The magical properties of petrified wood. The world and us

Andrew Snelling

"Instantly Petrified Wood"- that was the title of the article in the magazine Popular Science, in the October 1992 issue. The same was demonstrated by a study conducted at the High Performance Ceramics Laboratory of the University of Washington in Seattle (USA).

The researchers created a wood-ceramic composite that was 20 to 120 percent harder than regular wood but still looked like wood. The process of creating this mixture is surprisingly simple: the wood is impregnated with a solution containing a mixture of silicon and aluminum. The solution fills the pores in the wood, after which it is placed in an oven at a temperature of 44°C. According to the head of the research laboratory, Daniel Dobbs, during such experiments the wood is impregnated with a solution to a depth of approximately 5 mm. Moreover, deeper penetration into wood under pressure and more high temperature, produced a rock-hard composition of wood and ceramics that was very similar to petrified wood.

The original "recipe" for petrification

However, the first discovery of the "recipe" for petrifying wood belongs to Hamilton Hicks of Greenwich, Connecticut (USA), who received US Patent No. 4,612,050 on September 16, 1986. According to Hicks, his chemical "cocktail" of sodium silicate (known as " liquid glass"), natural spring or volcanic mineral water containing a high percentage of calcium, magnesium, manganese and other metal salts, and citric or malic acid can quickly turn wood into stone. But if you want to use this "recipe", you need to know what is used for artificial petrification special technology to mix these components in the correct proportions in order to obtain the “initial” solidified state.

Hicks wrote:

“When the solution is applied to the wood, it penetrates into it. Mineral water and sodium silicate are contained in the solution in relatively equal proportions, so that the solution is a liquid with a stable viscosity and is oxidized to the initial thickening condition, that is, the degree at which hardening occurs after penetration into the wood, and not before. Those. the solution can be stored and transported, but once it is applied to the wood, it hardens into it. When the solution content of the wood is high enough, the solution-impregnated wood takes on the characteristics of petrified wood. In this state, the tree can no longer be burned, even if it is exposed to high humidity or wet for a long time. The observed petrification occurs quickly through drying of the wood.”

The patent states that the amount of acid in the solution turns out to play important role in the hardening phase within the cellular structure of the tree, although evaporation also plays a significant role in this process. The wood is thoroughly impregnated and, if necessary, even treated several times or immersed in the solution. And once dry, it clearly has all the characteristics of petrified wood, including its appearance.

Both Hicks and researchers from the University of Washington laboratory talk about the potential uses of such "instant" petrified wood:

Fire-resistant wooden structures, such as houses and stables (then horses wouldn't chew petrified wood either!).

Durable coverings, floors and furniture.

Wood with increased strength for use in construction.

Wood protected from insects, decay and salt water for building buildings, etc.

Fast natural petrification

The chemical components used to artificially petrify wood can be found in nature and within sedimentary rocks. In this case, is it possible for natural petrification to occur quickly under the influence of these processes? Certainly! Sigleo reported that the rate of silica deposition in wood blocks in alkaline springs located in Yellowstone National Park (USA) is between 0.1 and 4.0 mm per year.

Some startling reports have come from Australia. Pigott, writing for the Australian magazine Lapidary, recounts what he saw in southwest Queensland:

". . From Mrs. McMurray of Blackall I heard a story that shocked me and seems to have destroyed many ideas about the age of petrified wood. Mrs. McMurray has a piece of wood that has been turned to stone and has obvious ax marks on it. She says that the tree from which this piece was cut grew on her father's farm in Eutella, located near Rome, and was cut down by her father about 70 years ago. The tree was partially hidden underground, and when it was dug up, it was petrified. At the end of her story, Mrs. McMurray said that another resident of her town had a piece of a petrified fence post with holes made for the wire and with a piece of wire.

“Petrified wood thousands of years old? I wonder, or is that so?”

A few months later, Pierce added to these amazing stories about wood that quickly petrified in the soil of outback Queensland:

". . . Piggott writes about petrified wood with ax marks, and also about a petrified fence post."

“This kind of discovery, of course, occurs frequently. In the Hagenden district of North Queensland... Parkinsonia trees near one ranch were inundated and covered with sediment in a flood in 1918. The sediment was later washed away by a flood in 1950. Parts of the tree trunk turned into a nice colored stone. However, most of the trunk and its branches have completely disappeared."

“At Zara Ranch, located about 48 km from Hughenden (North Queensland), I was repairing a fence. The old posts of this fence in some places passed through the black soil into the shaley clay. The acacia wood in this black soil was still perfect. Then it ended as smoothly as if it had been sawed off, and the several inches of the pillar in the shale-like clay were pure stone. Every ax mark could be clearly seen on this post and the tree retained its color as the day it was cut down. . . ."

“I know that in the dunes near Boulia [southwest Queensland], where the fences are often almost completely covered by moving sand, it is common for the sand to slide off after a few years, leaving the fence posts standing upright.”

From the other side of the world, word has been received of the Church of Santa Maria della Salute, built in 1630 in Venice, Italy, to celebrate the end of the plague. Since Venice is built on water-soaked clay and sand, the church was built on 180,000 wooden piles to reinforce its foundation. Even though the church is a massive stone structure, it has remained stable since its foundation. How did wooden piles remain strong for 360 years? They are petrified! Now the church stands on “stone” piles!

Experimental confirmation

Of course, none of these reports should surprise us, since the processes of petrification of wood have long been known, as well as the fact that this process can and has happened quickly. For example, Scurfield and Segnit reported that the wood petrification process can be considered as five stages:

1. The entry of quartz in solution or in the form of a colloid into wood.
2. Penetration of quartz into the cell walls of wood structure.
3. Gradual disintegration of the cell walls, which at the same time are replaced by quartz, so that the wood's dimensional stability is maintained.
4. Filling voids inside cell wall frames with quartz.
5. Final hardening (lithification) as a result of drying.

Conclusion

Data that has been obtained by scientists in laboratories, as well as in God's natural laboratory, shows that in their respective chemical conditions Wood can quickly petrify through silicification, even at normal temperatures and pressures. The process of petrification of wood is now so well known and understood that, if desired, scientists can quickly petrify wood in their laboratories.

Unfortunately, most people continue to think and have this thinking imposed on them, that petrification of petrified wood buried in strata rocks, should have taken thousands, if not millions, of years. This thinking is clearly incorrect, since it has been demonstrated time and again that petrification of wood can occur, and occurs rapidly. Thus, the time interval for the formation of petrified wood within the geological record is completely consistent with the Biblical time scale of recent creation and the subsequent devastating Global Flood.

What is a stone tree? Is it really possible to turn a stone into a plant? Or is it just the shape of the stone that resembles wood? It's worth looking into this. Of course, it is not made of stone. There are two plants that are called stonewood: boxwood and southern hackberry. That's what we'll talk about.

Ordinary frame (southern)

Frame, or stone wood, has more than 50 species. Most often these are deciduous plants, but sometimes they are evergreen. The frame is also found in the form of a bush. It grows in the tropics, subtropics and temperate zones of the Northern Hemisphere. What is the shape of the stone tree? has a round shape. The leaves are oval (up to 15 cm), elongated, with small serrations. The structure of the leaves is very rigid.

The frame is adapted to arid rocky soil prone to salinity. He is very thermophilic. The frame also takes root well in urban environments and is used for decorative purposes.

Where is the stone tree found?

IN natural conditions the frame is found in the south of Europe, in the north African continent and in some Asian countries. Small hackberry trees grow in Crimea, in the eastern Caucasus. Entire trees can be found in Israel. The stone tree is a long-liver, some species live up to 500 years. It has a straight trunk and can reach up to 20 meters in height. The frame is also adapted to sub-zero temperatures and can withstand frost down to -20 0 C.

Uses of fruits and leaves

The stone tree has edible fruits. When ripe, they acquire a dark purple color, almost black. The fruits are shaped like a small ball. In Israel, a national delicacy is made from these fruits. There are seeds inside the fruit. They are made from very healthy oil, similar in composition to almond. Also, the fruits are ground into flour and prepared from it very tasty dish- “prishmi” (porridge). Many owners in Armenia plant the frame in their gardens for the sake of these fruits. The tannins contained in the bark of this tree are used to produce fabric dyes.

Goats and silkworms love to eat the leaves of the hackberry. And birds love to peck at the fruits.

How it is used on the farm

Stone wood is a good decorative material. Today, many bonsai trees of this species have been bred, which live well indoors. After all, the frame is very resistant to air pollution. It has greenish-yellow wood, which is very dense and hard, and lends itself well to polishing. Various souvenirs, canes, musical instruments and many other wooden products.

Southern frame in medicine

Stone wood has good healing properties and is widely used in medicine. It contains elements of organic acids, tannins, pectins, dyes, sugar, oil, many vitamins, and mineral salts. Decoctions are made from the roots and fruits of the stone tree, which are used to treat diarrhea and dysentery. They also strengthen well cardiovascular system, increase protective functions body. To prepare such decoctions, fruits and roots are prepared in advance: berries - after ripening, and roots - before the growing season.

What made the frame famous?

Stone wood is famous for its extraordinary properties. Its heavy and dense wood is highly prized. It is characterized by flexibility, elasticity, strength, and hardness, which is why it has long been widely used in construction. Many have heard about the mausoleum of Sultan Sanjar, but it was built in the 12th century (Turkmenistan) precisely from the southern frame.

Many peoples in ancient times loved to wear various talismans and amulets. In many Central Asian countries, such miraculous contraptions were made from stone wood. They were worn around the neck or hung in homes. It was also believed that the pieces of frame wood had magical power, they protected from evil spirits and a bad look. Such pieces, or “dagans,” were hung above the entrance to the house or at the gate.

Stonewood is not very demanding and is easy to grow. It is considered sacred in some areas of Israel and is used in many ways. There, beads are made from the fruits of the carcass and placed around the necks of children or animals. This counts good sign, protecting from adversity.

Boxwood - stone tree

Boxwood is very ancient. But few people know that this plant is also called stone tree. Trimmed boxwood bushes were found back in ancient Roman times. But boxwood was called a stone tree because of the exceptional density of its wood. After all, this one is long-lived and can grow for up to half a century. Hedges and various fancy and geometric shapes are made from it. More hardwood than that of boxwood, cannot be found on the European continent. It is used to make small dishes, chess pieces, various small parts for instruments, and smoking pipes. Boxwood wood is highly valued.

Composition of petrified wood - silica SiO2 with impurities. petrified wood represents either a complete pseudomorphosis disgraced on wood, and in this case it is often called woody opal, or it is completely replaced chalcedony. The most common are opal-chalcedony varieties with various combinations of both components.

Replacement of wood by crypto-crystalline is also observed. quartz(Arizona tree). Occurs siderite petrified wood (Kamchatka). The common minor minerals in petrified wood are iron hydroxides, pyrite, carbonates - magnesium and phosphorus (about 1%), in addition, bluish veins of barite-celestine composition are noted. Petrified wood almost always contains carbonates- carbonic acid salts H2CO3 - (70-80%), carbonaceous matter (5-30%), iron oxides (up to 10%), apatite, quartz The layers of carbonaceous matter have a thickness of 0.1 to 3 mm; there are also single cutting longitudinal veins. The presence of certain impurities chemical elements, such as iron, manganese or copper in water during the petrification process gives the resulting petrified wood a particular color: Sometimes the color of the stone can even resemble landscape jasper.
- manganese— pink/orange
- manganese oxide – black/yellow
- carbon- black
- oxide gland- red, brown, yellow
- cobalt— green/blue
- chromium— green/blue
- copper— green/blue

Petrified wood is the remains of trees that grew during the Permian (285-250 million years ago) and Carboniferous (360-299 million years ago) periods. Although plant fossils are much less common than animal fossils, many specimens have survived to this day that provide a clear picture of the evolution of the plant kingdom.

Petrified wood specimen. Indonesia.
Size 3.2 cm x 2.5 cm x 2.3 cm
Issue No. 45 PETSTICK WOOD
Minerals - Treasures of the Earth. Publishing house DeAgostini
Based on textural features, they are distinguished spotted , concentric-zonal And unclear-zonal homogeneous petrified wood of various colors. Combinations of concentrically zoned and spotted varieties in one specimen are not uncommon. Spotted petrified wood - the most common decorative variety- ornamental stone of opal-chalcedony composition with a significant admixture of iron hydroxides . This three-component composition with a variable ratio of opal, chalcedony and iron hydroxides causes an uneven spotted color and, accordingly, a spotted and banded-spotted texture.

Produced at the Washington Laboratory artificial petrified wood . During the fossilization process, small cubes of pine were soaked in acid for two days and then immersed in a silica solution for another two. This product was then prepared at 1400 °C under argon for two hours. The result was silicon carbide, which preserved the complex cellular structure of wood. Then soaked in a tungsten solution, the resulting tungsten carbide was an artificial petrified wood.

(function(w, d, n, s, t) ( w[n] = w[n] || ; w[n].push(function() ( Ya.Context.AdvManager.render(( blockId: "R-A -142249-1", renderTo: "yandex_rtb_R-A-142249-1", async: true )); )); t = d.getElementsByTagName("script"); s = d.createElement("script"); s .type = "text/javascript"; s.src = "//an.yandex.ru/system/context.js"; s.async = true; t.parentNode.insertBefore(s, t); ))(this , this.document, "yandexContextAsyncCallbacks");

There is a country on our planet called Myanmar (formerly Burma). And in it is the City of Flowers - Pyin Oo Lwin. Not far from it there is a beautiful park - . And there is one of the most unusual gardens in the world - a garden of petrified trees.

Why are trees called petrified? Because these are really stones. And they really were formed from trees.

An unusual transformation into Coal and Coal began Permian periods, 350-250 million years ago. In that distant antiquity, trees, through various forces of nature, found themselves under a thick layer of earth, sand, and volcanic ash. It was so thick that the air did not reach the trees and the wood did not rot.

But the water, dissolving a bunch of all sorts of minerals along the way, got into all the fibers of the tree and the minerals settled there, crystallized, forming a durable stone. It’s quick to describe the process, but the action took place over millions of years.

Nowadays petrified trees are found all over the world, in all parts of the world. They are widely used in jewelry, souvenirs, and as decorative elements.

The colors of petrified wood depend on what minerals came with the water. For example, copper gives a greenish or bluish tint, iron oxide gives red, brown, yellow. Petrified trees are different colors and are extremely sought after by collectors.

Petrified trees in Kandawgyi Park

All materials on the “Roads of the World” website are copyrighted. We kindly ask you not to take articles and photographs without permission from the author and the site administration.

© Sergey Izvozshik, website "", 2016. Copying text and photos is prohibited. All rights reserved.

—————

Related posts:

In the United States of America there is an unusual national park, called Petrified Forest, which translates as petrified forest. This is one of the largest concentrations of petrified trees on the planet... It is noteworthy that most of the trees even retained their structure. But we will not talk about the entire national park, but one of its pearls - Agate House. Let's take a closer look at it...

Photo 2.

Eget House(English) Agate House, lit. "Agate House") is a partially restored complex residential structure on the territory of National Park Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. The houses of the Pueblo Indians were made entirely of petrified wood. The 8-room pueblo was constructed around the year 900, or during the Pueblo III period of the Pecos chronology. Petrified wood was held together with clay mortar.

Photo 3.

According to research scientists, this building was erected by the ancestors of the Pueblo Indians who now live in these places. Moreover, this happened in the time interval between 900 and 1200. The then inhabitants of the prairies and deserts North America They actively used petrified wood to create tools and, of course, in construction. Agate House consists of eight rooms, which confirms that this is not a temporary home.

The restoration of the ruins was carried out in 1933-1934 by the Civilian Conservation Corps environment under the direction of C.B. Cosgrove Jr. of the Anthropology Laboratory of the New Mexico Museum. A new roof was built over room 7. The walls of room 2 were rebuilt so that their height was 1.5 meters, but without a roof, and the remaining walls were rebuilt so that their height was between 1.8 and 3 meters. In the same park is a piece of modern Pueblo art, the Painted Desert Inn.

Photo 6.

Photo 7.

Photo 8.

Photo 9.

Photo 10.

Photo 11.

Photo 12.

Photo 13.

Photo 14.

Photo 15.

Photo 16.

Photo 17.

Photo 18.

Photo 19.

Photo 20.

Photo 21.

Photo 22.

Photo 23.

Photo 24.

Photo 25.

...Soon we noticed near the road, on the slope of the side of the basin, a giant trunk of a petrified tree. There were six pieces in this eleven-meter log, about a meter in diameter, broken into almost equal parts. Iron layers with red streaks stained the dark gray, cast-iron color and appearance of the surface of the trunk, which at the same time retained the complete resemblance of dilapidated and soaked wood. Replaced by silicon and iron, the wood forever retained the appearance with which the log sank in sediment, brought from afar by the river, eighty million years ago. Now water, wind, sun and frost destroyed the loose rocks around, and the trunk remained, as if on a platter, on a gently sloping slope, indestructible and so heavy that the forces of erosion could not move it.

For a long time we admired the giant of the disappeared forests, which had lain in the ground for such an unimaginable time. I dreamed of taking the entire trunk for the Museum of the Academy of Sciences in Moscow - such large and well-preserved trunks are very rare. However, there was no way to take even one of the pieces, which weighed more than a ton each. So I limited myself to just taking a few pictures. Further south, the hills were completely covered with pieces of petrified tree trunks. Thinner than the first giant we found, these pieces were scattered like a fallen woodpile.

Protruding twigs or roots on the stumps created the illusion of real wood. Only to the touch, the heavy, sharp, glass-like fragments of scattered trunks showed that this forest was only a stone ghost of the real thing. The correctly layered structure of the wood indicated the identity of the trunks coniferous trees, perhaps a group of swamp cypresses, still growing in coastal tropical swamps, just as the ancient ginkgo grows in Japan, and araucaria in the mountains South America and South-West Asia, red iron ore in our Lankaran...

Reluctantly, I had to leave all the variety of trunks piled up in disarray - the short day was drawing to a close...
Ivan Efremov. Road of the winds.