Klerksdorp Sphere - Criticism of "out of Place" Claims

Criticism of "out of Place" Claims

The various claims that these objects are either "perfectly round" or perfect spheres is now known to be incorrect as directly observed by Heinrich. These specimens vary widely in shape, from noticeably flattened spheres to distinct disks. As illustrated by Heinrich, some of the Klerksdorp spheres are intergrown with each other, like a mass of soap bubbles. The observations and figure refute claims that these objects are either always spherical or isolated in their occurrence. As noted by Heinrich, even grooved spheres are not perfect spheres and some consist of intergrown spheres.

Similarly, the claims that these objects consist of metal, i.e. "...a nickel-steel alloy which does not occur naturally..." according to Jochmans are definitely false as discovered by Cairncross and Heinrich. The fact that many of the web pages that make this claim also incorrectly identify the pyrophyllite quarries, from which these objects came, as the "Wonderstone Silver Mine" is evidence that these authors have not verified the validity of, in this case, misinformation taken from other sources since these quarries are neither known as silver mines nor has silver ever been mined in them in the decades in which they have been in operation.

Heinrich notes that one of Michael Cremo's sources regarding the allegedly anomalous spheres was the Weekly World News, a satirical tabloid, which he described as "...a unreliable source of data for discussing the origins of the South African spheres described as used by Forbidden Archeology". As noted by Cairncross, it appears that the source of the Weekly World News article is an earlier article by Barritt. This article appeared in a 1982 issue of Scope magazine about these objects. Scope was a South African tabloid-style magazine that, like the Weekly World News, cannot be regarded as being a credible source.

Additionally, Roelf Marx, as quoted in Cairncross and Pope and Cairncross, former curator of the Klerksdorp Museum, reports that he was misquoted in regards to these objects. Marx was quoted in popular articles as saying that the objects rotated by themselves in vibration-free display cases in the Klerksdorp Museum. Instead, Roelf Marx stated that they rotated because of the numerous earth tremors generated by underground blasting in local gold mining. Similarly, inquiries of scientists, who studied these objects, have found that the claims that NASA found these objects to be either perfectly balanced, unnatural, or puzzling are unsubstantiated.

Published descriptions of these spheres being harder than steel are meaningless in terms of Mohs scale of mineral hardness. Depending on either the type of heat treatment, the type of steel alloy, and whether it is case-hardened or not, the hardness of steel can vary quite widely. Given that the type of steel is unspecified in these accounts, it is impossible to assign a specific hardness in terms of Mohs scale of mineral hardness from such an observation and determine whether it indicates them to be abnormally hard. There is no data published in any formal scientific paper which substantiates that any of these spheres are abnormally hard, as implied by anecdotal accounts by non-geologists of these objects being harder than steel.