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The Valley of Balls, Kazakhstan

The valley of balls or Torysh, as it’s called in Kazakh, is located at the Northern tip of the Western Karatau, close to the town of Shetpe in Western Kazakhstan. The area consist of numerous ball-like rock formations strewn across a wide range of steppe land. The balls come in different sizes, but most are 3-4 meters in diameter.

The balls are believed to be concretions —a hard, compact mass formed by the precipitation of minerals. They are often spherical and usually forms in sedimentary rock or soil. The phenomenon is not rare — examples of such concretions are found all over the globe. What is rare, however, is the size these concretions have reached. Concretions as large as those in valley of balls are found only at few places on earth. The Moeraki Boulders of New Zealand is another example.

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Photo credit: Alexandr Babkin/Wikimedia

Dropping Balls to Tell Time

Architecture balls dropping Other tell time

Everyday, at five minutes to one, a bright orange ball on the roof of Flamsteed House at Greenwich’s Old Observatory in London, slides half-way up a pole. At two minutes to one, it rises all the way to the top. At exactly one PM, the ball falls with a dull thud. Anyone who is looking at the ball when it drops can instantly verify whether their watches are telling the correct time. In this current age, when time could be easily synchronized over the internet or by using mobile signals or GPS technology, “time balls” are superfluous, but back in the Victorian era this was one of the few ways by which time was announced to the public.

Back in those days, few people could afford to have their own watches and clocks, instead relying on the hourly chimes of the church clock to tell time. The church clocks were not very accurate but most people had no need for precise time.

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