libyan desert glass

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ibyan Desert Glass - TEKTITES

LIBYAN DESERT GLASS

Libyan Desert Glass is found on the Libyan-Egyptian border. It is around 26 to 29 million yea

old. I consider Libyan Desert Glass to be more of an impactite, rather than a true tektite.

ABOVE: A big chunk of Libyan Desert Glass in natural light. Note the yellow-green colour.

sculpture is due to desert weathering / wind-blown sand and is not original.

At the moment I don't have time to do justice to the story, but you can find some great, freely

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downloadable, references in my bibliography. Also a good introduction can be found at:

http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/197905/desert.glass-an.enigma.htm

ABOVE: The large piece is Libyan Desert Glass in artificial light. The smaller, bubbly piece,

desert sand that has been melted a few years ago by a gas flare. The colours are remarkably

similar. You can see more of this artificial glass by clicking here.



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ABOVE: Natural wind-blown/sand-blasted Libyan Desert Glass in the Red Zone of the BritisMuseum of Natural History, London. Note the nice conchoidal fracture at the top of the specim



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ABOVE: A cut piece of Libyan Desert Glass in the Red Zone of the British Museum of Natu

History, London.

More to come in the future.............

rther links at top of page! Thank you for visiting www.tektites.co.uk



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Bibliography - TEKTITES

BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR TEKTITES

In compiling this bibliography I have been moderately strict in keeping it to

tektites, microtektites and impact spherules. There has been temptation to

include references for source impact craters, to which tektites are inextricab

linked; however, I have tried to resist this. An excellent list of references to

specific craters, including Bosumtwi, Chesapeake and Ries can be found at

'Earth Impact Database’ webpage http://www.unb.ca/passc/ImpactDatabase/index.html. Additionally, the Cretaceous-Tertiary imp

references are incomplete, except where there is direct reference to tektites

spherule layers. So, in summary this list focuses on references for tektites a

in particular Australasian tektites, Moldavites, North American Tektites and

Libyan Desert Glass.

This tektite bibliography is probably the most comprehensive available. The

are around 3,466 references and, believe it or not, I am still finding

more! Tektites, far from being under-studied, appear to be over-studied! I

wanted to put all the references in one list to demonstrate the extensive

research that has been carried out. In time I may subdivide the references ismaller subject lists to make this work more user friendly. I have left the web

links in full so you won't lose them if you paste this document into Microsoft

Word. Please be aware that the links to papers take the user to different

webpages. Please abide by their guidelines, which can be found on their

websites, particularly with reference to copyright law. The main sites this

webpage links to for articles are the Smithsonian / NASA Astrophysics Data

System (ADS) at http://www.adsabs.harvard.edu/ ; the NASA Technical

Reports Server at http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp and the Lunar and Planeta

Institute at http://www.lpi.usra.edu/publications/absearch/. The Smithsonian

NASA Astrophysics Data System, for instance, will log your computer to

prevent mass downloads. I have 999 papers listed as downloadable for freedon't give links where the publisher charges a fee). Some of these links now

longer function or now charge for a copy of the paper, but they were correct

the time I accessed them.

I would like to thank Milan Trnka for access to his reference list. From this lis

sourced many references, mainly the Czech ones, which I did not have liste

prior to 2010. This just highlighted how many Czech references I have miss

have no doubt that I have also missed the vast majority of Russian and

Chinese references due to language barriers - so if you are Russian or Chin

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http://www.adsabs.harvard.edu/http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsphttp://www.lpi.usra.edu/publications/absearch/http://www.lpi.usra.edu/publications/absearch/http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsphttp://www.adsabs.harvard.edu/


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Bibliography - TEKTITES

and interested in tektites it would be great to make a reference list!

* means I have a copy. I am working to acquire as many as possible from th

internet, original second hand copies and from geological society libraries. I

currently have around 2,076 papers. In the meantime, I would welcome any

pdf's / scans / hard copies of any of the other papers! Maybe I can help you

too! I am using these papers for non-commercial private research and abidin

by copyright law.

Note that I have tried and keep this list as accurate as possible and it is mor

accurate than many, but errors may occur due to typo's or copying of an

incorrectly reported reference, where I don't have a copy myself. Due to my

computer not being happy with the long list, I have split it into four:

A to E

F to K

L to Q

R to Z

urther links at top of page! Thank you for visiting www.tektites.co.uk

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http://www.tektites.co.uk/a-e.htmlhttp://www.tektites.co.uk/f-k.htmlhttp://www.tektites.co.uk/l-q.htmlhttp://www.tektites.co.uk/r-z.htmlhttp://www.tektites.co.uk/r-z.htmlhttp://www.tektites.co.uk/l-q.htmlhttp://www.tektites.co.uk/f-k.htmlhttp://www.tektites.co.uk/a-e.html


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Planetary and Space Science Centre (PASSC) | The Planetary and Space Science Centre (PASSC) opened in April, 2001 and was the first facility of its kind in Canada.


etary and Space Science Centre | UNB

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Welcome to PASSC

Structural Geology Post-doctoral Project

If you are interested in completing a Structural Geology Post-doctoral Project at the Manicouagan Impact Structure, click here.

The Planetary and Space Science Centre (PASSC) opened in April, 2001 and was the first facility of its kind in Canada. PASSC is a growing group of scientists and engineersinvolved in researching planetary geology, space-related technology and associated applications. PASSC works directly with world-renowned space agencies, including theNational Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the European Space Agency (ESA), providing direct involvement with two missionsto Mars in the near future (Mars Science Laboratory and ExoMars).

The four main functions of PASSC are:

Planetary Research:

The core of PASSC is its research program. The goal is to provide and realize world class training opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students, post-doctoral fellowsand senior researchers in science and engineering. Our main areas of activity are investigating planetary materials (including Earth, lunar, martian and asteroid materials),planetary landforms and cratering processes. Click here.

Earth Impact Database:

The Earth Impact Database (EID) is a collection of images, publications and abstracts from around the world (compiled over the last 25 years) that provides information aboutconfirmed impact structures for the scientific community and space enthusiasts. Click here.

Regional and Planetary Image Facility:

The Regional and Planetary Image Facility (RPIF) is one of 17 worldwide NASA-designated facilities providing imagery, maps and data from NASA-led space missions by request.It is the only one of its kind in Canada. The data is available to scientists, educators, students, media and the general public for the purpose of encouraging and furthering space


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science studies. Click here.

High-speed impact and ballistics:

In addition to investigating natural impact-related phenomena, PASSC operates a ballistics facility that can accelerate projectiles from subsonic through to hypersonic speedsunder controlled, reproducible conditions. The High-speed Impact Research and Technology (HIRT) facility is an off-campus PASSC R&D unit that is operated by a team ofengineers. This facility performs impact tests for academic, aerospace, defence and space applications, and also provides high-fidelity computer simulations of high-speed impactdamage and shock effects. Click here.

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audi Aramco World : Desert Glass: An Enigma

Volume 30, Number 5September/October 1979

Desert Glass

An Enigma

Written by John W. Olsen and James R. Underwood

ecember 1932, an Egyptian Desert Survey expedition led by P. A. Clayton was sent southwest from Cairo to study the previously unexplored regions of the Egyptian

north of a broad plateau, the Gilf Kebir. On December 29 of that year, members of the expedition discovered, scattered about on the desert, transparent to transluce

es of a pale yellow-green vitreous substance that has since become known as Libyan Desert glass.

ated in the Great Erg, or Sand Sea, on the Egyptian-Libyan frontier, the area where the glass is found measures roughly 80 miles north and south by 30 miles east an

e corridors between a series of dunes (saifs) that rise abruptly above sharply contrasting weathered debris that overlies bedrock of the Nubian Sandstone deposited

Early Cretaceous Epoch some 100 million years ago.

ough the glass was used for tools by Pleistocene man, and may have been discovered as early as 1846 by explorers, the inaccessibility of the region and the harsh

errain precluded any further investigation until Clayton went back in 1934 with L. J. Spencer, then Keeper of Minerals in the British Museum. And it was not until 197n a joint University of Texas-University of Libya team explored the western extremity of the area, that modern science had a look. Indeed, the terrain is so remote an

spitable, that when the American-Libyan team neared the site of the glass deposits, they discovered an Egyptian plane, intact, with the remains of nine passengers

tered about, lying where they died of thirst several days after they landed, lost and out of fuel, more than three years earlier.

glass has generated intense interest among scientists because its origin remains an enigma. Was it produced by the encounter of an extraterrestrial body with earth

nce isn't sure and, in fact, has come up with at least 10 theories to explain its origin.

y researchers consider Libyan Desert glass to be a form of tektite (from the Greek tektos, meaning molten), a natural black, dark green, or dark brown glassy stone,

mbling the volcanic glass obsidian, that may possibly be of extraterrestrial or meteoritic origin. Tektites, which occur in four large associations of distinctly different a

ughout the world known as strewn fields, are similar to Libyan Desert glass in that both substances are composed chiefly of silica (silicon dioxide); the silica content o

tes ranges from 68-80 percent whereas that of Libyan Desert glass is approximately 98 percent. Both tektites and Libyan Desert glass are characterized by etched, p

aces, which in the case of some of the silica glass may have been obscured by the scouring action of the fierce Saharan winds.

ites, first scientifically reported in 1788, have been the subject of investigation since that time. In 1844, for example, Charles Darwin, the great naturalist, described a

cimen he was given in Australia while on the famous globe-circling voyage of H.M.S. Beagle from 1831-1836.

oubtedly of natural origin, tektites have been interpreted by various investigators as: (1) ejecta from terrestrial volcanoes, (2) meteorites, (3) ejecta from lunar volcan

sy material produced by lightning striking the earth, (5) glassy material produced by lightning discharge into the dusty, hot gases of a volcano's eruptive cloud, (6) the

uct of desiccating siliceous gels, (7) glassy debris from a disrupted planetary body with a glassy surface layer, (8) material produced by forest fires, (9) glassy mater

uced by meteorite impact on earth, or (10) similar material resulting from meteorite impact on the moon. It was even argued by some, for a time, that tektites had be

uced by human activities such as furnace operations or as a by-product in the manufacture of glass.

shape of tektites is varied; they may resemble buttons, teardrops, dumb-bells, rods, spheres, or disks. Some are blocky and layered. Although commonly about an in

meter, they range up to a maximum diameter of almost 12 inches and weigh as much as 28 pounds. Many tektites show the effects of surface etching and pitting -

preted by most specialists as having developed through chemical action during burial on the earth's surface. Some tektites, especially those from Australia, show a

nctive surface sculpture almost certainly produced by aerodynamic ablation as the glassy object hurtled through the earth's atmosphere. It was this characteristic of s

tes that drew special attention to them as the pace of the U.S. space program to reach the moon quickened. Tektites provided a model for the design of heat shields

ch to protect spacecraft returning to earth through the atmosphere. Suddenly these curious objects of heretofore relatively minor interest were center stage, because

already journeyed through the earth's atmosphere, and many were readily available for study.

chemical composition of tektites is similar to that of crustal rocks of the earth, and the discovery in some tektites of rare minerals produced only by extremely high pr

led many to believe that tektites are a form of glass, impactite, produced by meteorite impact. This view was further enhanced by the discovery in some tektites of sm

eres (spherules) of nickel-iron, the material of which many meteorites are composed.

cialists were divided, however, on whether tektites were produced by impact on earth and were consequently splashed into their strewn fields, or whether the impact

urred on the moon with some of the ejecta reaching lunar escape velocity and reaching earth as a form of meteorite. The hypothesis of lunar origin of tektites was dea

ere blow by the failure of samples returned from the moon by the Apollo missions to contain any tektite-like material or plausible tektite parent material.

me large terrestrial impact craters have been identified as being of the correct age and location to be the parent craters for some of the tektite-strewn fields, but for so

wn fields no parent craters have thus far been identified. Based on aerodynamic arguments however, some investigators feel that tektites cannot have a terrestrial or

be distributed as they are in strewn fields. They further maintain that tektites can only have come from certain lunar volcanoes that are believed to have erupted mate

r escape velocity in the directions necessary to result in impact with the earth. And so the debate continues.

byan Desert glass a tektite? Although it usually is discussed in the same context as tektites and is considered by some investigators to be a variety of tektite, there e

e very distinct differences. Libyan Desert glass has a uniformly higher silica content than tektites, and it shows no evidence of aerodynamic sculpturing. Many of the

ments are tabular and layered, which is characteristic of only one kind of tektite, the so-called Muong-Nong tektites of southeast Asia. Libyan Desert glass never occ

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h distinctive shapes as dumbbells, rods, spheres, disks, and teardrops as do tektites, and the color of the glass is rarely as dark as the color of typical tektites. In fact,

e glass is quite colorless. It ranges in size from tiny flakes 0.01mm in diameter up to pieces the size of a person's head and weighing over 16 pounds. Both tektites a

an Desert glass are harder than the steel in a knife blade, but no harder than the mineral quartz. Fragments of Libyan Desert glass are somewhat lighter weight than

tes of equal size. Both tektites and Libyan Desert glass may contain bubbles; those in the glass tend either to be elliptical, indicating deformation of the bubble during

ongated and pointed, suggesting deformation of original pore space in material that barely melted.

yses of both major and trace elements of the glass and of the Nubian Sandstone upon which it rests, together with the stratification visible in numerous pieces, have

aled that the Nubian Sandstone is a suitable parent material for Libyan Desert glass and suggest that the glass could be of impact origin. What is not yet understood

hanism that produced, momentarily, heat intense enough to melt surface rock or weathered debris. For the quartz-rich Nubian Sandstone, the melting temperature w

bout 2,800°F.

ough nickel-iron spherules have not been identified in the glass, it is still possible that it was formed by the impact of a stony meteorite (or aerolite). There are, for ins

small craters in the desert glass area, and although there is no evidence relating the craters to the glass, it would be an unusual coincidence to find such rare materia

an Desert glass so close to such relatively rare structures as astroblemes (deeply eroded impact features) without some relationship.

l Barnes has suggested that perhaps the glass was produced by the heat wave of a passing comet or by the intense heat generated by an exploding comet - neithe

ch would necessarily disrupt the surface rocks. Afterwards, the molten silica glass may have flowed into low areas, puddled and cooled - thus forming Libyan Desert g

r, it may have been broken up by weathering and then moved, either by running water, in an earlier, wetter climatic period, or by humans in prehistoric times.

he other hand, most Libyan Desert glass is much more dense and homogeneous than the well described porous and impure "impact" glass (impactite) found in suc

ers as Henbury in central Australia, Wabar in the Rub'al-Khali of Saudi Arabia, or 4 the nuclear test craters in Nevada.

absence of an extremely large impact crater in the vicinity of the Libya Desert glass, moreover, is not highly relevant. The glass has been reliably dated (by fission-tr

hods), as 28.5 million years old. That’s so long ago that any impact crater may have been covered by shifting sands or erased by erosion. Opponents of the cometa

eoritic origin of Libyan Desert glass say it is highly improbable that such large, homogeneous pieces of glass could be formed and freed of volatiles within the earth's

osphere by any process of simple fusion of sand, while supporters contend that the chemical composition of Libyan Desert glass so closely resembles the Nubian

dstone - upon which it rests -that the probability of finding two so similar yet unrelated materials together is extremely remote.

iously, the origin of Libyan Desert glass is unresolved and remains a topic of intense discussion among tektite specialists. But most scientists do agree that ancient m

d the glass at a time when the Sahara's climate was quite different.

nearly 10,000 years, the Sahara, of which the Great Erg or Sand Sea is a part, has been a hot, forbidding land, unattractive in most regions to human habitation.

50,000 years ago, what is today the Sand Sea may have closely resembled the Mediterranean environment of modern Greece and was thus more habitable. As a re

atter phase of the Palaeolithic (or Old Stone Age) there appeared the Aterian culture, named after an archaeological site in eastern Algeria.

earing about 30,000 years ago and persisting until perhaps 18,000 years ago, the Aterian people were apparently the first to recognize Libyan Desert glass and mak

s special properties. Like many types of glass, that from the Libyan Desert flakes conchoidally. That is, by striking the material a glancing blow with another rock, or b

d or bone, flakes may be removed in a predictable fashion so as to produce a variety of efficient cutting edges. The Aterian people used this property of Libyan Dese

eir advantage and produced an array of skillfully-flaked implements (See page 4, top). After their expeditions in the 1930's, Clayton and Spencer said that at least 10

ent of the Libyan Desert glass flakes recovered exhibited some sign of human workmanship and Virgil Barnes and James Underwood, who visited the Libyan Desert

wn field in 1971, reported that the largest specimen collected during their expedition - a tabular cobble weighing nearly two pounds - shows percussion marks that su

piece may have been used as a pounding tool. Flakes of Libyan Desert glass have also been found in localized concentrations suggesting the manufacture of imple

he spot. Other fragments of the glass have been located some 140 miles from the known field - and in a few instances on the top of the saif dunes, suggesting trans

.

he basis of the above evidence it is logical to conclude that by Aterian times, Libyan Desert glass was used for the manufacture of lithic tools. But there is still an enig

ough Libyan Desert glass has been dated as 28.5 million years old, there is no evidence that man used it before Aterian times even though much older Nubian Sand

daxes have been found.

plausible solution to this problem, offered by Virgil Barnes, is that the area that is now the Sand Sea may have been covered by thick deposits of sand prior to the cl

urbation of the late Pleistocene age that could have whipped the sand up into saif dunes, thus exposing the Libyan Desert glass below.

he other hand, the highly polished and faceted surface of many of the exposed Libyan Desert glass fragments indicates that some of them have been exposed to th

sive actions of wind and sand for a good deal longer than 30,000 years. As Kenneth Oakley has pointed out in Nature,"... it is important to bear in mind that the glas

ady corroded by sand-blast before it was worked into the [Aterian] bifaced points."

urally, it is possible that the Libyan Desert glass lay on the surface for some 26 million years or so before the arrival of humans on the scene and was then covered fo

t period up to about 30,000 years ago when the Aterian people began to utilize the material. Nevertheless, it remains an important task for archeologists working in t

on to investigate the possibility of pre-Aterian occurrences of Libyan Desert glass artifacts.

e the time of the Aterian's utilization of the substance, humans have found no practical use for Libyan Desert glass. From a scientific viewpoint, however, its existenc

inues to provoke intense curiosity regarding the formation of such unique material. Fundamental questions relating to the nature of Libyan Desert glass have yet to b

quately resolved. Can it be considered a true tektite? How did Libyan Desert glass come to be formed in such large, relatively homogeneous masses? Why the strikin

arity between the silica glass and the Nubian Sandstone upon which it rests? Coincidence? Perhaps; perhaps not. One hopes that continued diligent research will p

with answers to these questions and perhaps shed light upon the origin of other tektites as well.

hn W. Olsen is a Ph.D. candidate in Old World prehistory at the University of California and James R. Underwood heads the Department of Geology at Kansa

University.

This article appeared on pages 2-5 of the September/October 1979 print edition of Saudi Aramco Wor ld .

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Man-made Glass - TEKTITES

MAN-MADE GLASS

Made-made glass is first recorded in Egypt some 5500 years before present, with hollow glass production fr

3500 years before present. Glass blowing commenced around 2000 years ago. At one time it was suggested

Moldavites were in fact man-made glasses. Other, less attractive man-made glass is formed as the by-produ

smelting metals such as iron and is known as 'slag'.

Understanding how glasses of different chemical compositions behave when they are cooled and heated is k

tektite studies. Input from professional glassmakers/experts would probably go a long way to understanding

sculpture on tektites. Hal Povenmire also points out the problem of Stokes's Law, which deals with the way

bubbles rise in a liquid, in relation to tektite formation. The argument is that pure tektite glass could not form

bubble free as it is, in such a short time as invoked by the impact hypothesis. To counter this I would sugge

the huge velocities of ejection and centrifugal forces need to be taken into account.

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ABOVE: A variety of glasses from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

ABOVE: Antique 'Onion' Bottles in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Kind of similar to Onion

tektites.

ABOVE: A bowl that was partially melted in the Hiroshima Atomic Explosion. This is located in the Scien

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Museum in London. Meteorite impacts are similar in many ways to atomic blasts, where a large amount of

energy is released in a short time. When atomic blasts melt the ground an impactite-like melt rock called

'Trinitite' is formed.

Below is a piece of desert sand. This sand was melted by a gas flare during a drilling operation, i.e. it was m

in situ. Interestingly the bubbles and layering does not resemble Moung Nong tektites, which I do not believ

were formed in situ.

ABOVE: Two pieces of glass formed by the melting of desert dune sand by a controlled gas flare in the M

East. Note the absence of any flow structure.

Return to top of page Glossary page

ther links at top of page! Thank you for visiting www.tektites.co.uk
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libyan desert glass

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