There is a phenomenon in the human brain called Pareidolia. This particular event is what causes us to see shapes in the clouds, faces on trees, and the Virgin Mary on toast. What’s that got to do with grooved spheres you ask? Well, the long and short of it is, Pareidolia is a fancy way of saying, we see what we want to see, and the people hyping the Grooved Spheres want to see what isn’t there.

Those who I would not describe as experts want these stones to be something otherworldly, something strange, and inexplicable. The problem is that experts have explained them, and they are rather worldly, but still cool.

The major claims about the Spheres is that they are perfectly spherical [1], grooved [1], made of metal [1], are harder than steel [2], rotate on their axis [2], sing the theme from Star Trek, and are rather boss DJ’s…Ok I made the last two up, just in case you can’t tell.

The glaring problem with most of these claims is, as usual, the lack of evidence to back them up. Not to mention there only seems to be a few ‘sources’ that just get repeated over and over again, without being fact-checked. One of which is the ever creative Weekly World News [2].

When you ask actual Geologists about these ‘puzzling’ Spheres, you get some very un-puzzling answers.

These were pretty much debunked in 1996 [3] by Paul V. Heinrich, a research associate at the University of Louisiana. He did some extensive research into the Spheres, analyzing their structures, and even cutting a few in half.  He found the Spheres to be completely natural. Lets looks at what he found.

Lets start with what the Spheres are actually made of; they consist either of hematite (Fe₂O₃), or wollastonite (CaSiO₃) mixed with minor amounts of hematite and goethite (FeOOH) [2]. The Spheres found in unaltered pyrophyllite(Al₂Si₄O₁₀(OH)₂₎ consist of pyrite (FeS₂) [2].

Geologists agree that these little Spheres are actually concretions formed in either volcanic sediments, ash, or both [2]. What causes the groves, simply put, is the formation process itself. The material the concretion forms in is softer than the concretion, and so when the softer material erodes away, all that’s left is the imprint it made.

For example, think of making a sand-mold candle. If you’ve never done this before let me explain. To make a sand candle the first thing you do is find some wet sand, like you would on the beach, or in a kid’s sand box. Then you press a shape into the sand, which is why it needs to be wet so it will hold it’s form. Next you pour melted wax into the mold you formed in the sand, add a wick, and let the wax harden. After the wax is all hard, you scoop it out of the sand, brush off the excess, and depending on your artistic ability, you have a lovely molded candle!

Let me tie this together for you, what you just did with the candle is similar to what happens when concretions form. When you poured the wax into the mold, the wet sand was the more stable, harder structure. Once the wax hardened, the reverse was true. But because the wax was hardening inside the sand, the sand left an imprint of itself on the wax. You’ll notice on your lovely new candle that on top of the shape you intentionally made, there are lots of little  bits of sand stuck in the wax. When you brush those off they will leave behind cavities in the wax. This is how the groves in the stones formed.

It really is that simple, and that cool. The Grooved Spheres are quite natural, but the formation process it takes to form them is very interesting and the end product is obviously very cool to look at.