Man Thought He Found Gold Hidden in a Rock, Shocked to Find It Was Far More Valuable
In 2015, a prospector ventured out in a park in Australia and found a mysterious-looking rock. Considering the park's reputation as a place that changed fortunes with gold discoveries, David Hole thought it would be gold, Science Alert reported. To his surprise, the rock had no precious metal and was actually out of this world. After some years, Hole took the finding to the Melbourne Museum and found that the rock's true identity was a 4.6 billion-year-old meteorite.
Hole found the rock with the help of a metal detector in Maryborough Regional Park near Melbourne. The rock was reddish and was resting in some yellow clay when it was discovered. He took the rock to his home and attempted to open it. The prospector tried everything he could think of, from a rock saw, an angle grinder, and a drill, to a sledgehammer. To his surprise, nothing worked out. Still, he decided to keep the finding in his custody.
Years later, Hole took the rock to the Melbourne Museum to get an assessment, The Sydney Morning Herald reported. Museum geologists, Dermot Henry and Bill Birch, got pretty excited just by seeing the rock. They immediately guessed that the boulder could contain an extra-terrestrial substance.
"It had this sculpted, dimpled look to it," Henry recalled. "That’s formed when they come through the atmosphere, they are melting on the outside, and the atmosphere sculpts them." Birch additionally noted that the finding was extremely heavy and no rock from Earth should have that much weight.
The geologists put the rock through testing and their suspicions were confirmed. According to their examination, the rock was a 4.6 billion-year-old meteorite. They further revealed that the rock was uncharacteristically heavy because it was stuffed with a very dense form of iron and nickel. The rock was labeled Maryborough meteorite after its origin site.
Henry also managed to slice the edges of the rock with the help of a super-hard diamond saw. Researchers found a cross-section of little silver raindrops in the opened-up area. The geologists believe that these raindrops were traces of silicate minerals that crystallized due to various processes in the solar system. "You’re looking right back to the formation of the solar system here," Henry points out.
Researchers are yet to figure out where exactly from space the finding came, but they have some speculations, Science Alert reported. The rock's composition classifies it as an H5 ordinary chondrite, a type of meteorite. The solar system long ago was a spinning pile of such meteorites, but eventually, gravity pulled them into planets. The leftovers that did not find a place in planets found themselves in a huge asteroid belt.
"This particular meteorite most probably comes out of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and it's been nudged out of there by some asteroids smashing into each other, then one day it smashes into Earth," Henry shared.
Carbon dating shows that the rock has been on Earth from 100 to 1000 years. Multiple meteor shower sightings have been observed in that duration by experts. The meteorite could have been in any of those meteor showers. Researchers further claim that this kind of meteor is much rarer to get one's hands-on than gold, which makes it much more valuable. "This is only the 17th meteorite found in Victoria, whereas there have been thousands of gold nuggets found," Henry added.