Incredible facts
Our planet is often attacked by various space objects. Most of them burn up in the atmosphere before they reach the Earth's surface. Those that evaporate are what we call shooting stars or meteors (comet remnants).
However, some of the lucky ones, meteorites, sometimes manage to reach the Earth's surface, where it can lie unchanged for thousands of years.
Asteroids are even larger space objects. According to one theory, one such rock left Earth without dinosaurs about 63 million years ago, and with another similar rock, 2012 DA14, we narrowly avoided a collision in 2013.
Below we'll talk about the six largest meteorites ever known to earthlings.
The biggest meteorites
Iron-nickel Willamette
American Museum of Natural History, 1911
This is the largest meteorite ever found in the United States. It weighs 15.5 tons and measures 7.8 square meters. The dents on the meteorite were not due to the fact that it partially burned down while it reached Earth. The thing is that it has been rusting for hundreds of millions of years in the wet forests of Western Oregon.
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The meteorite was discovered at the American Museum of Natural History in New York in 1906. Before entering the museum, an interesting story happened to the meteorite.
The meteorite was originally discovered by Indians, who moved it to Oregon's Willamette Valley. This assumption arose due to the fact that the impact crater was not found. It is believed to be located in Canada.
The Indians worshiped the stone as a guest from the moon, and they used rainwater collected in the depressions of the stone to treat diseases.
In 1902, the meteorite was discovered by miner Ellis Hughes. The man immediately realized that there was more than just a stone in front of him, so he slowly moved the find to his site for three months.
However, it was exposed, and the pebble was recognized as the property of the steel company in Oregon, on whose territory the meteorite was originally located.
In 1905, the meteorite was bought by a private individual for $26,000 and a year later donated to a museum in New York, where it still lives today.
After the stone was in the museum, the Oregon Indians demanded the return of the meteorite, as it had been the subject of their religious worship for centuries and took part in annual ritual ceremony.
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However, it was impossible to remove the meteorite from the museum without destroying the walls, so an agreement was concluded with the Indians, under which the museum can be held once a year ceremony.
Largest meteorites
Mbosi meteorite
This meteorite was discovered in the 1930s in Tanzania. The meteorite is almost 1 meter high, 3 meters long, and weighs almost twice the weight of Willamette and amounts to 25 tons.
For many centuries, local tribes considered Mbozi a sacred stone and did not tell anyone about it due to various taboos. They called it kimondo, which means “meteor” in Swahili.
It is interesting that there is no crater at the site where the meteorite was discovered. This suggests that after the collision with Earth, the meteorite rolled across the surface for some time.
Like most of its known cousins, the meteorite is 90 percent iron, which also explains its dark color. The stone shows very visible signs of melting and heating to very high temperatures, as a result of passing through the upper layers of the atmosphere.
People dug a ditch around the meteorite because Mbozi was originally partially submerged in the ground. They left a layer of soil under it, which later became a natural pedestal.
The largest meteorites
Cape York Meteorite
This is the third largest meteorite to fall to Earth about 10,000 years ago. The meteorite was named after the place where its most significant fragments were found in Greenland.
The largest meteorite fragment is called Anigito and weighs 31 tons. The story of his name is interesting. When the stone was being transported by ship to the American Museum of Natural History in 1897, the four-year-old daughter of explorer Robert Peary broke a bottle of wine against it and said a word that did not mean anything in their own language: “ah-no-gi-so”.
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We decided to name the pebble that had previously been called “Tent” by the Eskimos, the first to find the meteorite. Anigito has done better.
The second largest meteorite fragment is called Agpalilik (the aborigines called it “Man”). It was discovered in 1963, weighs 20 tons and is now in the Geological Museum at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.
Various meteorite fragments were found between 1911 and 1984. In addition to “Man” and “Anigito”, they also found “Woman” (3 tons), “Dog” (400 kg), etc.
It is worth noting that for a long time, Inuit tribes used fragments and fragments of the Cape York meteorite to create their harpoons and tools.
Meteorites that fell to Earth
Bakubirito meteorite
This is the largest meteorite found in Mexico. It weighs about 20 tons, is 4.5 meters long, 2 meters wide, and 1.75 meters high. It was discovered by geologist Gilbert Ellis Bailey near Sinaloa de Leyva.
The pebble was found in 1863, and now it can be seen in the scientific center of Sinaloa.
El Chaco meteorite
This meteorite is the second largest meteorite to ever collide with Earth. It weighs almost twice as much as the previous one on this list — 37 tons!
It fell in Argentina and is part of a group of meteorites called Campo del Cielo. As a result of its fall, a crater with an area of 60 square meters was formed.
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El Chaco was discovered in 1969 with a metal detector because it was 5 meters underground.
Meteorite hunter Robert Haag tried to steal it in 1990, but local police responded in time.
Last year, 2016, another fragment was discovered and brought to the surface, which is believed to be part of the same group of meteorites as El Chaco.
Hoba meteorite
This is the largest meteorite ever found. It fell in southwestern Africa, in Namibia, and never moved. It is twice as heavy as its closest rival El Paco: this monster weighs 60 tons.
The pebble got its name from the Hoba West Farm, where it was found in 1920. It was found by pure chance by the farmer when he was plowing one of his fields, because neither the crater nor other signs of the fall were preserved.
Read also: Meteorites of various types helped create the Earth
Goba is interesting because, compared to other meteorites, its surface is smooth and flat. It consists of 84 per cent iron and 16 per cent nickel.
It should be added that the meteorite was never weighed. It is believed that when it fell to Earth, its weight was about 90 tons. At the time of discovery in 1920, the baby was estimated to weigh about 66 tons, however, scientific research, vandalism and erosion did their job, so today Goba has lost up to 60 tons.
Today, Goba is considered to be the largest piece of iron of natural origin. It covers an area of 6.5 square meters. It presumably fell to Earth about 80,000 years ago and has not moved since then due to its huge size.
Oddly enough, it was never necessary to dig it up. According to one theory, due to its relatively flat shape, the meteorite slid across the surface instead of going deep into the ground.