A pillar of glass in the desert

 

Let's get Biblical.

"They set out from Succoth and camped at Etham on the edge of the wilderness. And the LORD went before them in a pillar of cloud to guide their way by day, and in a pillar of fire to give them light by night, so that they could travel by day or night. Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place before the people ... " Exodus 13:20-22

These verses (especially Exodus 13:21) occurred to me when I read about the description and postulated cause of the shards of glass that have been found over a stretch of Peru's Atacama Desert (that's the really dry one by the coast).  LOTS of glass.  So recently there was a study of this glass, analyzing its composition in detail, and the conclusion was that it resulted from an incoming meteor, which gets very hot, and thus the entry and explosive heat of the meteor turned the surface sand into glass before it disintegrated and scattered its remnants over the Atacama (and grains of the alien debris were embedded in the glass). 

Yes, indeed.  Quite strange and unusual, but definitely in the realm of strongly-indicated probability.

Mysterious Shards of Glass Are Strewn Across Miles of Desert, And We Finally Know Why

"The results, the team says, unequivocally suggest the glass is not wholly of this planet.

This is the first time we have clear evidence of glasses on Earth that were created by the thermal radiation and winds from a fireball exploding just above the surface," [lead author Pete] Schultz says.

According to the researchers, minerals in the glass called zircons had decomposed to form the mineral baddeleyite, which would have required extremely hot temperatures of above 1,670 °C, which is far hotter than a wildfire."

So, maybe not a pillar of fire, but at least briefly, it was a fireball over the desert.

Here's what the stuff looks like:

Caption:

"Figure 2. (A) Example of large glass slab at Chipana (Chile) that folded over during emplacement. (B) Twisted glass slab with two contrasting surfaces from Puquio de Núñez: one side is rough with sediments attached; the other side is smooth with flow patterns. Contrasting textures indicate formation on a sedimentary surface with subsequent mobilization. (C) Thin-section view of folded glass from Puquio de Núñez (Fig. 2D) showing typical green color, vesicles, and schlieren. (D) Cut section of large vesicular glass slab with multiple folds that indicate folding while still molten. Small yellow dot corresponds to the site of Figure 2C. These and other glasses contain signatures of extreme temperatures and numerous meteoritic fragments."

Here's the actual paper from where the figure and caption came from:

Widespread glasses generated by cometary fireballs during the late Pleistocene in the Atacama Desert, Chile