About 790,000 years ago, a meteor slammed into Earth with such force that the explosion blanketed about 10 percent of the planet with shiny black lumps of rocky debris.
Known as tektites, these glassy blobs of melted terrestrial rock were strewn from Indochina to eastern Antarctica and from the Indian Ocean to the western Pacific. For more than a century, scientists searched for evidence of the impact that created these pitted blobs.
