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Typical broken fulgurite sections. Fulgurites (from Latin fulgur 'lightning' and -ite), commonly called "fossilized lightning", are natural tubes, clumps, or masses of sintered, vitrified, or fused soil, sand, rock, organic debris and other sediments that sometimes form when lightning discharges into ground.
A lightning strike can also create a large Lichtenberg figure in grass surrounding the point struck. These are sometimes found on golf courses or in grassy meadows. [12] Branching root-shaped "fulgurite" mineral deposits may also be created as sand and soil are fused into glassy tubes by the intense heat of the current.
Vitrification of quartz can also occur when lightning strikes sand, forming hollow, branching rootlike structures called fulgurites. [18] Trinitite is a glassy residue formed from the desert floor sand at the Trinity nuclear bomb test site. [19]
Following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, it was discovered in 2016 that between 0.6% and 2.5% of sand on local beaches was fused glass spheres formed during the bombing. Like trinitite, the glass contains material from the local environment, including materials from buildings destroyed in the attack. The material has been called hiroshimaite ...
Vitrified sand is a type of natural glass, contrasted with manufactured glass in which soda ash or potash are added to lower the melting point. Pure quartz melts at 1,650 °C (3,002 °F). There are several natural processes that produce more or less melted sand and one man-made form: Fulgurite is sand fused by a lightning bolt hitting sand.
Being hit directly by a lightning bolt and becoming part of the main channel of electricity flowing from the cloud to the ground is one of the least common ways to be struck by lightning, Dr. Mary ...
Desert glass may refer to: Libyan desert glass, in Egypt and Libya; Atacama desert glass, in Chile; Edeowie glass, in South Australia; Darwin glass, in West Coast, Tasmania; Fulgurite, lumps of glass formed by lightning; Trinitite, a more specialised subclass is that formed during a nuclear explosion
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