There are also a lot of versions of their origin. These are dinosaur eggs and products of giants and the result of volcanic activity. And what can you see in Kazakhstan?
Huge stone balls, resembling the eggs of a giant dinosaur, have been lying under the hot sun of Kazakhstan for more than one millennium. Of course, no animal will ever break through a stone shell and crawl out onto the hot sand from years of confinement.
So how did they come about?
When you look at this scattering of stone balls, one recalls Shahrazada's tale about Sinbad the Sailor's second voyage: “… suddenly the sun disappeared, and the air darkened, and the sun was blocked from me. And I thought that a cloud had found in the sun and, looking at what was happening, I saw a large bird with a huge body and wide wings, which flew through the air - and it covered the eye of the sun and barred it over the island. “And I was convinced,” Sinbad said, “that the dome that I saw is a rukhkh egg. And when this was so, the bird suddenly sank onto this dome and embraced it with its wings and stretched its legs on the ground behind it and fell asleep on it…”.
The Kazakhs have their own legend about these huge balls. According to her, these are enemies turned to stone, thanks to the prayers of local residents. Another legend says that these are the cannon balls for the cannon of the batyr Ersary.
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In London, at the Natural History Museum, an entire showcase in the Mineralogy Hall is dedicated to nodules.
The Valley of the Balls attracts travelers who flock to the peninsula to see with their own eyes the stone blocks of the correct rounded shape. The balls vary in size and color, but are predominantly composed of sedimentary rocks (sand and clay). Scientists call these balls "nodules". In the course of studying the question of their origin, it was revealed that, possibly, the balls were formed as a result of electrical discharges that appeared in the earth's crust in zones of active tectonic faults. The rock rotated, and around the grain the rock "grew", and stone balls appeared.
Scientists suggest who the nodules were formed in those distant times, when there were reservoirs in the place of the modern valley. The grain, or core, of the ball was formed from the remains of small organisms that lived in water bodies. This is confirmed by the fact that, examining the rock inside the ball, one can see the preserved ancient prints of insects, shells and fish. The ball was formed according to the principle of a snowball: a tiny core was overgrown with a thick layer of sand and clay. The size of the balls is not the same: there are small specimens, and there are those with a diameter equal to a meter or more.
The shape of the balls is gradually changing today. Under the influence of the winds, they are gradually destroyed, and the landscape becomes even more mysterious.
Now what does traditional science tell us about it:
Concretions are small round mineral bodies of various shapes. The formation of nodules occurs either as a result of diffusion constriction of chemicals to the seeds that activate this process with the formation of a colloidal protoconcretion in the marine sediment and its subsequent crystallization, or through the growth of mineral aggregates around the “seed” core. Organic residues, carbonaceous matter, or accumulations of minerals of a different composition can serve as such seeds that initiate the deposition of a particular mineral around itself, and collective crystallization occurs around the core. Primary, epigenetic and early diagenetic nodules are formed mainly by colloidal matter, which is subsequently transformed into mineral aggregates. Often, nodules gravitate towards certain lithological horizons, and in some places are so numerous,that merge together, forming sections of continuous nodule beds and interlayers with a length of hundreds of meters or more. The nodules formed at the later stages of lithogenesis at the stages of catagenesis and metagenesis, in particular by the metasomatic pathway, are characterized by the selectivity of substitution of material for nodules of rock areas with a certain structure (composition, density, porosity, etc.). Often inside the nodules are some organic remains (shells of ancient mollusks, etc.).characterized by the selectivity of substitution of material for nodules of rock areas with a certain structure (composition, density, porosity, etc.). Often inside the nodules are some organic remains (shells of ancient mollusks, etc.).characterized by the selectivity of substitution of material for nodules of rock areas with a certain structure (composition, density, porosity, etc.). Often inside the nodules are some organic remains (shells of ancient mollusks, etc.).
The center of nodule growth could be both individual shells of ancient mollusks or even the smallest particles or accumulations of organic matter, as well as entire areas of sedimentary rock with plant remains, colonial corals, bryozoans, accumulations of fusulin, etc. Thus, the most common type of sediments of the Late Paleozoic and Mesozoic, including the remains of cephalopods are essentially clayey strata, respectively, containing nodules, to some extent enriched in phosphorus. The presence of framboidal pyrite, which is common for nodules of sedimentary strata, suggests that the nodules, the central part of which is usually composed of a small accumulation of ammonoids or other fossil fauna, were formed under reducing conditions. The rapid formation of carbonate nodules can occur due to the decay of soft tissues,causing an increase in alkalinity, an increase in pH. It is precisely such accumulations of ammonites, places of decay of their soft tissues, that often serve as the center of contraction and deposition of nodule matter.
The formation of the phosphate material of phosphorite nodules occurs not through direct precipitation of phosphate from the bottom water, but as a result of the redistribution of phosphorus from the surrounding sediments during the processes of early diagenesis. Favorable conditions for the formation of nodular and spherical nodules are determined by: 1) the presence of local accumulations of fresh organic matter at the bottom of the sea; 2) rather high sedimentation rates of predominantly thin, clayey-silty oozes, which excluded the bottom oxidation of soft tissues, contributed to the creation of a reducing environment in the sediments; 3) the absence of intensive bioturbation, which prevents the preservation of soft tissues, which is most typical for the environment of the outer shelf - the upper part of the slope, moreover, the most favorable for the development of plankton and an increase in the number of ammonoids.
Sometimes concretions contain cavities inside themselves, the walls of which are encrusted with calcite, pyrite, quartz, chalcedony. Cavities and cracks are the result of a uniform reduction in volume of a drying out pore moisture-rich or semi-liquid source material and its crystallization, and sometimes - recrystallization with partial removal of matter or coarsening of aggregate grains. Such nodules, the internal cavity in which has a complex configuration of a system of radial fissures expanding towards the center, are commonly called septaria.
Large and gigantic (1-3 m in diameter, rarely up to ~ 5 m) spherical nodules in their internal structure, as a rule, are fractured septaria. These are marly, carbonate-clayey cryptocrystalline mineral bodies of dense constitution. Obviously, at the first stage of their formation, these were semiliquid or colloidal concretions syngenetic to marine sediments. For such nodules, the mechanism of their direct formation is most probable, starting with the formation of spherical gel clots and the subsequent fusion of nearby clots with the formation of nodules. Further growth of nodules occurs along the perimeter of the circle.
This linear-concentric growth distinguishes them from other mineral neoplasms. It is also likely that the high content of silica in some of these nodules is due to the silicification of nodules under the influence of alkaline groundwater.
Peculiar marly nodules-concretions of clay-carbonate composition of the "cranes" type are formed as a result of leaching of carbonates from the host rocks and their redeposition. Such concretions are found among clayey rocks, in loesses and loesslike loams. In sands and sandstones, dense concretions of spherical, flattened-spherical, disc-shaped and other rounded or flattened forms, from small to many meters, are common, confined to certain lithological horizons. They are formed due to the cementation of individual areas of unconsolidated rocks with mineral matter due to the redeposition of silica, carbonates, iron hydroxides, and sulfates by filtering pore solutions.
In general, any small particle of excellent composition or disturbing structural homogeneity can become the center and cause of the beginning of the process of collective crystallization. And lead to the formation of nodules in a homogeneous mass of sediment or rock. In the same way, as a speck of dust, which gets into a metastable supersaturated solution, initiates violent crystallization around itself; the process of nodule formation resembles the formation of pearls around a foreign particle trapped in a shell.
The shape of nodules in homogeneous sediments is determined by the symmetry of the influx (redistribution) of matter, i.e. diffusion. Since the characteristic symmetry of the diffusion process in a homogeneous medium corresponds to the symmetry of a sphere, the shape of the nodules is also spherical. In inhomogeneous sediments (rocks), the symmetry of diffusion is superimposed on the symmetry of the inhomogeneous medium, therefore, in layered rocks, nodules are disc-shaped and other flattened forms, and so on.
