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Rock

thought

to be

gold,

turns

out more

precious!

tehelka bureau

n an interesting turn of events, To crack open his find, Hole tried a offerings have ever turned out to be
a man found a piece of rock, rock saw, an angle grinder, a drill, even real meteorites.
brought it home thinking it to be putting the thing in acid, but not even
gold rock, kept it for years and it a sledgehammer could make a crack. This was one of the two
I turned out to be more valuable That’s because what he was trying so “If you saw a rock on Earth like this, and
than even gold. The interesting big of hard to open was no gold nugget. As you picked it up, it shouldn’t be that
information came from Jacinta Bowler he found out years later, it was a rare heavy,” another Melbourne Museum
datelined December 27, 2019 in “Sci- meteorite. geologist, Bill Birch told.
ence Alert” on the basis of research “It had this sculpted, dimpled look to The researchers have recently pub-
published in the “Proceedings of the it,” Melbourne museum geologist Der- lished a scientific paper describing the
Royal Society of Victoria”. mot Henry told The Sydney Morning 4.6 billion-year-old meteorite, which
The story goes on like this that In Herald. “That’s formed when they come they’ve called Maryborough after the
2015, one David Hole was prospecting through the atmosphere, they are melt- town near where it was found.
in Maryborough Regional Park near ing on the outside, and the atmosphere It’s a huge 17 kilograms (37.5 pounds),
Melbourne, Australia. Armed with a sculpts them.” and after using a diamond saw to cut off
metal detector, he discovered some- Unable to open the ‘rock’, but still a small slice, they discovered its com-
thing out of the ordinary — a very intrigued, Hole took the meteorite position has a high percentage of iron,
heavy, reddish rock resting in some into the Melbourne Museum to be making it a H5 ordinary chondrite.
yellow clay. He took it home and tried identified. The rock measures 38.5cm x 14.5cm
everything to open it, sure that there “I’ve looked at a lot of rocks that peo- x 14.5cm and weighs 17 kilograms. The
was a gold nugget inside the rock — af- ple think are meteorites,” Henry told. specimen is quite rare being one of only
ter all, Maryborough is in the Goldfields In fact, after 37 years of working at 17 meteorites ever recorded in Victoria.
region, where the Australian gold rush the museum and examining thousands It is also the second-largest chondritic
peaked in the 19th century. of rocks, Henry explains only two of the mass, after a 55-kilogram meteorite

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