Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
n. (context geology English) The layer of loose rock, dust, sand, and soil, resting on the bedrock, that constitutes the surface layer of most dry land on earth, the moon, and other large solid aggregated celestial objects. There can also be sub-marine regolith.
Wikipedia
Regolith is a layer of loose, heterogeneous superficial material covering solid rock. It includes dust, soil, broken rock, and other related materials and is present on Earth, the Moon, Mars, some asteroids, and other terrestrial planets and moons.
Usage examples of "regolith".
It was a breccia, regolith compacted so the grains stuck together, analogous to sandstone on Earth.
Rather, it was a lightning bolt blasting the moonscape, melting the regolith and its underlying rock, crushing the mantle, vaporizing everything within hundreds of kilometers of ground zero.
I knew there must be layers of truth, hidden beneath tine surface of what the Ambassador had told me, just as their nuggets of quagma had been inexpertly hidden beneath the regolith of their hollowed-out moon.
When the habitats and stations in orbit had proved too small for the horde of refugees, tunnellike shelters had been prepared on the Moon, metal-ribbed, plastic-sheathed, insulated by layers of regolith.
To either side of the railgun, the surface was scarred by the tracks of vehicles and workers and by the trenches from which the shattered regolith, lunar soil plowed by eons of meteoritic impacts, large and small, had been scooped.
But as soon as the beneficiation and reduction processors for the regolith were in place, we -were able to expand significantly, using the dust and by-products of reduction as our radiation shield.
But as soon as the beneficiation and reduction processors for the regolith were in place, we were able to expand significantly, using the dust and by-products of reduction as our radiation shield.
In Phase I the lunar regolith would be raked for metal grains, which would then be reduced to their component elements by the gaseous carbonyl process.
On flat rocks he found the crustose lichens: button lichen, stud lichen, shield lichen, candel-laria, apple-green map lichen, and the red-orange jewel lichen that indicated a concentration of sodium nitrate in the regolith.
On flat rocks he found the crustose lichens: button lichen, stud lichen, shield lichen, candellaria, apple-green map lichen, and the red-orange jewel lichen that indicated a concentration of sodium nitrate in the regolith.
Delamar's regolith is rich in aluminum silicates, easily extracted, easily processed with a simple solar furnace.
Tracks, pits, mounds of regolith, all dark red against the dusty orange surface of the plain-it looked as if a dragon had reached down with a great taloned claw, and drawn blood time after time.
Tracks, pits, mounds of regolith, all dark red against the dusty orange surface of the plainit looked as if a dragon had reached down with a great taloned claw, and drawn blood time after time.
They go apeshit whenever a busload of tourists churns up the Regolith.
Here solifluction, the daily melting of ground ice on a tilt, had caused the loose regolith to slide down in a series of dips and rims, and although it all looked gray and lifeless, a faint pattern like minuscule tiling revealed that it was actually covered with blue-gray flake lichen.