About 15 million years ago, a meteorite struck what is now the Nördlinger Ries crater in southern Germany. The impact blasted molten terrestrial rock into the air. Some of that molten material was thrown hundreds of kilometers away, mostly toward what is now the Czech Republic.

Those droplets cooled into translucent green glass → moldavite.

The green color comes from trace amounts of iron and very low levels of other transition metals. It’s not due to extraterrestrial chemicals — it’s melted terrestrial rock.

Around 2020–2022, moldavite went viral on TikTok, where influencers claimed it caused dramatic “spiritual transformations,” breakups, job changes, and emotional upheavals, which caused the price of moldavite to soar. Multiple celebrities started wearing moldavite jewelry, and that trickled down fast through Etsy, Instagram, and mainstream jewelry shops, this pushed it from “rockhound niche” to “mainstream accessory.”