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Man Becomes A Millionaire When Meteorite From Heaven Crashes Through His Roof
A rare CM1/2 carbonaceous chondrite meteorite worth a million bucks hits the home of Indonesian coffin maker Josua Hutagalung.
International
One minute, you’re minding your own business, working outside your house building a coffin, and the next minute a smoking meteorite worth a small fortune hurtles through the roof of your veranda and winds up buried in the earth next to your living room.
It wasn’t a typical day, but that’s exactly what happened to a 33-year-old Indonesian coffin maker named Josua Hutagalung. “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,” the father of three told the Sun. “[The meteorite] was too hot to pick up so my wife dug it out with a hoe and we took it inside.”
Weighing in at roughly 4.5 pounds, the 4 billion-year-old meteorite was later classified as the extremely rare CM1/2 carbonaceous chondrite variety.
In the space-rock market, it sells for $850 per gram. When you do the math, that’s roughly $1,858,556 of ka-ching!
As soon as news of the incident went public, American space rock guru Jared Collins hopped on a plane to Sumatra to purchase the precious cargo. After fielding a crazy number of offers, Collins sold the extra-terrestrial treasure to Indianapolis-based meteorite collector Dr. Jay Piateck, who mailed it for safe-keeping to the Center for Meteorite Studies at Arizona State University (where it’s currently being stored in liquid nitrogen).