December 10, 2013

Hobby exhibition uncovers piece of Dutch meteorite

Filed under: History by Orangemaster @ 1:55 pm

Hoba

Registered as having fallen on 27 October 1873 in Diepeveen, Overijssel, a piece of a meteorite popped up at a hobby exhibition and may actually be made up of substances older than our solar system. The one shown here is the biggest known meteorite in the world, the Hoba meteorite in Namibia.

The ‘Diepenveen’ (meteorites are named after where they were found) weighs only 68 g and it just 5 x 3 x 3,5 cm in size. However, it is the fifth meteorite ever found in the Netherlands, making it very rare, according to Dutch expert Marco Langbroek. The rock is currently undergoing detailed analysis by Langbroek and his colleague Wim van Westrenen of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, which cannot be rushed as the rock is very fragile and needs to be handled with the utmost care.

The other four known meteorites have fallen in Uden, Noord-Brabant; Blauwkapel, Utrecht; Ellemeet, Zeeland and Glanerbrug, Overijssel.

For many years when I was small I lived in an area called Manicouagan (in Québec, Canada), which is apparently “one of the oldest known impact craters and is the largest ‘visible’ impact crater on Earth” of which Dutch astronaut André Kuipers took a breathtaking picture from space.

(Link: www.kennislink.nl, Photo of Hoba meteorite by coda, some rights reserved)

Tags: ,