Author name: Norm Lehrman

The Wuhan coronavirus has served as a vivid reminder of how quickly our whole world can change. It has brought to public consciousness great plagues and epidemics of the past, but I have seen no mention of the truly monstrous life changer of geologic history. Virus particles commonly are of the order of 20 to 300 nanometers in diameter (20 […]

As I prepared to write this article, it was my intention to flash through a series of tektite ornamentation images accompanied by minimal text. I made it all the way to the first photo before breaking my vows and changing my title. The ancient Chinese called these strange starburst patterns” Dragon Tracks”. They are thin-skinned collision features that formed at

This is a “Best Of” reprint of one of Norm’s favorite articles as he was not able to write an article due to factors beyond his control. Trinitite. Edeowie glass. Daugistau glass (if you’ve ever heard of this last one, you are part of a very exclusive brotherhood indeed. This article may well be the first time this material has

In previous columns, we have been working through a review of the classic tektite morphologies. If the perfect minimalist tektite collection was limited to just three variations, I would choose a dumbbell, a teardrop, and a patty. In this edition, patties take the stage. Patties are a proxy for a range of shapes that began life as oscillating spheroids of

On our planet, the grand cabinet of curiosities contains a very limited range of glass teardrops. Volcanic eruptions can form fire-fountain droplets like Pele’s Tears that take their name from Hawaiian traditions. Occasionally, lightning strikes and electrical discharges produce a spatter of glassy droplets, termed “exogenic fulgurites”. I am sure there must be a variety of glassy droplets in coal

I thought this article was going to be easy, but things took a bad turn when I realized there is a lot about dumbbells I don’t understand. Even really basic stuff, like why the double “b”? Totally unnecessary. (All the dictionaries I checked think that I am wrong, so “dumbbell” it is.) By way of introduction, the dumbbells of which

(mybp or my: million years before present; ky: thousand years before present) …And when your children shall ask “what meaneth these stones?” ye shall answer that this marks a place where the heavens touched the earth. Touched indeed. With typical encounter velocities in the range of 15 to 25 km per second, an onrushing fragment of an iron asteroid is

In this edition we conclude our survey of the classic three or four morphologies of each part of the Australasian tektite strewn field, now moving on to the world of Australites. Australites! These were the stones that ignited my passion for tektites. One of my favorite activities on this planet involves wandering the dry lakes of the Australian outback looking

In this edition we were supposed to continue our orderly survey of the classic morphologies of the Australasian tektite strewn field, next moving on to the spectacular world of Australites. There has been a change of plans. We must revisit the irregular Philippinites that I have (very informally) termed “Amagorphians”*. In the last column, I declined to speculate on the

In the last edition, I commenced a series on the tektite “classics”, the essential specimens required to anchor a basic Australasian collection. Splashform dumbbells, teardrops, patties, bars, biscuits, spheroids, and endless plastically deformed oddities reign supreme in the impact-proximal regions of mainland Southeast Asia. Muong Nong-type layered tektites found at scattered localities within this domain provide one of the best

This is my 41st column for Meteorite Times, and I just realized that in my enthusiasm for tektite oddballs, esoterica, and rarities, I have never written about the most important group of all, the classics. If you had to choose just three Indochinese tektites to anchor your collection, they would be these: a patty, a dumbell, and a teardrop. It

Thermal ablation effects are the hallmark of Australites. Nearly all show them in some variation. Cores form as the incandescently-hot frontal surface expands and flakes explosively detach from the sides and front. In the following image, the flight direction was towards the top. All are classic Australite cores with well developed flake scars. A few reported examples of thermally-ablated tektites

Australites are a far-flung member of the c. 790, 000 year Australasian tektite event. Truly far-flung, with the best Aussie hunting grounds located 3000 to 4000 miles from the apparent ground zero area in Southeast Asia. Whatever it was, it hit hard! In 1959, Harvey Nininger, the first man so audacious as to try (successfully) to make a living searching

The upper specimen is a 120 gram giant that offers a great story on extensional necking and incipient parting. The odd little 12.4 gram piece, almost an order of magnitude smaller than the one above, remains a mystery to me. Both of these specimens are cylindrical in cross-section. It has long been accepted tektite dogma that many, or maybe even

It is one of the interesting factoids of tektite lore: Never, not even once, has a splashform tektite been reported that shows an embedded object or clear imprint from the ground surface on which the tektites fell. However, that noteworthy constant only serves to sharpen the search for the first one. Most tektite aficionados have visited the time and place