Australian man went looking for gold in 2015, found a rock. It was a 4.6 billion-year-old meteorite

In 2015, Dave Hole was looking for gold at a famous ancient site that has been well known since the 19th century for making many generations wealthy. He stumbled upon a big unique rock and tried to break it open in the hope of discovering gold. But he failed. So he just kept it on his shelf for 6 years. In 2021, he has discovered that his discovery was worth more than gold!

Six years ago, Dave Hole thought of exploring his neighbourhood, and went off wandering around in the neighbouring Maryborough Regional Park. He was excited and intrigued when his metal detector beeped and he found a large reddish rock, which was far heavier than it looked.

He was mighty excited. He had found himself a mystery object that was originally found in Maryborough, a historically significant place in the Goldfields area.

What's special about Maryborough, though?

Now, the Goldsfield area has been famous since the 19th century because it was witness to the historic Australian Gold Rush. The Australian Gold Rush was an event that started in 1851 when someone found gold in the area, which then triggered around 5 lakh people to transition to Australia in a year’s time. To find gold. (In fact, it’s such a craze in Australia that Discovery and Netflix both have a series on gold mining.)

Dave was convinced that he had struck gold (literally). Because the rock was 39 cms long but weighed 17 kg!

So, he tried everything possible to crack it open. He tried sawing it and sledge-hammering it. He even soaked it in acid. But the rock was a rock.

So, he left it on his shelf in disappointment.

Recently, he decided to get closure and took the rock to the Melbourne Museum. But he found something even more amusing there.

Turns out the rock did not belong to Earth at all. It had travelled from space! It was a 4.6-billion-year-old meteorite that was heavy because it contained a dense percentage of iron and nickel.

Expert Geologist Dermot Henry at the museum was in for a beautiful surprise because in his career of 37 years, he had only seen two real meteorites. And this was the second. Henry then did what Dave had been trying to do for long. He used a super hard diamond saw to slice off the edge to check its content, and it revealed something interesting. Not gold, but a cross-section of little silver raindrops.

Carbon dating of these little raindrops has suggested that the meteorite has been on earth between 100 and 1,000 years. Scientists don’t exactly know where it came from or how long it has been on earth. But here is what they know:

Our solar system was once a revolving pile of dust and chondrite rocks, and when gravity pulled most of this material together, planets were formed. The leftover rocks ended up forming a part of the huge asteroid belt. It is very likely that this meteorite came from this asteroid belt!

Isn't this amazing?