Thank you for your question! Since its discovery in the 1930s, there has been debate about how Libyan Desert Glass was formed. The following is an excerpt from "Glass in Nature," a brief article in All About Glass on the The Corning Museum of Glass website:
In nature, glasses are formed when sand and/or rocks, often high in silica, are heated to high temperatures and then cooled rapidly. The intense heat and force of meteoritic impacts on the earth and atmospheric explosions, millions of years ago, created the natural glasses that we know as tektites and Libyan Desert Glass. Libyan Desert Glass [such as 2000.7.1 from the Museum's collection, pictured here] is found in the Sahara's Great Sand Sea, which spreads across the border of Libya and Egypt. The large silica glass field there is believed to have resulted either from a meteoritic impact or from a comet exploding in the earth's atmosphere.
You can read the full article here: https://www.cmog.org/article/glass-nature.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Titles below are linked to records in the Rakow Library catalog. Read about the Library's Interlibrary Loan policy here: https://www.cmog.org/research/library/visit/services/loan.
- Brill, Robert H. Chemical Analyses of Early Glasses. Corning, N.Y.: The Corning Museum of Glass, 1999. (Volumes 1 and 2 have been digitized and are available through the Rakow Library catalog.)
- Frischat, G. H., Heide, G., Müller, B., & Weeks, R. A. "Mystery of the Libyan Desert Glasses." Physics and Chemistry of Glasses 42, no. 3 (2001): 179-183.
- McPherson, Donald M., L. D. Pye, V. D. Frechette, and M. Mortsea. "Was Libyan Desert Glass Formed by a Sol-Gel Process?" Glastechnische Berichte 62, no. 6 (1989): 208-212.
- “Natural Glasses: Proceedings of the International Conference on Glass in Planetary and Geological Phenomena, Alfred University, Alfred, New York, August 14-18, 1983." Amsterdam: North-Holland Physics Pub., 1984.
- “'Silica ‘96': Meeting on Libyan Desert Glass and Related Desert Events: July 18, 1996, Bologna University: Proceedings.” Segrate (Milano): Pyramids, 1997.
