OT South African Mystery Spheres

In message
Pat Flannery wrote:

Andrew Gray wrote:

No crustal rocks are known to have survived since the time of the
intense meteor bombardment that affected Earth between its formation
about 4,550Myr ago and 4,030Myr, the age of the oldest known components
in the Acasta Gneiss of northwestern Canada.

Isn't the latest theory that it wasn't an intense meteor bombardment,
but that Mars sized planet hitting us and forming the Moon?

Nope, the moon forming collision was just the most intense impact among
many. Or at least, the only one that left lasting evidence. *BIG*
meteor...

Anthony

On Tue, 08 Mar 2005 15:18:43 -0600, Pat Flannery
wrote:

Isn't the latest theory that it wasn't an intense meteor bombardment,
but that Mars sized planet hitting us and forming the Moon?

....As I expressed to Jack Schmitt a couple of years ago, I fully
believe that quite a number of the lunar formation theories have a bit
of a role in the actual existence of the Moon. Ergo, there's no one
theory that fits all, and that both the protoMars impactor *and* the
prolonged meteor bombardment are required as primary formation
factors, both for the Moon and the zircon pulverization and
distribution. In fact, it's probable that the distribution occurred
because of all the crap that got thrown up after the impactor
eventually rained back down on Earth. That, of course, which didn't
impact the protoMoon.

....Which brings us to the question: was significant amounts of the
zircon found on in the Lunar samples? Specifically the "Genesis Rock"?

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

In article ,
OM om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_researc h_facility.org wrote:
...Which brings us to the question: was significant amounts of the
zircon found on in the Lunar samples? Specifically the "Genesis Rock"?

There are zircons in the lunar samples here and there, but not a lot.
They've been important in the dating of a number of very old rocks and
fragments of rocks, but a quick look doesn't find any reference to them
being used to date 15415 (aka the Genesis rock). If I'm understanding the
geological jargon properly, it's the wrong flavor of rock to contain them.
In fact, "Lunar Sourcebook" notes that rocks of that type (ferroan
anorthosite) are very difficult to date reliably by any means.
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |

On Thu, 03 Mar 2005 20:55:58 -0600, Pat Flannery
wrote:

The cited article states that the grooves may be cut into existing
spheres in fairly recent times. The articles about the finding of the
spheres states that the mining is done my abrasive moving cables cutting
into the matrix that the spheres are found in. The cited article also
notes that they are in a very soft matrix...so... if the moving cable is
cutting through the soft matrix and hits a sphere, could it cause it to
spin around in the soft matrix as it cuts a groove into it?

I like the limonite/pyrite concretion version, with or without groove.
If you follow the links at the bottom you end up at a page with a
hematite ball with two fossilized ammonites inside. All natural, too.

My money's on Mother Nature here.

The cables would have to be fairly thin to make such narrow grooves.
How do they split the matrix to find the spheres?

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer

Pat Flannery

Isn't the latest theory that it wasn't an
intense meteor bombardment,
but that Mars sized planet hitting us
and forming the Moon?

Latest, yeah, but not recent. Computer sims and all the other relevant
facts in momentum and so on have been present in the literature since
at least 1969 and probably before. I believe it was in a NASA book
called "The Moon."

Mary Shafer wrote:

I like the limonite/pyrite concretion version, with or without groove.
If you follow the links at the bottom you end up at a page with a
hematite ball with two fossilized ammonites inside. All natural, too.


I think they probably stuck the hematite ball in a rock polisher for a
while; it looks a little too smooth to be natural.

My money's on Mother Nature here.

The cables would have to be fairly thin to make such narrow grooves.
How do they split the matrix to find the spheres?



Damned if I know... for all we know, these things may originate in
somebody's basement, like a lot of other "authentic" tourist items*. The
dent on the one with the groove in the original photo isn't something
that one would expect to find on a natural concretion... the thing
should shatter if you strike it, not dent. To me it looks like a hollow
man-made object that was manufactured in two hemispherical halves out of
thin metal, and got dented. I keep thinking of those hollow spherical
metal bells like are used on animal collars when I look at it.

* Including I suspect those "real Tektites" that came with my posable
astronaut figures- one of which looked like it had been molded over a
smooth spherical form of some sort.

Pat

On Wed, 09 Mar 2005 20:05:17 -0800, Mary Shafer
wrote:

My money's on Mother Nature here.

....Mother Nature has balls??? Egads! :-)

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

In article ,
Revision wrote:
but that Mars sized planet hitting us and forming the Moon?

Latest, yeah, but not recent. Computer sims and all the other relevant
facts in momentum and so on have been present in the literature since
at least 1969 and probably before...

Not the giant-impact theory. The three pre-1969 theories were "daughter"
(rapidly-spinning Earth fissions), "sister" (Moon forms in Earth orbit as
part of Earth's formation), and "wife" (Moon forms independently and is
later captured). There were reasons to doubt all of them, and all were
thoroughly destroyed by the Apollo samples: lunar rocks are too similar
to Earth rocks for the Moon to have formed separately, and too different
for it to have had the same history.

While people were thinking about giant-impact notions earlier(*), it did
not really surface as a mainstream theory until the Kona lunar-origin
conference in 1984, where it emerged as a fairly sudden scientific
consensus that cut through all the old difficulties.

(* In one case, much earlier: a very similar concept appears in a
forgotten 1946 paper by Reginald Daly. )
--
"Think outside the box -- the box isn't our friend." | Henry Spencer
-- George Herbert |

On Thu, 10 Mar 2005 16:34:51 GMT, (Henry Spencer)
wrote:

(* In one case, much earlier: a very similar concept appears in a
forgotten 1946 paper by Reginald Daly. )

....Thank you. I recalled the paper, but not the author.

http://www.agu.org/inside/awards/daly.html
http://www.eps.harvard.edu/daly.php

....Note that this is *NOT* the "Reginald Daly" who wrote a rather
contentious anti-evolution book in the 80's, equating evolution with
bad sci-fi. The true Dr. Daly died in 1957.

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

On Thu, 10 Mar 2005 00:03:13 -0600, Pat Flannery
wrote:

Damned if I know... for all we know, these things may originate in
somebody's basement, like a lot of other "authentic" tourist items*. The
dent on the one with the groove in the original photo isn't something
that one would expect to find on a natural concretion... the thing
should shatter if you strike it, not dent.

I still think that nature can produce pretty fancy shapes that would
seem to be man-made. How about cave pearls, for example. Have a look
at http://www.goodearthgraphics.com/virtcave/pearls/madperls.jpg.
I've got a couple of these and they're not particularly fragile.
They're certainly not brittle. They are really cool, though.

Cave pearls require a lot of free water but sun disks (pyrite suns)
don't and they look about as man-made as they can be. I was sure they
were cast, not grown naturally.

Incidentally, let me introduce an entrancing new time-wasting site,
http://20q.net, which will help explain why I'm running so far
behind on Usenet. I actually got behind when I added the StumbleUpon
extension to Firefox and this site added to my woes. I even went to
http://www.20q.com and bought a couple of the little hand-held
version for our god-kids (and one for myself, naturally).

Mary "try 'diagonal cutters (dykes)' at 20q.net"

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer