He thought it was a joke. He was told the rock that held a barn door open at his farm was a meteor that fell from space. Thirty years later, it turns out it was no joke.

The unidentified Grand Rapids man bought a farm in Edmore (20 miles west of Mount Pleasant) back in 1988. The man he bought it from joked that the giant 22 pound metal looking rock holding a barn door open was from space and had fallen to the earth in the '30s.

The GR man never believed him and for thirty years, the rock continued its life as a doorstop. All that changed in January when a meteor landed near Detroit. Rock hunters chased down the rocks and found them to be worth thousands of dollars.

'Hmm', the man imagined. What IF that rock IS from space? A Central Michigan University geologist, Mona Sirbescu, was summoned to look at it. Her eyes bugged out. She sent samples of the rock to the Smithsonian where they confirmed her suspicions.

It WAS a meteor from space.

"The story goes that it was collected immediately after they witnessed the big boom and the actual meteorite was dug out from a crater," Sirbescu told the Detroit Free Press. "I could tell right away that this was something special."

Sirbescu took it to one of the labs in Brooks Hall and examined it under an X-ray fluorescence instrument to determine that it was an iron-nickel meteorite with about 88 percent iron and 12 percent nickel, a metal rarely found on Earth.

The folks at  the Smithsonian have dubbed the rock, Edmore.

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