Magic Metal From Space

The 4-billion-year-old Gibeon meteorite, weighing between 50 and 70 tons, burst into smaller fragments high in the atmosphere and fell to Earth sometime between 10,000 and 30,000 years ago. The meteorite was discovered by the Nama people in Namibia thousands of years ago, a sneak peek into the iron age. They used this pure iron alloy to make strong tools and weapons (metal alloys found in meteorites are often the source material for “magic” swords and vorpal blades or lore). This iron-nickel alloy contains significant amounts of cobalt and phosphorus. First confirmed as a meteorite in 1838.

Gibeon meteorite is composed of an iron-nickel alloy that reveals a woven matrix pattern when cut. Formed by interwoven bands of kamacite and taenite alloys cooled very slowly over millions of years, this crystalline structure cannot be found on our planet.

Like all iron meteorites, Gibeon contains remnants of the core portions of distant planetoids, but its exact origin in the universe is unknown. But there are some possibilities in the research: “Based on their study of bidirectional reflectance properties including Gibeon samples Britt et al. in 1988 suggested M-type asteroids (e.g. 16 Psyche) as a possible source of origin for Gibeon and other IVA iron meteorites. In addition to the work of Malvin et al., Scott et al. pointed out that the parental liquid pool of the Gibeon meteorite on the IVA mother body was at least many meters in size. Pools this size quickly sink through the silicate and the authors conclude that the Gibeon IVA material very probably comes from an asteroidal core.”