Editing Talk:Glassing

What you said you've always imagined glassing to look like is how they glass a planet.  And that's why it is the most common method because its always been described like that every time they've glassed a planet. Halo: The Fall of Reach Prologue Page 8 ''"Three dozen Covenant ships—big ones, destroyers and cruisers—winked into view in the system. They were sleek, looking more like sharks than starcraft. Their lateral lines brightened with plasma—then discharged and rained fire down upon Jericho VII. The Chief watched for an hour and didn’t move a muscle. The planet’s lakes, rivers, and oceans vaporized. By tomorrow, the the atmosphere would boil away, too. Fields and forests were glassy smooth and glowing red-hot in patches."''

Halo First Strike Page 31-32 ''"Three Covenant cruisers broke through the clouds and drifted toward the generator complex. Their plasma artillery flickered and glowed with energy. Fred snapped open his COM channel and boosted the signal strength to its maximum. "Delta Team: Fall back. Fall back now!" Static hissed over the channel, and several voices overlapped. He heard one of his Spartans—he couldn't tell who—break through the static." "More voices crowded the channel, and Fred thought he heard Admiral Whitcomb's voice, but whatever orders he issued were incomprehensible. Then there was only static, and then the COM went dead. The cruisers fired salvos of plasma that burned the sky. Distant explosions thumped, and Fred strained to see if there was any return fire—any sign that his Spartans were fighting or retreating. Their only hope was movement; the enemy firepower would shred a fixed position. "Fall back," he hissed. "Now, damn it." Kelly tapped him on the shoulder and pointed up. The clouds parted like a curtain drawn as a fireball a hundred meters across roared over their position. He saw the faint outlines of dozens of Covenant battleships in low orbit. "Plasma bombardment," Fred whispered. He'd seen this before. They all had. When the Covenant conquered a human world they fired their main plasma batteries at the planet—fired until its oceans boiled and nothing was left but a globe of broken glass. "That's it," Kelly murmured. "We've lost. Reach is going to fall."''

Halo: The Cole Protocol Chapter 19  Page 148 ''"On the screen, plasma roiled and grew on the sides of the Covenant cruisers as the ships prepared to rain fire fire down upon the world the humans called Charybdis IX"''

Page 150 ''"Far below, the sleek, sharklike shape of a Covenant cruiser passed over the patches of land, and as it did so, everything underneath it glowed. The Screen flickered off, jumping to a new scene: a shot from the top of a skyscraper in downtown Scyllion. What looked like shimmering rain fell from the sky, but whatever it touched the city exploded into actinic flame. Buildings melted, slumping over and then bubbling down into a lavalike mix of asphalt and concrete and shattered glass. The camera wavered as blue haze began to build up near it, and then it melted and static filled the screen. Another live feed, from far outside the city, showed the blue waterfalls of plasma strike the river, sending up a giant cloud of steam as it was vaporized."''