An artist who hoped to stir debate over global warming with his 175-ton quartzite and bronze sculpture “Spaceship Earth” is instead struggling to solve the mystery of its spectacular crash at Kennesaw State University last week.

Questions abound over whether vandals destroyed the sculpture, made by a Finnish-born artist known as Eino, or whether a combination of substandard adhesive and rain caused it to crumble in the middle of the night on Dec. 29 in a collapse the campus police said they felt from their offices around the corner.

Just three months old, the $1 million globe, made of 88 chunks of Brazilian quartzite and adorned with raised bronze signifying land masses, lies disintegrated at the university, in Kennesaw, Ga., outside a new academic building praised for its eco-friendly attributes. A bronze statue of David Brower, a conservationist who was the first executive director of the Sierra Club, had stood atop the 15-foot globe and is now partly crushed. A steel time capsule intended to be opened in 3006 is exposed amid the rubble.

Eino flew to the site from his home in Pahrump, Nev., the day after the collapse and said he saw “very clear evidence” of vandalism. Steel beams that held together parts of the globe’s seven layers of stone had been bent, he said, adding that the adhesive used is the same as that used by most large-scale sculptors, although he would not name the manufacturer.