2.8 billion year old metal spheres. What or who produced them?
The “Klerksdorp mystery” originated from some publications published between the eighties and nineties about a series of small metallic spheres almost 3 billion years old. According to some, they are the bizarre result of natural processes, while others believe that the spheres are proof that intelligent life existed on Earth long before any hypothesis explored so far.
In 1982, an article by Jimson S. which appeared in Weekly World News reported the news of some metallic-looking spheres with a diameter varying from 1 to 2 centimeters, found in the early 1980s in the pyrophyllite quarries near the town of Ottosdal (Western Transvaal) in South Africa.
The spheres are named after the Klerksdorp museum where they were kept. They were brought to the attention of the general public by the museum curator himself, Rolfe Marx, who stated that they seemed to be the result of human activity, but that in reality they dated back to an era in which man did not exist.
The reason for this statement lies in the fact that one of the spheres had some parallel grooves along the equator for which, according to Marx and others, there is no scientific explanation that justifies a natural formation. Furthermore, the geological age of the deposit in which they were found dated back to approximately 2.8 billion years ago.
The spheres were found in a pyrophyllite quarry, a rather soft material also used as an electrical insulator, which originates from the metamorphic transformation of a sedimentary deposit. This would demonstrate that the formation of the material dates back to 2.8 billion years ago, a time considered appropriate for the sedimentation process.
The unusual characteristics are the basis of various theories about their origin, especially by supporters of the theories relating to the Ooparts, who consider them artifacts produced by a non-human civilization. Geologists who have studied these objects tend to believe that, despite their very regular shape, they are the product of natural phenomena. According to them, during the metamorphic process that transformed clay and volcanic ash into pyrophyllite, metamorphic nodules were formed, consisting of pyrite nodules, which then, due to exposure to air, transformed into goethite, inheriting its spherical shape.
Micheal Cremo, a scholar of Oopart and prehistoric culture, does not think so. He believes the spheres suggest that in a very remote past our planet hosted intelligent life, indigenous or of extraterrestrial origin.
In 1984, tickled by the news, Cremo contacted Rolfe Marx to obtain a detailed description of the spheres. Marx responded by pointing out the extremely hard surface of the spheres and describing the fibrous structure of their interior.
Marx writes:
“There is nothing scientific published about the spheres, but the facts are these: they were found in a quarry of pyrophyllite, a fairly soft mineral with a factor of only 3 Mohs [in the scale used to classify the hardness of minerals] and they were located in the sediment layer corresponding to 2.8 billion years ago.
The spheres have an internal fibrous structure with an extremely hard shell around it, so much so that even steel cannot scratch it”.
Steel is on the Mohs scale with a factor of 6.5 to 7.5, but spheres, according to Marx, are even harder.
In 2002, the Klerksdorp Museum published a letter from Dr. John Hund of Pietersburg, South Africa, explaining that one of the spheres had been analyzed by the California Space Institute. The letter stated that the researchers had concluded that “the surface of the sphere is so perfect that it has exceeded the limit of their measurement technology: less than a hundred thousandths of an inch from absolute perfection.”
According to geologist Paul V. Heinrich (https://ncse.ngo/mysterious-spheres-ottosdal-south-africa) those claims had not been verified and so the letter was later removed from the museum's site.
The Spheres of Moqui
Similar artifacts have been found in Utah. Known as Moqui Spheres, they date back about 2 million years. Legend has it that the deceased ancestors of the Hopi Native Americans used the spheres as marbles to play games and to leave messages for their living relatives. The Moqui Spheres have an outer shell of iron oxide and an interior of sand.
Several scholars have attempted to offer a natural explanation for the origin of the mysterious spheres. Dr. Karrie Weber, of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, proposed that some microbes may have helped form the spheres, with the byproduct of their life processes.
Geologist Dave Crosby originally hypothesized that a meteorite impact produced spheres of molten metal, which then condensed into grains of sand. After closer examination Crosby ruled out the impact hypothesis, developing a new theory: rainwater would have dissolved iron and other minerals, transporting them into underground aquifers. During the flow, the ions would have deposited around the grains of sand forming the characteristic spheres.
Despite their efforts, Cromo and the other Oopart scholars remain convinced that the artificial explanation for the origin of the spheres is the simplest and, clearly, the most likely. The invitation that these alternative researchers address to "conventional" scientists is to be bolder, and to open up to clues that seem to contradict dominant opinions.
