Sciacca Mystery what a great research!
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We hope you enjoy reading with us his incredible research on the Sciacca Coral.
Reserach is knowledge...
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Sciacca Mystery the End pt.V
An engineer friend of mine, one who builds roads, amused himself making a calculation: with such a mass of coral, we could have paved the entire highway from Trapani to Trieste!
I submitted the results of this final analysis to Margherita Superchi who, as I expected, said: “I would like to do a Knoop hardness test.”
Perhaps many are familiar with the Mohs hardness scale. This is an empirical meter, a simple enough device, that we owe to Austrian naturalist Friederich Mohs, who lived between the 1700s and 1800s and that is used to assess the hardness of materials that exist in nature. The scale starts with talk, the softest of materials, and ends with diamonds, which are perhaps the hardest. According to the Mohs scale coral is level 3, a material that can be scratched using a steel tip.
Since 1839 (when Mohs died) new methods have been experimented that are more precise and scientifically accurate. The most appropriate to our case, according to Margherita Superchi, was the Knoop hardness measurement, from the name of another researcher, Frederick Knoop, who tested it for the first time in 1939 in the laboratories of the National Bureau of Standards, in the United States.
So I prepared the corals, and sent them to the Institute of Science and Technology of Ceramic Materials in Faenza, the pride and joy of the National Research Council.
A little more than one week later we received the results. They may be difficult to understand by those not familiar with this work but in simple terms the results confirm that, in fact, the coral of Sciacca, in addition to changing its color and basic components, also modified its hardness.
The Coral of Sciacca has no more secrets, at least concerning its origin and morphological characteristics.
Now I know why it “chimed”. My research is finished.
And to think that it all began with a child’s game...
The conversations with Margherita Superchi, the sample sent to the CISGEM, the first analyses with the Raman. Then the chemical composition by Robert Bodnar, when the going really got serious! And the radiocarbon datings… one, two, three, four. And, finally, the Knoop hardness tests.
A long road. Long and fascinating.
Someone might wonder: what for? I don’t have the right answer to that.
If this someone exists I could say that many of man’s discoveries in the course of millenniums were the result of a thirst for knowledge, of curiosity, of the desire to know what lies around the corner. That’s what it was like for me, and with the mystery of the Sciacca Coral.
The End.
[text taken with license from the author Giuseppe Rajola from the book Sciacca Mystery]
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Sciacca Mystery the End pt.IV
On the following page I submit the results of the tests.
7,000-7,500 years Before Christ! In other words, 9,000-9,500 years ago! For I needed to add the two thousand years from year zero – the year of the birth of Christ – to the present, give or take a year.
Now it made sense. In other words, something extraordinary had happened in the area of the volcanic system Empedocles over several millenniums.
Every underwater volcanic phenomenon, with its production of gas, magma, smoke, ashes, raises the temperature of the water even by as much as 1,000 degrees, as maintained by Prof. Gianni Lanzafame, whom I contacted regarding this.
These temperatures, of course, cause the instantaneous death of all forms of marine life in the area. Obviously even coral. The experiments carried out by Superchi and Bodnar indicated why the coral changed from red to orange and, especially, what happened to its chemical composition, profoundly transformed by the increase in iron, manganese, copper and uranium that caused it to lose the characteristics of organic material. Thus the reason it was preserved until now. In an area so profoundly affected by marine volcanic activity through centuries and centuries, imagine how many events there must have been.
Every time there was an eruption, the same phenomenon was repeated: the water in the sea became overheated and this, together with the substances spewed by the underwater volcanoes, modified the structure of the coral, transforming it from organic to inorganic. In other words – turning it to stone. All the coral in the area, and there was a considerable amounts these seas were rich in plankton, separated from the walls upon which it was growing and accumulated on the bottom, in the deepest areas, specifically the Graham Shoal.
And this for thousands and thousands of years. Not only: I would like to emphasise another aspect that is no less important for our research. It is true that every time there was an underwater eruption this killed all forms of life; It is also true that, once the eruption ends, what remains is a habitat very rich in mineral salts, where the sea water creates an interchange between the area of the volcanic activity and the immediate vicinity not affected by the volcanic activity. Thus in a few years, the site of the eruptions is once again rich in life, marine flora and fauna that rush to re-inhabit it. And so the coral also, within a few years, will once again populate these new, virgin rocks, to continue this extraordinary cycle of nature...
In an article he wrote a few years ago Mimmo Macaluso describes one of his immersions to the Isola Ferdinandea: “It’s almost surreal. We are immersed in another world, beautiful and unsettling, pullulating with life. The materials that erupted in 1831 and more recently, very rich in minerals, were an exceptional support to the growth of numerous species of algae that found nourishment and sustenance. The same applies to the fish as in this very deep area of the Mediterranean they can find refuge and food.”
This is the exact confirmation of my theory. And the same goes for coral, naturally, which changed its nature and amassed on the bottom of the sea.
Until one fine day Bertu Ammareddu comes around...
To Be Continued...
[text taken with license from the author Giuseppe Rajola from the book Sciacca Mystery]
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