The rock could only be penetrated by a super-hard diamond drill (Image: Source: Museums Victoria / Photographer: Rodney Start)
A man, out with his metal detector one morning, believed he had stumbled upon a massive gold nugget. However, the reality was even more astonishing.
David Hole made the remarkable discovery in the soft yellow clay of Maryborough Regional Park near Melbourne, Australia. Given that the region experienced a gold rush in the latter half of the 19th Century, transforming Australia from a remote penal colony to a destination for hopeful immigrants, his assumption wasn’t entirely far-fetched.
However, what David had unearthed on that bright May day was something far more rare and valuable than gold. The first hints about the true nature of the mystery rock emerged when David attempted to cut it open to verify if he had indeed struck gold. Unlike gold, which is a relatively soft metal, David’s find resisted rock saws, drills, acids, and even a mighty blow from a sledgehammer.
Finally, three years after its discovery, David packed the rock in his backpack and took it to the Melbourne Museum. There, geologists Dermot Henry and Bill Birch revealed to David the amazing truth about his find: it was a meteorite that was 4.6 billion years old.
Dr Bill Burch [R] , senior curator emeritusand Dermot Henry, [L] head of sciences at Museums Victoria (Image: Source: Museums Victoria / Photographer: Rodney Start)
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While they often receive visitors who believe they’ve stumbled upon a celestial rock, authentic meteorites are exceedingly rare. However, when Dermot laid eyes on David’s discovery, he instantly recognised its uniqueness.
“It had this sculpted, dimpled look to it,” he shared with the Sydney Morning Herald. “That’s formed when they come through the atmosphere, they are melting on the outside, and the atmosphere sculpts them.”
In an interview with Channel 10 News, he emphasised the rarity of the find, stating: “This is only the 17th meteorite found in Victoria, whereas there’s been thousands of gold nuggets found.
“Looking at the chain of events, it’s quite, you might say, astronomical it being discovered at all.”
Because the rock was so heavy, David assumed it had to contain gold (Image: Source: Museums Victoria / Photographer: Rodney Start)
The stone, now dubbed the Maryborough Meteorite, likely hails from the very earliest beginnings of the Solar System. Dermot elaborated: “Meteorites provide the cheapest form of space exploration. They transport us back in time, providing clues to the age, formation, and chemistry of our Solar System – including Earth.
“Some provide a glimpse at the deep interior of our planet. In some meteorites, there is ‘stardust’ even older than our Solar System, which shows us how stars form and evolve to create elements of the periodic table.
“Other rare meteorites contain organic molecules such as amino acids; the building blocks of life.” Comprised of extremely dense forms of iron and nickel, the Maryborough Meteorite is noticeably heavier than an ordinary rock of the same size.
“If you saw a rock on earth like this, and you picked it up, it shouldn’t be that heavy,” Dr Birch commented.
Barred Olivine chondrule formed in the Maryborough meteorite. (Image: Birch et al., PRSV, 2019)
The geologists used an ultra-hard diamond saw to cut into the meteorite, unveiling an inner structure of tiny crystallised droplets of metallic minerals known as chondrules. The rock has been categorised as an H-type ordinary chondrites – the most prevalent type of meteorite, making up about 40% of all those catalogued.
They’re thought to originate from a dense body in the Asteroid Belt named Hebe, and scattered throughout the solar system by collisions between celestial objects. “You’re looking right back to the formation of the solar system here,” Dermot stated.
After a long, solitary journey around the Sun, at some point in the past 1,000 years or so David’s rock was captured by Earth’s gravity and plunged into the ground near Maryborough. One potential date for its arrival is in June 1951, when a large fireball was seen streaking across the sky close to where the Maryborough Meteorite was discovered.
It’s an incredible find, David said: “It was just pot luck, mate. A billion to one – bigger, a trillion to one. Got more chance of being struck by lightning twice.”