What would you guess this object is? An ancient bead? A ball for some kind of game? Maybe a kitchen tool, like a rolling pin? None of the above, and it's not even manmade. This is a Klerksdorp Sphere, found inside a three billion-year-old rock formation in South Africa. It does look strangely round, and the grooves around the middle seem like deliberate decoration. But this is how they are found. Could they have been left by aliens, or maybe some long-forgotten sentient civilization that died out long before mankind arose? Some people believe that, and that they even have mystical powers. One in a museum is said to have rotated on its own, inside a glass display case.
However, there is a perfectly reasonable explanation, although the above link doesn't make it easy to visualize. Neither does Wikipedia. The best I can make of it is that they were formed by water seeping into metamorphic rock, which carved a round opening before the minerals dissolved in it crystallized into a solid sphere. The grooves around it were caused by rock layering over time. If you understand the process as described at either source, maybe you can explain it better. But it wasn't aliens. -via Strange Company
(Image credit: Robert Huggett)
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I know my explanation was weak because the sources had a lot of geologic jargon.
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That explanation is weak at best. In the same thought channel that always assigns a reference to religion when they are completely stumped.
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