© East News Press AgencyThe rock fell through Josua's home in Kolang, North Sumatra
Josua Hutagalung, 33, was at home when the football-sized meteorite smashed through the veranda at the edge of his living room.
The lump of space rock is worth £1.4millionCredit: East News Press Agency
Experts have hailed the 4.5billion-year-old space rock as one of the most significant meteorite finds ever - saying it could contain elements which give clues to the origins of life.
Josua, of Kolang, in North Sumatra, has already sold the rock to a specialist collector - and it's given him enough money to retire and build a new church in his village.
He said: "I was working on a coffin near the street in front of my house when I heard a booming sound that made my house shake. It was as if a tree had fallen on us.
"It was too hot to pick up so my wife dug it out with a hoe and we took it inside."
© East News Press AgencyThe lump of space rock is worth £1.4million
He said: "I have also always wanted a daughter, and I hope this is a sign that I will be lucky enough now to have one."
Space rock expert Jared Collins was dispatched from his home in Bali to secure the meteorite. The American said: "My phone lit up with crazy offers for me to jump on a plane and buy the meteorite.
© East News Press AgencyJosua Hutagalung was at home when the football-sized meteorite smashed through his roof
"I carried as much money as I could muster and went to find Josua, who turned out to be a canny negotiator."
Fragments of the meteorite secured by a second collector are currently on sale on eBay for pound sterling 757 a gram, valuing the 1.839g 'hammerstone' - as the main rock is called - at nearly £1.4 million.
© East News Press AgencyExperts have hailed the 4.5billion-year-old space rock as one of the most significant meteorite finds
The meteorite is classified as CM1/2 carbonaceous Chondrite, an extremely rare variety which scientists believe contains unique amino acids and other primordial elements necessary for the sparking of life itself.
The rock smashed into the ground back in August.
Other meteorites have commanded high prices due to the rare metals inside them.
© Arizona Meteorite LaboratoryMarvin Killgore of the Arizona Meteorite Laboratory lets the sun shine through a polished slice of the Fukang rock which was found in China' Gobi Desert in 2000
Reader Comments
That banded section indicates either a sedimentary or metamorphic structure that is only found on planets. It might be a banded iron formation (BIF) which would mean a planet with water.
The Centre for Meteorite Studies at Arizona State University is part of the cover up between interstellar asteroids, oil, and extinction. To blow a piece of rock that big off of a planet would take the energy of an interstellar impact.
Interstellar asteroids are not made from Kryptonite. It is because interstellar asteroids can hit at velocities of up to 500 kilometers per second (kms). All of the publicly released impact “simulations” by Arizona State University never went above 20 kms.
This meteorite is worth the lives of a lot of corrupt US government scientists who actually work for the oil companies.
There is also the possibility that this meteorite was coming back home.
One part might be carbonaceous and the other part some water deposited sediment. Both look like they were subjected to metamorphosis (heat and pressure).
The carbonaceous section could have been a terrestrial black shale before metamorphosis and the banded section could be a terrestrial banded iron formation. These two types of rock can be found next to each other on Earth.
If this is a terrestrial black shale and a BIF this would have freaked out the Empire (Arizona State University). A lot of the so called billion year old meteors out there are a lot younger than that. Interstellar asteroid impacts keep restocking the solar system's shelves with fresh asteroids and meteorites. 4.6 billion year old meteorites might actually be quite rare.