In 1989, a man in Blaubeuren, Swabia, Germany, was digging a trench to lay a cable in his garden when he found a large boulder. Initially, the man intended to throw the boulder away. However, it was too heavy and difficult to move, so he rolled it to the corner of the garden and placed it there.
The man forgot about the rock for many years. It wasn’t until 2015 that he suddenly remembered it. By then, the rock had been eroded by wind and rain. He then used a cart to move it to his basement.
The rock was found in the man's garden, forgotten for more than 30 years. (Photo: DLR)
It wasn't until January 2020, when he happened to meet Heike Rauer, Director of the Institute for Planetary Research at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Jürgen Oberst, who oversees the European Fireball Network, and Dieter Heinlein, a meteorite expert at DLR, that he told them about his rock.
He took a 23.4 gram fragment from the rock and sent it to an expert. According to Dieter Heinlein, a meteorite expert, he could see with the naked eye that there was iron on the surface of the fragment. The expert used a diamond saw to cut it into small pieces. What he found inside the fragment surprised him.
Inside the fragment is a matrix of millimeter-sized chondrules. Chondrules are round grains commonly found in a chondrite. Chondrules are made up of silicates, metals, and sulfides and appear to have formed as high-temperature molten droplets in the early solar nebula.
Chondrites were formed about 4.56 billion years ago when many types of dust and small particles that were present from the beginning of the Solar System gathered to form ancient asteroids, but they were small enough to not be in a melted state. It can be seen that the rock that the old man found was a meteorite that was billions of years old. In the eyes of scientists, it is a "cosmic sediment" that contains a lot of information about how the Solar System was formed.
It turns out this rock is a meteorite worth millions of dollars. (Photo: DLR)
After careful examination, the meteorite was confirmed to weigh more than 30kg. It is recognized as the largest meteorite found in Germany.
Experts have named the meteorite “Blaubeuren” after the location where it fell. They also said that “Blaubeuren” is the result of a violent collision in space. This meteorite is also valued at up to 5 million USD (more than 115 billion VND). It is currently on display at the German Museum of Prehistory.
Quoc Thai (Source: DLR)
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