At three quarters to three o'clock in the morning, the atmosphere was suddenly illuminated by a large star of a glow that eclipsed the moon, and that walked from Midday to the North. «I saw a globe of bright fire and beautiful colors descend, which did not seem but one of the stars of the sky descended to Earth. He passed over this city at such a short distance from the tower of the cathedral, that it seemed that he was going to play in the lantern of that tower, but it did not happen that way, but he traveled about three more leagues, saving this city and its term » . These are some of the testimonies about the largest meteorite fallen in Spain that are recorded and that are part of the story of Rafael Martínez Fortún, a resident of the Murcian municipality of Molina de Segura , whose lands hit the celestial object on Christmas Eve of 1858.

Many people watched the phenomenon live and those who did not see it, felt the rumble, similar to that of a cannon shot, which made the earth tremble, accompanied by an earthquake. A few days after the event, recovered from the fright, some curious people approached the place where they thought it had impacted, but found nothing; it was not until the time of the harvest, when the farmers saw a hole through which a hard body appeared and, when digging, they discovered a strange rectangular stone of blackish color and of an extraordinary weight compared to its volume. They got a lot of attention because none of them had seen any of those characteristics until then.

A big ball

The phenomenon that the neighbors of Molina de Segura saw during Christmas Eve was the fall of a meteorite, preceded by a large ball of fire that left a light trail and a great rumble. In the history of mankind these celestial events have never gone unnoticed and, generally, were interpreted as divine signs. But, at the end of the 18th century, they began to be studied scientifically.

The German physicist Ernst Chladni, who was the pioneer of modern research on these objects, proposed in his work on the origin of the Pallas Iron and other similar, and some associated natural phenomena, that the meteorites came from outer space, a statement that he assumed not a few teasing, since at that time they were believed to be of volcanic origin; time would prove him right. In the nineteenth century its extraterrestrial origin was accepted.

When Martínez Fortún, owner of the farm suspected that it was an object from outer space, he commissioned a report detailing the circumstances that accompanied his fall and subsequent discovery, obtained from the statements of different witnesses before the judge, in addition of all the information related to its characteristics. The document states that "its weight amounted to ten arrobas, eight pounds and two ounces Castilian", about 144 kilos.

After the certainty that it was a meteorite, he sent it to the Natural History Museum - the current MNCN - to make it available to scientists. In 1863, five years after the impact, Queen Elizabeth II accepted her donation to become part of the National Museum directed by Mariano de la Paz Graells, as recorded in the file's documentation. The scientists of the time studied it and extracted several fragments for analysis. Three years later, the meteorite was exhibited at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1867.

Subsequently, some small pieces were distributed by different institutions of the world, such as the Natural History Museum (United Kingdom), the Field Museum of Chicago (United States) or the Vatican meteorite collection. The exchange of pieces was a common practice in natural history museums to improve and increase collections. In the MNCN Archive, a handwritten note by geologist Lucas Fernández Navarro, dated 1922, is preserved, indicating that several pieces of the meteorite were cut, which at that time weighed 117 kg, totaling 3,270 grams and provided abundant and appreciated exchange material.

A journey of millions of years

Aeroliths - to be meteorites they have to touch the earth - they detach themselves from their parent bodies after major collisions, and roam the interstellar space, sometimes for millions of years. Most are older than the oldest rocks on our planet and contain key information on the history of the Solar System, which helps us understand their origin, formation and other issues, such as the synthesis of organic compounds or the presence of water in the Land.

Molina, official name of this object in the Meteoritical Bulletin Database, is a condrita of the H5 type , due to its high iron content, and for belonging to the petrological type '5' (number that indicates the degree of alteration suffered in the 'parent asteroid '). Most likely, it comes from the fragmentation of the outermost layers of the asteroids located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, where it originated more than 4,000 million years ago and, after a long trip, fell on the Murcian town on the day of Christmas. The largest fragment, 112.5 kilos, is the one currently displayed in the National Museum of Natural Sciences (MNCN), in Madrid.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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