OT South African Mystery Spheres

"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...
Miniaturized Death Stars or Ben-Wa balls from beyond the stars?
You decide...I just hope they don't start hatching:
http://community-2.webtv.net/@HH!96!10!0C394463B0D1/WF11/3BillionYearOld/
:-)

Pat

A month early for April Fools, Pat.


--
Alan Erskine
We can get people to the Moon in five years,
not the fifteen GWB proposes.
Give NASA a real challenge

In article ,
says...
Miniaturized Death Stars or Ben-Wa balls from beyond the stars?
You decide...I just hope they don't start hatching:
http://community-2.webtv.net/@HH!96!10!0C394463B0D1/WF11/3BillionYearOld/
:-)

Ooooo-kay... Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the oldest
rocks found on Earth were granites from the Canadian Shield, that
weighed in at around 2.5 byo. I recall reading that a rock dated to 3
billion years was recently dubbed the oldest terrestrial rock found. So
it sounds a little odd to me that a layer of pyrophyllite in South
Africa would date out at 2.8 - 3 byo.

This really smells like a hoax to me, guys.

--

"The problem isn't that there are so | Doug Van Dorn
many fools; it's that lightning isn't |
distributed right." -Mark Twain

Alan Erskine wrote:

A month early for April Fools, Pat.



Check that link on the page; about the time the Witch Doctors start
stealing them, you know you are onto a classic in the loopy division.
The question is, what are they? They're all perfectly spherical- except
for the ones that aren't. They all have those grooves around the middle-
except the ones that don't. They're all full of spongy stuff- except the
ones that are full of a coalish substance.
They all rotate on their own accord- except for the ones that don't.
It's a world class mystery, if you ask me. For all we know, these could
be the fossilized testicles of androids from the future who fell into
that time vortex over Antarctica that the Russians found...yeah...that's
the ticket. ;-)


Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:
[snip]
It's a world class mystery, if you ask me. For all we know, these could
be the fossilized testicles of androids from the future who fell into
that time vortex over Antarctica that the Russians found...yeah...that's
the ticket. ;-)

What I'm wondering is how they dated them. Radiocarbon
dating is out for something that old, and that leaves a
variety of much more difficult and expensive techniques.
Consider that the very act of getting something like
this accurately dated would likely require the
involvement of a leading scientist in this field. It
seems odd then that that hypothetical scientist wouldn't
be researching these oddities and wouldn't have a paper
filtering through peer review right this very moment.

Doug... wrote:

Ooooo-kay... Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the oldest
rocks found on Earth were granites from the Canadian Shield, that
weighed in at around 2.5 byo. I recall reading that a rock dated to 3
billion years was recently dubbed the oldest terrestrial rock found. So
it sounds a little odd to me that a layer of pyrophyllite in South
Africa would date out at 2.8 - 3 byo.



READ YOUR HOLY BIBLE BOOK!
God has put these balls into the Earth to prove the
Humanist/Evolutionist/Atheist/Communist/Feminist/Gay Sponge Bob Fans
wrong, Wrong, WRONG!
We must all put our trust in God's Holy Balls!

This really smells like a hoax to me, guys.



Have you been smelling God's Holy Balls?! :-)

Pat

Christopher M. Jones wrote:


What I'm wondering is how they dated them. Radiocarbon
dating is out for something that old, and that leaves a
variety of much more difficult and expensive techniques.

Could be trace fossils in the matrix they were found in; that's the
normal technique for dating really ancient stuff. they were found in a
mine, so the mining company would have done studies on the age of strata
they were mining...
so do I believe these are two billion year old things made by some
exotic technology? Yeah...right... and there really is a Plesiosaur in
Loch Ness.


Consider that the very act of getting something like
this accurately dated would likely require the
involvement of a leading scientist in this field.


Trace fossil dating relies at looking at microfossils- you make a
complete list of all the species you find (diatoms and the like are very
good in this regard as there are huge numbers of species and they
evolved at a fairly fast rate into different looking forms), figure out
at what time all these species were co-existing, and you can nail the
date down pretty accurately. Of course the age they are claiming for
these things is when only the most primitive forms of life were around,
and fossils are almost unknown from this era.

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:


Trace fossil dating relies at looking at microfossils- you make a
complete list of all the species you find (diatoms and the like are
very good in this regard as there are huge numbers of species and they
evolved at a fairly fast rate into different looking forms), figure
out at what time all these species were co-existing, and you can nail
the date down pretty accurately. Of course the age they are claiming
for these things is when only the most primitive forms of life were
around, and fossils are almost unknown from this era.


I just took a bath, and Archimedes-like, had an inspiration: If you were
to entirely cover Pia Zadora in chocolate mousse, except for her knees...
But about those mystery spheres...so how does a steel alloy sphere end
up in two billion year old strata in a mine? Simple...it's really
closer to two hundred than two billion years old, and it gets taken into
the mine several decades back by a miner, who loses it, and it gets down
into the muck of the mine floor corrodes some and gets re-found years
and years later.
So the question is, what is it?
A cheaply made ball bearing for mining equipment of some sort?
Something that gets covered in leather or cloth and used in clothing as
a button of some sort?
Or my guess, some sort of trade object given to natives for use as an
ornament or bell on a necklace or bracelet- that would explain the
crease around the center (where the two hemispherical halves were joined).

Pat

In article ,
Doug... wrote:
Ooooo-kay... Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the oldest
rocks found on Earth were granites from the Canadian Shield, that
weighed in at around 2.5 byo...

No, Earth rocks go back to about 3.8, possibly a bit more if recent finds
have pushed things back further (I haven't kept current on this). Hmm,
"The Planetary Scientist's Companion" (a very useful reference), which is
copyright 1998, says that 4.1 is now the age record.

it sounds a little odd to me that a layer of pyrophyllite in South
Africa would date out at 2.8 - 3 byo.

That's not even exceptionally old by Earth standards. And some of the
oldest known Earth rocks *do* come from southern Africa, if memory serves,
although I couldn't tell you type or location.
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |

Pat Flannery wrote:
Miniaturized Death Stars or Ben-Wa balls from beyond the stars?

Or artifacts from the Planet of the Apes?

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mom/spheres.html

--
Dave Michelson

On Wed, 02 Mar 2005 22:06:03 -0600, Pat Flannery
wrote:

I just took a bath, and Archimedes-like, had an inspiration: If you were
to entirely cover Pia Zadora in chocolate mousse, except for her knees...

....Pia Zadora is to the pre-Gen X'ers what Charro was to my
generation. Just exactly *what* that is, alas, is still being debated.
And upchucked.

OM

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