Lucite Cube // Iron

Iron is arguably the most common metal in the universe. The reason is that it’s the last element created by stars. As you may already know, each star—large or small—starts life by burning hydrogen. The pressure at its core is so great that it is able to overcome the enormous forces of repulsion of individual protons to join them into helium; an atom with two protons. That process of union releases enormous amounts of energy in the form of heat and light.

One would expect this fusion to be snuffed out once the last of its hydrogen atoms paired up, however if the star has enough mass, the weight of all that helium becomes sufficient to bind these atoms in an analogous process. The entire sequence is reborn as the star can keep going by burning heavier and heavier elements.

But there’s a limit and its name is iron. In each of the earlier cycles the act of fusion generated the energy which literally blew the matter at its core outwards like a never ending bomb going off—and that matter continually rained right back down to the core again under its own gravity. But when you fuse iron the reaction takes energy rather than generate it. That is a big, big problem. All of a sudden while untold gajillions of stuff is falling towards the center the star has nothing left to burn to push all that matter back out. In a matter of seconds you end up with the mother of all pressure cookers. A star large enough to reach out to Jupiter if it were in our solar system going critical in less than a second has to be one of the most incredible catastrophes in all of nature. The stellar pop that ensues is called a supernova and it splatters the heavens with an obscene amount of iron.

Skip billions of years into the future—around 5000 BC to be more precise— and a bus-sized chunk of that iron pierces the sky above earth (possibly blinding some unfortunate people as they were putting the final touches on the Giza pyramid). The meteor ended up scorching a 10 mile long trail in Argentina in a region known as Campo del Cielo. First reported all the way back in 1576 by Spanish Conquistadors, the area has been one of the most studied meteorite fields in the world. An x-ray analysis performed at Luciteria in September of 2020 revealed the content to be 93.7% iron, 6.2% nickel and the remaining 0.1% mostly gold and other platinum group metals.

Luciteria is absolutely thrilled to be able to offer these genuine fragments of this famous space rock. With an estimated initial mass of 300 tons. Each of these ounce-sized fragments represent about a millionth of the total mass and, being extraterrestrial and all, they're pretty sure this 4.6 billion year old sample will be one of the most interesting objects you can own. Needless to say, their availability is also quite limited. Each cube comes encased in a 2" museum-grade Lucite block presenting the ideal collectible for element iron.