Tut's gem hints at space impact (older than the earliest Egyptians)

[seriousstan]

In 1996 in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Italian mineralogist Vincenzo de Michele spotted an unusual yellow-green gem in the middle of one of Tutankhamun's necklaces.
The jewel was tested and found to be glass, but intriguingly it is older than the earliest Egyptian civilisation.

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An Austrian astrochemist Christian Koeberl had established that the glass had been formed at a temperature so hot that there could be only one known cause: a meteorite impacting with Earth. And yet there were no signs of an impact crater, even in satellite images.

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Although there was no sign of a meteorite impact, scientists now think an extraterrestrial object of some kind must have exploded above Tunguska. Wasson wondered if a similar aerial burst could have produced enough heat to turn the ground to glass in the Egyptian desert.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5196362.stm

[arcane1]

1. interesting... isn't the benben stone a meteorite as well?

[seriousstan]

2. I hope so because the alternative theory is ....warning sexually explicit

Some scholars believe the conical Benben stone represented the very first mound of earth and marked the point where the first rays of sunlight fell from Re. The conical shape marked the Pharoah’s way to heaven by ascending the rays of the sun.

Others believe the stone was actually an iron-rich meteorite and represented the seed of the earlier god, Atum, who created the earth through masturbation: the word ‘benben’ means ‘to copulate’. The pyramid-shaped cap on an obelisk is called a Benbenet and, combined with the shaft, obelisks could represent Atum’s divine phallus and his seed.

P.S. The Pharaoh's stone isn't the actual meteorite but instead the sand/glass created by the heat produced when the meteorite blew up.

[arcane1]

3. ah ok, I guess that explains why they found other fragments

even things like this, identifying a rock, fascinate me when it pertains to Egypt :)

[tocqueville]

4. it's Lechatelierite, Libyan desert glass

is silica glass, amorphous SiO2. Lechatelierite forms due to very high temperature melting of quartz sand caused by a lightning strike. The result is an irregular, branching, often hollow tube of silica glass. These tubes are also called fulgurite by mineral collectors.

Lechatelierite also forms as the result of high pressure shock metamorphism during meteorite impacts known as tektites. Most tectites are blebs of impure glassy material, but tectites from the Sahara in Libya and Egypt are of pure silica and known as Libyan desert glass. A unique example of lechatelierite was formed by the first nuclear bomb explosion at Trinity Flats, White Sands, New Mexico. Samples from this event are called trinitite.

High pressure experiments have shown that pressures of 85 GPa are needed to produce lechatelierite in the quartz grains of the granite samples tested. <1>

Lechatelierite is a mineraloid as it does not have a crystal structure. Although not a true mineral, it is often classified in the quartz mineral group.

(wikipedia)

see even :
http://www.saharamet.com/desert/impactite/glass.html
http://www.skepticreport.com/mystics/atomicglass.htm

[hobbit709]

5. A large meteor crater was recently found

in the desert of Egypt through satellite imaging.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4779482.stm