3 ms·
Interesting place in many ways. Just a few days ago it was reported: "Vast patches of glassy rock in Chilean desert likely created by ancient exploding comet."
by 8bitsrule 5y ago
Interesting place in many ways. Just a few days ago it was reported: "Vast patches of glassy rock in Chilean desert likely created by ancient exploding comet." [https://phys.org/news/2021-11-vast-patches-glassy-chilean-ancient.html https://phys.org/news/2021-11-vast-patches-glassy-chilean-an...]
"Around 12,000 years ago, something scorched a vast swath of the Atacama Desert in Chile with heat so intense that it turned the sandy soil into widespread slabs of silicate glass.... Fields of dark green or black glass occur within a corridor stretching about 75 kilometers.... The analysis found minerals called zircons that had thermally decomposed to form baddeleyite. That mineral transition typically happens in temperatures in excess of 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit...."
Geology PDF: [https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/article-pdf/doi/10.1130/G49426.1/5456021/g49426.pdf https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/article-pdf/doi...]
- koheripbal 5y agoReminds me of the recent theory that a comet airburst destroyed a city in the middle-east 3600 years ago. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-97778-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-97778-3
- jdmichal 5y agoThis made me think of Sodom and Gomorrah. And, indeed, it looks like that's a published theory of the director of excavations there, Steven Collins. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodom_and_Gomorrah#Possible_sites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodom_and_Gomorrah#Possible_si... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_Southwest_University#Archaeology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_Southwest_University#A... EDIT: You think I would know to not read just the abstract... Sodom is explicitly mentioned in the linked Nature paper, but only in the sense that if the two are connected, it would be the second oldest known record of an airburst event.