The response of zircon to the extreme pressures and temperatures of a lightning strike.

ABSTRACT: Hypervelocity impacts can produce features in zircon that are not normally produced by endogenic processes. However, lightning can also induce extreme pressure-temperature excursions, and its effect on zircon has not been studied. With the aim to recognise features that form in response to extreme pressure-temperature excursions but are not unique to hypervelocity impacts, we imaged and undertook microstructural characterization of zircon in a fulgurite (a tubular body of glass and fused clasts that formed in response to a lightning strike). We document zircon with granular ZrO₂ and rims of vermicular ZrO₂, features which vary in abundance with increasing distance from the fulgurite's central void. This indicates that these features formed in response to the lightning

SUBMITTER: Kenny GG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7810979 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature