14 Million Year Old Meteorite Rock, Impactite (Suevite) of Nordlingen Ries Now Understood To Possibly Be The Closest Match to the Surface of Mars on Earth

From the Meteorite Strike Crater in Germany, collected by an official geological survey. The crater was caused by a binary asteroid that struck approximately 14 million years ago in the Meocene era. What a huge and magnificent conversational piece and collectors item, potentially the closest and most accurate example of the surface of Mars today, and since the Mars Rover sampling it is now believed by NASA and scientific research to be the very best and closest match to the surface of Mars on Earth, and certainly the best preserved from anywhere else on earth. This is a large 14 million year old meteorite strike rock that is also a simply stunning piece of art that would superbly compliment any decor, in any home, both vintage, antique or modern. It would look amazing on a display stand of any suitable material, such as glass, perspex, marble or wood. This is an unusually large piece of molten meterorite rock, the very few pieces we have had in the past of this type have all been small of just a few ounces. Suevite rock consisting partly of melted material, typically forming a breccia containing glass and crystal or lithic fragments, and often thousands of microscopic diamonds formed during an impact event. It forms part of a group of rock types and structures that are known as impactites. The Nordlinger Ries is an impact crater, large circular depression in western Bavaria, Germany, located north of the Danube in the district of Donau-Ries. The city of Nordlingen is located inside the depression, about 6 kilometers (3.7 mi) southwest of its centre. Recent computer modeling of the impact event indicates that the impactors probably had diameters of about 1.5 kilometers (4,900 ft) (Ries) and 150 meters (490 ft) (Steinheim), had a pre-impact separation of some tens of kilometers, and impacted the target area at an angle around 30 to 50 degrees from the surface in a west-southwest to east-northeast direction. The impact velocity is thought to have been about 20 km/s (45,000 mph). The resulting explosion had the power of 1.8 million Hiroshima bombs, an energy of roughly 2.4?1021 joules. This exceptionally large piece is 4.55 kilos. 13 inches x 11 inches x 3.5 inches As with all our items it complete complete with our Certificate of Authenticity, our unique lifetime guarantee of originality. Photo number 7 in the gallery is a clip from an article on the unique matching relation of this Suevite from Nordlingen Ries and the surface of Mars by
JULES BERNSTEIN in the University of California Science and Technology magazine

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