Pharaoh Tutankhamun possessed treasures from outside the Earth?

A fiery strike from extraterrestrials 29 million years ago created a unique material that has been sought after since ancient times: Libyan glass .

Libyan glass has appeared in some of the world's most precious antiquities, including a pendant from the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, the famous ruler of Egypt from 1332-1323 BC during the 18th Dynasty of the New Kingdom.

It is a beautiful naturally pale yellow glass that has been the subject of debate for nearly a century.

A simulation of a meteorite impact, Pharaoh Tutankhamun's pendant with a scarab beetle made of Libyan glass and his portrait on a mask - (Photo: EGYPTIAN MINISTRY OF ANTIQUES/NASA).

Some theories suggest that this mysterious material was formed from terrible lightning strikes, while others suggest that it is volcanic glass that traveled to Earth from the Moon.

There are also theories that it is the result of sedimentation or a hydrothermal system, or that a meteorite exploded in mid-air.

Writing on The Conversation, Dr Elizaveta Kovaleva from the University of the Western Cape (South Africa) said that his team - from South Africa, Germany, Egypt and Morocco - studied two pieces of Libyan glass using advanced electron microscopy techniques, allowing the observation of microscopic material particles, only 1/20,000th the diameter of a sheet of paper.

They identified the key minerals inside this mysterious material: Different types of zirconium oxide (ZrO ² ). Minerals can have the same chemical composition but different structures, called polymorphs.

Among them, a polymorph of ZrO2 _called cubic zirconia has been found, which can only form under high temperatures of 2,250 degrees Celsius to 2,700 degrees Celsius. In addition, there is another extremely rare polymorph called ortho-II or OII, which forms at extreme pressures of 130,000 atmospheres.

Those temperature and pressure conditions could only be created by two things: A large meteorite impact, or an atomic bomb.

Surely in the time of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, mankind did not possess atomic bombs. So it could only be the product of an extraterrestrial attacker.

The study also found that the mother crater that gave birth to the unique glass must be located somewhere in the Great Sand Sea desert, which spans 72,000 square kilometres ^between Egypt and Libya.

Two famous impact craters around it, GP and Oasis , measuring 2km and 18km in diameter respectively, were ruled out as too far away and too small compared to the nature of the material and the primary locations where it was found.

That's the team's next job: Finding the parent crater . It must have been huge given the parameters of that impact, and how it produced the incredibly rich source of Libyan glass, which is still occasionally found today.

However, it is likely that the crater is heavily eroded, with sand covering it. Further studies will require a combination of remote sensing and geophysical surveys.