Two Australian Gold prospectors who dug up a rare meteorite 4.6 billion years old decided to donate the entire meteorite to an educational institution after giving up their big chance to get rich overnight.
Paul McRae and John Miller are a couple of good friends who also both enjoy treasure hunting. They traveled together to the Georgetown area of northern Queensland in 2016 to pan for gold. While the two were searching in earnest, McRae’s metal detector made a loud noise, resulting in a 25-kilogram stone being dug up.
But the appearance of the stone is ordinary, the two are not clear what this is a stone, so it was put in the back of the car, this put on the four years. It was only last year that the two people sent the stone to Geoscience Australia for identification on a whim.
Unexpectedly, the professional test judgment, the stone is the existence of 4.6 billion years of ancient meteorites, and its composition contains iron-nickel pieces, is very rare “iron meteorite”.
Steven Petkovski, a scientist at Geoscience Australia, said that only five such meteorites had been found on Earth before this, in Antarctica, the United States and other places, and now the sixth one was found, and the largest in size.
Petkovski said it is a very rare meteorite with an iron composition rich in sulfides known as meteoric iron sulfide (troilite).
Someone told McRae and Miller that the meteorite was worth a lot of money, and if they cut it into several pieces and sold it, they would have an inexhaustible fortune to spend. However, the two gold miners didn’t do that, and decided that such a rare meteorite should be used for scientific and educational purposes, so they decided to donate the entire meteorite.
The meteorite was eventually bought from them by Earth Sciences Australia for $200,000. Petkovsky said the meteorite, which looks like a work of art in addition to being scientifically important, is currently on display at Geoscience Australia and on its website.
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