A man searching for gold in Maryborough Regional Park, Victoria, Australia has stumbled on something far more ancient - a 17-kilogram rock he first believed held a nugget now has been confirmed as a 4.6-billion-year-old meteorite.
The space rock, later named the Maryborough meteorite, landed on Earth centuries ago, but lay unrecognized until medical-equipment-level testing at the Museums Victoria identified it as an H5 ordinary chondrite.
Experts say the find ranks among the rarer meteorites ever recovered in Victoria. Its surface shows the characteristic dimpled, melted texture of an object that blazed through Earth’s atmosphere, and its interior is rich in iron and nickel - packed with tiny crystalline “chondrules” formed in the early solar system.
Scientists stress that meteorites like Maryborough offer a unique, direct look back at the formation of the solar system. Unlike gold, whose value is mostly financial, the true worth here lies in scientific insight - the rock preserves a time capsule from the birth of planets and perhaps clues about the origins of Earth itself.
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