Rock Found In Search Of Gold Ends Up Being Much More Valuable

The Maryborough meteorite.

A mystery rock was discovered in 2015 by an Australian man named David Hole, who was looking for gold close to Melbourne. He assumed there was something heavy inside because of the rock’s enormous weight. The rock later turned out to contain priceless raindrops that date back to the formation of our solar system, which are both rarer and more valuable than the gold he was searching for, according to ScienceAlert.

The science magazine further elaborated that to break open his find, Hole tried a rock saw, an angle grinder, a drill, and even dousing the thing in acid. However, not even a sledgehammer could make a crack. That’s because what he was trying so hard to open was no gold nugget. As he found out years later, it was a rare meteorite.

“It had this sculpted, dimpled look to it,” Melbourne Museum geologist Dermot Henry told The Sydney Morning Herald in 2019.

“That’s formed when they come through the atmosphere, they are melting on the outside, and the atmosphere sculpts them.”

The Sydney Morning Herald further stated that the testing quickly confirmed their suspicions. The rock was a 4.6-billion-year-old meteorite. It is now known as the Maryborough meteorite, and it is very heavy because, unlike standard Earth rocks, it is filled with very dense forms of iron and nickel.

Mr Henry used a super-hard diamond saw to slice the edge off, revealing a cross-section of little silver raindrops.

These were once droplets of silicate minerals that crystallised from the super-hot cloud of gas that formed our solar system. “You’re looking right back to the formation of the solar system here,” says Mr Henry.