Are these round stones a mystery of nature or traces of ancient civilizations? Mystery Balls on Champ Island

1930s, Costa Rica... A group of workers from the famous United Fruit Company are clearing dense thickets of tropical plants to start another banana plantation. And suddenly... Among wild jungle they stumble upon something unimaginable and incredible - huge stone balls of perfectly regular shape.

Multi-ton "balls"

The largest reached three meters in diameter and weighed about 16 tons. And the smallest were no larger than a children's ball, having only ten centimeters in diameter. The balls were located singly and in groups of three to fifty pieces, sometimes forming geometric shapes.

In 1967, an engineer and lover of history and archeology, working in Mexico in silver mines, told American scientists that he had found in the mines the same balls, but much more large sizes.

Some time later on Aqua Blanca plateau near the village of Guadalajara (Guatemala) at an altitude of 2000 m above sea level, an archaeological expedition found hundreds more stone balls.

Similar stone balls were also found near the city,

With the light hand of Erich von Daniken, the balls were dubbed "balls played by the gods."

Some geologists attributed their appearance to volcanic activity. A ball of ideal shape can form if the crystallization of volcanic magma occurs evenly in all directions.

According to the leading researcher of the Central Research Institute of Geology of Rare-Earth and Non-Ferrous Metals, Candidate of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences Elena Matveeva, the balls could come to the surface as a result of the so-called exopholization - weathering, operating in areas with large daily differences. In the same place, where the temperature is more stable, similar balls are found, but underground.

However, no matter how convincing these assumptions sound, there is still no final solution to the phenomenon. First of all, they are not able to explain the appearance of granite balls.

In addition, the ancient volcanoes could not correctly arrange in the form of figures a lot of balls, which, moreover, have traces of grinding! And although a significant part of such balls does seem to be of a purely natural origin, some specimens, for example, balls from Costa Rica, do not fit into the framework of this theory in any way, since they have obvious traces of alignment and polishing. More than 300 stone spheres have now been found in Costa Rica.

The first scientific study of the balls was undertaken by Doris Stone immediately after their discovery by the workers. United Fruit Company. The results of her research were published in 1943 in "American Antiquity", the leading academic journal for archeology in the United States.

Samuel Lothrop, a staff archaeologist at the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnography at Harvard University, conducted the main field work on the balls in 1948. The final report of his findings was published by the Museum in 1963.

It contains maps of the sites where the balls were found, detailed descriptions of pottery and metal objects found near the balls, and many photographs, measurement data and drawings of the balls, their relative positions and stratigraphic contexts.

Additional exploration of the balls by archaeologist Matthew Stirling has been reported in the pages national geographic in 1969.

In the 1980s, the orb sites were explored and described by Robert Drolet during his excavations.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Claude Baudez and his students at the University of Paris returned to the Lothrop excavations to undertake a more thorough analysis of the pottery and more accurate dating of the balls' stratigraphic contexts. This study was published in Spanish in 1993, with an English abstract appearing in 1996.

Also in the early 1990s, John Hopes did fieldwork around Golfito, documenting the easternmost known examples of these orbs. At the same time, Enrico Dala Lagoa, a student at the University of Kansas, completed his dissertation on balls.

The most thorough study of the balls after Lothrop, however, was the field work undertaken in 1990-1995 by the archaeologist Iphigenia Quintanilla under the auspices of National Museum Costa Rica.

She was able to unearth several orbs in their original state. As of 2001, most of the information she collected had not yet been published, although it was the subject of her graduate research at the University of Barcelona.

Unlike geologists, archaeologists recognize the artificial origin of the balls of Costa Rica.

Almost all balls are made from granodiorite, a hard lava rock, the outcrops of which are located in the foothills of the outskirts Talamanca. There are several examples made from coquina, a hard material similar to limestone, which is formed from shells and sand in coastal sediments. According to archaeologists, the balls were made by processing round boulders into a spherical shape in several stages. In the first stage, the boulders were subjected to alternately strong heating and cooling, as a result of which the upper part of the boulders peeled off like the leaves of an onion.

Granodiorite, from which they are made, as it was revealed, still retains traces of large changes in temperature. When they approached the shape of a sphere, they were further processed with stone tools from a material of the same hardness. At the final stage, the balls were placed on the base and polished to a shine.

Often in funds mass media there are claims that these balls have a perfect spherical shape with an accuracy of 2 millimeters. In reality, there are no grounds for such categorical statements.

The fact is that no one has ever measured the balls of Costa Rica with such a degree of accuracy. Lotrop wrote:

“To measure the circumference, we used two methods, neither of which is completely satisfactory. When large balls were buried deep in the ground, it might take several days to dig a trench around them. Therefore, we examined only the upper half and then measured two or three more diameters with a tape and a plumb bob. Measurements have shown that small specimens, usually 2 to 3 feet (0.6 to 0.9 meters) in diameter, have differences in diameter of 1 or 2 inches (2.5 to 5.1 centimeters).”

Lothrop also measured balls that were completely taken out of the ground by applying a piece of tape around five circles. He's writing:

“Obviously the big balls were of the highest quality, and they were so nearly perfect that measuring the diameters with a tape and a plumb bob showed no difference. Therefore, we measured the circles horizontally and, as far as possible, at a 45 degree angle to the four main points.

We usually didn't measure the vertical circumference as the big balls were too heavy to move. This procedure was not as easy as it sounds because several people had to hold the tape and all measurements had to be checked. Since the difference in diameters was too small to be detected by the eye even with a plumb bob, the diameters were calculated mathematically.”

Obviously, differences "too small to be detected by the eye" cannot be translated into a claim of accuracy "within 2 millimeters".

In fact, the surface of the balls is not completely smooth and has irregularities clearly exceeding 2 millimeters in height. In addition, significant damage to the surface is often noticeable on the balls. Therefore, it is impossible to determine how even they could be at the time of manufacture.

In fact, no one knows for sure what exactly these balls were made for.

By the time of the first Spanish conquests, balls were no longer being made, and they remained completely forgotten until they were rediscovered in the 1940s.

Some archaeologists believe that the balls were located in front of the houses of noble people as a symbol of their power or secret knowledge.

There is also an opinion that the very creation and movement of the balls was of great religious or social significance, no less than their final location.

As already mentioned, a significant part of the stone balls were located in certain groups. Some of these groups formed straight or winding lines, triangles and parallelograms. One group of four balls was determined to be aligned in a line oriented to magnetic north.

This led Ivar Zappa to speculate that they may have been placed by people familiar with the use of magnetic compasses or astronomical orientation.

However, the hypothesis of Ivar Zappa that the groups of stone balls were navigational devices pointing to Easter Island and Stonehenge seems to be unfounded.

This group of four balls occupies (according to Lothrop's measurements) only a few meters, which is obviously not enough to avoid planning errors over such long distances.

In addition, with the exception of balls located in Isla del Caso, most balloons are too far from the sea to be useful for ocean navigators.

There is also a version that the location of the stone balls resembles some celestial constellations. In accordance with this, some "researchers" often consider the balls of Costa Rica to be a kind of "planetarium", "observatory" or landmarks for spacecraft.

However, despite the attractiveness of such versions for the general public, it should be noted that the authors of such versions relied more on their imagination than on the results of field research.

Many of the balls, some of them in groups, were found at the top of the mounds. This has led to speculation that they may have been kept inside buildings built on top of the mounds, making them difficult to use for observation.

Moreover, by now all but a few groups have already been destroyed, so measurements made almost fifty years ago cannot be verified for accuracy.

Virtually all known balls have been moved from their original location in the course of agricultural work, destroying information about their archaeological contexts and possible groups.

Some of the balls were blown up and destroyed by local treasure hunters who believed the fables that the balls contained gold. Balls were rolled into ravines and gorges or even under water on the sea coast (as in Isla del Caso).

Nowadays, a significant part of the balls is used as an unpretentious decoration of lawns. It is possible that at least some of the balls were also once used for similar purposes.

(in Central America, balls could be placed in front of the house of noble people, thereby showing their status.)

So, for example, in located at pacific coast on the border with Guatemala, the center of Izapa, which existed a little later than the Olmecs, round balls of small size were found next to small stone pillars, which could well serve as supports for them.

The time of making the balls remains unknown.

Since there are currently no reliable methods for dating stone products, archaeologists are forced to rely only on stratigraphic studies and determine the date of manufacture of the balls from cultural remains found in the same deposits.

Such remains found during excavations are now dated by archaeologists in the range from 200 BC. until even 1500 AD. But even such a wide range cannot be considered final.

The fact is that stratigraphic analysis always leaves a lot of doubts about the dating of such artifacts. If only because if now the balls are moving from place to place, then nothing can exclude the possibility of such a movement of the balls at the very time that stratigraphy gives.

Therefore, the balls may well be much more ancient. Up to hundreds of thousands and millions of years (there are such hypotheses).

In particular, the version expressed by George Erickson and other researchers that the balls are more than 12 thousand years old is absolutely not excluded. With all the skepticism of archaeologists in relation to such a date, it is by no means without foundation.

In particular, John Hopes mentions balls in Isla del Caso that are underwater off the coast.

In the event that these balls were not moved there at a later time and were there initially, then they could be placed there only when the sea level was significantly lower than modern. And this gives them an age of at least 10 thousand years ...

The method of transporting balls (or blanks for them) also remains a mystery - from their locations to the places of the alleged origin of the material for their manufacture, tens of kilometers, a significant part of which falls on swamps and dense thickets of tropical forests ...

Archaeologist Doris Z. Stone ended the very first report on the exploration of Costa Rica spheres with the words: "We must attribute the perfect spheres of Costa Rica to incomprehensible megalithic mysteries." It's impossible not to agree with him on this...

And here we are talking about the so-called boulders of Moeraki, also known as "Watermelons of Elijah the Prophet" . Someone takes them for dinosaur eggs, someone - for the fruits of ancient marine plants, and some even suggest that these are the remains of a UFO.

The phenomenon is indeed strange. Imagine an almost ideally shaped stone or iron ball with a diameter of ten centimeters to three meters. If someone happens to meet such an “egg” broken, then inside he will find a cavity with crystalline formations along the inner surface.

The most famous collection of such eggs is located in a fishing village in New Zealand. The balls lie right on the beach. Moreover, all the stones have a different structure - some of them are impeccably smooth, others are like a tortoise shell, rough. Some are broken into pieces or with huge cracks.

But in order to admire the "watermelons of Elijah the prophet", it is not at all necessary to go to New Zealand. As mentioned above, they are found in China, in Israel. The same round stones are in Costa Rica, they are called "balls of the gods" there. These stones are considered man-made, they are called the "eighth wonder of the world" and they are under state protection. The largest "balls of the gods" in Costa Rica reach three meters in diameter and weigh about 16 tons. And the smallest - no more than a children's ball, have only ten centimeters in diameter. The balls are arranged singly and in groups of three to fifty pieces, sometimes forming geometric shapes.

We have similar formations in Russia (although Russian “eggs” are not considered man-made). For example, mysterious stone balls were discovered in the village of Boguchanka, in the north of the Irkutsk region. Locals are sure that this is a UFO, for the reason that the balls look like they are made of metal.

All stones have a different structure - some of them are perfectly smooth; others are like tortoiseshell, rough; some are broken into pieces or with huge cracks.

Or here are some more facts:

In 1969, in Germany, in the Eifel, during the explosion of a quarry, a perfectly round ball with a diameter of five meters and a weight of more than 100 tons rolled out of the slope.

In Kazakhstan, when developing a sand pit with great depth several large stone balls were excavated.

Balls of unique beauty were found along the sides of the Bukobai beam in the Sol-Iletsk district of the Orenburg region.

A few dozen more of these stones were located in a ravine five kilometers west of Zhirnovsk. Volgograd region. In 2002-2003, unfortunately, the most beautiful and expressive of them were destroyed by local oil bulldozers who laid several pipelines.

(Balls in the Volgograd region)

Full of balls (up to 2 meters in diameter) on the Arctic island of Champa in Franz Josef Land. However, there are also quite tiny ones.

In October 2007, at depths of 10-25 meters at the bottom of the Black Sea near Gelendzhik, the Kosmopoisk expedition found balls with a diameter of 0.7 to 1 meter. The smallest one was raised and examined on the shore.

Geologists and historians concluded that the ball was artificially carved, and a “side” and an X-shaped cut were visible on its surface. Why did they make such balls that are too large for the most gigantic powder cannons, and for the most big catapults, unknown.

Boguchanskie balls by no means claim to be the most mysterious. For more than 60 years, scientists have been puzzling over their more famous and massive counterparts - stone balls from Costa Rica ( Central America) and other parts of South America.

(Some Boguchan balls lie cut into slices.)

In the forties of the last century, they were discovered by workers cutting down thickets for banana plantations. There are also placers of small balls 10 centimeters in diameter, and giant "statues" of three meters each, which weigh under 20 tons. The material is different - from volcanic rock to granite.

Some balls at the time of discovery looked as if they had recently been brought to the place. Others were partially buried. Or barely sticking out of the ground. And several copies were found at a depth of two meters. Nobody dug deeper. Nevertheless, it seemed as if the balls were crawling out of the bowels.

Arctic Champa Island- one of the most unique places on Earth - all strewn with strange, perfectly round stones.

Without pretending to the ultimate truth, we can draw the following preliminary conclusion. Of course, the stones from Champa can be classified as spherical nodules. Concretions - from the Latin word concretio- accretion, thickening.

These are concretions, rounded mineral formations in sedimentary rocks. Mineral grains, rock fragments, shells, teeth and bones of fish, and plant remains can be centers of such constriction.

Most of them are formed in porous sedimentary rocks - sands and clays. By structure, concentric-layered are most often found - as if composed of several shells.

They usually consist of calcium carbonates, iron oxides and sulfides, calcium phosphates, gypsum, and manganese compounds.

The formation of nodules occurs something like this: outgrowths appear on the walls, which, growing towards each other, close and form various shapes. On Earth, nodules are spherical, disc-shaped, less often found in the form of an ellipse or irregular - fused.

There are as many opinions about the origin of stone balls as there are researchers. According to Viktor Boyarsky, from every geologist who has ever visited Champa, he heard his explanation of this phenomenon.

Victor Boyarsky does not rule out that there are still places where spherical stones are concentrated on Franz Josef Land: “I would not be surprised if new expeditions report something like this. In geological terms, this corner of the planet is capable of presenting a lot of the most unexpected surprises.

The proximity of mysterious civilizations and their places of worship like the pyramids naturally gives rise to supernatural hypotheses. Up to the fact that the balls were made by aliens either from outer space or from Atlantis. Or at least under their guidance.

After all, some actually find traces of processing. And inscriptions. And some of the balls from Costa Rica were originally lined with some kind of ornaments - it seems that their drawings corresponded to the location of the constellations.

However, now the finds have been rearranged, taken to private farmsteads and museums. And it is no longer possible to restore the previous picture.

The famous researcher of the anomalous and a great visionary, Erich von Däniken, generally dubbed the balls "balls played by the gods." Alluded to football. Although they are more suitable for playing golf or croquet.

Arctic Island Champ.

Champa Island is very popular with Arctic cruisers. And no wonder - there are objects on it, the origin of which is still not clear, and in the near future the solution to this riddle is not expected.

Location

Champa Island is one of the many islands of the Arctic archipelago of Franz Josef Land, which belongs to the most remote corners of Russia and is practically unexplored. The territory of this island is relatively small (only 375 sq. km), and is attractive not so much for its picturesque, untouched by civilization, arctic landscapes, as for the mysterious stone balls of rather impressive size and perfectly round shape, which make one get lost in numerous guesses about their origin on these uninhabited lands .


The island is littered with many strange round stones of various sizes - from exceeding human height to very small - the size of a ping-pong ball; part is a perfect cannonballs. Many stones due to exposure strong wind, water and low temperatures have lost their rounded shape, becoming like cobblestones.

Boulders of perfectly round shape, scattered all over the island, seem to grow out of the ground. Melting glaciers are exposing the surface of the island, washing out the rounded shapes.


The spherulites of Champa Island are stones of densely compressed sand. They are clearly not volcanic origin, and in some of them, scientists even found the teeth of ancient sharks.

The dimensions of many balls reach several meters (some of them are difficult to cover completely even for three people), although there are also perfectly round stone balls here, several centimeters in diameter.

Some balls seem to be buried in the ground, others just stand on the surface. Here you can also find many stones that look more like cobblestones - under the influence of wind, water and cold, they have lost their ideal roundness.

When you look at this amazing picture, you get the impression that some giants once played football here.



To date, there are several theories of the origin of these mysterious balls, although each of them is imperfect and generally does not answer the many questions associated with these mysterious objects of Champa Island.

According to one version, these balls are the result of washing with water. ordinary stones to such a perfectly rounded shape.

But if with stones of small sizes this version still sounds plausible, then in the case of three-meter balls it is somehow not very convincing.

Some even tend to believe that these balls are the result of the activities of an extraterrestrial civilization or the mythical civilization of the Hyperboreans. There is no official version, and everyone who has visited the island creates his own theory of the origin of these mysterious balls.

natural mystery

Franz Josef Land is not the only place on the planet where round stones are found. In South America and in Northern Europe they have long been the subject of close attention of geologists. In the forests of Costa Rica, when cutting down trees for banana plantations, stone balls came across here and there. And in the fall of 2003, Itogi correspondents found a huge plateau with spherical stones on Mangyshlak.

Balls are found both where people once lived or still live (as, for example, in Mexico), and where a person has never settled (the best example is Champa Island). This suggests that round stones can be of both natural and man-made origin - in some parts of the world, in ancient times, stones were specially processed for economic or architectural purposes. Some researchers even expressed the version that spherical stones are the work of space aliens, who have compiled some anagrams that have not yet been deciphered. But this is too exotic version ...

What do geologists think about this? Experts distinguish several types of stone balls: obsidian (dark volcanic glass), granite and sandstone. It is to the category of the latter, according to Sepp Friedhuber, that the amazing natural formations of Champa Island may belong:

- The geological department of the University of Hamburg is trying to figure out the phenomenon of round stones. The only thing that has been understood so far is that the stones “round up” very quickly. Their core is organic. I believe that they were born in sea water, formed in soft sediments from the remains of shells that once sunk and stuck in the sandy bottom. The shells consisted of quartzite, a sedimentary rock that, under the influence of heat or pressure, takes the form of a crystalline structure, and marcasite, a mineral that is a compound as a result of chemical reactions of iron and sulfur. And it was marcasite, as the analysis showed, that was the main connecting element in the balls. After Franz Josef Land rose from the depths of the sea, and the resulting glaciers began to melt, the sedimentary deposits were eroded, turning into these amazing stone forms as a result.

There is, for example, such an explanation: water cascades down from a melted glacier, forming peculiar pools in the ice, into which these stones fall. Due to the softness of the volcanic rock and constant friction under the influence of the flow of water, the stones acquire a round shape. And if in the case of small stones this version sounds logical, then, looking at the three-meter "balls", you begin to doubt it.

The well-known Russian polar explorer Viktor Boyarsky believes that the stones of Champa Island may be of organic origin, since they are composed of sandstone: “This soft rock, which can be destroyed. You, while on the island, will surely notice that some large stones have broken into two halves, and the largest stone is crumbling more and more every year.


There are as many opinions about the origin of stone balls as there are researchers. According to Viktor Boyarsky, from every geologist who has ever visited Champa, he heard his explanation of this phenomenon. Victor Boyarsky does not rule out that there are still places of concentration of spherical stones on Franz Josef Land: “I would not be surprised if new expeditions report something like this. In geological terms, this corner of the planet is capable of presenting a lot of the most unexpected surprises.

Why are the stone balls concentrated on the island of Champa, where did they come from…? There are many questions, but no answers have been found so far.

Introduction.

Many researchers of the Cosmos understood that there is some highly organized, most likely, intelligent substance in it, which, if it does not control natural processes, then regulates them so that they do not go beyond the permissible limits in their power, leading to the destruction of everything - to chaos. Such an anti-entropic principle is possessed by all of us known life on a carbon protein-ribonucleic basis. This life is able to regulate the processes occurring in the matter of the lithospheres, hydrospheres and atmospheres, maintaining them in a certain stable state, despite changing external factors. Much is known about such an organizing substance. Anyone can read the works of ecologists, biogeochemists and find there a lot of confirmation of my words.

But is the only form of highly organized matter a substance called "life" (carbon protein-nucleic life)? Fantasists have repeatedly tried to invent life on a silicon basis - a kind of living mountains and living stones on the surface of planets. However, the results of such attempts were not very convincing. Silicon is not suitable for creating living beings.

But there is an amazing natural phenomenon observed in various parts of the Earth. So far, no one can explain the reason for it. We are talking about the so-called Moeraki boulders, also known as "watermelons of Elijah the prophet." Someone takes them for dinosaur eggs, someone - for the fruits of ancient marine plants, and some even suggest that these are the remains of a UFO.

The phenomenon is indeed strange. Imagine an almost ideally shaped stone or iron ball with a diameter of ten centimeters to three meters. If someone happens to meet such an "egg" broken, then inside he can find a cavity with crystalline formations on the inner surface. And in other similar balls there are no cavities - they are all-stone.

The most famous collection of such balls is located in a fishing village in New Zealand. The balls lie right on the beach. Moreover, all the stones have a different structure - some of them are impeccably smooth, others are like a tortoise shell, rough. Some are broken into pieces or with huge cracks.

But in order to admire the "watermelons of Elijah the Prophet", it is not at all necessary to go to New Zealand. They are found in China, in Israel. The same round stones are in Costa Rica, they are called "balls of the gods" there. These stones are considered man-made, they are called the "eighth wonder of the world" and they are under state protection. The largest "balls of the gods" in Costa Rica reach 3 meters in diameter and weigh about 16 tons. And the smallest - no more than a children's ball, have only 10 centimeters in diameter. The balls are located singly and in groups of three to fifty pieces, sometimes collections of balls form geometric shapes.

There are similar formations in Russia (however, Russian "eggs" are not considered man-made). For example, mysterious stone balls were discovered in the village of Boguchanka, in the north of the Irkutsk region. Locals are sure that this is a UFO, for the reason that the balls look like they are made of metal.

Where did this "wonder of the world" come from? The assumption that the stone balls are dinosaur eggs does not stand up to scrutiny. Scientists reject this assumption for the reason that even the largest dinosaurs could not have such huge eggs. The birth of some stone balls is sometimes explained by the influence of glaciers, which allegedly carried fragments of rocks inside themselves, moved, dragged these fragments and gradually gave them a smooth shape. I saw a lot of glacial boulders, but I never came across spherical ones.

The most daring hypotheses claim that this is the creation of a cosmic mind, because there are not only stone, but also "iron balls", and some are hollow from the inside. Official science considered that this is a geological formation, and even gave it its name - geodan - a closed cavity in any sedimentary or volcanic rocks. Such geodans were formed, according to these scientists, from clots of liquid magma ejected from the vent of a volcano and, having cooled down, turned into a stone ball. But all this is just speculation. The age of most of these formations is, according to researchers, at least 60 million years.

Stone ball.

Stone balls in Turysh are destroyed by the type of "falling husk". Note that the “husk” is the outer layer of the ball, consisting of a substance of a different composition than the core.

Stone ball with layered structure. Photo by Vasily Dyatlov and Andrey Zamahin.

Deposits of stone balls.

In the west of Kazakhstan, in the Caspian region, there is a little-studied area Turysh. Here for several square kilometers stretched a ridge of bizarre stone formations, of which there are hundreds. The vast majority of them are nearly perfectly spherical, ranging in size from two meters in diameter to the size of a cannonball. Hundreds of such mysterious stone balls are scattered across the deaf Kazakh steppe. They appeared here about 8–9 million years ago.

It is human nature to see the manifestation of higher forces in everything unusual. Indeed, it is hard to believe that an unknown master did not have a hand in the creation of these unique stones. But who could they be? “Not people!” exclaim another lover of the unknown. However, the man did not really touch the balls. Or - hardly touched.

They try to explain the appearance of balls by the process of crystallization of rocks either in the thickness of volcanic ash or in the thickness of sand. When sand is impregnated with a solution that rises, for example, from the depths, crystallization centers appear in separate sections of the sand mass, growing like a snowball. By interacting with quartz, the solution contributes to the formation of large and small round stone balls. The crystallization process spreads in all directions evenly, which gives the formations a spherical shape. The question is why crystallization proceeds uniformly in all directions. This hypothesis does not answer this question.

Nodules on Easter Island.

Andrey Astafiev explains the emergence of Kazakhstani stone balls as follows: “Local balls were formed under the influence of tidal processes in the sea. In favor of the “marine” version is the fact that shell rock is found in their composition. Water covered the land in this area many millions of years ago, and in the Miocene (8–9 million years ago), when the Tethys Ocean retreated, large areas of land were exposed, and bizarre stone formations. Over millions of years, the wind has done its work, giving the stones the correct rounded shape. Powerful wind currents have so cut the surface of the balls that today it is dotted with cracks.

The weak point in this hypothesis is the assumption that the wind gave the stones a rounded shape. I watched rocks in the Gobi Desert, long time exposed to wind erosion. No roundness, and even more so balls, did not work out. And from erosion, the balls simply begin to collapse, which we see on some of them. In this case, the rocks are destroyed spontaneously in the form of a “falling husk”, that is, the outer layers of the stone formation are gradually separated, like the husk of an onion, and as a result only a hard spherical core remains. Some large concretions are split as if they were carefully sawn in two by someone, and the cut always faces south. They look like real locators or satellite dishes! The balls split in two look like a sectional model of the Earth.

Ancient legends connect the appearance of stone balls with the love of the gods for the game of “ball”. The gods amused themselves by tossing these stone balls. In those places where they competed, there were placers of these ancient “sports equipment”. Most a prime example in this regard, Costa Rica. It is clearly seen from the air that with the help of stone balls, the ancient inhabitants of this country laid out gigantic geometric figures for one purpose they knew. Why this was done is a mystery. How, in fact, is a mystery and how it was possible to move heavy stones over long distances. The Kazakh balls lie, in all likelihood, in the same place where they once emerged from under the water, and they do not form regular figures.

The stone ball has a clearly layered structure, which is probably related to its formation. These layers may be the result of successive stages of crystallization of the substance from the melt.

The age of this ball is determined at 180 million years. Two layers are clearly distinguished here: a thick top and a thin bottom. The cavity could have formed in place of the fallen nucleus. Or maybe the cavity was originally inside the ball?

Huge stone balls have recently been found near Volgograd. Many considered them to be fossilized dinosaur eggs, many researchers were baffled by these balls. These balls were discovered by Nikolay Pekhterev, a shepherd from the village of Mokraya Olkhovka. Going down into the ravine, Nikolai saw that at its very bottom from the side of the mountain lay strange spherical stones - 12 balls a little over a meter high neatly sticking out of the clay, washed out by streams of water, in a suspiciously correct order. The distance between them was about three meters. Nikolai tried to pick off one piece, but nothing happened. The shepherd told about what he saw in the village, and in the morning the whole Wet Olkhovka was drawn to look at the miracle. The local tractor driver even took a sledgehammer with him: after several blows, one of the balls was split in half. To the astonishment of those gathered, the stone formations turned out to be hollow: a dark, petrified mass lay in the cavity. The discovery was reported to the Kotovsky district administration. The deputy head of the administration, Irina Mironova, went to the place to make sure that another anomaly had appeared. After thinking, the inhabitants came to the conclusion - in front of them is either a masonry of ancient dinosaurs, or something from the unknown, cosmic.

Balls found in a ravine near Volgograd.

A hollow ball found in a ravine near Volgograd.

Ufologist Vasily Krutskevich explained the formation of balls as follows: stone balls are special geological formations made of sand, called concretions. They form in sedimentary rocks seabed as a result of the crystallization of minerals around the so-called central grain. Similar formations are found in places where the sea was millions of years ago, and after the geological restructuring of the Earth's surface, the water receded. If the rock where the nodule "grew" has the same permeability in all directions, then the nodule will have the shape of a ball. The sizes of such spheroids range from microscopic to three meters in diameter. These balls are considered a world-class attraction, and it never occurs to anyone to hammer them with a sledgehammer. But in Wet Olkhovka they simply did not know about concretions. But the fact that the stone balls are hollow inside makes the version of concretions very doubtful.

On the inside of the shell of the balls, there are fossilized veins all over the surface, like on the chaff of an ordinary chicken egg, so the version of dinosaur masonry has become the main one for many. However, only objective laboratory tests could give a definitive answer. Krutskevich handed over fragments of the shell and the substance found inside to the laboratory of two universities in Volgograd. Spectral analysis and research using various chemical reagents made it possible to reveal the composition of the petrified shells of the "eggs". At 70%, their shell consists of silicon dioxide, and 0.2% of iron and magnesium were also found in it, and laboratory tests could not determine the remaining almost 30%. The specialists of these laboratories stated that the substance was of unknown origin. The insides of the “eggs” were unambiguously identified as baked organics.

Stone balls in the Volgograd steppe.

The researchers were quite puzzled. In favor of the version of the eggs speaks the shell with signs indicating that it is a shell, and the remains of organic matter inside. It seems that the organic matter was subjected to intense heat, and the giant dinosaur embryos died. Maybe there was some kind of fault here and magma suddenly “spit” out of it? Geologists could answer this question if they were interested in the find, but, unfortunately, they were not very interested.

Dinosaur eggs.

However, all experts who deal with ancient lizards agree that the balls are too large for dinosaur eggs. A six-year-old boy from Wet Olkhovka easily fit into a broken egg. What kind of animal must have been to lay such eggs? After all, so far the largest known to science dinosaur egg, was found in China, its diameter is 46 cm. It was the size of a large melon, but not a meter in size. In addition, sometimes fossilized shells fall into the shells of stone balls. It is hard to imagine that the shells of dinosaur eggs contained such clear imprints of shells of marine mollusks.

I happened to see real fossilized dinosaur eggs in the Gobi desert in Mongolia. They even preserved the drawing that was on the top of the shell. The size of these eggs is about 20–30 cm long and about 10–15 cm wide.

Fossilized dinosaur egg from the Gobi Desert (Mongolia). Photo by A.V. Galanina.

Fossilized dinosaur eggs from the Bayanzag canyon.

In principle, stone nodules can be confused with fossilized dinosaur eggs. But dinosaur eggs are not so round and so huge. In addition, where fossilized eggs are found, dinosaur bones are also found.

Dinosaur eggs found in China.

Fossilized dinosaur egg found in the foothills of the Pyrenees in southern France in 1859 by the priest and amateur geologist John Jacques Nouchet.

Dinosaur eggs had a very strong shell and were no different from bird eggs or other reptile eggs. Many dinosaurs themselves created nests in order to hatch their offspring. In the Gobi desert, dinosaur nests are shallow, mostly small holes made in the ground, or low round mounds with a dent in the middle. From all this it is clear that dinosaurs reproduced by laying eggs in nests and then hatching them. The females laid their eggs in the nests in a semicircle; such clutches were found everywhere.

Dinosaur eggs from China.

Stone balls are not the work of human hands.

Volgograd stone hollow balls are about a meter or more in diameter and consist of silicon and metal. Some clearly show traces of corrosion, which confirms that some kind of metal is included in their composition. In the cavities inside the balls was a mixture of fine sand with granular metal. It is known that hundreds of millions of years ago there was a sea in this area and underwater volcano. During the eruption, not only steam was ejected from the volcano, but also minerals insoluble in water. From the high temperature in the mouth of the volcano, they melted and combined into one, and after cooling they fell to the bottom. But this hypothesis does not explain why all objects have the same spherical shape and are in close proximity to each other. So maybe G.V. is right. Tarasenko, and are these stone balls really products of underground fireballs?

In the 40s of the twentieth century, in the tropical thickets of Costa Rica, workers cutting down dense thickets tropical jungle under banana plantations, unexpectedly stumbled upon giant stone sculptures of the correct spherical shape. The largest ones reached three meters in diameter and weighed about 16 tons. And the smallest ones were no larger than a children's ball, only 10 cm in diameter. The balls were located singly and in groups from three to fifty pieces, sometimes groups of stone balls formed geometric figures. Stone balls of Costa Rica consist of gabbro, limestone or sandstone.

In 1967, an engineer and amateur in history and archeology, who worked in Mexico in silver mines, reported that he had found similar balls in the mines, but much larger. Some time later, on the plateau of Aqua Blanca in Guatemala at an altitude of 2000 m above sea level. archaeologists have found hundreds more similar stone balls. Similar stone balls were found near the city of Aulaluco in Mexico, in Palma Sur on Costa Rica, in Los Alamos and in the state of New Mexico in the USA, on the coast of New Zealand, in Egypt, Romania, Germany, Brazil, Kashkadarya region. in Kazakhstan and Franz Josef Land in the Arctic Ocean.

Stone ball from Costa Rica. Here it is turned into an element of landscape architecture.

Stone balls from Costa Rica.

Some geologists attributed the appearance of stone balls to volcanic activity. But a ball of ideal round shape can be formed if liquid magma solidifies in weightlessness and its crystallization will occur evenly in all directions. According to the candidate of geological and mineralogical sciences Elena Matveeva, the balls could come to the surface from the sedimentary rocks as a result of the so-called exopholization - weathering in areas with large daily temperature drops. In the same place, where the temperature is more stable, similar balls are found, but underground. I must say that this explanation is also very doubtful.

Stone ball from Costa Rica.

Klerksdorp balls.

Most likely, ball lightning was involved in the formation of Klerksdorp balls, which also took place in an oxygen-free atmosphere billions of years ago. Only the scars encircling these bodies in the middle are embarrassing.

In addition, the ancient volcanoes could not correctly arrange the balls in the form of certain figures, moreover, some balls have obvious grinding marks on the surface! And although a significant part of such balls does seem to be of a purely natural origin, some specimens, for example, balls from Costa Rica, do not fit into the framework of this theory in any way, since they have obvious traces of alignment and polishing. More than 300 stone spheres have now been found in Costa Rica.

In my opinion, stone balls that arose naturally could have been polished. They could be used for aesthetic or ritual purposes in the ancient states of Mesoamerica. These balls could be brought to places of worship and placed in accordance with the legends or cosmogonic ideas of these peoples. They could be worshiped as messengers of the gods. For ritual or astronomical purposes, the balls were arranged in groups in the form of geometric figures corresponding to the constellations in the sky, or some other structures. But how were such heavy objects moved? There were no horses and oxen in Mesoamerica, and they did not use the wheel either. Most likely, the balls rolled on a specially arranged hard surface.

Extremely ancient metal spheres are dug up from time to time in South African mines near the town of Ottosdal in the Western Transval. The age of the rock layers from which these spheres are extracted is approximately 2.8 billion years. Archaeologists who have studied the finds do not doubt their artificial origin, but geologists do not agree with them.

Klerksdorp balls, according to geologists, are of natural origin. The results of petrographic and X-ray diffraction analysis of these objects showed that they consist of either hematite or wollastonite with a small amount of hematite impurities, and many extracted from unaltered pyrophyllite layers are formed by pyrite. These are natural pyrite concretions that have undergone varying degrees of natural weathering and oxidation. During the formation of these balls, there was no oxygen atmosphere on Earth. Making balls by people is absolutely out of the question.

It is believed that the stone balls were formed under the influence of the glaciers of the Great Glaciation. Moving, these glaciers dragged fragments of rocks in their thickness, turned them over and polished them, giving them a perfectly round shape. Absolutely round boulders are also found in the folds of the stone bed mountain rivers, where a fast current, rotating stones, allegedly turns them into spheres over time. But, in my opinion, so far this is also one of the unconvincing versions. The probability of the formation of balls during these processes is very small, and many stone balls are found.

When they discovered stone balls in Costa Rica, they considered them to be the undoubted work of human hands. Therefore, it was archaeologists who took up their study. The first scientific study of the balls of Costa Rica was undertaken by Doris Stone in 1943, when his publication was published in American Antiquity, the leading academic journal in archeology. Archaeologist Samuel Lothrop from Harvard University conducted a study of the balls in 1948. The final report on the results of his research was published by the Museum in 1963. It gives detailed descriptions of pottery and metal objects found near the balls, many photographs, drawings of balls, results their measurements, their relative positions and stratigraphic contexts. In the 1980s areas with balls were explored and described by Robert Drolet in the course of his excavations. In the late 1980s and early 1990s. Claude Baudez and his students at the University of Paris returned to the Lothrop site to undertake a more thorough analysis of the pottery and more accurate dating of the orb layers. This study was published in 1993. In the early 1990s. Enrico Dala Lagoa defended his thesis on the subject of stone balls. In 1990–1995 stone balls were studied by the archaeologist Iphigenia Quintanilla under the auspices of the National Museum of Costa Rica. She was able to unearth several orbs in their original (natural) state. The results of archaeological studies of stone balls are presented in the following publications:

Lothrop, Samuel K. Archeology of the Diquis Delta, Costa Rica. Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology, Vol. 51. Harvard University, Cambridge. 1963.

Stone, Doris Z. A Preliminary Investigation of the Flood Plain of the Rio Grande de Terraba, Costa Rica. American Antiquity 9(1):74–88. 1943.

Stone, Doris Z. Precolumbian Man Finds Costa Rica. Peabody Museum Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 1977.

Baudez, Claude F., Nathalie Borgnino, Sophie Laligant & Valerie Lauthelin Investigaciones Arqueologicas en el Delta del Diquis. Centro de Estudios Mexicanos y Centroamericanos, Mexico, D.F. 1993.

Lange, Frederick W. (ed.) Paths Through Central American Prehistory: Essays in Honor of Wolfgang Haberland. University of Colorado Press, Boulder. 1996.

However, when stone balls were discovered in many regions of the globe and in considerable quantities, the hypothesis of their artificial origin began to quickly lose supporters.

Stone balls from the land of Frans Josef.

Stone ball on the island of Champa Franz Josef Land.

Champa Island is one of the many islands of the Arctic archipelago of Franz Josef Land, which belongs to the most remote corners of Russia and is little studied. The territory of this island is relatively small (only 375 sq. km) and is attractive not so much for its picturesque, untouched by civilization, Arctic landscapes, as for the mysterious stone balls of rather impressive size and perfectly round shape. It is hard to imagine that someone here once carved these stone balls from stone blocks.

The central core of these balls has a lighter color: obviously, it has a different composition and density. It is clear that the stone balls should be studied not so much by archaeologists as by geologists in order to obtain information about the processes occurring inside our planet in order to improve the model of the internal structure of the Earth.

Such balls could be formed only under conditions of insignificant gravity or even under complete weightlessness, i.e. in conditions completely different from those in which they now find themselves.

The spherulites of Champa Island are stones of densely compressed and fused sand. They are clearly not of volcanic origin, and in some of them even the teeth of ancient sharks were found. The dimensions of many balls reach several meters (some of them are difficult to cover completely even for three people), although there are also perfectly round stone balls here, several centimeters in diameter. Some balls seem to be buried in the ground, others just stand on the surface. Here you can also find a lot of stones that look more like cobblestones. Perhaps, under the influence of wind, water and cold, they have lost their ideal original roundness.

There is a version that stone balls are the result of washing ordinary stones with water, that prolonged washing gave them such an ideal rounded shape. But if with stones of small sizes this version still sounds at least somewhat plausible, then in the case of three-meter balls it is, to put it mildly, not very convincing.

Some are inclined to consider these balls the result of the activities of an extraterrestrial civilization or the mythical civilization of the Hyperboreans. But that doesn't sound very convincing either. Why would a civilization that is far ahead of ours in its development, will hew rocks, making a stone ball out of them? To convince earthlings of their power and stupidity at the same time?

Stone balls on the island of Champa Franz Josef Land.

You might think that on the island of Champa there is a whole garden of stone balls, that the island is literally dotted with them. But it is not. Most of the stone balls are located along the coast, and not a single one is found in the center of the island. This gives rise to another mystery, to which there is no answer yet.

It is also surprising that among all the other Arctic islands, stone balls have not been found anywhere. Maybe it hasn't been found yet?

Why are the stone balls concentrated on Champa Island, where did they come from? There are many questions, but the answers to them have not been found so far.

Broken stone ball on the island of Champa.

I believe that the stone balls on the island of Champa were pulled apart for a long time by a glacier that flowed from the mountains to the coast, i.e. top down. It was he who “collected” the stone balls on the coast. Here, the balls, melting from the glacier, simply fell out of it. It is possible that some of the balls inside the breaking icebergs floated into the sea, and stone balls will also be found there at the bottom over time.

When the glacier dragged the stone balls, it often destroyed them, as can be inferred from this photograph. But in the photo above, we also see that one ball is split in half.

But that's why underground lightning, including ball lightning, raged on Champa Island? After all, there are no stone balls on other islands of this archipelago. Consequently, for the occurrence of stone balls, underground lightning alone is not enough. Some special conditions are needed for underground fireballs to give their energy to stone or sand and, when “dying,” they themselves could “generate” stone balls. In other words, stone balls are petrified underground fireballs.

Stone balls in the Kirov region.

Hunter Anatoly Fokin recently came across stone balls in a remote and deserted area in the Kirov region, it is not clear where they came from here, far from mountain structures. Balls with a diameter of one to one and a half meters are stacked in heaps, similar to the laying of fossilized eggs of prehistoric gigantosaurs. Not far from the find site is a dinosaur cemetery, where every year a river flood washes away their bones. But A. Fokin believes that these stones most likely have a natural geological origin and are not dinosaur eggs. According to his version, the glacier ran them around like that while dragging blocks from Scandinavia to Vyatka.

Geologists immediately went to the place of finding strange stones, measured, photographed and said with knowledge of the matter that in Europe there is something similar only in a single place - on Franz Josef Land. But the round ones there are much smaller. But if Franz Josef Land is solid bedrock, then the appearance of stone balls on the Vyatka plain has baffled scientists. And not everything is the same with the glacier, as A. Fokin believes: the Scandinavian glacier did not reach the Kirov region. I think that these stone balls could have sailed to Vyatka in the thickness of icebergs, which could well have broken off from the glacier on the Franz Josef Islands. At that time, on the site of the Russian Plain, there was a shallow sea, into which icebergs from the Arctic Ocean could well swim.

Internal structure of the Earth.

Estimated internal structure of the Earth.

To understand the nature of underground linear and ball lightning, one will have to turn to the model of the internal structure of the Earth. Passing from the crust to the mantle, seismic waves noticeably increase their speed: longitudinal - from 6.3 to 7.8 km/sec, and transverse - from 3.7 to 4.3 km/sec. This phenomenon is associated with a sharp increase in the density of matter at the boundary of the crust and mantle. During the transition of longitudinal seismic waves from the mantle to the core, their speed sharply decreases - from 13.6 to 8 km/sec. So far, it has not been possible to detect the passage of transverse seismic waves through the core, since the core dampens them. This is one of the many mysteries of the matter that makes up the earth's core.

The average density of the earth's crust is 2.7 grams/cm3; at the mantle boundary increases to 3.3 grams/cm3; inside the mantle increases to 6 grams/cm3, and is captured by several small jumps. At the border of the core, the density reaches 8 grams / cm3, and in central region nucleus, apparently, increases to 11 grams/cm3 and even more.

If we consider pressure as the weight of a column of overlying matter, then at a depth of 100 km from the surface it should be 20,000 atm, that is, 20 tons per square centimeter. At a depth of 600 km from the earth's surface, the pressure probably already reaches 200,000 atm. Such pressures are obtained in laboratories; therefore, one can assume how matter should behave at the base of the earth's crust and even under the crust - in the upper layers of the mantle. But at a depth of 3200 km, that is, approximately at half the earth's radius, the pressure should reach 1500 tons per square centimeter, and in the center of the Earth the pressure, apparently, exceeds 3 million atm., or 3000 tons per square centimeter.

How can an increase in pressure affect the properties of subsurface matter? At high pressures and normal temperatures, the density, strength and, at the same time, plasticity of many substances increase. Recently, pressures of 200,000 atm have been obtained at a temperature of about 4000 ° C. X-ray "transmission" of various substances under high pressure has shown that when a certain pressure is reached, a sudden change in their structure occurs. The atoms are rearranged into a new crystalline structure with a higher density and higher binding energy between the atoms. In the case of an increase in temperature, this rearrangement can occur at a lower pressure.

As the pressure increases, the distances between the atoms first decrease, and then the atoms themselves “deform” or, more precisely, their outer electron shells “deform”. At a certain pressure, there is a transition of electrons inside the atom from one level to another. The approach of electrons to the atomic nucleus leads to a sharp jump-like increase in the electrical conductivity of the substance, since in this case some of the electrons lose their connection with specific nuclei and turn into an “electron fog” that permeates the substance at high pressure and high temperature. Many chemical elements that do not conduct electric current under normal conditions acquire the properties of semiconductors at high pressure, and semiconductors can become conductors - i.e. acquire the properties of a metal. Calculations show that at pressures above 2,000,000 atm even hydrogen can be "metallized".

The substance of the earth's core is in a "metallized" state. The orbits of the outer electrons of the atoms are strongly "deformed", the nuclei of the atoms are brought together, and this explains the high density of the substance of the deep interiors. The substance of the planet's core is saturated with electron fog, consisting of free electrons. A decrease in external pressure must inevitably lead to the transition of the “metallized” state of matter to another one, to the one in which the mantle matter is located. This transition must be accompanied by the release of a significant amount of energy. Perhaps, one of the energy sources of the deep bowels of our planet lies in the spasmodic changes in the structure of matter at the boundary of the mantle and the core. Free electrons from the core must diffuse into the mantle, since the gravitational field of the planet is not enough to hold electrons with negligible mass.

As you go deeper into the Earth's interior, the temperature increases. However, this growth is not uniform. The distance at which the temperature rises by one degree, geologists called the geothermal step. In the Phlegraean Fields of Italy, the geothermal step in places is only 0.7 m. In other areas it is much higher. On average, for the continents, it is 33 m, and in some places it increases to 100 m or more. But everywhere the temperature rises with depth.

What is in the Earth's mantle - molten plastic magma, from which igneous rocks crystallize, or supersolid matter? Are the earth's interior heated to temperatures of thousands and tens of thousands of degrees, or are they bound by cold at a temperature close to absolute zero? This is one of the greatest mysteries of the Earth. There are supporters of both one and the other extreme points of view.

Academician O.Yu. Schmidt believed that the temperature increases with deepening into the bowels only in the outer zone of the planet. And at a depth of about 100 km from the surface, it reaches a maximum of 1500–2000°C, while deeper the temperature remains constant or even decreases. In this case, the cold of outer space can indeed reign in the superdense core of the Earth. So far, it has been possible to observe temperature changes when deepening into the ground on an insignificantly small segment of the earth's radius, within the length of the deepest borehole (about 13 km) on the Kola Peninsula. O.Yu. Schmidt considered the earth's crust to be stone, the mantle to be stone-metal, and the core to be metallic - an alloy of iron and nickel.

So far, one thing is clear: in the earth's crust, the temperature increases with increasing depth, and at some distance from the surface there are or from time to time centers of melting. The molten substance of the crust or mantle erupts to the surface through the vents of volcanoes. On the surface, the temperature of the liquid lava reaches 1000°C, while in the volcanic chamber the temperature of the magma is several hundred degrees higher.

How do the properties of substances change with a simultaneous increase in temperature and pressure? It turns out that with increasing pressure, the melting point of various substances first increases sharply, then this growth slows down, and after the pressure reaches a certain "critical value", the melting point suddenly begins to decrease. Crystalline substances, and hence the crystalline rocks of the earth's crust, become plastic with increasing temperature and pressure, and then acquire the property of fluidity. Upon reaching a certain temperature and pressure, the crystalline state of a substance becomes unstable and passes into an amorphous glassy state. In the vitreous state, as the pressure increases, the substance acquires the property of compressibility and greater plasticity and fluidity.

At a depth of several tens of kilometers from the surface in a zone of sufficiently high temperatures and pressures, sedimentary and igneous rocks turn into metamorphic ones, and in areas and zones where pressure decreases, they can melt. Such melting can give rise to individual magma chambers inside the earth's crust. At a greater depth - at the base of the earth's crust - the crystalline substance passes into a vitreous state, acquires greater plasticity. How does modern science imagine the origin of magma? A few decades ago, most scientists believed that the deep parts of the Earth were completely melted and only covered from above by a solid earth's crust several tens of kilometers thick.

However, studies have shown that there is no continuous liquid layer at depth. Our planet behaves like a solid body. Moreover, its average hardness exceeds that of steel. Hotspots of molten material appear only when the pressure in the hotspot decreases, or when the temperature increases without changing the pressure. Already at a depth of 40–50 km, the temperature of the substance in the bowels should exceed the melting point of many igneous rocks at normal pressure. However, in the bowels of the Earth, the substance is under pressure from the overlying strata, and this increases the melting point. Only if a deep fault is formed in the earth's crust, then near it the pressure drops sharply, while the superheated substance of the bowels melts and turns into magma. Dynamically, magma is always unstable and tends to move in the direction of lower pressure - that is, up. Over time, the magma chamber cools and, finally, solidifies again - dies. The correctness of this explanation of the formation of magmas is confirmed by the constant presence of igneous rocks in deep faults in the earth's crust and by the fact that periods of volcanic activity are replaced by periods of cessation of eruption, sometimes for hundreds and thousands of years.

In recent years, it has been established that the development of magmatic activity, along with pressure drop and radioactivity, is affected by the low thermal conductivity of sedimentary rocks. It is, on average, about 2–3 times less than the thermal conductivity of igneous rocks. This means that the cover of sedimentary rocks, almost completely enveloping the deeper zones of the earth's crust, is a reliable heat insulator. Underneath, heat builds up. It is assumed that in the absence of such a cover or its low thickness, magmas arise at great depths, and with a significant thickness of the sedimentary shell, at smaller ones. Some scientists believe that with the accumulation of large strata of sedimentary rocks, magma chambers approach the earth's surface and even pass from the mantle to the earth's crust.

There is another explanation for the phenomena of local heating of the Earth's interior. The material of the mantle can gradually lose gases. Degassing of the mantle leads to the formation of water in the bowels of the planet through the synthesis of water molecules from hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Scientists are of the opinion that this reaction has a chain character and occurs with an explosion and the release of a significant amount of heat.

The third assumption connects the appearance of magma chambers with the release of highly heated gases of deep origin. Rising from the Earth's mantle, gases partly process, partly melt solid masses on their way. This process seems to take place slowly and in several stages. First, droplets of the melt appear in the solid material, then it becomes more and more, a mixture of the melt and the solid material abundantly impregnated with it is obtained. The amount of melt increases, and eventually magma appears.

It would seem that everything is clear, but where do “highly heated gases” come from? Their source is the deep interior: the lower part of the mantle, maybe even the core of the planet. They are born in the process of transformation of the substance of the deep geospheres. Maybe they are the products of nuclear reactions occurring at unknown depths. Maybe they are born in some chemical reactions. Here, as before, we are faced with one of the many mysteries of the planet.

Geologists believe that the whole variety of magmas can be reduced to three types: acidic, basic and ultrabasic. The acidity of magma is determined by its silica content. There is a lot of it in acid magmas (more than 65%), when they cool down, granites, granodiorites and some other rocks are formed. In the main magmas, the silica content is from 40 to 55%, the most common basic rocks are basalts. Finally, ultramafic magma is characterized by a very low content of silica - no more than 40%. This magma cools to form peridotites, dunites, and other ultramafic rocks.

Large reservoirs of magma can form at a depth of 50-70 km, that is, directly under the earth's crust. But magma, apparently, can also originate at great depths, and also form closer to the earth's surface. In 1963, the magma chamber of the Avacha group of volcanoes occurred only at a depth of 3–4 km. The subcrustal substance here has penetrated almost to the very surface, and it can be "reached" by a borehole. The least "deep" granitic magma: probably, it is formed due to the melting of the lower horizons of the granitic shell of the earth's crust - at a depth of about 40 km or less. The fiery blood of the Earth - magma pulsates in the veins of the planet; appearing and disappearing in different places, she lives her unusually complex, in many ways more unsolved life. Its mysteries are closely intertwined with other mysteries of the bowels of the Earth - the bowels, of which it is a part and product.

Underground thunderstorms and underground plasmoids.

The original hypothesis “Formation of the dynamo effect and its role in the structure of the planet Earth” was developed by G.V. Tarasenko from Aktau University. The origin of concretions (stone balls), according to G.V. Tarasenko, is associated with electrical discharges in the earth's crust and mantle in zones of active tectonic faults. These discharges are similar to lightning discharges in the atmosphere, with lightning tens of kilometers long. At the end of linear lightning, their closest relatives, ball lightning, also appear. The bottom of the Atlantic Ocean near the mid-ocean ridges is strewn with iron-manganese nodules, which allows us to speak of their origin due to ball lightning in the earth's mantle. During the occurrence of ball lightning, which consists of plasma, the rocks of the geological formation containing it are transformed and melted. As a result, spherical melt layers build up in the ball lightning body and around. When this spherical molten formation cools, spherical, cylindrical, elliptical, almond-shaped and other nodules are formed.

Electric charges of opposite signs accumulate in the core and geospheres of the Earth. Electrons that are not bound to the nuclei of deformed atoms diffuse from the earth's core into the mantle, and from it into the earth's crust. The deficit of electrons in the Earth's core creates a positive electric charge in it due to an excess of protons, and an excess of electrons in the mantle and crust creates a negative electric charge in these spheres. This is how an earthly electric capacitor is created, which accumulates a huge amount of electrical energy. Periodically, this capacitor breaks through, and electric arcs appear in the bowels of the planet - underground lightning. Sometimes ball lightnings are formed at the ends of these lightnings - round plasmoids. The plasma in these plasmoids is held by a strong closed magnetic field. These spherical magnetic fields in tectonic faults filled with fluid and crushed (crushed) rock, which is attracted by the electromagnetic field, create stone balls.

Ball lightning in the earth's firmament form ball nodules, while the hot plasma of ball lightning is replaced by mineral formations, and they are conserved in reservoir layers. In spreading zones, globular concretions fly out of faults and, losing energy, are deposited on the ocean floor. From submarines in the depths of the ocean, spherical glows were repeatedly observed, which confirms the electrical phenomena in the oceans.

Underground thunderstorms were also recorded at the Kola super-deep well, where the inventors of the journalists considered them to be the groans and cries of sinners from the underworld. And on the coast of Ladoga in Karelia in 1996, the earth was, as it were, blown up from the inside, and an even, shallow trench was formed. The trees that used to grow in this place were uprooted and thrown aside, and the roots of many of them were charred and smoking. It turned out that the fire scorched them from below, i.e. from underground.

Volcanic lightning.

A hundred years ago, geophysicists would have easily explained the sounds from an ultra-deep well and the explosion in Karelia as the result of an underground thunderstorm. “Terrestrial electricity produces storms that destroy the internal structure of our planet in the same way that storms in the atmosphere disturb the air space,” Georges Daris wrote in 1903 in his book “Electricity in all its applications”.

The earth is electrified, and strong electric currents constantly run through it. If the air is dry and hot, or already so saturated with electricity that it cannot take in the excess of it given off by the earth, if deposits of chalk and siliceous soils are near places rich in metals, then the accumulation of electricity eventually leads to a discharge - quite so the same as it happens during an atmospheric thunderstorm. One can imagine what destruction an underground thunderstorm can lead to when it discharges over a space of several square kilometers through various deposits, crevices, depressions, etc. Such discharges are given off by shaking the soil at a distance of hundreds of kilometers. This hypothesis, based on irrefutable facts, was developed as early as 1885.

But some time passed, and Georges Dari's underground thunderstorm hypothesis was forgotten by scientists. Now geophysicists are trying to explain the flashes of light by the ignition of gas escaping from the depths. However, the flash of light during the most powerful Tien Shan earthquake in 1976 was visible hundreds of kilometers from the epicenter.

In the early 1970s, a professor at the Tomsk Polytechnic Institute, A.A. Vorobyov. Gathering a group of like-minded young employees, he began experiments in different parts of the country. Vorobyov and his colleagues expressed the idea that radio waves should be generated during an underground thunderstorm, and if you try to register them, they can become the same harbingers of earthquakes as radio waves in the atmosphere are harbingers of ordinary thunderstorms. The researchers really managed to fix the increase in the intensity of the underground radio background immediately before the earthquakes.

But attempts by A.A. Vorobyov to submit the results of this important work to the scientific journal - "Reports of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR" - encountered resistance from opponents from the Institute of Physics of the Earth of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Having smashed Vorobyov's idea to smithereens, they themselves conducted similar experiments, and after a couple of years, articles on similar topics began to appear regularly in the Reports, of course, without references to their predecessor.

Then A.A. Vorobyov and his collaborators tested another idea: ordinary lightning generates a lot of ozone, which means that before an underground earthquake, free ozone should come out of the ground. This idea was also confirmed by practical experiments. But, unfortunately, the early death of Professor A.A. Vorobyova actually put an end to his work.

Interesting experimental data were obtained at the Institute of Physics. Kurchatov under the direction of Leonid Urutskoev. The “Urutskoev effect” is an incomprehensible phenomenon of a plasma object similar to ball lightning, which appears during the electric explosion of wires in distilled water. The researchers encountered this phenomenon while simulating an underwater electrical explosion. It is possible that during tectonic movements in the layers of the earth's crust, electrical energy is accumulated, which forms similar electrical explosions.

Shortly before an earthquake, "weird changes" occur in the ground, causing strong electrical surges, says Tom Blayer, a satellite communications engineer and Quake Finder project contributor. “These emissions are huge, about 100,000 amperes in a magnitude 6.0 earthquake and about a million amperes in a magnitude 7.0. It's like lightning, only underground," Bleyer said. To measure these emissions, Blayer and his team spent millions of dollars placing magnetometers along fault lines in California, Peru, Taiwan and Greece. This equipment is sensitive enough to detect magnetic impulses from electric discharges at a distance of up to 16 kilometers. On a typical day at the San Andreas fault in California, you can detect up to 10 impulses per day. The rift is constantly moving, changing. Before an earthquake, the background level of static electricity discharges should rise sharply, according to Blair. He claims that this is what he saw shortly before the six earthquakes of magnitude 5.0 and 6.0, which he was able to observe. “The number of pulses goes up to 150 to 200 per day,” Bleyer said. He added that the ripple starts building up about 2 weeks before an earthquake and then abruptly returns to its original level just before the shift.

Conclusion.

The formation of stone balls by underground ball lightning is, at first glance, a very extravagant hypothesis. Plasmoids, which have practically no weight and freely float in the gravitational field of the Earth, and heavy stone balls in the thickness of the earth's crust seem in no way compatible with each other. The hypothesis is very strange, but only at first glance. Not so long ago, claims that the Earth is round also seemed ridiculous. Catholic Christians burned Giordano Bruno alive at the stake for claiming that the stars are distant suns.

However, if we take as a basis the hypothesis of a superdense state of the matter of the earth's core, measure the flow of electrons from the earth's interior to the surface, measure the potential difference on the "plates" of a natural earth capacitor, carefully listen to the sounds from the "underworld" and the sounds from the depths of the ocean (Quakers), then the hypothesis of the formation of stone balls by ball lightning in the earth's firmament will not seem so extravagant.

One thing is clear, stone balls are not the work of human hands and these are not the works of aliens. It is necessary to study their morphology, mineralogical and chemical composition, nature of host rocks, confinement to tectonic faults, volcanoes, to determine the absolute age, residual magnetization. I hope there will be young researchers who are not yet burdened with the weight of generally accepted theories, who are courageous enough to contradict their official leaders and opponents, who are ready not to succumb to the devastating reviews of reviewers in leading journals. I believe that there are still young scientists for whom the truth is more precious than the recognition of their contemporaries. I would like to wish such researchers success and recognition at least at the end of their lives, and if recognition is not at the end of their lives, then at least posthumously.

Based on materials A.V. Galanina. 2013.

Electronic media "Interesting world". 02.11.2013

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Not a single scientist in the world has yet been able to give an intelligible, scientifically substantiated answer regarding the appearance of a huge number of "balls" on the island.

Uninhabited miracle island

The island was named after the leader of one of the Arctic expeditions, William Champ. It was he who organized the search for the missing American businessman Ziegler in polar waters. In 1904, the expedition landed on this island.

The island is rocky with very steep slopes. On the territory of Champa there are several rocky peaks, from which glaciers converge to the coast. But there are glaciers not throughout the island - they are not in the southwestern part. According to the records of various expeditions, the island has very tasty spring water. Almost in the middle of the island there is a flat plateau from which you can see the most beautiful horizons and landscapes.

There are two ways to get to Champ Island: either as part of scientific expeditions, which continue to this day, or as part of tourist trips on real icebreakers, which are organized annually and fall at the end of June - beginning of August.

"Entertainment Balls of the Gods"

Any expedition to Champ Island is carried out due to the presence on its territory of huge balls (spheres) of inexplicable origin, turning into an exciting one. These stone "inhabitants" have become a kind of calling card islands. It is because of these spherulites (as these stone balls are scientifically designated) that numerous tourists are sent here. The origin of these objects has not yet been clarified.

So, Champ Island is dotted with numerous strange round stones of various diameters - from sizes not exceeding ping-pong balls to gigantic diameters (more than three meters). The largest number of stones is observed along the coast, and are practically not found towards the center of the island.

Surprisingly, the stones have an absolutely perfect spherical shape and are clearly not of volcanic origin (comprising densely compressed sand). The balls either simply lie on the surface of the earth, or are slightly dug into it. Spherulites - this is the name given to these stones - have a core of organic origin (for example, the remains of a mollusk or shark teeth), around which a spherical layering of sandstone occurred.

The question "where did spherulites come from?" remains open to the world community to this day. There are a lot of theories of the origin of these round stones - from the washing of stones by waves and ending with the activity of extraterrestrial civilizations.

Each geologist who enters the island puts forward his own theory regarding the origin of the balls, but none of them has been scientifically proven or substantiated, although individually they provide answers to many questions. The similarities of all theories are noted only in one thing - people have nothing to do with it. And one writer from Switzerland, Erich F. Däniken, generally stated that these were balls that the gods themselves played with.

However, with the help of one Arctic theory, you can get the most answers to questions. According to it, several thousand years ago, the current Arctic had a completely different climate, and on its territory there was a special civilization with a particularly high level of development. The remains of this civilization allegedly rest on the bottom of the "icy" ocean, and the balls are the remains of their engineering structures or their consumables. The purpose of these hypothetical structures has not yet been clarified.

No matter how perfect human science is, it was not possible to unequivocally find out who “scattered” the stone spherical blocks around Champ Island. There is a lot of information about spherulites, but it is not enough to give an unambiguous answer to a single question. Champ Island may forever remain a mystery not only to ordinary inhabitants of the planet, but also to the scientific community.

In 2001 scientific world officially recognized that in the Russian Arctic, on the islands of the Franz Josef Land archipelago stone spheres of unknown origin discovered. However, absolutely nothing followed the recognition of the fact. Scientists have not yet offered a single intelligible explanation for this phenomenon. But for supporters of the theory of the existence of an Arctic civilization in the distant past, the presence of man-made structures beyond the Arctic Circle is a completely understandable phenomenon.

Arctic- one of the mysterious and little-studied areas of the globe. Giant expanses above the Arctic Circle, due to their remoteness and specific climate, have not been explored so far. It's hard to believe, but in the 21st century, world science does not know even half of what is in the giant polar territories. Maybe ice dragons live there, or a parallel civilization has developed?.. Maybe anything, because there is almost no information. There are only geographical maps, climate data, and dry information from Russian and Soviet polar expeditions.

One of the most mysterious places The Arctic is the northern corner of Russia - the Franz Josef Land archipelago. The archipelago is part of the Primorsky district of the Arkhangelsk region. It consists of 192 islands with a total area of ​​over 16,000 km². Located in the central part of the archipelago Champ Island. This island is not much different from any piece of land in the Arctic Ocean. Typical semi-desert arctic landscapes, poor vegetation, rocky shores, strong winds and terrible frosts eight months a year. People don't live here. The island is visited only during navigation in the Northern sea ​​route- fishermen, researchers and forecasters. In recent years, tourists have also begun to appear. Of course, there are also no serious buildings on Champ Island.

And on this lifeless island, rare visitors began to discover huge stone balls of absolutely regular shape. People looked and could not believe their eyes. One does not need to be a doctor of science to understand that nature itself does not usually create such ideal forms.

It is enough to look at the sea pebbles, which the sea grinds every day for centuries. Of the millions of pebbles, absolutely round ones almost never come across. And here - at every step there are giant stone spheres of ideal shape.

The first thought that comes to mind is that these balls are the remains of some modern technical structure. However, no traces of technogenic impact were found on them. And the island itself, according to official science, has always been uninhabited. Mysterious stone balls are called spherulites.

Champ Island spherulites are stones of densely compressed sand. They are clearly not of volcanic origin, and in some of them, scientists have even found the teeth of ancient sharks. The sizes of many balls reach several meters. Some of them seem to be buried in the ground, others just lie on the surface.

Most of them are located along the coast, and not a single one is found in the center of the island, which gives rise to regular riddles without answers. The famous researcher of anomalous phenomena, the Swiss writer Erich von Däniken, generally dubbed such stone balls "balls played by the gods."

Unfortunately, due to the impact of strong wind, water and low temperatures, spherulites are gradually destroyed. But even when studying the destroyed spheres, it is clear that their shape in the past was ideal.

The diameter of the largest balls is 2 meters or more. And the smallest - up to several centimeters. Official science turned its attention to the mysterious stone spheres and began to study them only since 2001. And until that time, scientific expeditions diligently did not notice them.

According to independent researchers, a lot of spherulites were stolen. The largest ones were taken away by helicopters. The questions of where, how and why spherulites appeared on this island, and what is the true nature of their origin, the world scientific community will answer in this moment can not. On deserted island perfectly correct giant balls, obviously made artificially. What could it be?.. Traces of a disappeared civilization or a product of the “work” of a glacier that rolled stones into perfectly regular balls?..

There are many mysteries, but no clues.

The spherulites of Champ Island are another unsolved mystery that attracts researchers and curious travelers. The legendary Russian polar traveler, vice-president of the Association of Polar Explorers of Russia, Viktor Ilyich Boyarsky, does not exclude that there are still places of concentration of spherical stones on Franz Josef Land: “I would not be surprised if new expeditions report something like this. In geological terms, this corner of the planet is capable of presenting a lot of the most unexpected surprises.

Today, Champ Island, with its spherulites, has become one of the most exciting travel destinations in the Arctic. In order to preserve the unique cultural, historical and natural heritage of the Western sector of the Russian Arctic, the Franz Josef Land state nature reserve of federal significance was included in the territory of the Russian Arctic National Park in December 2010.

Existence stone structures, having a clearly artificial origin, is quite understandable from the point of view of the so-called Arctic theory. It says that many thousands of years ago in the territory of the present Arctic there was a completely different climate, and there was a highly developed civilization.

The ruins of the buildings of this civilization lie mainly at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. And on the current polar islands (which were once the peaks of the mountains), only a few engineering structures remained, the purpose of which is still unknown to us. Maybe the numerous stone balls were consumables of some technical system. And that's why they were stored in large quantities?.. One thing is clear: so far there is no more logical assumption about the origin of the "balls played by the Gods."

Franz Josef Land is not the only place on the planet where round stones are found. In South America and Northern Europe, they have long been the subject of close attention of geologists. In the forests of Costa Rica, when cutting down trees for banana plantations, stone balls came across here and there. And in the fall of 2003, Itogi correspondents found a huge plateau with spherical stones on Mangyshlak.