Читать Scientific research certifies – 5 - Андрей Тихомиров

The yellow glass of the Libyan desert, from which the pendant of the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun is made, was formed as a result of a meteorite impact on the surface of the Earth. This conclusion was reached by researchers from universities and research centers in Germany, Egypt and Morocco, whose research results were published by Phys.org .

The origin of glass has been a matter of dispute among scientists for almost a century. The fact is that it does not look like any natural glass in its composition, and it can only be found in a certain part of the desert in southeastern Libya and southwestern Egypt. Its age is about 29 million years old. The new study describes the results of the analysis of two samples of yellow glass purchased from a resident of Libya. They found particles of cubic zirconia, a mineral that can only form at temperatures from 2250 to 2700 °C. A rare polymorpho-II has also been discovered, which can only appear at a pressure of about 130,000 atmospheres. Based on the above, the researchers concluded that such glass could have appeared in the Libyan desert only as a result of a meteorite impact or an atomic bomb explosion. Given the age of the glass, scientists settled on the theory of a meteorite.

A group of scientists from Brazil, Australia and Italy managed to reconstruct the face of the Pharaoh of Ancient Egypt Tutankhamun 3,300 years after his death. This is reported by The Daily Mail. According to the publication, the recreated "young and "gentle" face" of the ruler surprised researchers, as Tutankhamun turned out to be more like a student, rather than a formidable ruler and politician. "It was almost a detective work, in which bits of information were combined to provide us with a three-dimensional model of the skull," said one of the authors of the study, Brazilian graphics expert Cicero Moraes. At the same time, scientists used not only reference data on the skull of the pharaoh, and images from the death mask, but also the faces of living people in order to more fully recreate the image of the ancient ruler.

This is not the first time researchers have tried to restore the appearance of Tutankhamun. The previous attempt was made in 2005. Michael Habicht, a co-author of the new study, an Egyptologist and archaeologist from Flinders University in Australia, noted the striking similarities between the two reconstructions.