The 1930s Michigan men's door stop has proven to be a meteorite valued at $ 100,000.

Mona Sirbescu has been saying no for 18 years.

"For 18 years, the answer has been categorical:" no ", no meteorites," said Sirbescu jokingly in a statement from the CMU..

It is only this year that his answer has finally been changed to a yes.

A Michigan man had contacted Sirbescu a few months earlier to ask him to examine a large boulder he had on his farm. Do not forget that this is not a new rock, but the one he's been using for over 30 years and that has used it as a door-to-door.

A little hesitant, Sirbescu agreed to meet the man who asked to remain anonymous to examine the rock in question. The man arrived and unveiled the biggest potential meteorite in Sirbescu.

"I could tell right away that it was something special," Sirbescu said.

After carefully examining the rock, she determined that it was a 22-pound meteorite – the sixth-largest found in the state of Michigan, according to the International Society of Meteorology and global science – and worth $ 100,000.

"It's the most valuable specimen I've ever had in my life, financially and scientifically," Sirbescu said.

The owner of the meteorite confided to central Michigan that he had got the rock when he had bought a farm in Edmore, Michigan, in 1988. He had first spotted the meteorite when the owner of the farm had taken him to inspect a shed on the property whose door was fixed. opened by a big rock. Curious to know what was the story behind the massive and mysterious rock that was holding the door, he asked the farmer what it was about.

The farmer was candid in telling him that it was a meteorite that his father and he had seen crush on their property in the 1930s. "That made a hell of a splash when it hit," he said. said the farmer to the man. The next morning, he and his father found the crater and dug it in the ground. The rock was still hot, he said.

It was part of the property, said the farmer, and if the man wanted it, it was up to him.

After buying the land, the man used the rock wisely – a faithful door as she had been during most of his earthly life. He would also send his children to school with him to show it and tell it. It was only in January 2018, when people started to find and sell fragments from another meteorite that exploded in the Michigan skies that man began to wonder how much he was really worth.

This is how Sirbescu landed, who then took the meteorite to one of the campus labs of the CMU, where she was examined under an X-ray fluorescence instrument. It was determined that he it was an iron-nickel meteorite containing about 88% iron and 12% nickel, a metal rarely found on Earth. For reference, most ferrous meteorites are composed of about 90 to 95% iron.

In order to confirm his assessment of the rock, Sirbescu cut a small polite sample and sent it to a colleague from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.

His colleague has validated Sirbescu's assessment and the Smithsonian is now considering buying the meteorite for display. If she does not decide to buy the rock, the slice will remain in its place and will be called the Edmore meteorite, she said.

A museum of minerals in Maine is also considering the purchase of the meteorite.

The Smithsonian also sent the sample provided by Sirbescu to John Watson, Professor Emeritus of the Department of Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences at the University of California at Los Angeles, considered the ferrous meteorite guru. Sirbescu said that it was possible that Watson's analysis reveals rare items, which would increase its value.

Regardless of the amount the landlord receives for the meteorite, he is committed to returning 10% of the sale value to the university in order to fund students in Earth Sciences and Science. ;atmosphere.