The Champagne of Meteorites — 22 lbs Cut in Half

For a wedding gift to a couple who met in France, I wanted something that’s out of this world. It’s impossible to manufacture this on Earth — it requires zero-gravity and many millions of years of patience.

I chose this one because it landed in France. Christie’s called it “The Champagne of Meteorites”!

The Saint Aubin meteorite was originally found in 1968 near the small village of the same name in the Champagne region of France. Five masses were discovered by a farmer ploughing his field. Presuming that it was a bomb remaining from World War II, he dug it out very carefully. Then, he realized that it was a metallic mass with a pleasant form and brought it back to the courtyard of his farm and soon forgot about it. In April 2002, the Association Stephanoise d’Astronomie organized lectures and an exposition about meteorites in his area. After reading the publicity for this exposition, the farmer contacted members of the Association, and it was sent off for chemical isotope analysis. This meteorite is estimated to have impacted Earth just before the arrival of homo sapiens in Europe.

This meteorite took an incredible extraterrestrial voyage to get here. It originates from the molten-iron core of an ancient planet that shattered in pre-history, most likely from a collision with another planetoid. From isotope and cosmic ray exposure analysis, it then remained in orbit between Jupiter and Mars slowly cooling over millions of years. As orbital resonance with Jupiter, accumulating over hundreds of millions of years finally ejected it from the asteroid belt, on a trajectory that collided with Earth, 55,000 years ago.

When sliced and etched with a weak acid, it showcases the resplendent crystalline structure of its two iron-nickel alloys, kamacite and taenite. This matrix is diagnostic in the identification of an iron meteorite and different meteorites from different parent bodies have different patterns. Exhibiting a shimmering latticework of its crystalline structure, these long crystals form when cooling very slowly in zero gravity, roughly -2° Celsius per million years!

Less than 2% of meteorites are irons. Saint Aubin is a IIIAB-type iron meteorite, with a high nickel, high gold, and low iridium chemistry as compared to other irons. Saint Aubin contains long needles of schreibersite and two large iron-sulfide nodules. It also features Neumann lines and shocked kamacite — the result of a calamitous impact with another asteroid while journeying in interplanetary space at cosmic velocity. It’s rough out there in the belt!

IIIAB iron meteorites are magmatic irons, whose observed chemical variations are consistent with fractionation in a metallic magma melt (like the Earth’s core). From scientific study of Saint Aubin, the troilite-dominated sulphide inclusions, formerly known as Reichenbach lamellae, may be rimmed by schreibersite and swathed by kamacite. These formed from a residual sulphide-dominant melt after crystallization of the metal at higher temperatures. The growth of unusually large chromite crystals implies stable supersaturated conditions for a long period in the meteorite parent body of Saint Aubin. In other words, there was a long period of peaceful cooling of this dollop of metal flung from the shattered remains of what used to be a planet.

• Official classification by the Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle en Paris: Iron IIIAB

• Found: 1968 in Champagne-Ardenne, France