King Tutankhamun, an ancient Egyptian pharaoh who died at a young age, has long been a thing of fascination for people of all ages and from all walks of life. Now geologists have a reason to be even more interested!
Recent studies carried out by an Italian mineralogist and an Egyptian geologist found that King Tut’s Pectoral (a part of his beautiful necklace), contains a piece of glass that is much older than the Egyptian civilization. This perplexed the scientists and they decided to look for an answer as to where this glass could have come from.
The hypothesis they came up with involves a meteor exploding in the atmosphere in a remote area of the Sahara Desert, (similar to the Tunguska Event in Siberia during 1908).
They based their hypothesis on observations made during World War II when the first atomic bomb was exploded above the desert floor in New Mexico. A thin layer of sand surrounding the area turned to glass.
Similar Posts on Geology News:
- Discovering Asteroid Impacts from Home
- “Mega-Earthquakes” Can Occur Anywhere
- Weekend Adventures - Capitola Fossils
- How Fossil Fuels Killed the Dinosaurs
- Bad Luck with the Blog
1 comment
Thursday, July 20, 2006 at 5:39 am
Julien
This kind of glass is also known as Desert Glass. Evidence was found in March that this was indeed from a meteoritic(sp?) origin. This particular example is simply stunning, though… :)