Pele's Tears

Pele's tears are small, smooth droplets of basaltic volcanic glass shaped like teardrops, beads, spheres, or dumbbells, typically black to dark greenish and a few millimeters to a couple of centimeters across. Like Pele's hair, they are named for Pele, the Hawaiian volcano goddess.

They form from blobs of molten lava thrown into the air during fluid eruptions, which cool into solid glass as they fall. Often a Pele's tear is found with a strand of Pele's hair trailing from it, the two being products of the same process.

Glossy and aerodynamic in shape, Pele's tears are a popular volcanic curiosity, though, like Pele's hair, removing them from Hawaiian sites is culturally discouraged.

Pele's tears form during fluid basaltic eruptions — lava fountains, lava lakes, and Hawaiian-style eruptions — when droplets of molten lava are ejected into the air.

As each droplet flies, surface tension pulls it into a rounded or teardrop shape, and it quenches into glass before landing, preserving that aerodynamic form. Frequently a thin thread of glass (Pele's hair) is drawn out behind the falling drop and remains attached.

They accumulate near vents and downwind, mixed with Pele's hair and other tephra. Besides Kilauea and other Hawaiian volcanoes, they occur at basaltic volcanoes in Iceland, Nicaragua, and elsewhere.

Identify Pele's tears by their small, smooth, glassy, teardrop-, spherical-, or dumbbell-shaped beads of black to dark green basaltic glass, often with a tiny stub or strand of Pele's hair attached.

They are volcanic glass, hardness about 5-6, with a glassy luster and conchoidal fracture if broken. Their distinctive aerodynamic droplet shapes, formed in flight, are diagnostic.

Look-alikes: they can resemble small obsidian pebbles, basalt fragments, or man-made glass beads, but their natural rounded/teardrop forms and association with Pele's hair and basaltic vents set them apart. Tektites are also glassy droplets but are impact-derived and chemically distinct from basaltic Pele's tears.

Pele's tears have no real commercial or lapidary value and are collected mainly as natural volcanic curiosities and scientific specimens. In Hawaiian culture they hold spiritual significance as a form of the goddess Pele, and local tradition discourages taking them from volcanic sites.

Scientifically, Pele's tears are useful for studying the composition and behavior of fluid basaltic magma and eruption dynamics, since each frozen droplet captures a sample of the erupting lava.

They are sometimes confused in popular accounts with tektites or "Apache tears," but Pele's tears are specifically basaltic glass droplets formed in flight during basaltic eruptions.