Glaciers deposit sediments and other geologic debris called till, especially near their bases, sides, or fronts.
When a massive star exploded in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way, it left behind an expanding shell of debris called SNR 0519-69.0.
His was an almost Dickensian childhood spent atop a veritable toxic waste dump in Commerce, Okla., with piles of lead and zinc mining debris called "chat".
Young craters have rugged profiles and are surrounded by hummocky blankets of debris, called ejecta, and long light-coloured rays made by expelled material hitting the lunar surface.
After the ore is removed, the process of crushing the rocks and extracting uranium produces radioactive debris called tailings, which are stored nearby.
Agassiz noticed the marks that glaciers left on the Earth: great valleys; large glacial erratic boulders carried long distances; scratches and smoothing of rocks; mounds of debris called moraines pushed up by glacial advances.
The following day you walk amid the debris calling out the names of your missing colleagues and friends only to be met by the downcast eyes of residents who tell you hardly anyone survived from that neighborhood.
When the ice eventually retreated about 12,000 years ago, it left behind large piles of sand and rock debris called moraines, creating the hilly terrain visible along the lakeshore today.
Preliminary results from NEAR Shoemaker and its six main instruments indicate the cratered asteroid, now 130 million miles from Earth, is strewn with boulders, rocks and a loose layer of gravity-bound debris called regolith.
Many tried to return to San Miguel in the first few days after the explosion to look for survivors, but steady rain set off fast-moving mudslides of volcanic debris, called lahars.
