the.com/tektite
molten earth flung skyward by an asteroid, frozen into glass on the way down
means A small, dark, glassy object formed when an asteroid or comet impact melts terrestrial rock and flings it through the air, where it cools into glass before landing.
from From the Greek 'tēktos,' meaning 'molten' or 'melted' (from 'tēkein,' to melt), coined by an Austrian geologist in the late 19th century to name these enigmatic glass pebbles. The root is a distant cousin of 'thaw' — both reach back to a Proto-Indo-European sense of melting and softening — which is fitting for a thing born of rock turned briefly to liquid by the violence of impact.
- origin
- impact-melted rock launched, then rained back to ground
- travel range
- some flew thousands of kilometers from impact
- composition
- natural glass, nearly water-free unlike volcanic glass
- moldavites
- green tektites prized as gemstones in europe
- age clue
- reveal ancient craters now eroded away
moldavite — green tektite from czech republic, formed 15 million years ago from meteorite impact in ries crater
australite — dark tektite found in australia, ejected from henbury crater impact 4,700 years ago
philippinite — black tektite from philippines, created by the australasian impact event ~790,000 years ago