can be trapped in and preserved? Apart from ice I guess.
- SapporoChris 2y agohttps://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Lab-Preserved-Specimen-Dissection/dp/B09J1M8NJ1?th=1 https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Lab-Preserved-Specimen-Dissec...
- calibas 2y agoFrom the study itself: > Moreover, exceptionally well-preserved complex networks of neurons, axons, and other neural structures have been revealed by Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) investigation of the brain remains and those of the spinal cord https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-88894-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-88894-5