"Self-healing" Ceramic Material from Skinwalker Ranch - SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) Analysis

[Ann K]

I've sent an e-mail to Wessex Archaeology (who have conducted many digs) asking if they have any opinion on this.

As a devoted watcher of Time Team, I've never heard of that. There have been occasions where they found remnants of previous digs (once a piece of the string used to mark out a trench, once a couple of soft drink bottles from half a century before) but as I recall, they were only accidental remains.

 

[cmatt]

Is there any evidence for this being a practice in archaeology? Somehow I doubt it.

Maybe documenting the dig would be a better idea. But hey, what would I know, living in the rational world.
I've sent an e-mail to Wessex Archaeology (who have conducted many digs) asking if they have any opinion on this.

Looking forward to hearing what you hear from Wessex. A brief search online led me to a couple of casual references to this practice:

We also had a system for signifying how far we got by leaving pennies from that year in each section of each unit at depth before backfilling. But these practices are pretty rare.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/m413na/when_do_archaeologists_rebury_sites_or_keep_them/

My green crew had seen me backfilling a unit before. Now on the last day it was their turn. I watched each reach into his pocket and solemnly toss a handful of old coins into the trench.
Me: "Guys, what are you doing?"
Excavator 1: "We saw you do it."
Me: "Yeah, a few shiny new pennies to help the next crew date our dig."
Excavator 2: "Oh, we thought it was an offering."

Source: https://www.facebook.com/groups/397528990633871/posts/1317617955291632/

 

[FatPhil]

Nostalgia?

And a hat-tip to @L01 for the NGrams graph here: https://www.metabunk.org/threads/baass-ten-month-report-2009-leaked-document.14241/#post-346647

 

[yugo]

This is a clip from The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch, Behind the Gates: Bubbling Over. They're covering the "self-healing room-temperature superconductor".

00:18:15 - Erik Bard: Travis and I are both familiar with the way materials like ceramics behave under electron microscopy when we hit it with that beam.
You know, we do see certain kinds of changes.

This could indicate they have at least an intuition about how ceramic materials behave differently under an SEM (e.g., charge effects). Which makes their "self-healing" claims even weirder.

00:18:25 - Erik Bard: The changes we saw with this material are not like the changes I've seen in other materials. [...]
00:18:30 - Travis Taylor: They're very unique.

What are the changes and how are they different from other materials and what are the other materials. Dielectric versus conductor? Dielectric versus dielectric? What is very unique and compared to what? The entire thing is absolutely vague and extremely ambiguous.

 

[NorCal Dave]

Is there any evidence for this being a practice in archaeology? Somehow I doubt it.

I checked with my son who has a degree in Bio-archaeology/Anthropology. He said that while he's never seen it, most of his field work was in Portugal, he has heard of it. Seems it was more of an occasional old school thing that some crusty old field archaeologists would do. Certainly not anymore.

Was there some sort of archaeological dig on Skinwalker Ranch? Why? If so, there would likely be some sort of record. The ranch was owned by the Myers family from 1934-1994 so they would have known if archaeologists had been on their ranch.

A bit OT, but it should be noted that aside from some 1970's era general UFO stories in the general area, the Myers family didn't seem to report any high strangeness in their 32 years of owning the ranch. All the weird stuff starts after the Sherman family bought the ranch, with Terry Sherman being the sole source. This was picked up by George Knapp and hyped in some of his news stories which helped Puthoff convince Bigelow to buy it.

 

[yoshy]

Dr Patchett says: "I've never seen anything that is capable of doing this. This stuff is fixing itself."

Long thread so sorry if someone mentioned this: Self healing concrete

Self-healing concrete is characterized as the capability of concrete to fix its cracks on its own autogenously or autonomously. It not only seals the cracks but also partially or entirely recovers the mechanical properties of the structural elements. This kind of concrete is also known as self-repairing concrete.

My point here is not that whatever they have is self-healing concrete, just that self-repairing materials already exist.

 

[FatPhil]

Long thread so sorry if someone mentioned this: Self healing concrete

Self-healing concrete is characterized as the capability of concrete to fix its cracks on its own autogenously or autonomously. It not only seals the cracks but also partially or entirely recovers the mechanical properties of the structural elements. This kind of concrete is also known as self-repairing concrete.

My point here is not that whatever they have is self-healing concrete, just that self-repairing materials already exist.

My long-faded understanding of the process was that it was primarily the deposition of carbonates that had disolved in carbonic acid (carbon dioxide in water) elsewhere and flowed into the crack. Wouldn't the surface be more fractal if it was a gaseous CO2 reacting with the slaked lime - as that would be a brownian diffusion-limited aggregation.

 

[yoshy]

My long-faded understanding of the process was that it was primarily the deposition of carbonates that had disolved in carbonic acid (carbon dioxide in water) elsewhere and flowed into the crack. Wouldn't the surface be more fractal if it was a gaseous CO2 reacting with the slaked lime - as that would be a brownian diffusion-limited aggregation.

Interesting questions but I have literally zero knowledge of self-healing concrete past its existence. Sorry, you're better off reading the wiki page than asking me lol

 

[Ann K]

A bit OT, but it should be noted that aside from some 1970's era general UFO stories in the general area, the Myers family didn't seem to report any high strangeness in their 32 years of owning the ranch. All the weird stuff starts after the Sherman family bought the ranch, with Terry Sherman being the sole source. This was picked up by George Knapp and hyped in some of his news stories which helped Puthoff convince Bigelow to buy it.

But ...but ...but everybody knows that they won't show themselves to skeptics!!!1!

"Clap if you believe in fairies".

 

[John J.]

A brief search online led me to a couple of casual references to this practice

Wow! (To be shared with @NorCal Dave).
I didn't expect that there would be any evidence for this... my apologies to Travis Taylor, I guess!

 

[jplaza]

This is a clip from The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch, Behind the Gates: Bubbling Over. They're covering the "self-healing room-temperature superconductor".

00:18:15 - Erik Bard: Travis and I are both familiar with the way materials like ceramics behave under electron microscopy when we hit it with that beam.
You know, we do see certain kinds of changes.

This could indicate they have at least an intuition about how ceramic materials behave differently under an SEM (e.g., charge effects). Which makes their "self-healing" claims even weirder.

What kind of "superconductor" has "charge effects" ?

They are supposed to... eerr... well, conduct charges pretty well, right?

 

[yugo]

What kind of "superconductor" has "charge effects" ?

They are supposed to... eerr... well, conduct charges pretty well, right?

Right. Which begs the question: how one sees charge artifacts (according to Arnold Kruize's great detailed analysis) if the "superconducting" specimen discharges rapidly via the SEM mount and grounded stage return paths?

 

[orianda]

After a little hunting around it seems that "mud pump liners" -- which can include a ceramic "inner sleeve" -- might be something to focus on, so here's some info from a range of manufacturers. I would be happy to hear what others think!

This is really sharp sleuthing! The mud pump liner idea makes a lot of sense, especially since the fragments line up with known zirconia/alumina ceramics used in drilling.

I'll admit I haven't watched the drilling segments that closely. Did you spot whether liners like this were visible in the rig footage? It would be interesting if there's even a glimpse of the hardware that matches the description, since that would close the loop nicely.

 

[cmatt]

This is really sharp sleuthing! The mud pump liner idea makes a lot of sense, especially since the fragments line up with known zirconia/alumina ceramics used in drilling.

I'll admit I haven't watched the drilling segments that closely. Did you spot whether liners like this were visible in the rig footage? It would be interesting if there's even a glimpse of the hardware that matches the description, since that would close the loop nicely.

Thanks! I haven't been able to spot any tell-tale signs of ceramic liners in the footage -- and I would be way out of my depth if I pretended that I could with any authority or accuracy. But I was certainly intrigued by the possibility that ceramics might be (as I understand it) involved in the kind of drilling rig they're using!

 

[Mick West]

After a little hunting around it seems that "mud pump liners" -- which can include a ceramic "inner sleeve" -- might be something to focus on, so here's some info from a range of manufacturers. I would be happy to hear what others think!

It does not look like it's curved.

I think it's more likely just some old debris. It looks like a thin tile. It's magnetic. This suggests something like a refractory tile from a kiln, or maybe just a random old tile made from iron-rich clay.

There's a new episode I've not watched yet. Too busy.

 

[Gary C]

Another possible explanation for magnetic behavior might be older style bath or kitchen tiles adhered to a wire or metal mesh backing. Depending on how they hold it to the camera, any metal bits might not be visible.
My eyes are not good enough to say one way or the other.

 

[TRON]

It does not look like it's curved.

I think it's more likely just some old debris. It looks like a thin tile. It's magnetic. This suggests something like a refractory tile from a kiln, or maybe just a random old tile made from iron-rich clay.

There's a new episode I've not watched yet. Too busy.

Mick, I suggest you do not watch the latest SWR episode. It is utter nonsense.

The lack of logic and scientific methods by Travis has pushed this nonsense way past the edge of being even remotely believable anymore. TV show or not. My neck actually hurt after shaking my head so vigorously in disbelief as to what Travis was claiming. That one of the mesa photos taken by, I assume, the USGS in 1969 was altered in some nefarious way from prior years. Just because his "AI" analysis told him so.

And that it was 'suspicious' that there was a large time gap between photos. Which anyone with an ounce of common sense would know that photography back then was not digital and therefore expensive and time-consuming to develop. There is no need to analyze the terrain every single year unless there was some natural disaster or geological/environmental concern they wanted to document/analyze. He tries to analyze digital scans of different film photos with varying resolutions from what I would assume are different cameras and times of day and year.

And he has PHDs?!

 

[Mick West]

Mick, I suggest you do not watch the latest SWR episode. It is utter nonsense.

Too late!

They did put a sample of the tile in some liquid nitrogen over a magnet to see if it would levitate. They seemed puzzled that it was taking so long to cool down (with absolutely zero reference as to what is normal, or the mass of the object). No levitation was observed, but the episode ended with a "To Be Continued" cliffhanger.

 

[FatPhil]

Too late!

They did put a sample of the tile in some liquid nitrogen over a magnet to see if it would levitate. They seemed puzzled that it was taking so long to cool down (with absolutely zero reference as to what is normal, or the mass of the object). No levitation was observed, but the episode ended with a "To Be Continued" cliffhanger.

I'm sure they can call on experts from Nijmegen to help them out. (The guys behind the levitating frog from a decade or so back.)

 

[jplaza]

Too late!

They did put a sample of the tile in some liquid nitrogen over a magnet to see if it would levitate. They seemed puzzled that it was taking so long to cool down (with absolutely zero reference as to what is normal, or the mass of the object). No levitation was observed, but the episode ended with a "To Be Continued" cliffhanger.

So it's not a superconductor, either at room temperature, nor at liquid nitrogen temperature.

*Pretends to be shocked*

 

[orianda]

Is there any evidence for this being a practice in archaeology? Somehow I doubt it.

Maybe documenting the dig would be a better idea. But hey, what would I know, living in the rational world.
I've sent an e-mail to Wessex Archaeology (who have conducted many digs) asking if they have any opinion on this.

I asked ChatGPT how common this practice is, and I know we're not supposed to quote from AI so suffice to say the first sentence was "Short answer: not very."

What struck me was how fast the chain went on the show: "sometimes archaeologists drop coins" → "that must be what happened here" → "therefore there was an archaeological dig in the mesa at the date of the coin." That's a whole rabbit hole built on a shaky premise, with no pause to ask if the starting assumption was even sound.

And honestly, this is why peer review exists in science. Left unchecked, one speculative leap quickly calcifies into "fact," which then gets layered into the next round of speculation. Without anyone stepping in to challenge the reasoning, you end up with castles built on sand...or spaceships buried in sandstone.

 

[DerOndre]

They did put a sample of the tile in some liquid nitrogen over a magnet to see if it would levitate. They seemed puzzled that it was taking so long to cool down (with absolutely zero reference as to what is normal, or the mass of the object).

It also looked to me, that the sample wasn't even entirely submerged into the liquid nitrogen. With the surface exposed to the surrounding air, my gut feeling tells me, that the bubbling doesn't stop too soon.

The cliffhanger reminds me of the very first episode where Eric shows off his giant magnet. In this case we might get similarly disappointed by witnessing the lack of magnetism

 

[Indi]

I just want to add a personal observation regarding the nickel.

While they don't show a close-up of it in the episode where they find it, they did on the "aftershow", here.
For comparison, here is a shot of a 1964 nickel in the condition as-minted back in 1964.

Notice how much wear there is around the brow and cheek, the highest points on the surface. The claim is that this coin was dropped in a hole in 1964. So, a best estimate is that it had seen about 6 months of circulation wear, but a year at most. This is subjective, I don't have a study to cite, but they just don't wear down that quickly unless there were some extreme circumstances. And being in the ground alone won't do it... it may very well discolor it, especially if it's in highly mineralized soil. But it won't wear the high points down like that.

I highly doubt this coin has been in the earth since 1964. As Erik said himself, it could've just been exposed in the spoils pit... it's not as if people don't simply drop/lose coins now and then, and this could have been dropped anytime since 1964, and was sitting near the surface until they dug their pit and it fell in. The same is true for the chips of ceramic, which appear to be nothing special. It would certainly explain why they said they drilled for 40 feet and only saw a few small chips... because they had nothing to do with the interior of the mesa.

Beyond that, they apparently claim the nickel also came from "deep within the mesa", which is solid rock. Who does archeological "digs" into solid rock, and how could they ever backfill that if they tried?

 

[Indi]

I looked in my coin jar. There were 18 nickels in it. Six of them were pre-1990, one was 1963, and one was 1964.
View attachment 83102
So treating it as some date-defining artifact is a bit silly.

And, notice how your coin made it to 2025, but has less circulation wear than the SSWR 1964 nickel in question. Strongly suggesting that that very worn nickel they found was not dropped in within its first months of exposure as circulating coinage, when it would likely have had very little wear showing.

 

[Indi]

Not that this claim is (to my eye) very well supported by the bare glimpse we get of the thing:

There's a better view of it here. Notice how much wear there is. Very untypical of a coin that would have been supposedly deposited within its first several months of life in circulating coinage. The discoloration though could just be from sitting in highly mineralized soil for awhile, it wouldn't take any space-age ceramic artifacts to do that. That area is rife with mining and drilling and testing and has been for a long time. Combine naturally mineralized soil with whatever drilling mud, oil, etc. that may have been in the area, and it's not really surprising. Likely just dropped in the area of the spoils pit, sometime well after 1964.

 

[Indi]

They take the samples to Dr Brian Patchett at Utah Valley University, and he put it in a SEM.

It should probably be noted, for full disclosure, that Skinwalker Ranch owner Brandon Fugal donated $5 million to Utah Valley University.

 

[maico]

There is a stream at the bottom of my cottage where bits of broken ceramics can be fished out on a regular basis. If I had telly airtime to fill I would speculate they are part of an alien space craft heat shield or similar.
My Mum who is a studio potter can date some of it from the glazing. Mostly it's 19th century, probably cutlery breakages from a time when the cottage was not on the mains water supply and the stream was the only water source to do the washing up!

 

[Mendel]

Likely just dropped in the area of the spoils pit, sometime well after 1964.

possibly by a TV show producer, even

 

[uapreads]

Adding one thing to the nickel point. Worth remembering Brandon Fugal owns the ranch and the whole show depends on there being something new to find every season. Doesn't prove anything about this specific ceramic or the coin, but it's relevant background for why "we found something amazing" keeps landing right around each season premiere. Same incentive problem you'd see with any treasure hunting show.

 

[jarlrmai]

Adding one thing to the nickel point. Worth remembering Brandon Fugal owns the ranch and the whole show depends on there being something new to find every season. Doesn't prove anything about this specific ceramic or the coin, but it's relevant background for why "we found something amazing" keeps landing right around each season premiere. Same incentive problem you'd see with any treasure hunting show.

We are fully aware

 

[uapreads]

Fair enough, figured it was worth spelling out for anyone newer stumbling onto the thread. Good breakdown of the charging artifacts earlier in here, by the way, that cleared a lot up for me.

 

[JMartJr]

Adding one thing to the nickel point. Worth remembering Brandon Fugal owns the ranch and the whole show depends on there being something new to find every season. Doesn't prove anything about this specific ceramic or the coin, but it's relevant background for why "we found something amazing" keeps landing right around each season premiere. Same incentive problem you'd see with any treasure hunting show.

And, as with all of the supernatural "woo" shows, they have to find a way to keep interest and a story going in the absence of any resolution, ever. Anything called "Finding Bigfoot" has to deal with the fact that they will never find Bigfoot, any show called "In Search of Ancient Aliens" will never dig any up, and "Secrets of Skinwalker Ranch" will never be able to reveal any secrets. (Assume for a moment that there was a Bigfoot to find, and that the "Finding Bigfoot" cast and crew found it -- this news would come out LONG before the series finale of the show! If you have not already seen massive news coverage of the discovery, you can know they are not going to find ol' Sasquatch !)

These shows sell the sizzle, but will never provide the steak, there will never be any substance to them. (Treasure hunting shows might have an advantage here -- the specific treasure they are looking for may not exist, but treasures do get found from time to time, so it is not impossible they'll find one.) It is not surprising that an audience would watch a show for a time just for the sizzle, but it is still surprising to me that these shows can run season after season with nothing to ever show for it, and people keep coming back.

 

[Gary C]

And, as with all of the supernatural "woo" shows, they have to find a way to keep interest and a story going in the absence of any resolution, ever. Anything called "Finding Bigfoot" has to deal with the fact that they will never find Bigfoot, any show called "In Search of Ancient Aliens" will never dig any up, and "Secrets of Skinwalker Ranch" will never be able to reveal any secrets. (Assume for a moment that there was a Bigfoot to find, and that the "Finding Bigfoot" cast and crew found it -- this news would come out LONG before the series finale of the show! If you have not already seen massive news coverage of the discovery, you can know they are not going to find ol' Sasquatch !)

These shows sell the sizzle, but will never provide the steak, there will never be any substance to them. (Treasure hunting shows might have an advantage here -- the specific treasure they are looking for may not exist, but treasures do get found from time to time, so it is not impossible they'll find one.) It is not surprising that an audience would watch a show for a time just for the sizzle, but it is still surprising to me that these shows can run season after season with nothing to ever show for it, and people keep coming back.

I suspect the underlying economic model allows the producers and protagonists to generate additional income from books, podcasts, and speaking fees which make ad sales for the broadcast episodes less important. In our content hungry 24/7 infotainment space, that probably gives woo-based programing a competitive advantage.