The charm of the universe—its magic and mysterious phenomena understood fully perhaps only by physicists—has always fascinated humankind. After all, it was the movement of celestial bodies that first allowed people to measure the most precious thing we possess: time. Yet until the early 19th century, few suspected that fragments of these celestial bodies could also be found on Earth, bearing witness to the earliest days of our solar system. Some meteorites even contain amino acids, considered among the first building blocks of life in the universe.
About two million years after the Sun was formed, the first asteroids began to take shape. It was during their collisions that fragments of varying composition broke off—fragments that, under favourable conditions, still pass through our atmosphere and fall to Earth as meteorites. Some of them are as old as the solar system itself, that is more than 4.5 billion years.
Does that number seem unbelievable? It does to us too—especially when compared with the biblical Methuselah, who is said to have lived “only” 969 years. Now imagine that a piece of such ancient matter could belong to you. You do not have to collect natural curiosities to own one; you simply need to love watches. Certain timepieces are adorned with unique meteorite dials, lending them a touch of miraculous eternity. And not least, they are beautiful in a way that simply cannot be replicated anywhere else in nature.
