It Came From the Sky!

This post will also be found in Tehachapi's The Loop Newspaper.

A couple weeks ago I wrote about the asteroid that was going to fly by the Earth. Which it did, since we're all still here to read this. But at almost the same time, February 15^th, a meteor did come down on Chelyabinsk area of Russia (in the Ural Mountains). And it was big, though not particularly huge, at about 55 feet and weighing in at about 10,000 tons. It was certainly big enough to cause a lot of injuries and damage.

Chalcedony

On a recent trip out to the desert near Boron, a group of us went out collecting rocks.

The area we were at was know for its chalcedony (which is pronounced something like kal-sed-a-nee). This is actually the name of a large family of rocks and minerals including agates and jasper. But the form that is generally just called chalcedony is a bluish-grey quartzy rock.

The crystals in chalcedony are typically very small. The composition is mainly silica (silicon dioxide), while the colors come from other chemicals in the stone.