|
Desert Glass (other)
Desert glass may refer to: * Libyan desert glass, in Egypt and Libya * Atacama desert glass, in Chile * Edeowie glass Edeowie glass is a natural glass, or lechatelierite, found in the Australian state of South Australia. It is slag-like, opaque material found as vesicular free forms or sheet-like/ropy masses. It is located throughout a semi-continuous swath in ..., in South Australia * Darwin glass, in West Coast, Tasmania * Fulgurite, lumps of glass formed by lightning * Trinitite, a more specialised subclass is that formed during a nuclear explosion {{disambig da:Ørkenglas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Libyan Desert Glass
Libyan Desert glass or Great Sand Sea glass is an impactite, made mostly of lechatelierite, found in areas in the eastern Sahara, in the deserts of eastern Libya and western Egypt. Fragments of desert glass can be found over areas of tens of square kilometers. Geologic origin The origin of desert glass is uncertain. Meteoritic origins have long been considered possible, and recent research links the glass to impact features, such as zircon breakdown, vaporized quartz and meteoritic metals, and to an impact crater. Some geologists associate the glass with radiative melting from meteoric large aerial bursts, making it analogous to trinitite created from sand exposed to the thermal radiation of a nuclear explosion. Libyan Desert glass has been dated as having formed about 29 million years ago. Like obsidian, it was knapped and used to make tools during the Pleistocene. The glass is nearly pure silica which requires temperatures above 1,600 °C to form – hotter than any i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atacama Desert Glass
Atacama desert glass is an impactite found in the Atacama Desert in Chile. The event was approximately 12000 years ago; traces of chondrites suggest a cometary impact. Widespread glasses were generated by cometary fireballs during the late Pleistocene The Late Pleistocene is an unofficial Age (geology), age in the international geologic timescale in chronostratigraphy, also known as Upper Pleistocene from a Stratigraphy, stratigraphic perspective. It is intended to be the fourth division of ... in the Atacama Desert, Chile. See also * * References * Peter H. Schultz, R. Scott Harris, Sebastián Perroud, Nicolas Blanco, Andrew J. Tomlinson; Geology 2021; doi: https://doi.org/10.1130/G49426.1 * https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/article/doi/10.1130/G49426.1/609354/Widespread-glasses-generated-by-cometary-fireballs Glass in nature Impact event minerals {{Mineral-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edeowie Glass
Edeowie glass is a natural glass, or lechatelierite, found in the Australian state of South Australia. It is slag-like, opaque material found as vesicular free forms or sheet-like/ropy masses. It is located throughout a semi-continuous swath in baked pod-like clay-bearing sediment in an area of about long by along the western side of the Flinders Ranges near Parachilna and east of Lake Torrens. The region in which this glass is found is mostly restricted to concentrations correlated to the ancient shoreline terrace sequence at the locality. It is typically black in appearance, but can occur as variegated grey-green with various streak-like impurities. Pale grey and red-brownish surfaces can be caused by chemical weathering (oxidation, mineralization) and devitrification.Haines, P.W., R.J.F. Jenkins, and S.P. Kelley, 2001''Pleistocene glass in the Australian desert: The case for an impact origin.''Geology. v. 29, no. 10, pp. 899-902.Macdonald, F.A., K. Mitchell, and S.E. Cin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Darwin Glass
Darwin glass is a natural glass found south of Queenstown in West Coast, Tasmania. It takes its name from Mount Darwin in the West Coast Range, where it was first reported, and later gave its name to Darwin Crater, a probable impact crater, and the inferred source of the glass. Occurrence Fragments of Darwin glass are found scattered over a 410 km2 (160 miles squared) area. Such an area is called a strewn field. On slopes and flat ground between 250 and 500 m elevation, the glass occurs with quartzite fragments buried under peat and soil. The peat is normally around 20 cm thick, and the quartzite fragment horizon is typically 30 cm thick. On mountain peaks higher than 500 m, the bedrock is directly exposed to the air, and Darwin glass occurs occasionally on the surface. In valleys below 220 m the Darwin glass is buried below peat and sediments. The glass occurs north, west and south from the crater. Its distribution extends to Kelly Basin and the lower north ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fulgurite
Fulgurites (), commonly known as "fossilized lightning", are natural tubes, clumps, or masses of sintered, vitrified, and/or fused soil, sand, rock, organic debris and other sediments that sometimes form when lightning discharges into ground. When composed of silica, fulgurites are classified as a variety of the mineraloid lechatelierite. When ordinary negative polarity cloud-ground lightning discharges into a grounding substrate, greater than 100 million volts (100 MV) of potential difference may be bridged. Such current may propagate into silica-rich quartzose sand, mixed soil, clay, or other sediments, rapidly vaporizing and melting resistant materials within such a common dissipation regime. This results in the formation of generally hollow and/or vesicular, branching assemblages of glassy tubes, crusts, and clumped masses. Fulgurites have no fixed composition because their chemical composition is determined by the physical and chemical properties of whatever material is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trinitite
Trinitite, also known as atomsite or Alamogordo glass, is the glassy residue left on the desert floor after the plutonium-based Trinity nuclear bomb test on July 16, 1945, near Alamogordo, New Mexico. The glass is primarily composed of arkosic sand composed of quartz grains and feldspar (both microcline and smaller amount of plagioclase with small amount of calcite, hornblende and augite in a matrix of sandy clay) that was melted by the atomic blast. It was first academically described in ''American Mineralogist'' in 1948. It is usually a light green, although red trinitite was also found in one section of the blast site,G. Nelson Eby1, Norman Charnley, Duncan Pirrie, Robert Hermes, John Smoliga, and Gavyn RollinsTrinitite redux: Mineralogy and petrology''American Mineralogist'', Volume 100, pages 427–441, 2015 and rare pieces of black trinitite also formed. It is mildly radioactive but safe to handle. Pieces of the material may still be found at the Trinity site as of 2018, al ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
