[meteorite-list] Largest Crater in the Sahara Desert and LDG

From: Kevin Forbes <vk3ukf_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sun Mar 5 21:05:43 2006
Message-ID: <BAY113-F2123520FE6002259447D7899E90_at_phx.gbl>

Hi Sterling and list.

I have a couple of Muong Nong and they have small brown stones stuck in
them, I don't imagine this to be a rare thing in these particular tektites,
as I have 2 specimens, both have rock inclusions.
Would these inclusions not lend a hand in identifying, either where they
came from, or where they landed ???

And, I have seen some rather large roundish tektites, (I need to get some of
these) that are mainly hollow. One huge bubble of gas inside. Perhaps if
some investigative person could get their hands on one, they could detect
the gases trapped inside after breaking it. A hollow 3 inch tektite might
have a 2 inch bubble in it. What and how??

Also, if anyone has any ideas or suggestions as to the anomaly in the Sun's
corona I seem to have found, would love to hear them.

I posted the notice not long ago, as a CC that was a request to the SOHO
satellite team fpr assistance in analysis.

See the movie and pic at,

http://www.qsl.net/vk3ukf/index.html

Cheers all, Kevin. VK3UKF.







>Hi!
>
> If we made Norm ("Mr. Tektite") think
>because of our babble, then we did a good
>job. Does moving out 100,000 tektites mean
>that you can move from the pup tent in the
>back yard and get back into the house, Norm?
>
> A few loose ends...
>
> Doug, the actual language Kroeberl uses
>is that the F/B ratio of tektites "should tend
>toward 1.0." This is Professional Science
>Speak for "too complex to model exactly,
>but most of the cows ought to stampede
>in this direction..."
> And you're right; he didn't analyze that
>many samples. I wish he had more data.
>He found one ivorite with a F/B ratio of
>0.40 (means more boron than fluorine).
>Most results were 0.8 to 1.2, which
>indeed is a 'tendency" toward 1.0,
>if you think numbers have tendencies.
> Actually taking the trouble to think
>about it, I realize that once you get a purely
>thermal regime, the slightly lighter boron
>will actually escape faster than the more
>pudgy fluorine, which would drive the ratio
>back the other way, to values higher than
>1.0, but by this time you'd be dealing with
>temperatures so high, there wouldn't be
>any light elements left (my guess).
>
> Back in the days of the MetList's Great
>Tektite War of '01, the question of airbursts
>as mega-heating events was bandied about.
>Proponents of the mega-airburst pointed to
>Muong Nongs as "evidence" of melt-in-place.
>At that point I was emailing off-List with the
>late Darryl Futrell. He was sending me stuff
>and we were kicking the issues back and
>forth.
> He made one point about Muong Nongs
>that I pointed out was really significant; I don't
>think he realized how significant. He had done
>a lot of microscopic examination of Muong
>Nongs. One thing he noted that distinguished
>them from "volcanic" glasses was the nature
>of the microscopic voids in the tektite material.
> In a substance that is melted in place (big
>heat boils local rock; no flying or maybe just
>a flop and plop) is that the multitude of tiny
>voids are convex and isolated from each other.
>Gases are devolving everywhere from the
>melt into little bubbles, but the whole mass
>is cooling and they are trapped alone and
>still pushing outwards, hence the convexity.
> But in the Muong Nongs, the voids were
>concave and highly interconnected. In particular,
>they were like "spiny stars." And they were
>everywhere, like a sponge's. This "proves" that
>the Muong Nongs formed as a rain of tiny
>microspheres of molten glass that fell to earth;
>at least, it proves it to me.
> To visualize it, take an acrylic clear box
>and fill it with marbles or ball bearings and look
>at the spaces between the packed spheres.
>The voids are 3D stars with spiny concave
>points or rays, all interconnected.
> Darryl was thinking of this purely in the
>context of stuff flying around next door to the
>crater, but I was convinced that it didn't mean
>that at all.
> I decided that the conventional view of
>Muong Nongs as hardly better than impact
>glasses, as molten splash going plop! somewhere
>very near the impact site, as only semi-cooked
>tektite material that didn't quite get transformed
>completely into "true" tektites was nothing but
>simple-minded hooey.
> Picture instead a rain of fire, immense volumes
>of micrometer scale droplets condensing out of
>clouds of rock vapor (that incidentally cover an
>area of hundreds of miles across) and falling to
>Earth in such quantities that they accumulate
>many inches thick in places. (Announcer:
>"Tonight's weather: expect a rain of molten
>glass vapor with up to a foot of tektites on
>the ground by morning...")
> Our term "microtektites" characterize
>the ocean sediment layers of degraded glass
>spherules from big impacts. Muong Nongs
>are the terrestrial microtektite layers. As a
>rock, they should be characterized as a
>microtektite concretion. They are wet and
>dirty as a macro-scale sample because they
>were and are contaminated. The small size of
>the individual droplets contact welded together
>makes them degradable, getting wet and get dirty
>just like oceanic microtektites do. A rock (or big
>tektite) is a great piece of packaging to preserve
>the original composition within. A concretation
>of 50 micrometer particles is not.
> They fell (repeatedly) as tiny particles on
>dirt, water, plant life, big tropical bugs, perhaps
>the occasional hapless hominid, incorporating a
>lot of junk. Then, the tiny spheres of the more
>porous tektite started soaking up gases, water
>vapor, losing silica content, and so forth, a kind
>of weathering their more solid cousins are immune
>to. Oceanic microtetites decay this way and
>are believed to decay to clays eventually.
> Muong Nongs are layered, sub-layered, and
>sub-sub-layered, the result of many rains of fire
>over some short time scale. Fiery rain, fiery rain,
>fiery rain, and after that, fiery rain. So, again the
>simple impact scenario -- boom, melt, plop!
>-- fails. There's only one impact, hence there
>would be only one plop!
> In fact, with this composition, the one thing
>everybody seems certain of, that they are found
>near the impact site, goes right out the window.
>The high speed re-entry of an immense swarm
>of glassy rubble (and when I say immense, I mean
>many billions of pieces) could produce a rain of
>glass vapor cooling to molten microspheres in
>the last moment before landing, and then another
>swarm, and another. Would that necessarily
>happen adjacent to the crater? No.
> There are ocean finds of layered tektites off
>the Caribbean coast of South America. That's a
>long way from the Chessy Crater. Of course,
>they could also be found closer to the crater,
>like in Georgia (they are), but they could be
>anywhere in the strewn field. That's the point.
> This just takes an already headache level,
>very complicated mystery and boosts it way
>up the Migraine Scale to what-is-going-on-here?
>It produces the paradoxical result that,
>while "ordinary" tektites may be superheated
>droplets of melt that didn't quite vaporize, the
>Muong Nongs may be the product of droplet
>condensation from a vapor, a conclusion
>that is pretty much completely backwards
>from the way most people conceptualize
>the formation of tektites. There's that
>headache factor again... Why do the layers
>"tend" to alternate colors? Shut up; I have
>a headache...
> As for Darryl's analysis of the micro-voids
>in Muong Nongs, I don't know if he ever
>published or even communicated it. We were
>talking about it the week he died. Somebody
>want to section a Muong Nong and look?
>By the way, there are layered tektites from
>three of the four major strewn fields, all but
>the Ivory Coast. (But, then, ivorites are very
>rare, with few examples compared to other
>"falls.") So, it's probably a "universal" outcome
>of the Tektite Event, whatever that is.
>
> While I always worried about the asteroid
>hit, or the stray comet hit, the "usual" cosmic
>catastrophe, a straightforward impact event,
>I was so fascinated by tektites that I never
>thought to worry that much about the event.
>But after envisioning clouds of rock vapor
>and repeated fiery rains of molten droplets
>over hundreds of miles, I wonder if we ought
>to worry more than we do. Or at least,
>figure out what they are...
>
>
>Sterling K. Webb
>----------------------------------------------
>
>----- Original Message ----- From: "Norm Lehrman" <nlehrman_at_nvbell.net>
>To: "Larry Lebofsky" <lebofsky_at_lpl.arizona.edu>; "Sterling K. Webb"
><sterling_k_webb_at_sbcglobal.net>
>Cc: <MexicoDoug_at_aol.com>; <nlehrman@nvbell.net>; <bernd.pauli@paulinet.de>;
><Meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com>
>Sent: Sunday, March 05, 2006 9:13 AM
>Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Largest Crater in the Sahara Desert and LDG
>
>
>>All,
>>
>>Thanks for the fabulous discussion. I had to take
>>time out from the discourse to wash, size-sort, cull,
>>and count 10,000 tektites for an order I'm supposed to
>>ship tomorrow, and all of this gave me a lot to mull
>>over. And it did a lot to reinvigorate the wonderment
>>of the puzzle that first drew me to tektites.
>>
>>For any of you on the list that may be new to the
>>subject, this discussion serves as an appetizer for
>>the much larger array of puzzles posed by tektites.
>>
>>On the more immediate topics; Doug, I very much like
>>your thought of an aerial thermal event like a
>>mega-Tunguska for Muong Nongs and maybe Edieowie also.
>>And Sterling, I to find the F/B story intuitively
>>comfortable and rational. Larry, your comment
>>regarding something like a plasma condensate for true
>>tektites as opposed to simple splash glass impactites
>>feels good. Pieces are beginning to fall into place
>>in new combinations for me.
>>
>>More after I get the counting finished---
>>
>>Norm
>>http://tektitesource.com
>>
>>--- Larry Lebofsky <lebofsky_at_lpl.arizona.edu> wrote:
>>
>>>Sterling:
>>>
>>>Sounds good to me (though I study big rocks that you
>>>can see with a
>>>telescope). It sounds like it is time for me to
>>>start reading up on tektites
>>>too!
>>>
>>>As a novice, would you basically say that tektites
>>>come from volatilized
>>>material that has recondensed while an impactite
>>>derives from melted material
>>>that never got hot enough to vaporize.
>>>
>>>Obviously, you would have ranges of materials
>>>(hotter vapor or hotter and more
>>>devolatilized liquid).
>>>
>>>Larry
>>>
>>>PS Did you see the comet? Never been clear enough
>>>and no access to a telescope
>>>where I am.
>>>
>>>
>>>--
>>>Dr. Larry A. Lebofsky
>>>Senior Research Scientist
>>>Co-editor, Meteorite
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
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Received on Sun 05 Mar 2006 09:05:38 PM PST