Basaltic in the context of "Deccan Peninsula"

The Deccan Plateau (/ˈdɛkən/ DEK-ən ) is a geographic formation that extends over an area of 422,000 km (163,000 sq mi) on the southern part of the Indian peninsula. It stretches from the Satpura and Vindhya Ranges in the north to the northern fringes of Tamil Nadu in the south. It is bound by the mountain ranges of the Western Ghats and the Eastern Ghats on the sides, which separate the region from the Western and Eastern Coastal Plains respectively. It covers most of the Indian States of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh excluding the coastal regions, and minor portions of Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

The plateau is marked by rocky terrain with an average elevation of about 600 m (2,000 ft). It is subdivided into Maharashtra Plateau, Karnataka Plateau, and Rayalaseema and Telangana Plateau. The Deccan Traps in the northwest were formed by multiple layers of igneous rock deposited by basaltic lava flows following a massive volcanic eruption occurred at the end of the Cretaceous period (66 mya). The underlying bed consists of granite and sedimentary rocks formed during the Precambrian era and the formation of Gondwana.

Lunar regolith is the unconsolidated material found on the surface of the Moon and in the Moon's tenuous atmosphere. Lunar soil typically refers to only the finer fraction of lunar regolith, which is composed of grains 1 cm in diameter or less, but is often used interchangeably. Lunar soil differs substantially in properties from terrestrial soil. Lunar dust is even finer regolith than lunar soil, with grain sizes less than one millimeter.

Lunar regolith is primarily the result of mechanical weathering. Continual meteoric impacts and bombardment by solar and interstellar charged atomic particles of the lunar surface over billions of years ground the basaltic and anorthositic rock, the regolith of the Moon, into progressively finer material. This situation contrasts fundamentally to terrestrial soil formation, mediated by the presence of molecular oxygen (O₂), humidity, atmospheric wind, and a robust array of contributing biological processes.

Larnite is a calcium silicate mineral with the formula Ca₂SiO₄. It is the calcium member of the olivine group of minerals.

It was first described from an occurrence at Scawt Hill, Larne, Northern Ireland in 1929 by Cecil Edgar Tilley and named for the location. At the type locality it occurs with wollastonite, spurrite, perovskite, merwinite, melilite and gehlenite. It occurs in contact metamorphosed limestones and chalks adjacent to basaltic intrusives.