Mysterious 'one of a kind' hollow glass EGG spewed out by Hawaii volcano

By CHEYENNE MACDONALD:

Last week, a lava lake at Hawaii's Kilauea volcano exploded, and it spewed something very unusual—a mysterious, balloon-like object with a glassy shell.
Explosions at the lake are typically very activity, but this bizarre find is something scientists have never seen before.
It's now being said that the hollow object is a 'Pele's tear' with a one-of-a-kind structure.

The black, egg-shaped object was found on the rim of Halema'uma'u Crater, roughly 360 feet above the lake's surface.
The 'one-of-a-kind,' Pele's tear found by the observatory is about half an inch long and completely hollow.
Tim Orr, a geologist at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, discovered the volcanic egg on Friday.
'It's kind of like a balloon,' Janet Babb, observatory geologist and public information officer, told The Huffington Post.
'It's hollow inside with this thin, glassy shell, which is very fragile.'
Lava lakes have been known to produce 'hollow spherules,' The Huffington Post writes, but these objects are much smaller.

The mysterious object is now being called the 'coolest Pele's tear ever found.'
A Pele's tear, named for the Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes, is a tear-drop shaped piece of glass formed by the swift cooling of molten lava as it spews.
Friday's discovery is unusual in its size and ability to survive despite its fragility; after being launched from the lava lake, and out onto the rim, the 'tear' remained intact.

'Something that fragile looking, you would think it would have broken into many pieces,' Babb told HudffPost.
'This is one of the things that makes science fun.'
Though it's been identified, the scientists are still perplexed by the strange egg-like structure. The tear was mostly likely formed in the aftermath of the lava lake explosion.
'To my knowledge, it's the only thing like it that has ever formed,' Orr told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, The Huffington Post writes.

The unusual Pele's tear is extremely fragile, and scientists are keeping it in a display case away from the public.
Explosions at the lava lake happen all the time, and without warning, sending fragments of volcanic debris into the air.
The explosion that produced the glass egg was the third one that week.
Along with Pele's tears, lava lakes can also form golden strands of volcanic fiberglass, called Pele's hair, and flakes of volcanic glass known as limu o Pele, or 'seaweed of Pele.'
The lava lake is continually surprising researchers. Last year, when the lake overflowed several times, lava touched the floor of the Halema'uma'u Crater for the first time since 1982.

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