By Sid Perkins
A profusion of fused, glassy material found on the desert plain of southern Australia might be the result of the intense heat from an extraterrestrial impact.
Scientists have found irregular hunks and flat slabs of glass at two locations in the Edeowie region about 400 kilometers north of Adelaide. At these places, separated by about 30 km, the glass is locally concentrated but otherwise sparsely distributed over several square kilometers, says Peter W. Haines, a geochemist at the University of Tasmania in Hobart. He and his colleagues describe the mysterious melted material in the October Geology.