I see Jeebus in that image! Praise be to Google!

Yeah, and the Romans had the ability to travel at warp speeds.

wait, does that mean scientoligists are right about xenu and the bombs? oh boy

I hate to be a curmudgeon, but...

"You know my feelings about arming morons: you arm one, you've got to arm them all, otherwise it wouldn't be good sport." - Judge Flatt, _Nobody's_Fool_

The ancients knew how to make glass!!! OMG!!! LOL!!! WTF?!?

This links to NEXUS magazine:

"NEXUS is an international bi-monthly alternative news magazine, covering the fields of: Health Alternatives; Suppressed Science; Earth's Ancient Past; UFOs & the Unexplained; and Government Cover-Ups. "

Enough said. Too much, actually...

@2, You're thinking of the Romulans.

Interesting, but ultimately crap.

Of course, if you make clay pots and bronze with enough heat, you also can get glass.

But let's all be paranoid, shall we?

@6, clearly I was implying that the Romans ARE the Romulans. LOL!!!

It's an unexplainably huge amount of glass.

Glass Parking Lot!!

Citing source articles that rely heavily on religious texts for "evidence" is a good strategy - if your audience consists mainly of 3rd graders, religious zealots, and village idiots. So uh ... carry on.

So the Iraqis really did have WMDs. Huh.

Not explainable by a large hot impact (asteroid)? Sounds more likely than we had nuclear weapons way back when...

The dinosaurs had atomic bombs!

...or didn't.

Meteor hit? You'd get roughly the same effect.

Okay, quick science lesson: to get a nuclear explosion, all you need is a volleyball size amount of uranium or a softballs size chunk of plutonium. The mere presence of that much of either material is enough to set off an uncontrolled chain reaction that results in fission.

If you have lead, you have a material that at one time was uranium. All radioactive elements decay into lead.

There are still uranium deposits that are mined today. In earth's ancient past, these were more numerous. There were seams of uranium large enough that if, say, seismic activity pushed them together, it would have reached critical mass and resulted in a nuclear blast.

There. No ancient atomic cultures needed.

The Discovery or History Channel (I can't remember which) had a show recently about glass found in the Sahara that had been used by the Ancient Egyptians to make jewelry. Scientists have surmised that the glass was formed when a meteor impace fused sand into glass. Unfortunately, I didn't watch the whole program so I don't know if the scientists were ever able to discover the remnants of an ancient crater or not.

Um, Gitai uranium ore or pitchblend, the mineral in which uranium is most commonly found, doesn't naturally exist in high enough concentrations to create the kind of fissionable reaction you describe.

Only highly refined iosotope U 235 (or the even more rare U 238) or Plutonium, which is not a naturally-occurring element, could create a fissionable reaction, and then only when bombarded by slow-neutron source, such as radium; spontaneous fission is nearly impossible to achieve in Uranium isotopes, even under ideal conditions, and the probability of uranium ore in its natural state undergoing such a reaction is statistically zero.

More likely, the "fused green glass" described in the article is a form of Uranium Glass, which is simply common glass infused with small amounts of Uranium Oxide. Although not known to be in common usage prior to the late Roman Era, this could certainly be an example of an isolated use of the material, not previously known.

There were seams of uranium large enough that if, say, seismic activity pushed them together, it would have reached critical mass and resulted in a nuclear blast.

Uh. No.

As quantities of fissile material approach one another they "burn off", reducing the total fissile mass to sub-critical mass. This was the challenge of the Manhattan Project: creating a critical mass quickly enough to generate a blast rather than a fizzle. Ultimately, the easiest method was to fire a uranium bullet into a sub-critical mass of uranium to create a sudden critical mass that would result in a expanding chain reaction and give a blast.

So, in order to avoid an ablative burn-off, the two sub-critical masses have to be brought together at speeds in the range of hundreds of meters per second. Otherwise you’re going to end up with a simple meltdown. It’ll be hot, but it won’t be an explosion and it won’t create a disbursed quantity of glass like the one that has been found in the deserts of the Middle East.

It pretty much has to be a meteor hit.

Sounds pretty cool.

Oh, and I should have added that a fission reaction isn't at all the same as a "nuclear blast" in the sense that the former, while it does result in a sudden release of various radioactive particles (Alpha, Beta & Gamma), isn't an "explosion" in the traditional meaning of the word.

And the other likely explanation for the "green glass" would be either a meteoric impact, volcanic explosion, or possibly even a fire that generated sufficient heat to melt silica (containing trace amounts of Uranium ore) into glass.

Eh? Meteors have been producing the same kind of energy for pretty long. Wouldn't be surprising if one of them caused it.

I wonder how far a volcanic eruption in the Mediterranean could scatter glass.

I with Judah on the meteor idea. One could even imagine some kind of meteor carrying the right isotopes colliding with a uranium vein on earth. Unlikely, sure, but it only had to happen once, and its a lot more likely then stone age atomic scientists.

It looks like Jesus with a really big afro.

In other words: Reggie Watts.