{"id":239325,"date":"2026-06-19T10:08:41","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T15:08:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/shocked-soil-discovered-rare-on-earth-but-abundant-on-mars"},"modified":"2026-06-19T10:08:41","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T15:08:41","slug":"shocked-soil-discovered-rare-on-earth-but-abundant-on-mars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/shocked-soil-discovered-rare-on-earth-but-abundant-on-mars","title":{"rendered":"Shocked Soil Discovered: Rare On Earth, But Abundant On Mars?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/shocked-soil-discovered-rare-on-earth-but-abundant-on-mars.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>When a meteoroid strikes, it generates a wave of energy that moves faster than the speed of sound. When all that energy propagates through material in seconds or less before being quickly cooled and resolidified by a secondary wave, it produces glass.<\/p>\n<p>Planetary Science Institute Senior Scientist Shawn Wright was looking for such glassy material while doing field work among the basaltic volcanic rock of Lonar crater in the Deccan region of India, when he found something unexpected.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSome glassy samples were fluffy and light, like popcorn,\u201d he said. \u201cIt had a really low density, it was airy, and it crumbled in my fingers. It looked different than all the other samples I\u2019d seen and collected, so I aimed to find out what it was by trying to figure out what it used to be.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When a meteoroid strikes, it generates a wave of energy that moves faster than the speed of sound. When all that energy propagates through material in seconds or less before being quickly cooled and resolidified by a secondary wave, it produces glass. Planetary Science Institute Senior Scientist Shawn Wright was looking for such glassy material [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":556,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1497,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/556"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239325\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}