My name is Smoldor….

Small, black/red and pretty hot…. until I’ve cooled down.

I owe my name to my original place of origin. Okay, there was a little bit „Lord of the Rings“ in there too.

I’m a hot-blooded little guy made of magma, also called magmatites when I’ve cooled down. These include pumice, obsidian, diabase, basalt and many more.

Even though these igneous rocks are often called solidification rocks, I am not. My place of origin, the magma chambers, is not only found in the earth’s mantle, but also at great depths in the lower earth’s crust. So you could say I come from very deep down… and it’s hot here too! Temperatures of 700°C or more melt all rock into a hot and viscous pulp. What is formed by me depends on two factors: the cooling rate and the composition of the pulp.

If I cool down quickly, you will find me in the form of basalt as on almost the entire ocean floor and on large parts of the continental crust. But the sea is my favorite place to be.

I am tough. Basalt is used, for example, to make cladding panels, tombstones and monuments. But I’m not as tough as another dwarf called Plutogran. The little guy tops me.