Nine quick checks you can do at home with a magnet, a kitchen scale and the back of a tile. Answer honestly, choose "not sure" whenever you are, and you will get a fair verdict and safe next steps. Nothing here damages your rock.
Experts who examine possible meteorites find that the great majority are ordinary Earth rocks or industrial waste. These are the ones that fool people most often, and the quickest way to tell each one apart.
Tell-tale sign: gas bubbles and a glassy look
The waste left over from smelting metal. It is often heavy and may attract a magnet, but it is full of round bubble holes, can look glassy or drippy, and sometimes contains rusty iron blobs. It turns up near railways, old ironworks, farm tracks and anywhere it was spread as hardcore. Meteorites are solid inside and almost never have gas holes.
Tell-tale sign: black streak, no metal flecks
A black iron-oxide mineral that is heavy (about 5.2 g/cm³) and strongly magnetic, so it passes the two tests people try first. Rub it on an unglazed tile and it leaves a black or very dark grey streak. Inside it looks the same all through, with no bright metal specks and no fusion crust.
Tell-tale sign: red-brown streak
Another heavy iron oxide (about 5.3 g/cm³), often shiny grey-black or rusty red, sometimes in smooth lumpy shapes. It is usually only weakly magnetic or not at all. The streak test settles it: hematite always leaves a red-brown streak, like dried blood, however dark the rock looks.
Tell-tale sign: normal weight, bubbles or crystals
Dark volcanic rock is the most common rock on Earth's surface. Its density is about 2.8 to 3.0 g/cm³, so it feels normal rather than heavy, and many pieces have small gas holes or visible crystals. Some basalt contains enough magnetite to tug a magnet weakly, which is why it gets mistaken for a stony meteorite.
Tell-tale sign: rounded, rusty, sandy or layered inside
Hard lumps that grow inside sand, clay or mud when iron minerals cement the grains together. They can be round, knobbly or shaped like bones, with a rusty brown rind. A broken one shows layers, rings or sand grains, never metal flecks. They are common on beaches, in quarries and in eroding cliffs.
Tell-tale sign: no nickel, machine-like shapes
Old cast iron, bolts, cannonballs, mill parts and lumps of rusted scrap. They are dense and stick to a magnet, but they lack the 5% or more of nickel that almost every meteorite metal contains, and they often show casting seams, holes or flat faces. Only a laboratory can measure nickel reliably.
Most people never need more than a museum or university to look at a few good photographs. Here is the safe order of things.
Always ask the landowner before searching or picking up rocks on private land, and keep to public rights of way. Ownership rules differ around the world. In the UK a meteorite found on private land generally belongs to the landowner. Some countries treat every meteorite as state property, require finds to be reported, or ban export, and meteorites from Antarctica may only be collected by scientific programmes. Nature reserves, national parks and protected sites usually forbid collecting altogether. This is general information, not legal advice.
Saw a fireball and want to look for the fall? Read about recent fireballs and the full identification guide.