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This article tells a fantastic story of mysterious nanoscale artifacts found in the Ural Mountains in 1991.

These manufactured coils were initially discovered during geological research associated with the extraction of gold in the Ural mountains. These pieces include coils, spirals, shafts, and other unidentified components.

According to an analysis from the Russian Academy of Sciences in Syktyvkar, the largest pieces found are mostly copper, while the smallest are made of tungsten and molybdenum.

While the largest of these objects measure 1.18 inches, the smallest are only 1/10,000th of an inch, and many exhibit Golden Mean proportions. Their shape suggests that they are manufactured and not naturally occurring metal fragments. In fact, they have been found to closely resemble the same miniature components of contemporary nanotechnology.

They have apparently been known and studied for some time too:

The artifacts have been studied at four different facilities in Helsinki, St. Petersburg, and Moscow. However, further research into these tiny structures seems to have ended in 1999 with the death of Dr. Johannes Fiebag, a principal researcher of the find.

enter image description here

Were these nanostructures found in the Ural Mountains?

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    They are very careful with the phrasing. "suggests that they are manufactured", "closely resemble" etc.
    – pipe
    Jun 23, 2021 at 10:20
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    I made a significant change to the title, which changes the question a fair bit. It no longer assumes that these items really were found, or really are "nano-" sized. Before we speculate on how such amazing nanostructures were formed in the Ural Mountains, we should apply basic skepticism to the idea that they even exist.
    – Oddthinking
    Jun 23, 2021 at 11:53
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    @pinegulf I don't have to log in to access it, but there's also ancient-origins.net/unexplained-phenomena/… Jun 23, 2021 at 12:27
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    @RuslanOblov I don't think "they exist" is the main issue, but that they are nano-scale and with other properties. The most zoomed-in structure in the photo looks to me to be more like 1-2 mm in size. For example, here's a bacteria that's actually 1/10,000th of an inch: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:EscherichiaColi_NIAID.jpg
    – pipe
    Jun 23, 2021 at 13:20
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    The spiral objects look an awful lot like guitar strings.
    – Harabeck
    Jun 23, 2021 at 14:29

1 Answer 1

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All the references I could find on the web post-date and either copy from or reference the original Epoch Times article in the link. I would guess that the original source of the information is one of the books written by Dr. Johannes Fiebag, mentioned in The Epoch Times article, trained as a geologist, but a writer of popular science books focused on speculation about extraterrestrials.

I would suggest that the correct question is not whether these were found in the Ural Mountains. It is rather whether they are in fact ancient, contemporary with the 20,000-300,000-year-old strata in which they were said to be found.

A key quote from The Epoch Times article is:

Though some have asserted that these tiny structures are merely debris left behind from test rockets being launched from nearby Plesetsk space station, a report from the Moscow Institute determined that they are far too old to have come from modern manufacturing.

The question is how is this age determined? As of 2019:

Dating metals poses an even bigger problem than dating ceramics, with currently no widely used scientific dating method. No one had found a measurable property that changes regularly with time.

There is no way to assess the parts age other than the geology of the strata where they were found. The most likely explanation is that these are modern artifacts that somehow came to be associated with old rocks, although Dr. Fiebag seemed to be convinced otherwise.

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    Maybe somebody can explain what these things in the photos are, if they're really rocket parts? Jun 23, 2021 at 16:41
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    @RuslanOblov nanotechnology has a bright future in space. Small, light, etc. Being near to Plesetsk Cosmodrome there may be all kinds of experimentation going on, not necessarily with any utility yet as rocket parts. Plainly they were not made 20,000-300,000 years ago. Jun 23, 2021 at 17:16
  • @antlersoft the "As of 2019" article you linked says "No one had found a measurable property that changes regularly with time" (for inorganic materials) and goes on to say how techniques are being developed, and "the precision is still far from that achieved with radiocarbon dating." Jun 23, 2021 at 19:31
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    @WeatherVane I think the point is that this method certainly was not around when this story started circulating, so the claimed date is suspect.
    – Harabeck
    Jun 23, 2021 at 19:36
  • @Harabeck I see thanks, to disprove the "Moscow Institute determined that they are far too old..." Jun 23, 2021 at 19:39

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