250,000 Year old aluminium object found

So much disinformation.. Poster above has even switched the name of the institutes and compositions and made up compositions.

I speak Romanian.

This is the composition and this is the testing institute.

ICPMMN -institute, (Magurele) -town of institute.

Aluminiu-88%
cupru(copper) - 6,20%, siliciu-(silicon) 2,84%, zinc - 1,81%, plumb(lead) - 0,41%, staniu(Sn=tin)- 0,33%, zirconiu - 0,2%, cadmiu - 0,11%, nichel(nickel)- 0,0024%, cobalt - 0,0023%, bismut - 0,0003%, argint(silver)- 0,0002%, galiu(gallium) - urme(traces).

One Romanian institute said 250.000 years old.
One Swiss institute said 250.000 years old.
Nobody said any other age...no 400, no 80.000 nonsense. It's all disinformation, except 250.000 years old.

originally posted by: MaximRecoil
By looking at some more of the Romanian sites (with semi-coherent translating by Google), I found various claims of the alloy composition. In one case there were multiple alloy compositions listed on the same site, along the names of the labs that did the tests:

The National Institute of Physics and Nuclear Engineering, Department archaeometallurgy. The results were the following: aluminum - 80.5%, tin - 6.5%, copper - 6%, silicon - 4%, zinc - 2%, lead - 0.5% Antimony - 0.5%, in addition they were highlighted traces of silver, nickel, manganese and iron.

MMPG - ICPMMN - Baia Mare - AND RESEARCH CENTER FOR RADIOACTIVE METAL - Magurele - Bucharest - Analysis Bulletin no. 334 on A-1975-sample symbol CNST - Bucharest: Al - 74.17% Cu - 4.62% Zn - 1.81% Pb - 0.11% Sn - 0.33% Ni - 0 , 0024% Bi - 0.0003% Ag - 0.0002%, Co - 0.0023%, Cd - 0.11% Zr - 0.20%. Ga - traces and Si - now. Note: Due to lack of material, they could not dose other elements, although their presence was detected during analysis. Section chief, Dr. Ing. Niederkorn I. Chief collectively researchers. Ing. Neciu St., Researcher. Princ., M. Gradin.

RESEARCH CENTER FOR RADIOACTIVE METAL - Magurele Commune - Analysis Bulletin nr.380, sample NK-2, brought by Dr. Eng. John Niederkorn: Al - 92.74% Si - 2.84%, Cu - 6.2% Zn - 0.95% Pb - 0.41% Sn - 0.33% Ni - 0.002% Bi - 0.0003, Ag - 0.0002%, Co - 0.002% Cd - 0.055, Zr - 0.20%.

Link< br />

The object was sent to the Institute of Archaeology in Cluj-Napoca, to be examined. Dr. Niederkorn analyzed the composition of this artifact and concluded that it is a very complex metal alloy. 12 elements came together to form the "heel aluminum Aiud". It is, thus, composed of 89% aluminum, 6.2% copper, 2.84% silicon, 1.81% zinc, 0.41% lead, 0.33% tin, 0.2% zirconium, 0.11% cadmium, nickel 0.0024%, 0.0023% cobalt, 0.0003% bismuth and gallium traces. In addition, this strange object is covered with a thin layer of aluminum oxide which is at least 300-400 old years.

Link

So it's all over the place, depending on who is doing the testing, with aluminum percentage ranging from 74.17% to 92.74%, which is a big difference. The ones that go out to the ten-thousandths place would seem to be the most accurate, though three of them do that and they still differ drastically from each other. The only thing I see in common among all of them, aside from aluminum being the primary metal, is copper being the second-most prominent metal, ranging from 4.62% to 6.5%, depending on the test.

On this Wikipedia page - en.wikipedia.org... - there is a list of some aluminum alloys by composition, and most of them have a very low copper percentage, except for 2014, 2024, and 2219 (2000 series), all of which have copper percentages similar to the test results of this mystery object. Wikipedia says this about the 2000 series alloy:

2000 series are alloyed with copper, can be precipitation hardened to strengths comparable to steel. Formerly referred to as duralumin, they were once the most common aerospace alloys, but were susceptible to stress corrosion cracking and are increasingly replaced by 7000 series in new designs.

As for the object's age, it seems they are going by the thickness of the aluminum oxide layer on it, which is said to be over 1mm thick. Various Romanian sites mentioned that, for example:

A totally unusual was the existence of an abnormal layer of aluminum oxide on the entire surface of the object. It is known that this metal oxidizes very hard in depth, usually covering itself with a protective oxide surface layer that limits the oxidation phenomenon of mass penetration of metal. The most plausible explanation seems to be from this point of view, very old object ... But aluminum was discovered in the laboratory in 1825 by Oersted, and its production industrially started only in 1883 ... in a century it was virtually impossible to produce an oxide layer so thick.

Has been said on this occasion that some experts have estimated by evaluating the aluminum oxide layer thicker than a millimeter object discovered at Aiud could have fantastic age of 250,000 years!

Link< br />
So it seems to be a cast and/or machined piece of Duralumin, found 33 feet down alongside mastodon bones, with a 1mm+ thick layer of aluminum oxide, and in 43 years, no one has identified it, even though, based on its size, it would seem to belong to a large and conspicuous machine, and should be easy to identify, especially by the people native to the country in which it was found. It's very bizarre.

ETA: This is interesting:

Corrosion protection
Although the addition of copper improves strength, it also makes these alloys susceptible to corrosion. For sheet products, corrosion resistance can be greatly enhanced by metallurgical bonding of a high-purity aluminium surface layer. These sheets are referred to as alclad, and are commonly used by the aircraft industry.

en.wikipedia.org...

That could explain the varying alloy composition results (though it says it's for sheet products, so it may not apply here), because the surface layer would be a different alloy than the rest of it. I wonder if there could be intermetallic alloys between the surface layer and the core as well.

Also interesting is that that same article says that Duralumin's composition and heat treatment were a German wartime secret.

Clearly is properties were engineered from a specific use; 33ft deep in just 200 yrs sounds like a bit much.

a reply to: TheKestrel04


The depth an exploding "Ghost Rocket" part might penetrate Romanian earth is beyond me. However, those "Paper-Clip" boys were pretty good with metallurgy weren't they?

a reply to: Nickn3

How would it be subjected to electrical current when buried 33 feet deep in the ground?

originally posted by: IVANV
So much disinformation.. Poster above has even switched the name of the institutes and compositions and made up compositions.

That's a bald-faced lie. I switched nothing and I made up nothing. I copied and pasted excerpts from the sites I linked to; anyone can confirm that for themselves, including you.

Aluminum excavator bucket teeth are made, and are used in cases where there are volatile materials or gases present, because aluminum doesn't spark like steel does.

Here is a company that manufactures and sells them in aluminum (and various other metals and alloys).

originally posted by: Atsbhct

originally posted by: Atsbhct
a reply to: GreenGunther

It looks something like a link from a tanks tracks.

Scratch this theory.

Someone in the comments of the article stated they thought it looked like a tooth from an excavator bucket. I think that's more than believable.

TO me, it looks like a locking lever (pawl) in an escapement mechanism or part of a Gear and Pawl ratcheting assembly possibly used on a crane cable spool or something like that. I see there is what looks to be a very smooth bore that still has a polished finish on it and then there is a round blind hole on the flat portion that could have easily held the end of a release rod use to push the pawl out of the position so the gear it locks can spin freely. It doesn't look that old to me though it could be a UFO (unknown found object)

originally posted by: evc1shop
TO me, it looks like a locking lever (pawl) in an escapement mechanism or part of a Gear and Pawl ratcheting assembly possibly used on a crane cable spool or something like that. I see there is what looks to be a very smooth bore that still has a polished finish on it and then there is a round blind hole on the flat portion that could have easily held the end of a release rod use to push the pawl out of the position so the gear it locks can spin freely. It doesn't look that old to me though it could be a UFO (unknown found object)

That hole was drilled post-discovery, which is why it has zero corrosion in it. There is also an area on the front of it that was scraped to bare metal, post-discovery. Since those "ears", or "tabs", or whatever you want to call them, never had any holes originally (and one of them still doesn't), there would be no way to use it as a pawl, i.e., in order to use it as a pawl, it would need a pin through those "ears" to pivot on:



Also, a pawl is another thing which would, in all likelihood, be made of steel, especially one of that size, which would be for a pretty big ratchet mechanism. The ratchet gear would, in all likelihood, be steel too.

It has two original holes; a large one in the top, and a smaller one that is perpendicular to it, and also intersects the larger hole:

a reply to: AdmireTheDistance

This tooth is not 88% aluminium.

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edit on 23-10-2016 by FauxMulder because: (no reason given)

edit on 23-10-2016 by FauxMulder because: (no reason given)

Aluminized steel, from Wikipedia: The basic structure of aluminized steel is a thin aluminium oxide layer outside, then an intermetallic layer that is a mix of aluminium, silicon, and steel, and finally a steel core.[2]

a reply to: MaximRecoil

Thank you for clearing that up for me. I totally missed that the hole was drilled post-discovery and thanks for the nice pictorial and graphic. It really points out where my thinking went astray.

originally posted by: Tardacus
This is really interesting.

"Lab tests concluded it is an old UFO fragment given that the substances it comprises cannot be combined with technology available on Earth."

we still don`t possess the technology to combine those particular 13 types of metal.

BS

It's an example of the 2000 series of aluminum alloys.
That's not a date, by the way. Architectural aluminum uses the 6000 series.

Harte

originally posted by: Harte

originally posted by: Tardacus
This is really interesting.

"Lab tests concluded it is an old UFO fragment given that the substances it comprises cannot be combined with technology available on Earth."

we still don`t possess the technology to combine those particular 13 types of metal.

BS

It's an example of the 2000 series of aluminum alloys.
That's not a date, by the way. Architectural aluminum uses the 6000 series.

Harte

Well, like 2000 series (AKA: Duralumin), it is an aluminum-copper alloy, but none of the ingredients lists I've found for this mystery object mention magnesium. Do you know of any 2000-series alloy that doesn't have magnesium? Wikipedia says that magnesium is one of the main ingredients:

Alloying elements
In addition to aluminum, the main materials constituting duralumin are copper, manganese and magnesium.

en.wikipedia.org...

There is an overview of the 2000 series aluminum alloys here:

www.matweb.com...

Going by this list, which the Romanian poster above insists is the correct one ...

aluminum - 88%

copper - 6.20%

silicon - 2.84%

zinc - 1.81%

lead - 0.41%

tin - 0.33%

zirconium - 0.2%

cadmium - 0.11%

nickel - 0.0024%

cobalt - 0.0023%

bismuth - 0.0003%

silver - 0.0002%

gallium - traces

... and comparing it to that overview, in addition to the lack of magnesium (and manganese, for that matter), it contains cadmium and cobalt, neither of which are listed in that overview. Gallium isn't listed in that overview either, though there are only trace amounts of it in the mystery object.

Also, the amount of nickel, bismuth and silver are way under-represented in the mystery object compared to that overview, and zinc is a little over-represented. Everything else appears to be in range.

With regard to cadmium and cobalt:




Link

(Why does this forum software insist on automatically enlarging small images? I've never encountered that on any other forum, ever, and I've used hundreds of them over the past 16 years. Some images are small for a reason.)

So cadmium is useful for aluminum-copper alloys to accelerate the rate of age-hardening, and to increase strength and corrosion resistance. Cobalt doesn't seem to have any [known] relevance to aluminum-copper alloys, and is not a common addition to aluminum alloys in general. That same book says that gallium is an impurity in aluminum, which is consistent with it only being present here in trace amounts.

I'm not suggesting that the mystery object is made of an "impossible alloy" because I don't know one way or the other, just that it doesn't seem to be a known variety of Duralumin / 2000-series.

a reply to: MaximRecoil
Maybe I got the wrong series. Try the 5000 series. It's been over a decade since I worked in the industry, and we primarily used the 6000 series.
At any rate, the post I responded to was certainly BS, as it said "we still don`t possess the technology to combine those particular 13 types of metal."

Harte

originally posted by: Harte
a reply to: MaximRecoil
Maybe I got the wrong series. Try the 5000 series. It's been over a decade since I worked in the industry, and we primarily used the 6000 series.
At any rate, the post I responded to was certainly BS, as it said "we still don`t possess the technology to combine those particular 13 types of metal."

Harte

It definitely isn't 5000 series, which has a low copper percentage (0.8% at the most), and up to 6.2% magnesium. I think it would be considered 2000 series if someone were to manufacture that particular recipe today; I just don't think it is any currently known/established variety of 2000 series, i.e., I think it would be given a 2XXX number that isn't currently in use.

originally posted by: MaximRecoil

originally posted by: Harte
a reply to: MaximRecoil
Maybe I got the wrong series. Try the 5000 series. It's been over a decade since I worked in the industry, and we primarily used the 6000 series.
At any rate, the post I responded to was certainly BS, as it said "we still don`t possess the technology to combine those particular 13 types of metal."

Harte

It definitely isn't 5000 series, which has a low copper percentage (0.8% at the most), and up to 6.2% magnesium. I think it would be considered 2000 series if someone were to manufacture that particular recipe today; I just don't think it is any currently known/established variety of 2000 series, i.e., I think it would be given a 2XXX number that isn't currently in use.

Might be a special alloy created for a specific purpose.

Whatever, it's certainly an alloy we can make, unlike the crazy claim I was addressing.

Harte