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2H Cinders - Appear like industrial slag. A cinder will have vesicles - a small, usually spherical cavity in a rock or mineral, formed by expansion of a gas or vapor before the enclosing body solidified.

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Bloodstone found in Tucson, AZ, notice the cinder section in upper right corner. 
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I had to add a new type of impact phenomena after seeing a number of these type specimens. There are two types of very high energy effects specimens. Touch down area specimens and explosion cloud launched specimens. The above specimen is 25 miles from touch down point or more but Howell/Petersburg Impact was a traveling explosion, very rare launching high energy specimens downrange of its movement. All those voids represent a "deep fry." 

Here is a picture of it blown up. This is impact splatter from the Barringer crater impact in NM. 
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Nearby smaller specimen containing various iron oxide types.  
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This specimen has a burned out cinder matrix with Ft. Payne Mississippian chert. What a blast! Keep in mind it hit into a sea, with mud and sand and still made cinders of it's metal content. 
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Cinders appear to be burned out meteor material. Likely a more top effect in the shock explosion. They launch far. Vector debris effects cause a group to be found in locations. This one is almost a mile long cinder debris field. SW crater. 
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Weathering to green, the meteor contained various minerals. 
  • S1: completely unshocked (up to 5 GPa)

  • S2: very weakly shocked (5-10 GPa); uneven darkening of olivine as seen under polarized light; planar and irregular fractures (breaks in other than a natural cleavage plane.)

  • S3: weakly shocked (15-20 GPa); weak fractures in olivine seen under polarized light; dark shock veins and some melt pockets

  • S4: moderately shocked; (30-35 GPa); weak planar fracturing of olivine under polarized light; some pockets of melted material, dark interconnected shock veins

  • S5: strongly shocked (45-55 GPa); very strong planar fracturing and deformation features in olivine; alteration of plagioclase into maskelynite; formation of dark melt veins

  • S6: very strongly shocked (75-90 GPa); olivine recrystallizes, with local alteration to a mineral called ringwoodite and shock melting of plagioclase to a glass

Greater shock pressures will melt the rock, producing what is referred to as an "impact melt". These are seldom found on Earth, so they are very much sought after by collectors.

Considering iron boils at 5,000 degrees F it is easy to see that cinders are a high shock condition vaporizing even through the insides of some specimens. 

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Volcanic? Scoria shown above. As geology is not integrated to impact formation rocks are assumed to be volcanic. Notice there is no "provenance" shown with the specimens. 
Here is a good blog about cinders from the sky:
http://thebiggeststudy.blogspot.com/2012/08/cosmic-chaos-or-contrived-confusion.html 

Blue rock turns out is red just oxidizes to blue, copper. This meteor seems to have a similar content to the Chelyabinsk meteor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wc8lAjP1oeY 

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This one has partially not burned out material. The other side below. 
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Cinder below found in Farmington NM 200 miles NE of Barringer Crater! Shown below. The explosion dynamics of normal angle impacts make a classic ballistic arc but what force to travel that far must have been a very high apogee. 30 miles high? I rather think there is a separate crater at Farmington. The Frankewing, TN explosion was low and below sea level at that time; the spray would have to climb to where ground level is today. 300mya vs 50,000 years ago.   

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Cinder below was found in Midlothian, TX. It is from an impact yet to be determined. This specimen I broke into and this is the interior as fully cooked as the exterior. The orange and red are oxides of iron. It has a sandy texture. 
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The dark charcoal color cinders below from Lake Logan, TN SW crater but SE Giles county. The color represents the material it was. This has to be even more overcooked than McDonalds fries.  Found near railroad so this is coal clinker type. Those old steam fired trains could make heat up to 4,500 degrees F so this stuff is very burnt out. 
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The cinder shown left from Italy I call sand cinder. It has the deep fry look. A close up shown below shows the small quartz crystal structure of a fast formation. Provenance of type is a difficult process. A place like Italy is thought to contain a lot of volcanic/tectonic types however with the current estimate of 25,000 earth surface craters of 5 miles or greater and so few identified it is a tricky process. 
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Shown above is a cinder section from Timanfaya National Park, Spain. Cinders from shock or volcano are very difficult to distinguish. 

Shown below is Volcanic lava, Italy, with vesicular, frothy texture. It has a layering longer formation and different lattice form structure. 
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This is the largest cinder structure I have ever seen. It is from South West Wyoming.  Notice the "Septarian" edges gradient contraction. The surface has imparted minerals from the meteor itself i.e. iron and a "Constellation" surface from the charged shock particle storm. You can read about the large postulated western impact crater at: https://www.hillbillyu.com/new-findings  Shock Septarian at: https://www.hillbillyu.com/shock-septerian-crater-impact and Constellationing at: https://www.hillbillyu.com/constellationing
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<<<Particle Storm blast coating
The difficult provenance of cinders is illustrated below. This is a landscape cinder sold by Home Depot i.e. volcanic. Impact metamorphic diversity is it's hallmark. You will not find a cinder debris field large enough for profitable landscape material  mining. Also the cinders themselves are more uniform in volcanic process. But alas provenance is easy in Middle, TN where no mafic rocks are defined. Playing "what's my rock?" on facebook much harder. 
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Shock cinder from Lake Logan, TN at scale of 1/1000 inch. It has iron fiber crystals. It is making micro Septarian borders and Turing Pattern Constellationing from the shock particle storm. As cinders are associated with the heat part of an impact sequence it is clear the other parts of the shock chaos storm invaded the burned out sequence. 
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Wow, that is such a cool specimen shown above. Very high shock. Between beading and a cinder. The holes are vaporization although it may have been a sagging plasma form as it evaporated. You seldom see any relics at this high of shock.
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Specimen above is from New Mexico, USA. It is a transition to almost cinder. You can see the crumble nature of it on the table. It also has a high Constellationing signature. You can read about that at: https://www.hillbillyu.com/constellationing

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This is a "splatterform" impactite. The black is Fe3O4 iron oxide very hot that hit it during an impact explosion. TheFe3O4 iron oxide is in a state of cindering at 5 to 6 or more thousand degrees. While earth entry can make heats up to 5,000 degrees the black does not conform to the rock matrix as it is a silica base. There is a large earth impact somewhere near the Philippines as it is a Tektite shock glass strewn field.

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We are down at the micro level here so you can see the transition form of a shock particle storm exterior "Constellationing" becoming a cinder. Notice the micro iron color areas. It was so hot the circles form similar to bubbles but not quite to that level yet. 
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Now here is the next level of cinder formation, found in Louisiana, USA of all places. It does have the nano iron signature i.e. highly pulverized iron from impact but appears to be a silica base cinder rather than mineral. Low metal content meteor hits sand type. These voids are larger and have moved beyond tiny circles to larger septarian patterns. Most of the granular particle matrix is still in tact so this is a simi cinder transition form. 
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Shown above is a lunar meteorite for sale on line. I like it because it shows a changing vesicle property which is likely related to ablation. That was the entry side. It is a multi metamorphic form.  

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Harmonic Vesicle  -   This small rock from my driveway at Lake Logan, TN is a shock form  impactite. It has a wave  resonance going through it. These patterns are as small as 1/64 inch which is rare. A shock microwave. 

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Specimen above was found in a mountainous region near Eskişehir Bilecik, Turkey by Ali Karadeniz. The cobalt makes it the prettiest cinder I have ever seen and also eliminates it as a volcanic cinder. It is not slag either. 

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Impact shock glass cinder - A relic of one of the Ontario Meteor Impacts. Silica and iron, high shock. It has a high shock particle flow sequence of fractals you can see on it's surface chevage planes. I am going to name it "The cinder in white." Other side shown below. 

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Troy Anderson of Arizona had these specimens fall on his and his neighbor's house. Meteorite Cinders? These are more burnt out than impact cinders. This is where provenance is the issue as this cinder as a type is not considered to be meteor even though they exist as impactites. But the real tragedy is this often happens. When people consult geologist they are told that "kids find cinders and throw them on roofs." Wow, would that hold up in court? What evidence supports that wild accusation? And that is why geology is full of so much non science. They show up at a crater and stumble over high shock mega clast looking for a low pressure shatter cone type. Sad, really. 
 
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Shock Septarian Cinder from the Springfield, Illinois Impact Structure - Large vesicles are from the extreme heat as well as the botryoidal bubbles. The particle patterns not usually present on a cinder as this is a cusp form are from the shock particle storm blasted outward from the impact explosion. The druzy nature of the quartz is another heat effect, fast formed crystals. The iron is an evaporative mist from the meteor bolide it's self when it exploded, which comes back down and makes a coating on specimens. Specimen collected by Josh Constant.

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Mark England found this specimen on the beach in Florida. Earth impact cinder - Yes, while I collect cinder types, this has larger vesicles. This is because it was launched from a larger earth impact. The magnified surface shows the "shock particle storm" and the "common particle." These are grouped into shock type construction forms. The matrix is a base of Fe3O4 black iron oxide however you can still see a faint edge of red iron Fe2O3 all mixed to some degree with silica in the impact melt sequence.
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Round cinder - Type rarity is just one of those things about the study of any phenomena. Iron and silica. Only one I have ever seen. 

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Cindering harmonic - While a sphere is the answer to uniform pressure this is a shock made harmonic which is conformal to wave pattern propagation. High shock has constructed this form as you can see it's porous nature. 

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Trinitite forming vesicles. Yes, as you can see atomic bombs make glass then can have evaporative holes.  

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We think of cinders as a chorus and not a solo. This cavity could have been made by shock evaporation however. 

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Impact non evaporative expansion void - Geode sounds better don't you think? Oh, but look it has a void in the wall expansion too. 

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California lake bed shock made structure with expansion voids. Cindering is an evaporative made form. So this is also not a cinder. 

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Simi state shock cindering - This is from the spot where modern geology was born. James Hutton 1726 - 1797 stood on this cliff and postulated that if I come back here tomorrow and it still looks the same that means that all earth was formed by a very slow process of accumulation. Never mind the spot was all formed in hours from an impact. Darwin read his book and figured biology was a slow process of accumulated change. Never mind the evidence of earth impacts which are an accumulated process of fast change. Which is by the way the evidence of the fossils record, accumulated fast change. 

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Meteorite with void avoidance - So how can a shock melt to evaporative vesicles have stages of states? Well for one it can have a mix of matter with some being of lower evaporative temperature. 

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Modern Industrial Slag is cinder like but not as vesicle rich. 

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Phenomena makes it's own rules. A surface can cinder and leave the rest of the body intact. An explosion made product with energies as high as the large impacts can have it's own physics. You can see that in this specimen a high melt occurs around the voids and other holes are just holes but from a beginning evaporation. 

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Surface cindering - This high shock bolder piece was found NW of Elkton, TN along the crater bottom beside Richland Creek. It is just starting to fizz with the tiny bubbling getting started. 

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Rare type impact cinder. There is a serial crater pattern crossing Oregon. Beautiful and valuable specimen. Very very few have ever seen one; I have never seen one with so much color banding. Collected by Mark Hopping of Oregon. 

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Meteorite Cinder
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Micrometeorite cinder from page 112 of  In Search of Stardust by Jon Larsen. 
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Crypto crystalline shock conglomerate with vesicles. Prospect, TN. 

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Railroad ballast cinder collected at Veto, Alabama near Elk River. Circa mid 1800's to early 1900's. Impact cinders are rare but strangely slag is also in the rural south. It does have unique features you can see under magnification. 

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Same specimen magnified showing surface cooling crinkle marks. Also voids around inclusions. I have not seen this type of exact cooling features with impactites. This fine surface crinkle is caused by source heat being external imparted oven type whereas shock made heat is like microwave cooking, more instant. Another example shown to the right. 

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Railroad ballast slag going into some strange cinder sequence. 

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Ukin Ajidin - Niyo Gems Ceylon - Impact cinder with thin plane inserts of several angles similar to PDF cross shock. And of course it is rare and pretty. Chrysocolla is a hydrated copper phyllosilicate mineral and mineraloid with formula Cu 2–xAl ₓ{H 2–xSi ₂O ₅ ₄•nH ₂O or ₂H ₂Si ₂O ₅ ₄•nH ₂O).

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Splatterform Cinder collected by Jim Kingdom. Must have been a close in survivor or kicked outward in the blast receiving the splatter as it went. 

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This is thought to be Vesicular Basalt with Amygdaloidal secondary spheres. Right so you see the voids have a trace reference to other  spheres having been present. 

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This is not a typical vesicular basalt amygdaloidal inclusion presentation. These are agate type spheres and not a generalized matrix inclusion. How would you have a rolled pearl construction inside these irregular shaped voids? Why would they attach? Paragenesis. A round zeolite is rare and the banding even more. Banding of perfect sphere zeolite is impossibly improbable, and even more so in a constrained environment. Impact could explain the entire structure as an impact cinder and impact spheroids. Both from same event. A rare occurance but with at least some probability.

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Shock made. If you do a high magnification on the white inclusions they have a phenomena of granular particle consolidation called "cloud constellationing." The particles are from the impact and they consolidate from shock pressure. This is an impact cinder.

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The blue is cobalt a common mineral of impacting bolides. 

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Fulgurite Cinder - Vaporization state. 

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Wayne A Larson

@Wayne A Larson

Studied Solar energy and electrical at Sauk Valley Community College

Vugs with direction - This is a type of cindering but unlike the typical cinder it has a direction flow. Silica perhaps some trace calcium and iron. This was instant made from the large NW Central Illinois Impact Crater. 

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Aidan C Slayford of Exeter, UK specimen - Shock Cinder with Nested Triangle Coning Wave. Rare as in the only one I have ever seen. 

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Good specimen. Cindering and beading - At first I thought this was a conglomerate with cindering. When magnified it looks more like the high heat made the beads you see i.e. melt drops. So is it an impactite or meteorite, industrial slag, or volcanic? I think the heat may surpass volcanic because the beads look to have a high silica content and lava is usually a little less than the heat required for silica to bead up. Based on where found i.e. provenance I am going with meteorite. Specimen collected by: نيازك مولاي عمر

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Impact cinder - Vesicles (voids) this large are counter to man made slag. Also composition which is largely silica (sand) with nano iron Fe3O4. Impact cinders are considered "close in survivor relics." Waterways collect very old rock specimens. 

Rock Collectors

Steven Lysohirka  · 7h  · 

My daughter caught this fishing one day from the bottom of the lake. Just wondering if anyone knows what it might be

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Central spherule with cindering. Impact is a progressive event with layering often present. Liquid drop layering is the drop combination but retains a differential as the core drop has solidified somewhat.

Project Stardust - Jon Larsen & Jan Braly Kihle

Aug. 4, 2022

Micrometeorite NMM 2488 is really strange. The 0.35 mm Space rock was found in Trondheim, Norway, and is basically a fine-crystalline (almost cryptocrystalline, dendritic) olivine foam with lots of chromites, and hardly any magnetite. I have only seen one other related micrometeorite; a compact cryptocrystalline sphere with chromites on the surface (depicted in the Atlas of Micrometeorites). How shall we classify this one, scoriaceous? Or? Your comment is welcome.

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Same as above only larger. This is a close in explosion nodule (impactite). The central impact sphere was blast surrounded by more material which was being impacted by little impalements all while cindering.

Rock Collectors

Jordan Warren  · August 4, 2022 · 

Help please.

North Ga

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Impactite cinder with the appearance of flow directionality. Granular particle matrix. Specimen collected by: David Linnens

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Howell, TN Meteor

I really like that cinder. It is unique. It has a center vein and directionality. Unusual color. This is different from a heat cinder is an energy cinder. A high energy current went through that vein. Fulgurites usually don't look like that but can't rule out. Industrial processes use high electrical smelting. Also impactites often display high energy signatures as impact particle storms are generators like volcano lightning. Could it be a volcano cinder? Possible although again not typical.

Kit Lenox

September 7, 2022

Anyone know what this?

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Not cindering, this is a coral fossil. 

Brandi Murray  · 

 Oct. 23, 2022

Lake huron, Ontario

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Meteorite cinder with cavitation. 

rock identification group

Reynaldo Ochoa  · 

Dec. 1, 2022  · 

Hi! So 2 days ago my dad noticed this in our backyard. It's never been there before and just appeared out of nowhere. From research on the internet it could be terrestrial ignigeas basalt or Lunar . Pictures I've seen on the internet looked similar. It's pretty heavy.

  • Moira Jane Ellis

    Reynaldo Ochoa was there a mark in the ground as if it hit the ground with force?​

  • Reynaldo Ochoa

    Yes there a mound of dirt surrounding it as if the rock impacted, but it wasn't like a crazy deep crater. I mean where the rock was lying it looked like a small crater on surface with dirt around it. So why is this? Terminal velocity. 

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Impact sphere formed too close, hence the voids. High shock but burned out like a cinder. Missouri, from the Big MO Impact. 

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Oblate Impact Sphere Cinder. 

Lilianne Hurell  ·   · March 2, 2023

Is this rock volcanic? There are tons of them on the Bristol Bay beach.

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Rare, impactite, type 2, internal cindering, iron silica. Burnt Sienna Carnellian. The color burnt sienna is made by burning iron oxide. The back side is bubbling, 1,300 to 2,200 F range of rock temperatures with the cindering being on the highest side. Only impact can make this rock as it is shock made. Shock like your microwave oven cooks from the inside out. The physics of this process is believed to be due to the rarefaction wave which is the back side of the shock wave which stretches matter apart causing heating. This specimen is cindering on the inner area which is contrary to convection heating like your long wave convection oven or a volcano.

Missouri’s Rocks, Minerals, fossils, & Artifact Finds

Susan Waite  · April 7, 2023· 

Mushroom hunting rock find

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Impact cinder. The veins are thin plane insertions. Impact is a progressive event so in the initial form it received the thin jets of quartz, likely at hypervelocity. Rare.

Arkansas Rocks and Minerals

Scott Joslin  ·   April 17, 2023· 

Hi everyone, just wondering if anyone can tell me about this? Seems to have a vein of quartz sandwiched between, and Its not magnetic.

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Directional Cindering - You just don't see that much. Impact or Volcanic. April 22, 2024. 
 

Charlean Andes

Is this basalt ? Someone said that's what it was. Got it at an estate sale today.

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Impact cindering on Mars. It is a strewn field of cinders. You can see it has multi mineral composition from the color changes on the surface or a patina effect. 1 Aug. 2024. 

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Cinderites, meteor/fireball type burn out like you see as the meteorite streak widens out and ends which is also an explosion. The fragments just fall at much slower speed. Aug. 21, 2024. 
 

Meteorite Identification

Keith Dean  ·   · 

This building was built around 2010. I am one of few people that have had access to the rooftop. I picked these up using an extendable tool magnet while walking to do a repair.

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