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| A Glass Bead Sparks A Global Qu est in 'Fireball of Tutankhamun', Jan. 14 |
| Posted
on Monday, December 11, 2006 - 09:50 AM |
Follow explorers through the Great Sand Sea of the Sahara Desert as they work to solve the puzzling origin and creation of unique yellow-green natural glass beads when Fireball of Tutankhamun premieres on Discovery Channel - and on Discovery HD - Sun., Jan. 14 at 9 p.m. ET/10 p.m. PT.
Taken from the new special Fireball of Tutankhamun premiering january 14th on Discovery Channel and Discovery HD.
The mystery starts with the discovery that one of the unusual beads had been used in Tutankhamun's necklace and the revelation of that bead's mysterious origin points to an unsuspected and dramatic new cosmic threat.
Scattered in the sands of the Sahara Desert are chunks of glass so old that they predate the ancient Egyptians, but it was a discovery in 1996 in Cairo's Egyptian Museum that sparked the quest to solve the mystery of its origins. Italian mineralogist Vincenzo de Michele spotted an unusual yellow-green gem in the middle of one of Tutankhamun's necklaces that, when tested, was found to be identical to the ancient desert glass. Further tests on the glass revealed it was formed at a temperature that could only be created by one known thing: a meteorite impact - and yet there were no signs of an crater. Even crater expert Farouk El-Baz, director of Remote Sensing at Boston University, looking at pictures taken from space could see nothing in the spot where the glass is found. How could this glass be formed without a meteor strike? To solve the scientific enigma, Egyptian geologist Aly Barakat, Austrian astrochemist Christian Koeberl and American impact physicist Mark Boslough embark on an international mission to discover the origin of this glass.
A critical clue came from the forests of Siberia. In 1908, a massive explosion flattened 80 million trees in Tunguska. Although there was no sign of a meteorite impact, scientists now assume an extraterrestrial object must have exploded above Tunguska. Could a similar aerial burst have produced enough heat to turn the sand to glass in the Egyptian desert?
In 1994, the Hubble telescope recorded the largest incandescent fireball ever witnessed rising over Jupiter's horizon when the Shoemaker-Levy comet collided with planet. A computer simulation revealed that a meteorite of that magnitude could indeed generate a blistering fireball and create surface temperatures of 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit, leaving behind a field of glass. According to experts, events similar to Tunguska could happen as frequently as every 100 years and even a small airburst would be as devastating as many Hiroshima bombs - over a densely populated area the casualties could number in the millions.
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