Glassed
A recent Nature paper reported that the analysis of glass found in the remains of a man in the ancient Roman city of Herculaneum, killed when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79CE. Researchers have revealed that remarkable process of vitrification had converted fragments of his brain to glass, in a manner believed possibly to be unique in history. They reported that, while the damage must have been instantaneous and catastrophic, under scanning electron microscopy it was still possible to see complex neural networks in these glass fragments.
Lead researcher Guido Gordano himself said that “A few times I really got into the human side: you’re thinking about this person, and I was really affected by that.”
I was moved by idea that here there was somehow an echo not only of a person’s living tissue, but of the medium of all their thinking. Almost like the hologram of a thought, instantaneously and violently encoded two millennia ago..
Glassed
What was in your head? Not a motto or a proverb, no Latinate Et tu.. declamation while you lay in bed, that's for sure. Today's dream or plan for breakfast, or just some random thoughts, a love to see, parent, brother, child – time to shop, or walk the dog. Then quicker than a Glasgow kiss, a cataclysmic shift of atmosphere drove you to a new mode, sublimed mind to another state of matter. A boiler burst, heat braced time, rapid cooling stained into veins of a cut glass chalice, a vessel an after-thought glazed after-image. Exposed as they were last fired your neurones and axons messaging action potentials fixed as splinters – a filigree of last intention.
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