The Great Sand Sea Desert stretches over an area of 72,000km² linking Egypt and Libya. It was first described in a scientific paper in 1933 and is known as Libyan desert glass. But none are as rich in silica as Libyan desert glass, nor are they found in such large lumps and quantities. One polymorph of ZrO₂ that we observed in Libyan desert glass is called cubic zirconia – the kind seen in some jewellery as a synthetic replacement for diamonds. Such pressure and temperature conditions provided us with the proof for the meteorite impact origin of the glass.

Source: Libya Today November 27, 2023 14:07 UTC