(DailyVantage.com) – Dave Hole was scouting for gold in Maryborough, Australia, near his home in 2015. He came upon a rock he was certain held a gold nugget inside, so he took it home. After unsuccessfully trying to crack the stone open using various methods, including a saw and a sledgehammer, he put it aside for several years. In 2019, he decided to take it to the Melbourne Museum, where he got the shock of his life — this rock was actually a meteorite.
Man's jaw drops after learning rock he stored on shelf for years is priceless. Turns out it was an incredibly rare 4.6 billion-year-old meteorite. https://t.co/kHaSd4ohGn
— Chicago News Bench™ (@ChiNewsBench) November 30, 2021
When geologists Bill Birch and Dermot Henry took a look at it, they knew they had something special on their hands. Its appearance gave it away. As a meteorite descends through the Earth’s atmosphere, the exterior melts, and the atmosphere sculpts it.
Another key indicator making the rock atypical but lending to Hole’s suspicion it contained gold was its weight. This meteorite is filled with nickel and iron, making it heftier than expected. The two geologists used a diamond saw to cut it open and pinpointed the rock as an “H5 chrondite,” which dates back to the “formation of the solar system” as much as 4 billion years ago.
The rock went on display at the Melbourne Museum as part of science week the same year.
The moral of this story? Keep those interesting rocks you find. You never know if you might be holding a piece of our solar system from billions of years ago.
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