2007ApJ...662..372B

While a significant fraction of silicate dust in stellar winds has a crystalline structure, in the interstellar medium nearly all of it is amorphous. One possible explanation for this observation is the amorphization of crystalline silicates by relatively ``low'' energy, heavy-ion cosmic rays. Here we present the results of multiple laboratory experiments showing that single-crystal synthetic forsterite (Mg₂SiO₄) amorphizes when irradiated by 10 MeV Xe ions at large enough fluences. Using modeling, we extrapolate these results to show that 0.1-5.0 GeV heavy-ion cosmic rays can rapidly (∼70 Myr) amorphize crystalline silicate grains ejected by stars into the interstellar medium.