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DISCOVERY

Henry told, “This is only the 17th
Back in 2015, David Hole meteorite found in Victoria, whereas
found a unique looking there’s been thousands of gold nuggets
found.” Looking at the chain of events,
rock in Maryborough it’s quite, you might say, astronomical it
Regional Park near being discovered at all.” It’s not even
the first meteorite to take a few years to
Melbourne, Australia. make it to a museum. In an amazing sto-
Thinking it might have ry, we covered last year, one space rock
took 80 years, two owners, and a stint as
gold inside, he took it a doorstop before making it to a
home with him only to museum.
find that no matter what ow is probably as good a time as
any to check your backyard for
he did he could not break N particularly heavy and hard-to-
it. After holding on to break rocks — you might be sitting on a
the rock for a few years, he metaphorical gold mine.
Interestingly, once upon a time, gold
decided to take it to was the basis for sound money. Gold
has long been a measure of wealth,
the Melbourne Museum to and it is still coveted the world over for
see if it could be identified. jewelry and as a store of wealth.
Throughout history, people have lit-
The rock turns out to be erally traveled to the ends of the earth
a 4.6 billion years old in search of the yellow metal. Silver is
often said to be gold’s ugly sister. Per-
meteorite haps not as aesthetically pleasing as
gold, silver is much cheaper to gain
exposure to — and is quite possibly a
found in 2003. This begs the question Our Solar System was once a spin- better long-term investment than gold.
what other simple looking rocks out ning pile of dust and chondrite rocks. Platinum and its close cousin, pal-
there could actually be rare meteorites? Eventually gravity pulled a lot of this ladium come next. Platinum is much
Once open, you can also see the tiny material together into planets, but the rarer than both gold and silver and
crystallized droplets of metallic miner- leftovers mostly ended up in a huge palladium is even rarer than that. The
als throughout it, called chondrules. asteroid belt. vast majority of platinum comes from
“Meteorites provide the cheapest “This particular meteorite most South Africa. Palladium is even rarer
form of space exploration. They trans- probably comes out of the asteroid belt than platinum, and certainly less talked
port us back in time, providing clues between Mars and Jupiter, and it’s been about. Palladium is in the platinum
to the age, formation and chemistry nudged out of there by some asteroids family of metals, and jewelry connois-
of our Solar System (including Earth),” smashing into each other, then one day seurs know it as an alternative to gold
explained Henry. it smashes into Earth,” Henry said. or platinum.
“Some provide a glimpse at the deep Carbon dating suggests the meteor- One reason for its growing value is
interior of our planet. In some meteor- ite has been on Earth between 100 and the simple fact that palladium deposits
ites, there is ‘stardust’ even older than 1,000 years, and there’s been a number are rare, with major mines in Russia,
our solar system, which shows us how of meteor sightings between 1889 and South Africa, Ontario and Montana.
stars form and evolve to create ele- 1951 that could correspond to its arrival Overall, it’s estimated about 110,000
ments of the periodic table. on our planet. tons of platinum-group metals are
“Other rare meteorites contain The researchers argue that the held in reserve around the world, with
organic molecules such as amino acids; Maryborough meteorite is much rarer nearly 70,000 tons held in South
the building blocks of life.” than gold. It’s one of only 17 meteorites Africa. The research has been published
Although the researchers don’t yet ever recorded in the Australian state in the “Proceedings of the Royal Society
know where the meteorite came from of Victoria, and it’s the second largest of Victoria.
and how long it may have been on chondritic mass, after a huge 55-kilo-
Earth, they do have some guesses. gram specimen identified in 2003. LETTERS@TEHELKA.COM

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