A man stumbled upon a strange rock while he was on a hunt for gold.
David Hole took the rock home and perched it on a shelf for years. Lately, he got to know that it was a rare 4.6 billion-year-old meteorite.
He found the meteorite in 2015 at Maryborough Regional Park in Australia. The park was the site of the famous Australian gold rush in the nineteenth century.
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The man thought that the rock contained a gold nugget and he tried to crack it open. Unable to open it, he put it up on a shelf for next six years.
It was when David took it to the Melbourne Museum recently that he discovered the strange rock was something that traveled from space – a meteorite.
A geologist at the museum, Dermot Henry, said he had come across only two genuine meteorites in his 37 years of working in the area.
“It had this sculpted, dimpled look to it. That’s formed when they come through the atmosphere, they are melting on the outside, and the atmosphere sculpts them,” Henry said.
Known as the Maryborough meteorite, the rock weighs 17 kilograms and is quite heavy as it is filled with very dense forms of iron and nickel.
Henry sliced the edge off with a super-hard diamond saw, revealing a cross-section of little silver raindrops.
He said meteorites provide the cheapest form of space exploration as they transport us back in time, providing clue to the age, formation and chemistry of our solar system.
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Henry pointed out that the lack of weathering on the rock suggests that it has been on Earth for less than 200 years.
