原文开头
A soldier returned from the Sahara desert in 1916 with a wild story about a gigantic meteorite. Over 100 years of hunting yielded nothing – but now the puzzle may have been solved, finds Alex Wilkins IT ALL started with an overheard conversation between some camel herders. The year was 1916, and Gaston Ripert, a French army captain, had been injured and sent to recover in the small town of Chinguetti in Mauritania. It was a lonely, dusty place on the edge of the Sahara. So when Ripert heard local people talk of a colossal block of iron out in the undulating expanse of dunes, he was intrigued. They referred to it as the “iron of God”. …
摘自《新科学家》(New Scientist)第3576期 · 2026年1月3日。仅引用开头一小段供了解文章,版权归原刊所有,全文请阅读原刊。