The chemical compound silicon dioxide, also known as silica or silox (from the Latin "silex"), is an oxide of silicon, chemical formula SiO2, and has been known for its hardness since the 9th century[1]. Silica is most commonly found in nature as sand or quartz, as well as in the cell walls of diatoms. It is a principal component of most types of glass and substances such as concrete.

...so where does this lead to an atomic explosion?

They have confirmed that Mars had been hit by a freak sunflare millions and maybe billions (I don't remember how much) of years ago, wiping (most?) of the life off of Mars and leaving the surface viporated, dry and airless, as the ozonelayers had been destroyed by the extreme heat aswell.

http://www.unexplainable.net/artman/publis...icle_1132.shtml

Many researchers have written of the possibility that life on this
planet began with "ancient astronauts" from other stars or other
galaxies who colonized this planet untold thousands of years ago.

http://www.netscientia.com/chinese_hindu.html

In India, it was and still is believed that man descended from gods who flew fiery crafts. Early Chinese texts tell of long-lived rulers from the heavens who flew in "fire-breathing dragons". In Tibet there is a book called the Kantyua, which means "the translated word of Buddha". It tells of flying "pearls in the sky" and of transparent spheres carrying gods to visit man. Here to, the belief is of being reborn time and time again and not just to earth. The Royal Pedigrees of Tibetan Kings dates back to the seventh century. It states that the first seven Tibetan kings came from the stars, and goes on to say that they eventually returned to the stars.

It is important to note three ancient Hindu text scriptures, the Bhagavata-Purana, Mahabharata and Ramayana Scriptures. These scriptures date back to at least 3000 B.C. and are among some of the oldest writings currently known to man. They speak extensively about flying machines called Vimanas that flew not only the skies, but to the stars as well. India's Vedic writings speak of gods, (they called Devas) from other star systems. They tell of how the human soul is nonphysical and how our sentient energy goes through a succession of physical bodies, as only the physical body dies.

Kirshna - In the Bhagavatam and all Vedic literatures, there are many descriptions of vimanas, aircrafts.

The Bhagavatam describes spaceships of different categories. One category is gross mechanical spaceships called ka-pota-vayu. Ka means 'outer space,' and pota means 'ship.' These kind of spaceships are known on our planet. The second category of spaceships are very subtle. They are called akasa-patana. The akasa-patana spaceships can fly at the speed of mind. In the verse (4.12.27) of the Bhagavatam a transcendental spaceship is described. The general mass of people can neither see such crafts nor understand how they fly in the sky.

On different planets, there are different kinds of spaceships. On this gross planet earth, there are spaceships run by mechanical means, but on other planets, the spaceships are run by sound vibrations not by mechanical means. They are used by the denizens of the heavenly planets for enjoyment, such as traveling from one planet to another.

On other planets, such as the Siddhalokas, the denizens can travel from one planet to another without spaceships. The inhabitants of these planets are materially perfect beings who have full capacities to control gravity, space and time. They are naturally endowed with mystic powers to go from one planet to another without using any spaceships.

On the Satyaloka planetary system, the spacecrafts are controlled by psychic power not by gross mechanical means. The higher-dimensional sphere of the upper planetary systems is the natural field of flying spaceships of this type.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15970232/

LONDON - Humans must colonize planets in other solar systems — traveling there using "Star Trek"-style propulsion — or face extinction, renowned British cosmologist Stephen Hawking said Thursday.

There is the above... but I am thinking more in the lines of ancient biblical tales of Lucifer... the wars in the heavens...and Lucifer and his followers falling.. to earth.

Those photos of the Martian landscape so look like the remnants of the nuclear blasts of New Mexico.. the stones look identical.. the chemical composition???

Could we be the refugees from an ancient nuclear war on Mars?... note how quickly we came..( as quoted by the above site) from buggy to space colonization...

One we were technical enough to discover nuclear energy... That even the great mind Steve Hawkins fears for our safety on Earth ( nuclear... chemical.. polluting..gene manipulation.. dangers to mankind) and encourages the emigration to other planets in order for Mankind to continue...

Ok, now lets get back to square 1: The chemical composition of most solid planets is amazingly the same ... as far as the "rocks" are concerned. That means that silica is the 6th most abundant element and the 3d most abundant solid... so it would be no surprise to find it anywhere.

It melts at 1410 °C (Source), which means that any volcanic activity, meteor impact could have melted it. In fact, a good going grill fire could cause silica to melt.

The fact that some melted silica has been found anywhere is just an indication that there was heat present...and there are many more sources of heat than atomic explosions.

For your question re. dessert glass... any of the above mentioned could have created it, the most likely a meteor impact.

Now, if you come with a piece of dessert glass that glows in the dark...

http://unitedcats.wordpress.com/2007/05/29...rnobyl-reactor/

here has been an exciting new biological discovery inside the tomb of the Chernobyl reactor. Like out of some B-grade sci fi movie, a robot sent into the reactor discovered a thick coat of black slime growing on the walls. Since it is highly radioactive in there, scientists didn’t expect to find anything living, let alone thriving. The robot was instructed to obtain samples of the slime, which it did, and upon examination…the slime was even more amazing than was thought at first glance.

This slime, a collection of several fungi actually, was more than just surviving in a radioactive environment, it was actually using gamma radiation as a food source. Samples of these fungi grew significantly faster when exposed to gamma radiation at 500 times the normal background radiation level. The fungi appear to use melanin, a chemical found in human skin as well, in the same fashion as plants use chlorophyll. That is to say, the melanin molecule gets struck by a gamma ray and its chemistry is altered. This is an amazing discovery, no one had even suspected that something like this was possible.

Aside from its novelty value, this discovery leads to some interesting speculation and potential research. Humans have melanin molecules in their skin cells, does this mean that humans are getting some of their energy from radiation? This also implies there could be organisms living in space where ionizing radiation is plentiful. I’ve always been a big panspermia proponent, the idea that life did not originate on Earth but is actually common in the cosmos. Organisms that can live in space certainly gives more credence to this idea.

Possibly this could also be used to create plants or mushrooms that could grow in space, serving as a food source for space travellers. Maybe these fungi could be modified and used somehow to clean up radiation contaminated environments. There’s quite a few of those, in fact the disposal of radioactive waste is still a huge and unsolved problem. Now the fungi couldn’t actually eat the radioactive isotopes, I’m not saying that, but if they can live in radioactive environments they might be used to somehow scour out or concentrate the radioactive isotopes in such a way as to facilitate their clean up.

does the New Mexican glass made from the nuclear blast glow in the dark???

how many years does this glow last for???

How long does the toxicity of nuclear fall out last???

Note it didn't take them too long to rebuild Japan... it wasn't abandoned for thousand years.. ..

Also I have cousins in Europe who mentioned that after the chernobyl accident and the resultant toxic cloud that contaminated much of Europe http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/news/200...st/16080701.asp ... as well as there being many resultant mutant plants .. ( that they were instructed to burn) and the farmstock miscarrying... there were huge mushrooms growing in the fields for years.. http://aem.asm.org/cgi/reprint/59/1/134.pdf

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Finnish_...rnobyl_999.html



I wonder if they were Nature's way of
Bioremediating the soils???

Ancient legends referring to Mars as being the planet of War...

atomic weapons and war wiped out a species on mars? could this happen to us? if thats what the articles are talking about.
...i dunno. im on here kinda late. my imagination is running wild. brains probably not thinking straight

CS,

Do you have any academic studies or actual press releases about this organism that is reported to have been discovered inside the irradiated reactor casing? All I can find is a few links on blog sites and internet forums. The lack of actual reporting leads to view this as possibly an internet myth.

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread98728/pg1

I'm posting the following article that was sent to me by email and apparently published online November 16, because it has now disappeared from the Net. In it's place is an extremely censored short version called, "Odd bacteria could be valuable tool in cleaning up hazardous waste"
www.news-leader.com...





Scientists Seek Indestructible Bugs To Eat Nuclear Waste
Scientists Envision New Role For Sturdy Bacteria Breed; Creating 'Super Conan'

SAVANNAH RIVER SITE, S.C. (Nov. 16) - Eight years ago, scientists using a metal rod here to probe the radioactive depths of a nuclear-waste tank saw something that shocked them: a slimy, transparent substance growing on the end of the rod.
They took the specimen into a concrete-lined vault where technicians peered through a 3-foot-thick window and, using robot arms, smeared a bit of the specimen into a petri dish. Inside the dish they later found a colony of strange orange bacteria swimming around. The bacteria had adapted to 15 times the dose of radiation that it takes to kill a human being. They lived in what one scientific paper calls a "witches' brew" of toxic chemicals.

It was a step forward for the U.S. Department of Energy, which has been looking for a few good bugs -- in particular, members of an emerging family of microbes that scientists call "extremophiles." These microbes can survive in some of Earth's most inhospitable environments, withstanding enormous doses of radiation, thriving at temperatures above boiling, and mingling with toxic chemicals that would kill almost anything else.
That makes them a potentially valuable tool in the Energy Department's effort to clean up vast amounts of nuclear waste, including the Savannah River Site near Augusta, Ga., and the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash. The department says it could cost as much as $260 billion to clean up its messes with conventional methods, which rely heavily on chemical treatment and robots. Using extremophiles could slash that bill.
Extremophiles eliminate toxins by ingesting them and breaking them down into relatively harmless components. The microbes also can reduce the hazard of radioactive wastes by changing them into insoluble forms that are much less likely to leak into aquifers and streams. Outgoing Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham predicted this year that "in the not-too-distant future," extremophiles will be cleaning up nuclear waste and munching the pollutants of coal-fired power plants, including carbon dioxide, one of the causes of global warming. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration thinks if it can understand the mechanism that the bugs use to survive radiation, it might be able to use it to protect space crews against radiation on long voyages. The National Institutes of Health hopes the microbes' peculiar powers might help cancer patients survive more-intensive radiation therapy.
So far, scientists say that the extremophiles they have found in nature aren't harmful to humans. Laboratory-engineered modifications of these bugs, however, are likely to cause some controversy because no one knows what their long-term effects might be.
The berry-shaped bug discovered at the Savannah River Site was christened Kineococcus radiotolerans. Scientists have probed 95% of its genetic structure. They know what it does and what it eats -- it loves malt sugar -- but after 50 years of studying these sorts of bugs, they have no idea how they survive. Radiation shatters the genetic structures of living things, but extremophiles snap themselves back together in a matter of hours.
Christopher Bagwell, a microbiologist here, says Kineococcus has shown the ability to break down herbicides, industrial solvents, chlorinated compounds and other toxics, all while growing in a radioactive environment that shrivels other living things and turns glass brown.
Scientists know of at least a dozen extremophiles. The first was discovered in 1956 in Corvallis, Ore. Scientists were zapping cans of horse meat with high radiation, trying to establish the preservative value of food irradiation. One can developed an ominous bulge. Inside, the scientists isolated pink bacteria they had never seen before.
They gave it the scientific name Deinococcus radiodurans. But researchers were so amazed by the bug's resilience that some years later, they nicknamed it "Conan the Bacterium," spawning a folklore and debate among scientists that continues today. Because the microbes endure radiation at levels higher than any natural source, some scientists have argued that they must have ridden in on comets. Others speculate that they were the Earth's first residents after the planet was born in a radioactive explosion.

So all silica crystal iwas made by atomic blasts? better check your windows for radioactivity... and your computer too...you know those so called silicon chips!

http://www.vivanewmexico.com/nm/sw.trinity.htmlWhat You'll See
After parking, you weave your way through an area of vendor and informational booths. After getting through the booths you will arrive at edge of a fenced area. Trinity Site is surrounded by a tall, circularly, chain-link and barbed-wire fence. You will enter through a large gate and follow a fenced roadway to ground zero. The walk is not too far, and booths will be set up along the way with information on radioactivity, historical information and the like. This helps break up the walk which is less than half a mile. After this short walk you enter an inner fenced area surrounding ground zero.

The Trinity Test involved detonating a fission device on top of a tall steel tower. Most of the tower was vaporized by the explosion, but visitors can still see the stumps of the tower legs in the ground at Trinity Site. At the center where the tower once stood is an small stone obelisk marking the site. Around the perimeter of the inner fence there will be historical photographs and information hung on cardboard plaques.

As you walk around, keep your eyes open for blue-green pebbles underfoot: this rock is known as Trinitite . Trinitite was formed when the heat pulse from the explosion fused the desert sand into glass. Trinitite is found nowhere else on earth. You are not allowed to take trinitite from the site, and even if you could you wouldn't want to: it is still "mildly radioactive". There is a small glassed box a short distance from ground zero inside the inner fenced area. This box encloses a small area of earth that was preserved in it's post-test condition. In this box you will see a good amount of Trinitite. The rest of the area you have been walking on has been plowed over and under in an attempt to clean up radioactivity.

This green mineral called Trinitite was made in the heat of Trinity's detonation. You cannot find it anywhere on the Earth but here. And it's prohibited to take any of them outside the area.
Trinity Test Site - Open House on 4/1/06. .. except Mars!!!!

There are many known fakes in circulation among collectors. These fakes use a variety of means to achieve the glassy green silica look as well as mild radioactivity.

Is there a source for this? Or are you just referencing the fact that it's named after the Roman God of war, due to its reddish appearance? Seems like shaky evidence to say that because it's named after Mars then there must have been a nuclear war there.

http://www.nasca.org.uk/Ancient_Nuc__War/a...t_nuc__war.html
The Titans and Olympians.

In a nutshell occultists believe that the planets Venus, Mars and the Moon were once inhabited by advanced societies who fought out a planetary war on a scale outlined in mythology as the clash between the Titans and Olympians! The result was a Solar System in chaos - the destruction of a planet - and the orbital change of Venus to a position considerably closer to the sun! In the break-up vast debris such as seen on Mars would have been thrown out in all directions. Worldwide phenomenon.



The Martian and Lunar atmospheres, together with their rivers and whatever life on them would quite literally have been flung into space rendering the planets forever uninhabitable


Worldwide phenomenon.

This baffling enigma of vitrified ruins is to be found all across the world. No more so than North America where the strange remains of vitrified rocks and dwelling places defy logical explanation. In South America the Brazilian ruins of Sete Ciddaes are enormously revealing. Author Noorbergen writes of "ruins melted by apocalyptic energies..."! Elsewhere, in Mesopotamia sizeable ziggurats - a form of early pyramid - have been found melted to their base in a vitrified mass!

In the Arabian desert blackened stones litter the sands over a wide area, showing signs of having been subjected to intense radiation. In Israel the location of the Dead Sea and it's mysterious connection with Sodom and Gomorrah bears evidence of an amazing focus of heat that is thought to have gouged out the entire area in a massive explosion. Vitrified rock created under intense pressure is a frequent discovery, and in 1952 archaeologists discovered a vitrified area of sand that stretched out over hundreds of square feet! Apparently deposits like this are similar to those left behind at the White Sands atomic testing site in America!

So it is radioactive....

but this should interest you:

So a big portion of your evidence is based on the legends of people who were unable to explain natural occurences and thus created myths and stories to try and explain them? So earthquakes are really just Vulcan pounding away on his anvil under the earth?

I understand what you're trying to get at, that their stories were attempts to explain the "interplanetary war" or whatever, but I don't think I can make the jump from them using the legends to explain ordinary occurrences on earth to them using the same legends to explain the destruction of planets, without at least a few scribes or something writing down a factual description of what's happening. When Pompeii was destroyed by a vulcano (a pretty momentous occassion), people such as Pliny the Younger still wrote about the actual event without attributing it to something supernatural.

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." First you would have to find an account with a little more direct of a description of what you're arguing.

Those photos of the Martian landscape so look like the remnants of the nuclear blasts of New Mexico.. the stones look identical.. the chemical composition???

Note it didn't take them too long to rebuild Japan...

this would explain why its all deserts and hurricanes nowadays but its probably more likely it was an asteroid or meotorite

So by your reasoning, because from a distance Earth and Venus "look the same" we could happily go and live on Venus?

What on earth makes you think that because something looks similar to something else, they could have been caused by the same events, not matter how eye-wateringly unlikely that could have been????

You might say I'm being overly caustic about this, but this is so typical of this board - Mars is amazing enough without inventing some ridiculous Mad Max-style story to go with it. Celebrate Mars's real mysteries.



"Rebuild Japan"? Obviously no historian either.



Neither would result in what we see today in the Martain atmosphere. Mars lost its magnetic protection 4 billion years ago, and since then solar winds have stripped away the atmosphere, boiling away any water there was on the surface.

Given the timescales we're talking about here, you realise how much cobblers this "ancient life on Mars" idea actually is. Human-type life couldn't have survived without a magnetosphere, and ity sounds even more ridiculous when you realise that the last time there was liquid water on Mars was only 3.5 billion years ago. Life like us simply couldn't have evolved.

Ref.

Well you certainly aren't going to find writings of these events dating back from????
but there would have been historical records
told in other forms.. if you research the history of story tellers... Bards ... you'll find that a great deal of trouble was made to ensure that those chosen to keep the tradition of reciting ancient tales had great memories and were true to the original story... I know there is the case of "Chinese Whispers" were stories slowly morph at the retelling.. but if you look at the discoveries such as the Mari tablets from Syria... the Nag Hamidi documents

http://www.geocities.com/encyclopedia_dama...tsyria/mari.htm

http://www.nag-hammadi.com/manuscripts.html

seem to support some of these tales... legends...

http://www.biblestudymanuals.net/quran5.htm

http://www.lightstreamers.com/saddam.pdf

http://haram.wordpress.com/2007/01/18/name...e-ebla-tablets/

So by your reasoning, because from a distance Earth and Venus "look the same" we could happily go and live on Venus?

What on earth makes you think that because something looks similar to something else, they could have been caused by the same events, not matter how eye-wateringly unlikely that could have been????

You might say I'm being overly caustic about this, but this is so typical of this board - Mars is amazing enough without inventing some ridiculous Mad Max-style story to go with it. Celebrate Mars's real mysteries.

Neither would result in what we see today in the Martain atmosphere. Mars lost its magnetic protection 4 billion years ago, and since then solar winds have stripped away the atmosphere, boiling away any water there was on the surface.

Given the timescales we're talking about here, you realise how much cobblers this "ancient life on Mars" idea actually is. Human-type life couldn't have survived without a magnetosphere, and ity sounds even more ridiculous when you realise that the last time there was liquid water on Mars was only 3.5 billion years ago. Life like us simply couldn't have evolved.


Ref.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast22jun_2.htm


In what could turn out to be a landmark discovery in the history of Mars exploration, imaging scientists using data from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft have recently observed features that suggest there may be current sources of liquid water at or near the surface of the red planet.

I think I'm starting to understand what your argument is a little better, but I'm still rather unclear. So you're arguing that these refugees from an interplanetary war had the technology to travel from planet to planet as well as the technology to destroy their home worlds, but they didn't know how to write their own history down, nor how to teach a writing system to the indigenous peoples already on earth so that maybe they could record the events? That these aliens only thought to orally pass down their history?

According to the researchers, an asteroid or comet whacked a young Mars some 4 billion years ago, blasting away much of its northern crust and creating a giant hole over 40 percent of the surface.

Well how long would a book physically last? or many of the films ..videos. we have today last? a few hundred years??? a thousand?

Note how many libraries.. artifacts were destroyed over the centuries during wars... witch hunts...religious/political mania..note the book burnings..destruction of relics in the last century... how ignorant people destroy clever gadgets.. amazing artifacts of the past that they have forgotten how to duplicate .,.. or even know what they were for... they fear what don't understand.. calling it evil.. devil's work...

Look at some of those impressive buildings that 'man' has build throughout history... that we ..as a 'superior' technological civilization can't .. or have great difficulty trying to duplicate... going with the easy explanation eg for the pyramids.. that it was pure monotonous man power over decades to complete.. that if we accept that... and as one member here mathematically calculated , that the placing of all the stones, was it 1 minute per stone? to complete the pyramid in the said amount of time?..

We couldn't match that speed today, assuming that we could make.. carve the stones , in the said time frame.. if we could find enough talented craftsmen to do the job!!!

I don't know what the OP's original timeline is for Mars, but might this be an answer for "chunks of silica", etc.



Scientists think big impact caused two-faced Mars

cormac

Good post, Cormac. Very interesting...

http://www.metaresearch.org/solar%20system/eph/eph2000.asp
The Late Heavy Bombardment

Planetary and moon explosions are not just a recent phenomenon. There is direct evidence for the explosion of one or more very large planets in the very early solar system. From studies of lunar rocks it is now known that the Moon, and presumably the entire solar system with it, underwent a “late heavy bombardment” of unknown origin not long after the major planets formed. The following are relevant descriptions of the event: [ix]

Mars May Be a Former Moon of a Now-Exploded Planet

Evidence that Mars is a former moon
The Original Solar System

Putting all this evidence together, we have strong hints for two original planets near what is now the main asteroid belt: hypothetical “Planet V” and “Planet K”. These were probably gas giant planets with moons of significant size, such as Mars, before they exploded. We have hints of two more asteroid belts, probably from the explosions of two more planets (“Planet T” and “Planet X”) beyond Neptune. And we have hints for two extra-large gas giant planets, “Planet A” and “Planet B”, that exploded back near the solar system beginning.

Of the existing nine major planets today, we have strong evidence that Mercury is an escaped moon of Venus [xi], Mars is an escaped moon of Planet V, and Pluto and its moon Charon are escaped moons of Neptune [xii]. If we eliminate these, then perhaps the original solar system consisted of 12 planets arranged in 6 “twin” pairs. Such an arrangement would be consistent with origin of all major planets and moons by the fission process. [xiii] This model makes a major prediction that will soon be tested: Extrasolar planets should arise in twin pairs also, with 2-to-1 orbital period resonances common. If so, then many cases that now appear to be single massive planets on highly elliptical orbits will turn out, when enough observations are accumulated, to be twin resonant planets on near-circular orbits.

More on that theory..




It does put another interesting slant to the theory!!!


Just think of how the orbits of the various planets would have been altered with the impact of these asteroids.

What's really interesting, I think, is how relatively uniform the orbits are overall considering how often various planets have been bombarded. Kind of amazing the orbits aren't somewhat like the aftereffects of breaking a rack of pool balls.

cormac

http://www.eridu.co.uk/Author/human_origins/mars.html

The consensus among modern scientists is that Mars was once a vibrant world, with oceans of water, an atmosphere and a strong magnetic field.

Today, the oceans of water are gone, the atmosphere is gone and the magnetic field is nothing more than a barely detectable pulse.

What happened on Mars to turn it from a paradisiacal garden into a rusty-coloured wasteland?

The scientific consensus is that the Old Mars suffered a devastating bombardment from asteroids or comets. The results of this devastation are plain to see on the surface of the New Mars.


... Further to this speculation, some new and quite remarkable MGS photographs were publicised in early-2001 providing compelling evidence of (a) vegetation on the surface of Mars; and ( further artificial-looking structures. These discoveries were the subject of a press conference by Van Flandern in USA on 5th April 2001, and the images can be seen on his website http://metaresearch.org. In particular, I would draw attention to the enigmatic tube-like structures which resemble, in Van Flandern’s words, ‘an environmentally protected rapid transit system’.(13)

In summary, both Van Flandern and I are willing to entertain the idea that a human-like extraterrestrial race once lived upon Mars, and perhaps on another body in the original Planet V system, but migrated to Earth after its home world (or worlds) had been destroyed or made uninhabitable millions of years ago by the explosion of Planet V and one of its moons. Such a race might then have survived on the Earth, perhaps by hybridisation with a native terrestrial species, and might have retained a racial memory which generated the myths of the ‘golden age’, the ‘lost paradise’ and ‘the fall of man’.

The investigation continues.

Was just perusing the site on ancient atomic knowledge.. http://s8int.com/atomic1.html

Libyan desert glass created by???
(image)
(image)
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/print.asp?ID=63

(Photo:Olive green Trinitite formed in New Mexico as a result of atomic testing in 1945) and whilst mulling over these pictures.. and the mention of silica... I seem to remember photos of Mars that had similar silica stones... I find it quite interesting.. don't you?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hortonheardawho/704821045/
http://www.astronet.ru/db/xware/msg/apod/2004-01-16

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_glass
Desert glass, Libyan desert glass (LDG), Edeowie glass, or great sand sea glass is a substance found in areas in the Libyan Desert, as well as in deserts in Africa and South Australia. 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.

Crystal Sage wrote:
(image)

wink2.gif It looks wet doesn't it!

A most interesting feature came to light on Mars recently. ... It is a fact that in the image the feature looks like a "glass worm"
(image)

cool.gif Dune !

To me, they look like stepped rills of some sort , the kind you'd expect at the bottom of a stream with a long, gradual fall.

Let me rephrase that. Rills are mini streamlets and the kind of thing I'm used to seeing those in. I meant stepped ridges or ripples. I think there's a precise term I was thinking of but I got conused with the other.

When the first atomic bomb exploded in New Mexico, the desert sand turned to fused green glass. This fact, according to the magazine Free World, has given certain archaeologists a turn. They have been digging in the ancient Euphrates Valley and have uncovered a layer of agrarian culture 8,000 years old, and a layer of herdsman culture much older, and a still older caveman culture. Recently, they reached another layer of fused green glass. It is well known that atomic detonations on or above a sandy desert will melt the silicon in the sand and turn the surface of the Earth into a sheet of glass. But if sheets of ancient desert glass can be found in various parts of the world, does it mean that atomic wars were fought in the ancient past or, at the very least, that atomic testing occurred in the dim ages of history?

This is a startling theory, but one that is not lacking in evidence, as such ancient sheets of desert glass are a geological fact. Lightning strikes can sometimes fuse sand, meteorologists contend, but this is always in a distinctive root-like pattern.

These strange geological oddities are called fulgurites and manifest as branched tubular forms rather than as flat sheets of fused sand.

Therefore, lightning is largely ruled out as the cause of such finds by geologists, who prefer to hold onto the theory of a meteor or comet strike as the cause. The problem with this theory is that there is usually no crater associated with these anomalous sheets of glass.

Brad Steiger and Ron Calais report in their book, Mysteries of Time and Space, that Albion W. Hart, one of the first engineers to graduate from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was assigned an engineering project in the interior of Africa. While he and his men were travelling to an almost inaccessible region, they first had to cross a great expanse of desert.

"At the time he was puzzled and quite unable to explain a large expanse of greenish glass which covered the sands as far as he could see," writes Margarethe Casson in an article on Hart's life in the magazine Rocks and Minerals (no. 396, 1972).

She then goes on to mention: "Later on, during his life he passed by the White Sands area after the first atomic explosion there, and he recognized the same type of silica fusion which he had seen fifty years earlier in the African desert."

http://www.davidicke.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10928