The largest meteorite ever found in Germany has recently been rediscovered after lying in a garden for over 30 years. The meteorite has been dubbed “Blaubeuren” after the town in which it was found.
Researchers announced on Wednesday that they had discovered the largest meteorite to have ever landed in Germany. However, this meteorite didn’t crash into the Earth any time recently; rather the lump of space rock was rediscovered after sitting in someone’s back garden for over 30 years.
According to the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), the meteorite was rediscovered in the southwestern town of Blaubeuren, near Ulm in Baden-Württemberg. It was originally dug up in 1989 by a man in his garden. The man noted how heavy the rock was, as well as its high iron content, but did not clock that the rock had come from the cosmos. “Even a professional would hardly have guessed it was a meteorite when first laying eyes on the heavily weathered boulder," said the DLR.
The meteorite sat in the man’s garden until 2015 when he was going to throw it out with other garden waste. After changing his mind, he stored it in his basement until contacting the DLR in January this year.
The meteorite then underwent tests at three laboratories, which confirmed the rock was actually a meteorite. “The find has a mass of 30.26 kilograms [66.7 pounds], which makes it the largest stone meteorite ever found in Germany," meteorite expert Dieter Heinlein said. The scientists are now trying to figure out when exactly it fell to Earth.
DLR posted a video onto Twitter of the meteorite being cut from the boulder it was encased in, allowing you to see how large it actually is.