The Grooved Spheres aka the Klerksdorp spheres were found over the last few decades, by miners in South Africa. These spheres measure approximately 3 to 4 centimeters in maximum diameter, 2.5 centimeters in thickness and said to be made of metal ! Some are etched with three parallel grooves running around the equator. Two types of spheres have been found: one is composed of a solid bluish metal with flecks of white; the other is hollowed out and filled with a spongy white substance. The kicker is that the rock in which they were found is a Precambrian pyrophyllite deposit and dated to be 2.8 billion years old!
They have been cited by alternative researchers and reporters in books, popular articles, and many web pages, as inexplicable out of place artifacts that could only have been manufactured by intelligent beings (i.e. Ancient astronauts). Some sources say that NASA has found these objects either in perfectly balance, unnatural or totally puzzling. While other sources claim that these spheres, sometimes rotate itself, proving that it is different than any conventional spheres. However, Geologists who have studied these objects argue that the objects are not manufactured, but are rather the result of natural processes!
Through X-Ray diffraction analyses of specimens of these objects specialists found that they consist either of hematite or wollastonite, mixed with minor amounts of hematite and goethite. The color of the specimens ranged from dark reddish brown, red, to dusky red. All of the specimens of these objects, which were cut open, exhibited an extremely well-defined radial structure terminating on either the center or centers of a Klerksdorp sphere. Some of these objects exhibit well-defined and parallel latitudinal grooves or ridges. Even specimens consisting of intergrown flattened spheres exhibit such grooves.
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Pictures of similar calcareous concretions, which exhibit equatorial grooves, found within Schoharie County, New York.
A Geological explanation of their origin
Geologists agree that the Klerksdorp spheres originated as concretions, which formed in volcanic sediments, ash, or both, after they accumulated 3.0 billion years ago.
Geologists argue that the grooves exhibited by these concretions are natural in origin. They proposed that the grooves represent fine-grained laminations within which the concretions grew. The growth of the concretions within the plane of the finer-grained laminations was inhibited because of the lesser permeability and porosity of finer-grained sediments relative to the surrounding sediments. Faint internal lamina, which corresponds to exterior groove, can be seen in cut specimens. A similar process in coarser-grained sediments created the latitudinal ridges and grooves exhibited by innumerable iron oxide concretions found within the Navajo Sandstone of southern Utah called “Moqui Marbles”. Latitudinal grooves are also found on carbonate concretions found in Schoharie County, New York.
Very similar concretions have been found within strata, as old as 2.7 to 2.8 billion years, comprising part of the Hamersley Group of Australia. The Australian concretions and the Klerksdorp spheres are among the oldest known examples of concretions created by microbial activity during the digenesis of sediments.
Criticism of “out of place” claims
1. The claims that these objects consist of metal, i.e. “…a nickel-steel alloy which does not occur naturally…” are definitely false as discovered by most experts (i.e. Cairncross, Heinrich). The fact that many of the web pages make this claim also incorrectly identify the pyrophyllite quarries, from which these objects came, as the “Wonderstone Silver Mine” is evidence that these authors have not bothered to verify the validity of, in this case, misinformation taken from other sources since these quarries are neither known as silver mines nor has silver ever been mined in them in the decades in which they have been in operation.
2. The various claims that these objects are either “perfectly round” or perfect spheres are now known to be incorrect as directly observed by many experts.
3. These specimens vary widely in shape, from noticeably flattened spheres to distinct disks.
4. Some of the Klerksdorp spheres are intergrown with each other, like a mass of soap bubbles revealing its natural origin. The observations and figure refute claims that these objects are either always spherical or isolated in their occurrence.
5. Inquiries of scientists, who studied these objects, have found that the claims that NASA found these objects to be either perfectly balanced, unnatural, or puzzling are completely unsubstantiated.
6. Along with the internet, two trivial magazines once claimed that these objects are ‘out of place artifact’. However, most of these sources are not regarded as credible and the ‘out of place artifact’ claims are regarded as hoaxes by most scholars as there is not a single scientific research or document that proves these spheres are unnatural, merely perfect & self rotational.
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