Natural Glass in the Desert
New Stuff (Robert Twigger)
For some reason the natural glass in the Great Sand Sea of Egypt is always referred to as silica glass which is odd as all glass is made of silica unless it’s plastic…anyway this natural glass is 98% silica which makes it the purest natural glass in the world. Other glasses, such as volcanic obsidians are lower in silica at 75%.
The natural glass of the Sand Sea is found in a large area stretching from just north of the Gilf Kebir to a few hundred km south of Siwa. The area of highest concentration is small but I’ve found small pieces of glass spread over a long but not wide distance. Mainly the glass is confined to four dune corridors- the ones used by cars storming up from the Gilf to Siwa.
The glass was formed by a giant meteorite hitting the earth it is widely believed.
See the above for more.
There's a review of Lost Oasis by Toby Lichtig on the Guardian website.- Cray Computer At Helps Discovery Of Origin Of Glass Found In Tut's Tomb
Macro World Investor Global supercomputer leader Cray Inc. today announced that researchers running simulations on the Cray supercomputer at Sandia National Laboratories have re-created what could have happened 29 million years ago when an asteroid explosion...
- Egyptian Glass Formed By Meteorite Strike
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/12/061221-egypt-glass.html"Strange specimens of natural glass found in the Egyptian desert are products of a meteorite slamming into Earth between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago, scientists have concluded. The...
- Tutankhamun Jewel Formed By Meteor Fireball
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5196362.stm"In 1996 in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Italian mineralogist Vincenzo de Michele spotted an unusual yellow-green gem in the middle of one of Tutankhamun's necklaces. The jewel was tested and found...
- Tut's Necklace Shaped By Fireball
http://tinyurl.com/zsdwm (theaustralian.news.com.au)"Scientists believe they have solved the mystery surrounding a piece of rare natural glass at the centre of an elaborate necklace found among the treasures of Tutankhamun, the boy pharaoh. They think...
- Crater Found In Gilf Kebir
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060303_big_crater.htmlInstead of a Saturday Trivia this week (none found), here's piece about a new crater found from satellite images in the far southwest of Egypt, at the north west tip of the Gilf Kebir: "The...