PREMIUM A++ GEM Libyan Desert Glass Meteorite 2 OZ Impact Tektite Sahara Desert

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PREMIUM A++ GEM Libyan Desert Glass Meteorite 2 OZ Impact Tektite Sahara Desert:
$260.00

This specimen weighs 279.95 carats, which is 55.99 grams, which is 2 ounces!!!! . It measures 60 mm x 26 mm x 46 mm.
THIS IS A REALLY LARGE PIECE - ONE OF THE LARGEST PIECES I HAVE!!!!I offer a shipping discount for customers who combine their payments for multiple purchases into one payment!
The discount is regular shipping price for the first item and just 50 cents for each additional item!
Please be sure to request a combined invoice before you make your payment. Thank you.This is a very nice, and highly translucent specimen of Libyan Desert Glass. And if you don\'t know what that is, well then, get ready to be amazed!
This is what was formed from an ancient meteorite impact in the middle of the deserts of Egypt. The sand was immediately fused into this beautiful yellow glass!
It is highly collectible and more and more rare all the time. It getting more difficult to find and I was just selling some stuff that I had in an old collection.
So I am offering this beautiful piece for you. Times are tough and I am just trying to make some money, and I know it will find a nice home out there somewhere. It is really beautiful, and itwhat a great present or just to buy for yourself.
Have fun offerding. Thanks so much for visiting my sale and have a great day:>)If you purchase from me you should know that your authenticity of thisspecimen is guaranteed!
I am a member of the IMCA or the International Meteorite Collector\'s Association. This is an organization that is a checks and balances of those who trade, deal and sell meteorites. You can only join this organization by having the utmost of integrity and being reliable, and trustworthy. You have to have two references to get in, and a good reputation.
The members adhere to the highest standards of meteorite identification and proper labeling practices. Membership in this organization maintains this high standard by monitoring each other\'s activities for accuracy. It is every IMCA member\'s responsibility and pleasure to offer help and assistance to fellow members in order to ensure specimens are genuine.
The logo below is my own personal logo, and guarantees authenticity of the meteorites that I sell. It is not wise to purchase meteorites on or other sources from those who do not have this logo. This is a very tight-knot community, and people look out for each other to make sure that the meteorites offered to the public are authentic and genuine.
You can click on the link below to be forwarded to the IMCA site and get more information on what being a member means, and how your purchases from its members are guaranteed.

INTERNATIONAL METEORITE COLLECTORS ASSOCIATIONAuthenticity GUARANTEED * Click the imageBelow is some information from Wikipedia about Libyan desert glass:
Libyan desert glassFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search Libyan Desert Glass

Libyan desert glass (LDG), or great sand sea glass is a substance found in areas in the Libyan Desert. Fragments of desert glass can be found over large areas, up to tens of kilometers.

Geologic origin

The origin of the glass is a controversial issue for the scientific community, with many evolving theories. Meteoric origins for the glass were long suspected, but recent research linked the glass to impact mechanics, such as vaporized quartz and meteoric metals, and to an impact crater. Some geologists associate the glass not with impact melt ejecta, but with radiative melting from meteoric large aerial bursts. If that were the case, the glass would be analogous to trinitite, which is created from sand exposed to the thermal radiation of a fireball.

TektiteFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2008)This article is about impact rocks. For the oceanographic research habitat, see Tektite habitat. For the video game character, see Enemies in The Legend of Zelda series#Tektite.Two tektites

Tektites (from Greek tektos, molten) are natural glass rocks up to a few centimeters in size, which most scientists argue were formed by the impact of large meteorites on Earth\'s surface. Tektites are typically black or olive-green, and their shape varies from rounded to irregular.

Tektites are among the \"driest\" rocks, with an average water contentof 0.005%. This is very unusual, as most if not all of the craterswhere tektites may have formed were underwater before impact. Also,partially melted zirconshave been discovered inside a handful of tektites. This, along with thewater content, suggests that the tektites were formed under phenomenaltemperature and pressure not normally found on the surface of the Earth.

A very rare shape of Australite Tektite - Shallow Bowl, next to a coin 24 mm in diameterContents

1 Origins
- 1.1 Terrestrial impact theory
- 1.2 Early non-terrestrial impact theories
2 Occurrence
3 Literature
- 3.1 Books
- 3.2 Articles
4 External links

Origins

Terrestrial impact theoryTektite and Sandstone concretion demonstrate the same shape

The terrestrial-impact theory states that a meteorite impact meltsmaterial from the Earth\'s surface and catapults it up to severalhundred kilometers away from the impact site. The molten material coolsand solidifies to glass. According to this theory, a meteorite impactcauses their formation, but the precursor material of tektites isprimarily of terrestrial origin, as determined from isotopicmeasurements. Today, the terrestrial origin of tektites is widelyaccepted based on the results of many geochemical and isotopic studies(e.g. Faul H.(1966), Koeberl C.(1990)).

The impact theory relies on the observation that tektites cannot befound everywhere on Earth\'s surface. They are only found in fourstrewnfields, three of which are associated with known impact craters. Only the largest and geologically youngest tektite deposit in Southeast Asia, called the Australasian strewnfield,has not been definitively linked to an impact site, probably becauseeven very large impact structures are often not easy to detect. Forexample, since the Chesapeake Bay impact crater(today the largest known impact structure of the United States andassociated with the North American tektite strewnfield) is covered bysediments, it was not detected until the early 1990s. Also, the biggerthe strewnfield, the bigger the area to search for the crater. Sinceseveral new craters are identified every year, this is not reallyregarded as a problem by proponents of the tektite impact theory,except for the expected Australasian crater, a feature that would beless than a million years old and thus easily visible. This crater, ifit exists at all, has not been located.

A moldavite tektiteAn Indochinite tektite

The ages of tektites from the four strewnfields have been determined using radiometric dating methods. The age of moldavites, a type of tektite found in Czech Republic, was determined to be 14 million years, which agrees well with the age determined for the Nördlinger Ries crater (a few hundred kilometers away in Germany) by radiometric dating of Suevite (an impact brecciafound at the crater). Similar agreements exist between tektites fromthe North American strewnfield and the Chesapeake Bay impact crater andbetween tektites from the Ivory Coast strewnfield and the LakeBosumtwi-Crater.

Below are some types of tektites, grouped according to the four known strewnfields, and their associated craters:

European strewnfield (Nördlinger Ries, Germany, age: 15 million years):
- Moldavites (Czech Republic, green)
Australasian strewnfield (no associated crater identified; but see Wilkes Land crater):
- Australites (Australia, dark, mostly black)
- Indochinites (South East Asia, dark, mostly black)
- Chinites (China, black)
North American strewnfield (Chesapeake Bay impact crater, USA, age: 34 million years):
- Bediasites (USA, Texas, black)
- Georgiaites (USA, Georgia, green)
Ivory Coast strewnfield (Lake Bosumtwi Crater, Ghana, age: 1 million years):
- Ivorites (Ivory Coast, black)

Early non-terrestrial impact theoriesThis article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia\'s quality standards.
Please improve this article if you can. (October 2006)Aerodynamically shaped Australite; the button shape caused by ablation of molten glass in the atmosphere

Though the meteorite impact theory of tektite formation is widelyaccepted, minority theories propose alternate ideas of tektiteformation.

Tektites contain no cosmogenic noble gases produced by cosmic rays,a factor that excludes long travel in space, necessary if tektites arenot terrestrial. According to terrestrial-impact adherents, this makesa lunar origin unlikely, because it is hard to reconcile with finding cosmogenic noble gases in all lunar meteorites– a typical lunar meteorite taking about 1 million years to transferfrom Moon to Earth. Furthermore, an origin from the Moon or other bodycannot explain why many tektites are only found in confined areasunlike meteorites of lunar or other origin, which are found dispersedon the Earth\'s surface. Whether the Australasian and Ivory Coasttektites fit this thesis is debatable.

In particular, no tektite strewn field exists in Antarctica, wherethe flow of glaciers would sweep extraterrestrial material away. Sincethe Australasian strewnfield expands with each new tektite discoveredon the southern seafloor, this tektite field may yet be found to reachas far as Antarctica, but regularly undertaken meteorite recoveryexpeditions in areas that accumulate extraterrestrial material havefound only meteorites and no tektites at all. If tektites from spacefall in Antarctica, a large part of the recovered material shouldinstead be tektites and an existing strewnfield should already havebeen discovered. Conversely, the Australasian and Ivory Coaststrewnfields have expanded over the decades as new tektites are foundin sea sediments; they now reach toward the southern continent. Thus,it may be premature for terrestrial-origin proponents to say thattektites will never be discovered on Antarctica.

According to researchers, measurements of high concentrations of the radionuclide 10Be in tektites from the relatively young Australasian strewnfield are an indication of terrestrial origin. 10Beis produced by cosmic rays in the atmosphere, where it is down-washedby rain and incorporated into young sediment layers. Because 10Bedecays with a half-life of about 1.5 million years, its concentrationin older sediments and other kinds of rocks appears successively lower.10Be is found in meteorites and lunar rocks at aconcentration lower than that of the young sediments because the cosmicrays interact with these rocks to produce much smaller quantities. Many[citations needed]regard these findings as the final breakthrough for the non-terrestrialimpact theory, because they show that the precursor material is mainlyterrestrial in origin (mixed with small traces of extraterrestrialmaterial, perhaps that of the impactor). Scientists who claim tektiteglasses are impact melts generally ignore[citations needed]their structure (petrography) and high quality. Instead, they basetheir claims on comparisons of tektite chemistries with the averages ofcertain sediments, and on certain rare-earth and isotopic valuesclaimed not to exist in the Moon. Other researchers[citations needed],however, have shown that tektite glasses are not really comparable toterrestrial sediments, which have a wide range of chemical variance –especially in the alkalis; and instead often exhibit igneous (volcanic)chemical trends. They also argue the physical impossibility of formingtektites by impact \"jetting\" or \"compression rebound\".

In 1961, officials at the U.S. Air Force\'s Cambridge Research Laboratories in Bedford, Massachusetts,were keenly interested in the chemical and physical characteristics oftektites. \"Project 7698\" was commissioned with W.H. Pinson, Jr. of theMassachusetts Institute of Technology as the principal investigator.The 7698 final report concluded that the strontiumisotopic composition of tektites did not match those of terrestrialrocks and impactites. Pinson concluded the theory of formation byrandom fusion of terrestrial materials \"whether by impact ofmeteorites, asteroids, comets or lightning\" could not be supported.

It has been shown by researchers working on certain Apollo samplesthat a number of terrestrial-like rare-earth and isotopic valuesevidently do exist at depth in the Moon. Such samples have reached thesurface in certain volcanic processes. Both terrestrial and lunarvolcanism have produced iridiumvalues comparable to that of the KT (Cretaceous/Tertiary)clay/microtektite layer. However, either terrestrial or lunar volcanismcan not explain isotopic anomalism found in the KT boundary. In otherwords, chromium isotopic composition is homogeneous within theEarth-Moon system, so the chromium isotopic anomaly found in the KTboundary can be explained only if material from an impactor (asteroidor comet) were mixed in. Material of lunar origin, discovered to date,cannot explain the isotopic characteristics.

NASA scientist John A. O\'Keefepublished numerous papers between the 1950s and 1990s discussing theselunar rare-earth, isotopic and other chemistries, and how they relateto tektite glass.[citation needed]

Thus, some tektite researchers continue to strongly disagree withthe popular terrestrial-impact theory; they suggest that tektites aremore likely volcanic ejecta from the Moon.

From the 1950s through the 1990s, NASA aerodynamicist Dean R. Chapman and others advanced the \"lunar origin\" theory of tektites. Chapman used complex orbital computer models and extensive wind tunnel tests to support the theory that the so-called Australasian tektites originated from the Rosse ejecta ray of the large crater Tycho on the Moon\'snearside. Until the Rosse ray is sampled, a lunar origin for thesetektites cannot be ruled out. During the 1980s and 1990s, researcherssuch as O’Keefe of NASA, astronomer and long-time tektite researcher Hal Povenmire, and petrologist Darryl Futrellclaimed that the slow way in which tektite glass formed (called\"fining\"), and the volcanic features they claimed to have observedwithin some layered tektites, couldn’t be explained by theterrestrial-impact theory. Unlike all terrestrial impactite glasses,tektites are nearly free of internal water similar to lunar rocks. Also, Stokes\' Lawdoes not permit the formation of tektites during impact while thevelocity needed to form certain \"flanged\" tektites is more compatiblewith a lunar origin rather than a terrestrial origin. O\'Keefe suggestedexplosive, hydrogen-driven lunar volcanoes as the original source oftektites. Note: Since the unmanned U.S. Clementine lunar mission of the1990s, vast areas of pyroclastic (volcanic) glasses have beenidentified, notably in the area of the Aristarchus plateau. There isalso evidence of interstitial granitic material (akin to the acidictektites in chemistry) in some lunar highland samples which bolstersthe lunar-origin theory. Lunar Orbiter spacecraft images reveal fieldsof volcanic domes that may indicate deep-seated, high-silica eruptionson the Moon, possible sources of the tektites. (These domes are similarto the Mono Lake craters of California; ironically, Mono obsidiansresemble some layered tektites).

A part of one of the rock samples collected on Apollo 12, lunarsample 12013, has a composition which is remarkably similar to sometektites. It is especially similar to high-magnesium javenites (part ofthe Australasian field). Sample 12013 is inhomogenous in that it iscomposed of two types of materials, light and dark. The light, acidicportion is composed of up to 71 percent silicon dioxide. The darkportion resembles KREEProcks. The abundances of 20 of 23 elements tested from the acidicportion of the sample showed a striking similarity to high-magnesiumtektites. The major elements matched well; the minor and trace elementsdid not. However, other lunar samples matched some microtektites verywell.

Even with great similarity to a tektite, lunar sample 12013 is notgenerally accepted as a tektite. However, it is similar enough to sometektites that it cannot be ignored.[citations needed]Thus, mineralogist Brian Mason and petrologist W.G. Melson, geologistsEdward Chao, Robert J. Foster, and Jack Green – along with astronomersMark R. Chartrand, Franklyn Branley, J.E. van Zyl, Paolo Maffei andceramic scientist David Pye – reject the terrestrial-origin theory andsupport a lunar origin.

Finally, according to O\'Keefe and Povenmire, Apollo 14 lunar sample14425 resembles some high-magnesium, low silica content microtektites.However, this claim was rejected in a study by scientist B.P. Glass.Regardless, O\'Keefe said that \"If 14425 was found in Antarctica insteadof Fra Mauro (on the Moon), it would probably have been accepted as atektite.\"

While the more visible tektite-origin \"battle\" may have quieted downsince the Apollo era, it continues among some serious meteoriteresearchers and collectors who have studied the topic in depth andrefuse to surrender their favorite theory.

Occurrence

The Moldau Riverin the Czech Republic is now the only known locality for green,transparent tektite. The first tektites were found in 1787 in theMoldau River, hence their original name of \"moldavites.\" Other colorvarieties of this natural glass have since been found in many differentlocalities. Tektites are usually translucent and occur in a range ofcolors from green to brown. Their surfaces are usually uneven or rough,with a distinctive lumpy, jagged, or scarred texture. Tektites do notcontain the crystallites found in obsidian. They may, however, havecharacteristic inclusions of round or torpedo-shaped bubbles orhoneylike swirls. Tektites from Thailand have been carved as small,decorative objects worn in the belief that they give protection fromevil.