In 1920, a Namibian farmer's ox-drawn plow suddenly ground to a halt with a loud, metallic scrape. Digging into the soil, he discovered he had just struck a 60-ton piece of outer space.
This extraordinary object is the Hoba meteorite, which landed roughly 80,000 years ago. The massive, flat block of solid metal was quickly identified as an iron-nickel meteorite and named after the farm, Hoba West, where Jacobus Hermanus Brits unearthed it.
While many meteorites have been found globally, Hoba stands out for several distinct reasons:
- Unmatched Size and Mass: Weighing an estimated 60 tons, it is the largest known intact meteorite in the world. It is also the most massive naturally occurring piece of iron known to exist on Earth's surface. Its main slab measures roughly 2.7 by 2.7 meters and is nearly a meter thick.
- The Missing Crater: Typically, a space rock of this mass would strike the ground with catastrophic force, excavating a huge crater and largely vaporizing or fragmenting upon impact. However, the Hoba meteorite sits right near the surface without any surrounding crater. Scientists believe its unusual flat, tabular shape caused it to skip and drag through the upper atmosphere like a flat stone skimming across a pond. This immense atmospheric friction drastically reduced its speed to terminal velocity, allowing it to drop to the ground intact and land relatively gently.
- Rare Composition: Hoba is classified as an ataxite, a rare type of iron meteorite characterized by a very high nickel content. It is composed of roughly 82% iron, 16% nickel, and trace amounts of cobalt.
Because of its immense weight, moving the meteorite to a museum was deemed completely impractical. Instead, the ground around the giant metal slab was simply excavated, creating a small tiered amphitheater that allows visitors to view the space rock precisely where it fell to Earth.