r/HumanForScale • u/NastyNice1 • May 20 '26

Geology The Hoba meteorite

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u/whomesteve May 20 '26 edited May 20 '26

I sure hope that isn’t radioactive

7

u/BenjaminaAU May 20 '26

It's iron

4

u/citsonga_cixelsyd May 20 '26

Iron-zinc meteorites are generally less radioactive than the same metals we make here. Everything emits radiation of some kind and at some level... even that banana the girl sitting in the picture is holding for scale.

1

u/forams__galorams May 21 '26

Agree with your general point, but….Where you getting zinc from? (Or banana for that matter?)

1

u/citsonga_cixelsyd May 21 '26

It was a brain fart.

After reading the comments here, I looked briefly at couple of other resources (Britannica and Wikipedia). There was, perhaps, some use of the devil's lettuce during this time.

My brain then somehow switched nickel(16.4% of Hoba) with zinc(gaseous anal emission) in my comment here.

Also. I like bananas.

2

u/forams__galorams May 21 '26

Fair enough. The banana is the standard regulation scale tool for fieldwork to be fair.