Unnamed male left, Ora Scheel right. Hoba below. 1952. Source: Hoba meteorite - Wikipedia

The world's biggest meteorite poses a big problem.

When it landed, it should have blasted out a big crater.

Instead, it embedded itself level with the topsoil. Leaving scientists a minor job digging it out - and a major job explaining it.

How exactly did 50+ plus tons of nickel-iron alloy slab decelerate to a gentle touchdown on the Namibian plain?

Soon after Hoba's 1920 discovery, scientists proposed Hoba approached at a low angle, skipping like a flat stone through Earth's atmosphere until it settled into place.

But when skeptics asked for evidence of Hoba's earlier touchdowns and its final skid to a halt, skipping-stone theory sank.

Like a reserve parachute, a new explanation was deployed.

From Hoba:

This meteorite has a flat shape, which has led some scientists to believe that it did not rotate as it entered the atmosphere and fell as a flat disc, which may have moderated its velocity and prevented the formation of a crater.

Both theories are ridiculous ¹.

And when theories don't fit the facts, the facts must change.

In 1955 the public were told Hoba was theirs, the site a national park. Hoba's new owners were promptly denied access.

When they were allowed back 32 years later, they found Namibian mining company Roessing Uranium Ltd had carefully rearranged Hoba's landscape.

The facts now fit the theory:

After all, when you're in a hole, why stop digging? Source: Hoba meteorite, a fallen ‘shooting star’!

Hoba had acquired a crater.

Its authentic landscaped rim even includes steps to help show that Hoba is 'down'.

They're stonewalling you. Source: The Hoba Meteorite, Namibia Largest Known Meteorite on Earth - Geology Science

The two unnecessary steps - the little one at top and the little one at bottom - help raise the step-count from six to eight. In their subtle, low-rise way, they enhance Hoba's descent into fiction.

It is tempting to show that Hoba isn't alone. That 18 of the 20 largest meteorites found on Earth also failed to make craters.

But that would involve showing that the two that did, didn't.

So, instead, a single image shows that meteorite theory is twaddle:

It came from space. Through a rock. Source: Special Topic Large Ground Meteorites - RocketSTEM

This is Akebulake.

Akebulake was found in 2011. It is one of several multi-ton nickel-iron alloy meteorites discovered in north west China since 1898. Two of them are the fifth and sixth biggest (publicly known) meteorites in the world. At 28 tons and 23 tons, they are significantly heavier than Akebulake.

None of them created a crater. Yet photographs of their paradoxical landing sites are very, very difficult to find.

At 18 tons, Akebulake is the ninth largest meteorite in the world. And the largest found under a rock.

You can probably guess which theory was resurrected to show how Akebulake skipped like a flat stone through Earth's atmosphere until it settled into place. And why none of the Aletai meteorites made craters.

All this is verifiable at List of largest meteorites on Earth - Wikipedia.

Not verifiable on Wikipedia is that Roessing Uranium Ltd wasn't the first to dig a suspicious crater around Hoba.

In the summer (South Africa's winter) of 1929, a bunch of pissed off Germans inspected Hoba:

Mein Gott! Sie haben die technischen Teile mitgenommen! Source: Mineralische Bodenschätze im südlichen Afrika via Mineral & Exploration Hoba Meteorite Virtual Visit Namibia

And here's a quote from one of them - Hans Schneiderhöhn:

From Das Otavi‑Bergland und seine Erzlagerstätten, Zeitschrift für praktische Geologie, Vol 37 (Heft 6, 1929): pp 95-96:

At the time of the first visits by experts in 1925 it was already completely exposed on the sides, so that it could not be decided whether the limestone in the immediate vicinity showed contact phenomena.

Because yes, you would expect the Mach 8 arrival of 50+ tons of nickel-iron alloy slab meteorite to create contact phenomena.

Or even a crater.

Especially if you knew early visitors had reported that instead of a crater, Hoba was wrapped in interesting contact phenomena.

From The Grootfontein Meteorite, Willem J. Luyten. South African Journal of Science, Vol. 26, December 1929, pp. 19-20:

the crushing and compression of the limestone layers underneath can be easily seen, as well as their sharp bending upward on the sides.

Witnesses were saying that instead of being blasted away, layers of limestone had bent sharply upwards to embrace the massive, rapidly decelerating nickel-iron alloy slab meteorite. And embrace it tightly.

We can assume some knew this was a naive description. Hoba wasn't embedded in a new, flexible, shock resistant limestone but in laminated iron shale.

And the prior removal of Hoba's curious contact phenomena left many scientists in a hole:

British and South African scientists peacock on Hoba. 5 September, 1929. Source: Hoba (South-West Africa), the largest known meteorite ²

The delegation above - and the German delegation pictured above them - travelled to Pretoria for the 15th International Geological Congress (XV Session). They examined what was left of Hoba - or its laminated iron shale wrapping - from June to September 1929.

Obviously, whoever stripped out Hoba's contact phenomena didn't stop to take photographs. Although in the world of meteorites, you'd be surprised at the thefts that do get photographed.

Therefore we don't know if this is the gentleman who completely exposed Hoba's sides:

It's illustrative, not evidence. Source: The Grootfontein, Southwest Africa, Meteoric Iron, Samuel Gordon 1931, Proceedings of the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences, Vol. 83, pp. 251-256

And we can be pretty sure if he was the thief he would have needed more than the hammer just visible in his left hand as he points out the thickness of the contact phenomena beneath Hoba:

Man and hammer at work. Source: The Grootfontein, Southwest Africa, Meteoric Iron

To his right, a sharp upturn in the dotted lines indicates a remnant patch of contact phenomena missing from most of Hoba's sides. And, as the photograph's labelling shows, investigators did know by then that the contact phenomena was 'iron shale'.

Just visible above his right forearm is a patch of iron shale whose details fascinated LJ Spencer, Keeper of Minerals at the British Museum. Spencer made that patch the central image in the presentation he gave to London's Mineralogical Society on 9 June 1931 ³:

Hoba left, 'iron-shale' centre, limestone right. Source: Hoba (South-West Africa), the largest known meteorite

What that very poor photograph is trying to show is that the piece immediately below the letter 'B' is bumpy, bobbly, uneven in a regular sort of way.

Spencer was a keen student of iron shale. When he presented to the Royal Geographical Society 18 months later, he told them iron shale had been found at several craters (Meteor Crater, Arizona; Odessa Crater, Texas; Henbury crater complex, Australia; and Campo del Cielo crater complex, Argentina).

That iron shale, he said, is strong evidence meteorites made those craters.

He may even have sounded convincing.

The absence of iron shale and meteorites at Estonia's Kaali crater complex was just an anomaly, Spencer explained. He ignored Estonian 'folklore' that says Kaali was made off-limits and walled around for a time while lights and strange quarrying sounds emanated from inside.

And, despite his earlier interest in how Hoba had become iron shale, Spencer avoided describing Hoba in detail. He merely said that Hoba's missing crater made Hoba another anomaly.

With this 16 January 1933 presentation - Meteorite Craters as Topographical Features on the Earth's Surface - Spencer had solved several global problems:

Craters and anomalies. Solved.

Key:

• Blue marker: Crater(s) with iron shale
• Violet marker: Crater(s) without iron shale
• Red marker: Iron shale with meteorite but without crater(s)

Spencer fixed in public minds their current understanding that 'meteorite equals crater' and 'crater equals meteorite'.

He also left scientists with opportunities to make a living writing daft theory's about the theory's anomalies.

Even more helpfully, by turning iron shale into a rusty remnant of meteorites he distracted the public - and many scientists - from noting what the iron shale really was ⁴.

He weathered its meaning away.

'Contact phenomena' was only the first of several anodyne names for Hoba's odd wrapping. It became laminated 'iron shale', then 'iron shale', then various forms of iron oxide. Or simply 'rust'. Rust created by water interacting with nickel alloy and crushed limestone.

Today it is never described as the degraded mess created when water interacts with nickel alloy plates that have been laminated with variants of calcite and bonded to armour plate.

Like an early version of Composite Ceramic Armour:

Although, not always. Source: What Tank Armour Can (& Can't) Do | Evolution of Armour

And its variant forms of Electric armour.

So even today, serious geological publications promote Hoba's laminated iron shale as iron oxide. As rust.

From Hoba: The World's Largest Meteorite:

An abundance of iron oxides in the soil around the meteorite suggests that it was much larger than 66 tons when it landed and has suffered significant losses from oxidation.

Samuel Gordon - likely the man with the hammer - estimated Hoba's original weight by measuring how much contact phenomena had been removed.

From The Grootfontein, Southwest Africa, Meteoric Iron:

The weight of 'iron shale' formed by oxidation of the meteorite was probably fifty tons, which would indicate the weight of the meteorite at the time of fall to have been about one hundred tons.

That ties in with reports of Hoba's steady weight loss. First estimates put Hoba between 87 and 100 tons; while later reports put it at 66 tons, then 61 tons, then 60 and now 50+ tons.

Gordon also hinted that some unknown agency had tried to hide Hoba before its presumed 1920 discovery.

From The Grootfontein, Southwest Africa, Meteoric Iron:

The meteorite was buried in the superficial calcareous tufa (Kalahari Kalk), which had apparently been deposited about it since it fell.

Several other clues point to Hoba being a remnant technology left over from the First World War.

Spencer, for example, seems to have dismissed Harvard astronomer Willem Luyten's reports about Hoba as innaccurate. Especially about Hoba's composition. Luyten reported Hoba's high nickel content made it very different to other metal meteorites. At approximately 17% nickel to 83% iron, Hoba was, Luyten claimed:

about as hard and as tough as the steel used in locomotive wheels, about the toughest steel used.

Luyten also seems to have been the only investigator with the gall to say Hoba was found near Otjihaenene - a railway siding built by Otavi Minen und Eisenbahn Gesellschaft (OMEG). Or, as the English called it, Otavi Mining and Railway Company. OMEG built Otjihaenene siding into the rail line that linked Tsumeb's spectacularly rich metal mines with the sea port at Swakopmund. That record-breaking infrastructure project required vast amounts of iron, steel and the best minds in metal engineering. Plus military support and a couple of genocides.

So it seems hard to believe Hoba sat there on a farm near OMEG's Otjihaenene railway siding unnoticed for up to 80,000 years.

Especially when you consider that the scientists' 1929 Hoba tours were arranged by W. R. Feldtmann, General Manager of the South West Africa Company - a major shareholder in the Otavi Mining and Railway Company and the nearby Tsumeb metal mine:

Tsumeb mine, 1926. Source: Geology of Tsumeb

One of the first people to publicly say the iron shale around Hoba was a laminate was former Government Geologist of German South-West Africa, Dr. Paul Range.

According to Spencer, Range also dropped this bombshell:

the Hoba meteorite was certainly not known previous to the war of 1914-18.

And of all people, Range would know. Because Hoba was located in a very busy, very well prospected area famous for its metal mining and processing.

Which is why Hoba's likely creation date and the level of obfuscation abouts its iron shale wrapping quite possibly tie in with the following two claims:

From Ceramic armor - Wikipedia:

Tests as early as 1918 demonstrated the potential of ceramic armor

Its first operational use was not until the Vietnam war.

Among many things not said about the enigma of Hoba is that the Tsumeb region does get rain.

Which means that anyone who wanted to continue destruction of remnant evidence of Hoba's laminated iron shale simply had to help rainwater pool around its base:

Hoba circa 1960. Source: Mineral & Exploration Hoba Meteorite Virtual Visit Namibia

For as long as they could:

Hoba circa late 1960s or 1970s. Source: Hoba meteorite, Grootfontein Constituency, Otjozondjupa Region, Namibia

Knowing the annual wet and dry cycle would eventually hide the stain of hidden military science under a stain of rust:

No matter how hard you look. Source: The largest meteorite on earth

Yet despite efforts to hide Hoba's true origins, photographic evidence of its real story occasionally re-appears:

Hoba meteorite 1967. Source: Hoba meteorite - Wikipedia

The photograph shows Hoba's anomalous underside. A black sheet apparently emerges from part way down the white underside. May be protective plastic sheet or layer of laminate. But below it, in the bottom left corner, is a grey ridged or layered area.

As this photograph is the only extant modern image of Hoba's underside, the close up image below links through to a slightly higher definition close up:

Close up: layers beneath Hoba. 1967.

It offers as good a look at Hoba's enigmatic underside as is likely to be had.

Although you don't need that 1967 photograph to see that the following Hoba sample looks, as LJ Spencer would have put it, like an anomaly:

And even more like a laminate. Source: Fragment of the Hoba meteorite on exhibit at the Planétarium

Montreal Planetarium mercilessly protects its copyright. But there's nothing to stop you downloading this image so that you can enlarge it for proper inspection.

If you do, you should see that this extraordinary, natural, meteoritic nickel-iron alloy is made of six - possibly seven - laminated plates.

One or more of the techniques used to hide Hoba's real origin were also used to hide the real origin of each of the biggest iron meteorites in Wikipedia's list. From water-baths to fires; from removal of ground evidence to - literally - cutting them up and burying the parts; from mis-described 'iron shale' to rewritten physics; just about every Hoba technique has been deployed to hide the origins of other metal meteorites.

Together, the world's biggest meteorites appear to be the remains not just of one military secret but of an entire war.

And of technologies most of us do not yet know exist.

In the next part, we take a look at more evidence that some meteorites are remnants of damaged armour plate. Then at the tenth biggest meteorite in the world - Hoba's curiously unstudied neighbour: Mbosi.

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