There was no reason for the people in Barwell, England to think that Christmas Eve 1965 would be different from any other Christmas Eve. People were doing what people usually do when Christmas is so close: caroling, last minute shopping, walking the dog. Little did they know that a meteor that was as big as a desk had entered the atmosphere. It started burning up and breaking apart, but a chunk as large as a Christmas turkey blazed across the sky overhead. Just after sunset, the people in the village saw an incredible, bright light. The meteorite was at least 100 pounds and burned at over 5,000 degrees. When it exploded, there was a shock wave. A sonic boom shook the earth and thousands of pieces were flung down.
Folks were startled, to say the least, but generally figured that it was a comet or something like that. One man found that a shard of the meteorite had broken through the hood of his car and damaged the engine. But… things happen and rocks are rocks. He tossed it aside without a second thought.
Serendipitously, Barwell is less than fifteen miles from the National Space Centre, a museum with a university research program looking at all things outer space. Eager scientists soon realized that this was the biggest meteorite that has ever fallen in the UK. Not only that – parts of the meteorite are more than 4.5 billion years old. We’re talking the birth of our solar system –older than the Earth itself. This was something extraordinary, beyond priceless.
When the news broke, it was like a gold rush. People came from all over scavenging for meteorite fragments, looking to cash in. The man whose engine was damaged searched frantically for the shard he had thrown over the fence in the field next door. If he had been able to find it, it would have easily paid the cost to repair his car. A piece that weighed 2 pounds was sold in 2009 for more than $10,000! Some folks saw dollar signs (well, pounds because they were in England), but others wanted to hold on to the meteorites: to remember that day, to gaze at a sort of time capsule of creation.
I don’t know if you’d ever heard this story before, but it was brand new to me. As I learned more about it, I saw echoes of that first Christmas. It’s not just that the meteorite was like a star you could follow on Christmas. What seemed like a simple rock was actually connected to the mystery of creation. Left to our own devices, so often we don’t see things for what they are.
References:
–https://www.hinckley-bosworth.gov.uk/download/downloads/id/1492/appraisal_-_barwell.pdf
–https://www.wisdomlib.org/cities/barwell-43425
–https://www.thetimes.com/comment/register/article/villages-meteorite-encounter-was-no-christmas-miracle-s5r85tjl5?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=AWEtsqcwD9L-jpj_9BWyL2BVo7TTMCwTsufsjK_Zbb4c3P55Mt32YGTbCaM2383XJqM%3D&gaa_ts=694c1e36&gaa_sig=C1vf8oT9_o7V3CbKKhw0XW1ARIhdBt6T8Wm-YqRc6iBcmHyIsJTTKu4WaIOT_2eZ1JFlC4TDsts5084eAK2ziA%3D%3D
–https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Space_Centre_(England)
–https://www.spacecentre.co.uk/collections/categories/space-rocks/barwell-meteorite-bm1966-64/
–https://www.planetary.org/articles/how-old-is-the-earth
–https://www.currency-converter.org.uk/currency-rates/historical/rate/GBP-USD-09_12_2009.html
–https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35053786
