Atacamaite 3.87g Impact Glass Assortment From Atacama High Desert

Description

Item for auction is a 3.87g  lot of assorted Atacamaites, an impact glass found in the high altitude Atacama Desert of Chile.
This new material, first discovered in 2014 takes its rightful place as representatives of the tiniest little jets of glass ever squirted from the white-hot furnace of an earth/asteroid collision. Atacamaites began life as little squirting fingers of incandescent (but soon to be black) glass. These jetting rivulets of fire were seldom larger than half the diameter of a pencil. Reportedly, they are found over an area of some 20 square kilometers, so these must've been truly high-pressure squirts. Can you picture this viscous spray of orange-yellow-white molten glass streaking from the unthinkable place where the kinetic energy of a massive body moving at tens of kilometers per second met an immovable object (earth) and flashed at an instant into shock waves and heat radiating outward at velocities that left all sound far behind? Consider the instantaneous release of "more energy …than the whole Earth releases (through volcanism, earthquakes, tectonic processes, and heat flow) in hundreds or thousands of years." (French, 1998, p. 7). That's a description of a moderate-sized impact! The glass is relatively dry at about 130 ppm water. There is significant comingling of impactor material, with iron contents varying from about 5 to about 15 weight-%.
This impact glass comes with a Big Kahuna Meteorites Certificate of Authenticity. Scale cube in photo is 1cm on each side, and not included in sale. Big Kahuna combines shipping, and addresses must be in the English language, to facilitate customs input at US Postal Service. Non-English addresses cannot be shipped, and may incur additional fees for handling. We no longer ship to China or Italy.
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