The altar is four feet high, and rests on two narrow cross pieces. It is a dark gray block of crystalline iron ore from a Swedish mine and weighs six and one-half tons. The Swedish government presented this block of iron ore — the largest of its kind ever mined — to the United Nations in early 1957. „The chunk rests on a concrete pillar that goes straight down to bed-rock.“ The area and passageway beneath the room are closed to the public.
The chunk of ore has been described as a lodestone, or magnetite, which is strongly magnetic and which posses polarity. In northern Sweden are what may be the largest magnetite deposits in the world, believed to have been formed by segregation in the magma.“ Magma is the term for molten material held in solution under the pressure of the earth’s crust.