About 15 years ago I was just south of Nags Head, on the Outter Banks of North Carolina, when I found this curious rock. I was on a large sand bar called “The Point”. "The Point"doesn’t go away, but shifts season by season. It is unlikely that something heavier than the sand would have washed “up”.
You can see a rainbow sheen, like it is covered in oil, but it is not. It is not unusually heavy (or light) for its size.
It has resided in the window above the sink in our kitchen…until my wife knocked it to the floor last week and broke it into two pieces.
What is inside stirred my interest. It is shiny like it is metallic or glassy. And - here is the weird part, it is attracted to itself. If you put the pieces back in place they stay, even if you hold it upside down, or sideways. When you pull them apart you can feel a weak connection being broken. BUT it is not reactive to a magnet, or iron.
Yeah the Outter Banks are called the “Graveyard of the Atlantic” because of all of the shiwrecks. Probably a lot of coal right offshore in sunken ships.
[Joe Dirt]
Meteor Bert: Well, it ain’t a meteor.
Joe Dirt: Yeah it is. It came out of the sky.
Meteor Bert: Well I’m sure it did but it ain’t no meteor. It’s a big ol frozen chunk o’ shit.
Joe Dirt: What!
Meteor Bert: Oh yeah, see them airplanes they dump their toilets 36,000 feet. The stuff freezes and falls to earth. We call ‘em Boeing bombs
[chomps teeth]
Joe Dirt: no that can’t be. That’s not what it is
Meteor Bert: oh, afraid so. See that peanut? Dead giveaway.
Joe Dirt: Uhhh, no, that’s a space peanut.
Meteor Bert: No, afraid not. That just a big ol’ frozen chunk of poopy.
[/Joe Dirt]
Anthracite has a very high heat of ignition - you won’t ignite it in a pan. But it will burn. If you had any possible way to measure density, you could see if it has a specific gravity of about 1.1 to 1.4.
From the pictures, it looks like anthracite. I have…some knowledge of coal, but I can’t really say for certain without seeing it.
Absolutely. Heck, the substance of that rock and every single thing you see and feel around you was formed in a supernova explosion some 7-10 billion years ago. How cool is that?
