edge of the character and chemical composition of the rocks of the moon, and thus possibly a decision of the question of the volcanic or non-volcanic origin of its "craters," might conceivably be arrived at by astronomers, through study of the maximum polarization angle of various portions of the moon's surface, such as the floors of the "seas" and the "walled plains." From the determination of...

Microorganisms have been found to etch volcanic glass within volcaniclastic deposits from the Ontong Java Plateau, creating micron-sized tunnels and pits. The fossil record of such bioalteration textures is interpreted to extend back ∼3.5 billion years to include meta-volcanic glass from ophiolites and Precambrian greenstone belts. Bioalteration features within glass clasts from Leg 192 of the ...

Shallow-water coral reef ecosystems, particularly those already impaired by anthropogenic pressures, may be highly sensitive to disturbances from natural catastrophic events, such as volcanic eruptions. Explosive volcanic eruptions expel large quantities of silicate ash particles into the atmosphere, which can disperse across millions of square kilometres and deposit into coral reef ecosystems....

Volcanic ash is a heterogeneous mineral dust that is typically composed of a mixture of amorphous (glass) and crystalline (mineral) fragments. It commonly contains an abundance of the crystalline silica (SiO2) polymorph cristobalite. Inhalation of crystalline silica can induce inflammation by stimulating the NLRP3 inflammasome, a cytosolic receptor complex that plays a critical role in driving ...

In the spirit of collaborative research, Glicken and Ford embarked on the problem of identifying the source of volcanic ash used as temper in prehistoric Maya ceramics. Verification of the presence of glass shards and associated volcanic mineralogy in thin sections of Maya ceramics was straightforward and pointed to the Guatemala Highland volcanic chain. Considering seasonal wind rose patterns,...

[1] Sintering and densification are ubiquitous processes influencing the emplacement of both effusive and explosive products of volcanic eruptions. Here we sinter ash-size fragments of a synthetic National Institute of Standards and Technology viscosity standard glass at temperatures at which the resultant melt has a viscosity of ∼108-109 Pa.s at 1bar to assess sintering dynamics under near-sur...

[1] We collected 56 marine gravity cores from the Pacific seafloor offshore Central America which contain a total of 213 volcanic ash beds. Ash-layer correlations between cores and with their parental tephras on land use stratigraphic, lithologic, and compositional criteria. In particular, we make use of our newly built database of bulk-rock, mineral, and glass major and trace element compositi...