2.8 Billion Year Old Metallic Sphere
Found in Transvaal
For more than three decades, miners at the Wonderstone Silver Mine near Ottosdal
in the Western Transvaal, South Africa, have been extracting out of deep rock
several strange metallic spheroids. So far at least 200 have been found.
In 1979, several were closely examined by J.R. McIver, professor of geology at
the University of Witwaterstand in Johannesburg, and geologist professor Andries
Bisschoff of Potsshefstroom University.
The metallic spheroids look like flattened globes, averaging 1 to 4 inches in
diameter, and their exteriors usually are colored steel-blue with a reddish
reflection, and embedded in the metal are tiny flecks of white fibers. They are
made of a nickel-steel alloy which does not occur naturally, and is of a
composition that rules out meteoric origin. Some have only a thin shell a
quarter of an inch thick, and when broken open are found filled with a strange
spongy material that disintegrates into dust on contact with the air.
What makes all this very remarkable is that the spheroids were mined out of a
layer of pyrophyllite rock, dated both geologically and by various radio-isotope
dating techniques to at least 2.8 billion years old.
Adding mystery to mystery, Roelf Marx, curator of the South African Klerksdorp
Museum, has discovered that the spheroid he has on exhibit slowly rotates on its
axis by its own power, while locked in its display case and free of outside
vibrations.
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