Today I have a new story for you. From our earthly perspective, it begins almost 5000 years before present, in the skies over South America, when a giant metal space rock collided with Earth creating a cluster of falling stars. At least 26 pieces of this meteor survived the fiery descent through the planet’s atmosphere, crashing into the ground, near what is now the southwestern boundary of the country known as Argentina, and technically becoming meteorites.
What a sight this must have been for the Indigenous peoples of this region. The meteorites produced a crater field that covers 18.5 by 3 kilometers. The largest of the craters is 115 by 91 metres. The Indigenous name for this place is Piguem Nonralta, which translates into Spanish as Campo del Cielo, meaning “field of heaven (or of the sky)”.
The meteorites found at Campo del Cielo consist of an iron-nickel alloy. While iron meteorites are much rarer than stony meteorites, they are more resistant to weathering and much easier to recognize. Around the globe, the iron found in such deposits from space were among the earliest sources of usable iron available to humans, before the onset of smelting that signified the Iron Age.
In 1576 provincial military within Argentia were tasked with finding the source of the iron natives were using within their weapons. The soldiers went to “the field of the sky” and found large masses of metal alloy protruding from the ground. Samples were collected and were found to be of an unusual purity. The find was reported to Spanish authorities, but European memory of the site was lost.
The site was re-discovered in 1774 when the mineral exposures were mistakenly thought to be the tip of an iron vein. Explosives were used to expose the site which showed the discrete nature of the “stones” whose origins were then mistakenly attributed as volcanic.
Since that time hundreds of meteorites have been recovered from Campo del Cielo, weighing from milligrams to tonnes. The largest of these pieces have been named and many are now homed in renowned museums. In 2016 the largest of the Campo del Cielo meteorites was uncovered, with a mass of approximately 30,000 kilograms.
Studies have estimated the size of the meteor’s main body as over four meters in diameter. Its age is estimated at 4.5 billion years, meaning it formed around the same time as our solar system.
If you had a piece of this meteorite in your pocket, would that be like having a souvenir of forever from another reality? Or maybe from heaven? I like that we both have pieces of the same falling star. Should we make a wish?
24 gram sample of iron-nickel alloy meteorite collected from the Field of Heaven, in Argentina.