Authors:
- The first dedicated book to treat shaped, flight-textured tektites
- Provides the most detailed explanation to date of how such tektite shapes were formed
- Offers a checklist for tektite collectors
- Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
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Table of contents (1 chapter)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
About this book
This book provides a showcase for the incredibly well-preserved flight-textured tektites of southern Australia, which are the world’s finest known examples. It provides an overview of their forms and flight features, which can be expected to appear, at least in part, on any objects falling from space. Some of these specimens are so perfectly shaped that it is hard to believe that they have been buried in the recent strata of Australia for 770,000 years. It also discusses the history of the story of their incredible flight into space and return becoming widely accepted, which led to them being recognized as space travelers. Further, it describes their classical shapes and offers an explanation of how each developed. It provides collectors, meteoriticists, and museum curators with insights into the astounding forms of Australian tektites produced by hypersonic flight.
Authors and Affiliations
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Glenside, Australia
Don McColl
About the author
Don McColl has been involved with Australian meteorites and tektites for over fifty years. His early graduate years were in the early sixties, when he was studying at Melbourne University, and spent time in the company of George Baker whose work on the tektites of Australia was monumental. It is difficult to believe now how much controversy there was at that time, about the nature and origin of the superbly shaped Australian tektites. George Baker never had any doubts, but then he did have the advantage of having the finest shaped tektites in the world virtually at his doorstep. During the author’s working life, which included curating for three different national museums, he continued to take a special interest in these remarkable specimens. In recent retirement years, he and his wife Lois have amused themselves finding a large number of stony and iron meteorites, plus great numbers of the flight textured tektites, in all kinds of country, along the tracts of inland Australia where the tektites fell in such abundance so long ago. In 2011 together with Svend Buhl of Hamburg, he produced the recent book, “Henbury Craters and Meteorites, their Discovery, History and Study”, and it seemed logical to follow this with something about the tektites.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Australia's Little Space Travellers
Book Subtitle: The Flight Shaped Tektites of Australia
Authors: Don McColl
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46052-9
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental Science, Earth and Environmental Science (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer International Publishing AG 2017
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-46051-2Published: 04 November 2016
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-46052-9Published: 26 October 2016
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XV, 64
Number of Illustrations: 18 b/w illustrations, 56 illustrations in colour
Topics: Popular Earth Science, Planetology, Astrophysics and Astroparticles, Space Sciences (including Extraterrestrial Physics, Space Exploration and Astronautics), Mineralogy, Ceramics, Glass, Composites, Natural Materials