26 kg meteorite spent six years as a table decoration in Paraíba

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A 26.93 kg meteorite spent six years serving as a table decoration in a house in the municipality of Nova Olinda, in the interior of Paraíba. Two brothers found the rock not knowing what it was until they went through a period of study.

On Saturday (19), the fragment, which is estimated to be more than 4.5 billion years old, was made official and classified by the Meteoritical Society, the American association responsible for meteorite records in the world.

The brothers Edsom Oliveira da Silva and João Jarbas Oliveira da Silva were responsible for finding the meteorite in November 2014. Edsom owns a jewelry store and has been in the business for 32 years.

He says that, like his brother, he has an “adventurous spirit” and likes to go in search of gold nuggets. It was on one of these adventures, in a lake on his farm, in the hinterland of Paraíba, that he found the meteorite, which is now called Nova Olinda, in honor of the city.

On the day of the discovery, says Edsom, they were carrying equipment that detects metals in the ground. As they passed through a certain area, the instrument went off, causing the pair to stop to look at what was there.

“He [o equipamento] It’s not that powerful, but it shot up. I told my brother: ‘It’s strange’. We took the pickaxe, dug it up and found a rock that wasn’t that big,” he recalls. We took it out and washed it. We then came across a different stone from the ones I found and took it home.”

When taking it to his house, Edsom says he noticed that the rock was very shiny. “I put it on the kitchen table and it was a decoration for six years,” he says. The appearance, he also recalls, made people who arrived at the house ask what it was about.

“People would pick it up and say they couldn’t handle the stone. It’s heavy, which is a characteristic of meteorites.”

After almost six years, after watching the news about a meteorite shower in Santa Filomena, Pernambuco, in 2020, Edsom realized that the decoration of his table might not be a simple rock.

From there, he went in search of specialists in the area, until he found André Moutinho, a researcher and meteorite collector. In contact with him, the jeweler informed him about the finding and with that he was instructed to carry out tests.

“He [André Moutinho] asked me to buy a saw and test it [fazer um corte na rocha]. The metal blinded the saw. He said then he had everything to be [um meteorito]”, he narrates. “Then we did one last test with a magnet and it worked.”

To analyze the meteorite, a team was then assembled with researchers from the Federal University of Ouro Preto, University of Campinas, University of São Paulo and also from the University of Alberta, in Canada.

In its composition, the Nova Olinda meteorite has nickel, cobalt, chromium, iridium, gallium, germanium, platinum, copper, gold, palladium, silver and tungsten.

Now, after officialization, the find is for sale, but the brothers want it to remain in Paraíba, as it is the state of origin. Edsom declined to inform the expected value. He said only that it is tied to the costs of making his classification official.

There is no specific law dealing with the commercialization of meteorites. A bill authored by federal deputy Alex Santana (Republicans-BA) is still pending in the Chamber of Deputies, which defines whose property belongs to those who reach Brazilian soil. The proposal predicts that the meteorite will belong to the owner of the property on which it lands.

The government of Paraíba, through the Department of Education, informed that it participated in a meeting with representatives of the Paraiba Association of Astronomy and “received the proposal that the State acquire the meteorite for R$ 50 thousand”. “The proposal is being analyzed.”

The discovery has a great impact on the state, according to the president of the Paraiba Association of Astronomy, Marcelo Zurita.

“Paraíba doesn’t have much tradition in the meteorite area. We have a few meteorite collectors here, but in a particular way. We don’t have, for example, a meteorite exhibition in the state, researchers in this area around here. makes this rock even more important to stay here in Paraíba”, he says.

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