[meteorite-list] Another in the curious tektite series

[Thomas Harris iMac]

I always enjoy the irregular shapes in tektites because the standard dumbbells, teardrops and spheroids are exactly that, standard. 

This is a 5 cm irregular or fragment-form Australasian tektite from Viet Nam with what appears to have smeared indentations from low speed contact(s), presumedly with other equally soft-skinned tektites.  This is problematic because the through-body re-heating above glass temperature and plastic deformation don’t happen with aerodynamic heating and ablation.  At the very least the skin of this tektite seems to have been reheated after solidification, retaining fine surface texture outside of the smear channels.  If this is ascent-phase after solidification, that is a large displacement from the source location for collision with multiple other tektites.  If this is descent-phase, why are tektites on converging trajectories after the better part of an hour or more to solidify before reentry?

The highly ‘platy' coarse morphology relative to any spheroidal protomorph makes the formative process quite puzzling. 

When the Indochina region is considered as probable source for this distal impact ejecta glass, it directly disagrees with a first principles suborbital analysis of ablated tektites, which shows the source region must like across eastern North America per Harris (2022) and Davias, Harris (2022).  

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/FqenhEGuGrY <https://www.youtube.com/shorts/FqenhEGuGrY>


Thomas “Tim” Harris
Email: THSHarris1 at icloud.com <mailto:THSHarris1 at icloud.com>
Engineering Scientist

Brooklyn NY USA
718 344 6016

Web:
Google Scholar T. H. S. Harris <https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=OZ6JzVIAAAAJ&hl=en>  
Research Gate <https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Thomas_Harris8>


Cintos.org Survey: US LiDAR
by M. E. Davias
https://cbaysurvey.cintos.org <https://cbaysurvey.cintos.org/>



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