Meltglass found in Syria was likely created by a cosmic event thousands of years ago, say researchers

Meltglass excavated from Abu Hureyra -an ancient village in the Euphrates Valley of Syria- points to a cosmic event of some sort that wiped out the village.

A team of researchers, curious about the origin of the meltglass, analyzed the geochemical composition and performed experiments to determine its melting point.

What they observed was the meltglass had a similar composition to the local sediment of the region but contained small quantities of meteorite material. To test whether thatched hut fires or haystack fires from villagers could have formed the meltglass, the researchers heated excavated meltglass in laboratory furnaces as well as local sediment from Abu Hureyra. They wanted to see what temperatures were required to melt the meltglass and the local sediment.

Thirteen of the Abu Hureyra meltglass fragments softened at 1100°C but melted between 1200 and 1300°C. For the local sediment at 1100°C, the sediment did not melt. At around 1300°C, smaller quartz grains began to melt. At 1700°C, the meltglass from the heating of the sediment had similar characteristics to the meltglass that was also examined.

The authors emphasize this is not the maximum temperature the sediment could have been exposed to but the minimum. Such high temperatures are known to occur only in atomic detonations, impact events, or lightning strikes.

Based on this the authors exclude haystack or thatched hut fires as potential sources of formation for the meltglass.  Lighting was also excluded because the meltglass was low in remanent magnetism.

Instead the authors suggest that the glass fragments came from a “nearly instantaneous melting and vaporization of regional biomass, soils, and floodplain deposits followed by nearly instantaneous cooling.”

Those conditions point to a minimum of one “high-energy, high-temperature, hypervelocity” occurrence near Abu Hureyra. The favored current hypothesis is that this was an airburst – an event where a meteor explodes before hitting the earth’s surface- caused by a disintegrating comet.