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is easy to accept. Yet one of them must be accepted, and I Great Sand Sea near the Saad Plateau in the virtually uninhabited believe it is feasible to pick the more reasonable one by area just north of the southwestern corner of Egypt, when he rejecting the more unlikely. heard his tyres crunch on something that wasn't sand. It turned The key to solving the tektite problem is an insistence on a out to be large pieces of marvellously clear, yellow-green glass. physically reasonable hypothesis and a resolute refusal to be In fact, this wasn't just any ordinary glass, but ultra-pure glass impressed by mere numerical coincidences such as the simi - that was an astonishing 98 per cent silica. Clayton wasn't the first larity of terrestrial sediments to tektite material. I believe person to come across this field of glass, as various ‘prehistoric’ that the lunar volcanism hypothesis is the only one physically hunters and nomads had obviously also found the now-famous possible, and that we have to accept it. If it leads to unex - Libyan Desert Glass (LDG). The glass had been used in the past pected but not impossible conclusions, that is precisely its to make knives and sharp-edged tools as well as other objects. A utility. carved scarab of LDG was even found in Tutankhamen's tomb, To cite just one example of the utility, the lunar origin of indicating that the glass was sometimes used for jewellery. tektites strongly supports the idea that the Moon was formed An article by Giles Wright in the British science magazine New by fission of the Earth. Tektites Scientist (July 10, 1999), entitled "The are indeed much more like ter - Riddle of the Sands", says that LDG restrial rocks than one would Libyan Desert Glass (LDG) is the purest natural silica glass ever expect of a chance assemblage. found. Over a thousand tonnes of it If tektites come from a lunar is the purest natural silica glass are strewn across hundreds of kilome- magma, then deep inside ihe ever found. Over a thousand ves er bleak desert. Some ot the oon there must be materia F chunks weig lograms, but mos: that is very much like the mantle tonnes of it are strewn across LDG exists in smaller, angular 3 g ofthe Far -more Te | hundreds of kilometres of bleak ff sss fukn ie hrs el he lower parts of the Moon from desert. Some of the chunks colossal forces. which the lunar surface basalts weigh 26 kilog rams According to the article, LDG, pure have originated. If the Moon was formed by fission of the Earth, the object that became as it is, does contain tiny bubbles, white wisps and inky black swirls. The whitish inclusions consist of the Moon would have been heated intensely and from the out - refractory minerals such as cristobalite. The ink-like swirls, side, and would have lost most of its original mass and in though, are rich in iridium, which is diagnostic of an extraterres- particular the more volatile elements. The lavas constituting trial impact such as a meteorite or comet, according to conven- most of the Moon's present surface were erupted early in the tional wisdom. The general theory is that the glass was created by Moon's history, when its heat was concentrated in the shal - the searing, sand-melting impact of a cosmic projectile. low depleted zone quite near the surface. During the recent However, there are serious problems with this theory, says periods represented by tektite falls, the sources of lunar vol - Wright, and many mysteries concerning this stretch of desert con- canism have necessarily been much deeper, so that any vol - taining the pure glass. The main problem: Where did this canoes responsible for tektites have drawn on the lunar mate - immense amount of widely dispersed glass shards come from? rial that suffered least during the period of ablation and is There is no evidence of an impact crater of any kind; the surface therefore most like unaltered terrestrial mantle material. of the Great Sand Sea shows no sign of a giant crater, and neither Ironically, that would explain why tektites are in some ways do microwave probes made deep into the sand by satellite radar. more like terrestrial rocks than they are like the rocks of the Furthermore, LDG seems to be too pure to be derived from a lunar surface. messy cosmic collision. Wright mentions that known impact craters, such as the one at Wabar in Saudi Arabia, are littered with Mysterious Glass in the Egyptian Sahara bits of iron and other meteorite debris. This is not the case with One of the strangest mysteries of ancient Egypt is that of the the Libyan Desert Glass site. What is more, LDG is concentrated great glass sheets that were only discovered in 1932. In in two areas, rather than one. One area is oval-shaped; the other December of that year, Patrick Clayton, a surveyor for the is a circular ring, six kilometres wide and 21 kilometres in diame- Egyptian Geological Survey, was driving among the dunes of the ter. The ring's wide centre is devoid of the glass. One theory is that there was a soft projectile impact: a mete- orite, perhaps 30 metres in diameter, may have detonated about 10 kilometres or so above the Great Sand Sea, the searing blast of hot air melting the sand beneath. Such a craterless impact is thought to have occurred in the 1908 Tunguska event in Siberia—at least — as far as mainstream science is concerned. That event, like the pure desert glass, remains a mystery. Another theory has a meteorite glancing off the desert surface, leaving a glassy crust and a shallow crater that was soon filled in. But there are two known areas of LDG. Were there two cosmic projectiles in tandem? Alternatively, is it possible that the vitrified desert is the result of atomic war in the ancient past? Could a Tesla-type beam weapon have melted the desert, perhaps in a test? A fulgurite: sand fused or vitrified by lightning An article entitled "Dating the Libyan Desert Silica-Glass" Libyan Desert Glass (LDG) is the purest natural silica glass ever found. Over a thousand Mysterious Glass in the Egyptian Sahara One of the strangest mysteries of ancient Egypt is that of the great glass sheets that were only discovered in 1932. In December of that year, Patrick Clayton, a surveyor for the Egyptian Geological Survey, was driving among the dunes of the 54 - NEXUS tonnes of it are strewn across hundreds of kilometres of bleak desert. Some of the chunks weigh 26 kilograms... A fulgurite: sand fused or vitrified by lightning AUGUST — SEPTEMBER 2000