{"product_id":"bourg-st-pierre-fulgurite-natural-glass-specimen-02-12-switzerland","title":"Campo del Cielo - Hierro, IAB-MG - Recorte pulido y grabado - 6.32g - Argentina","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis Bourg-St-Pierre fulgurite is a lobed, twisting piece of glossy yellow-green glass with a smooth, flowing surface. It is presented in a clear display box with a printed card showing the village of Bourg-St-Pierre in the Val d’Entremont.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBourg-St-Pierre is a village in the Val d’Entremont, in the canton of Valais, on the old route to the Great St Bernard Pass. These fulgurites come from a single site above the village, at around 2,000 metres near the Les Toules dam. They first came to light in the summer of 2023, when a mountain biker picked up a few pieces of green glass, and on 10th August 2023 the Swiss mineralogist Samuel Filliez traced the site. Beneath a high-voltage power line he found the charred stump of a tree, with the ground around it scattered with green glassy fragments and light, blister-like beads lying on tufts of grass.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnalysis by Nicolas Meisser, curator at the Natural History Museum in Lausanne, confirmed the pieces as fulgurites: glass formed when an intense electrical discharge melts soil and rock. The story behind them is unusual. Swissgrid, the operator of the Swiss transmission grid, later confirmed that on 16th March 2023 a broken insulator brought a guide cable into contact with the ground, producing a short-circuit current of around 5,000 amperes, and Meisser observed tiny metallic grains in the glass that he attributed to the melted cable. Samuel Filliez believes lightning also played a part, and the Earth Sciences Museum in Martigny describes the event as a lightning strike, so the balance between natural and man-made causes remains a matter of interpretation. The rock that melted is well understood: mica schist of the Casanna Series in the Great St Bernard Nappe, whose iron-bearing micas are thought to give the glass its green colour. Like other fulgurites, the glass is a mineraloid rather than a mineral, because it is largely non-crystalline.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBourg-St-Pierre fulgurites show a remarkable range of forms, from glossy olive-green beads and twisted blisters to vitrified root casts and fine glass filaments draped over unmelted stone. One of the largest pieces recovered from the site is on display at the Earth Sciences Museum in Martigny. The guide cable has since been replaced and the nearby trees cleared, so the event is unlikely to be repeated. For collectors, these are unusually well-documented fulgurites, with a precise Alpine locality, a recorded date for the discharge, and a recovery story that links mineralogy, the Swiss power grid and a scorched mountainside.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOuterSpacer Meteorites acquired these specimens directly from Samuel Filliez at the Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines Mineral \u0026amp; Gem show in Alsace in 2025, where the Bourg-St-Pierre fulgurites were first presented to the public. Each piece carries a direct line of provenance back to the mineralogist who traced and documented the site.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSamuel Filliez tells the full story of the discovery in his article \u003cem\u003eLightning in Bourg-St-Pierre\u003c\/em\u003e, which he has kindly allowed us to share. \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0757\/0518\/8678\/files\/Bourg-St-Pierre-Fulgurites_Samuel-Filliez_2025_EN.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"\u003eRead the English translation by Jet Mahoney (PDF)\u003c\/a\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"OuterSpacer Meteorites","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57870581989702,"sku":"BSP-02\/12","price":73.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0757\/0518\/8678\/files\/BSP-02-12b_24423825-dd92-4074-aa02-45a30637b303.jpg?v=1794514072","url":"https:\/\/outerspacer.com\/es\/products\/bourg-st-pierre-fulgurite-natural-glass-specimen-02-12-switzerland","provider":"OuterSpacer Meteorites","version":"1.0","type":"link"}