But Dermot-a man who has devoted his life to rocks-ranks the Murchison Meteorite as his favourite in the collection.īecause this is a rock which may well harbour secrets of the formation of the Solar System, Dermot says. The museum holds both lunar and martian rocks. as exciting as Moon dust’.īut over the subsequent decades, its scientific prestige has only mounted from that first impression.įifty years later, Museums Victoria Dermot Henry says that innocuous-looking, remarkable-smelling black rock is now, probably, the world’s most studied meteorite. On the spot, John declared it as ‘almost. To the geologist, it was the unmistakable odour of organic molecules, including amino acids-the building blocks of our DNA. When John opened the bag he was hit with a pungent smell similar to methylated spirits. Within was a chunk of a meteorite that had just exploded above the northern Victorian town of Murchison. In September of that year Professor John Lovering was disembarking a plane with Moon rock samples when a journalist presented him a plastic bag. On 24 July 1969 the Apollo 11 astronauts returned to Earth with rocks from the surface of the Moon.īut what if they were not the most important rocks collected in the 20th century? What if they weren’t even the most scientifically significant rocks found in 1969? A fragment of the Murchison, perhaps the world's most studied meteorite.
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