Dry Lake Beds: The Best Place To Find Meteorites | Meteorite Men | Spark

[Music] visitors from outer space they crash land without warning and can lie buried for thousands of years oh my god jeff notkin and steve arnold live to unearth these space rocks i need some help with that jeff their quest is part science and part treasure hunt they are oh yeah the meteorite men on this adventure steve and jeff hunt a dry lake bed somewhere in nevada the secret sight hidden out in the open they're led by a fellow hunter who already scored a 700 000 space run one of the rarest in the world the hunt of a lifetime turns up a treasure trove like the guys have never seen well you have to be looking for this place we have a very good map that shows well i was gonna say it shows everything but there isn't really anything out here steve arnold and jeff notkin are on their way to hunt for meteorites at a most unusual location is it area 51 somewhere yeah we're pretty close to area 51. their destination is in a remote part of eastern nevada a seven hour drive from las vegas where they're headed is not marked on any map it's just a set of coordinates known only to a fellow meteorite hunter the secret location is a dry lake bed that could be ripe with meteorites ready for picking the fragments that we're looking for are primarily on the surface and the logic of hunting these lake beds is their vast open areas and any stone that we see in this expense is worth checking out because it might have fallen out of the sky in one year about 17 meteorites might hit an area the size of nevada most are small a couple could be the size of a fist but every two or three years a meteorite weighing more than 20 pounds crashes through the atmosphere steve and jeff are hoping they can find one of these big space rocks out on the dry lake bed we're out here to find as many as we can and as big of ones as we can the guys know how to find big meteorites they teamed up to hunt more than a decade ago jeff is a science writer with a passion for space rocks steve's an expert in tracking fireballs that have just hit earth [Music] today they're sharing information with another meteorite hunter and his trusty companion the meteorite fragments that hopefully are to be found on this lake bed are from a new meteorite it's it's a new discovery it was discovered by our friend sunny clary sonny clary hunts meteorites with his buddy brix a german shepherd who digs meteorites too sonny clary is one of my best friends he's a phenomenal meteorite hunter [Music] he's an emt and a fireman in las vegas which also gives him a lot of free time and his unusual schedule gives him lots of time for meteorite hunting and sunny is a dry lake bed specialist this country is desolate dry and remote it's no place to be going solo if you get into trouble but sunny is a low-tech hunter he's scoured hundreds of miles on foot i've always spent my time outdoors hiking walking backpacking from there it went crazy not too many people have what it takes to go out and spend eight to ten hours a day in the field and find nothing the heat 120 degrees weather or freezing weather so i'm out there by myself and this may go on for months sunny is the first to find meteorites on this dry lake bed to protect its scientific value he's keeping the location top secret but he's agreed to let jeff and steve in on his find a couple of years ago sunny made an amazing discovery on this lake bed and he told us about this discovery and invited us to come up and work with him at the site which is secret nobody apart from sonny and ourselves even know about it let alone where it is let's go let's go what's up come on buddy this is a secret sight hidden out in the open it would take us years to find a spot like this and it's just amazing it's hidden in plain sight a few thousand years ago this part of what's now nevada was deep underwater a place called the great basin it must have been a spectacular place thousands of years ago the hunt starts at location number one on the edge of what was once a massive lake it's now barren and as flat as a table top meteorites that fall here should stand out like a cue ball on a pool table the area in which we're hunting is just a small portion of the entire lake bed when i say small it's still three miles wide and 10 or 12 miles long or something like that it's huge it looked to me roughly the size of the island of manhattan which would be quite a big area to search the target rocks will be attracted to the magnets on their walking sticks these particular meteorites we're looking for are stone chondrites they they have a little bit of metal in them and so they have a little bit of rust we're looking for fragments unlike a freshly fallen meteorite that would be burnt in black these have rusted and have weathered [Music] it's the once in a lifetime experience to be walking across this beautiful surface you could almost be on mars it's so barren out there this used to be the bottom of the lake two thousand three thousand years ago we would have been way underwater it's a really interesting site it's beautiful and scenic what more could you want what they want are meteorites like the spectacular find sunny already has to his credit meteorites are rare collectible meteorites are super rare and then there's the meteorite that sunny found it was like nothing ever found before it was by pure luck i just happened to be walking and found this black rock in 2004 sunny found a carbonaceous chondrite a meteorite rich in carbon instead of stone or iron the meteorite that sonny found this carbonaceous chondrite is so exceptionally rare it's not just from a collectible standpoint oh i have something that no one else has it has answers in it the term gets thrown around the god rock was there one meteorite was there one body that started the dominoes going was a meteorite or were many meteorites the progenitors of life on the planet it's possible it's an interesting theory that's actually one of the most fascinating questions of course how did life begin on the planet at arizona state university dr minakshi wadwa studies these visitors from space the big question is did carbonaceous chondrites carry the building blocks of life from outer space to earth the key there is understanding how organic compounds started to synthesize to form more complex compounds and so we believe that some of the organic materials that may have been the precursors of life may actually have been delivered to the earth in meteorites sunny found this rarity at another undisclosed site in nevada it's one of only 14 of this type ever found and just the second to be discovered outside of antarctica there you go wow like most other meteorites carbonaceous chondrites come from the asteroid belt and are more than four and a half billion years old but they're unusual because they don't contain iron and thus don't pass the magnet test it defies everything you look for in a meteorite usually put a magnet to them to see if they're magnetic and with this it was nothing i've had a praise and there was saying between 600 to 1 000 wholesale per gram per gram total grams 699 grams wow this single meteorite is worth at least seven hundred thousand dollars one of the rarest finds in history right here oh it's one of the rarest in the world what a find no kidding find of a lifetime you bet hungry to find their own meteorites the guys get started at location number one not far from where sunny has found stone meteorites in the past the original find was made right here about 50 feet oh wow this is the perfect place to spot space rocks the dry lake bed presents a tabletop for meteorites to fall on but an hour into the hunt no luck right color no stick [Music] out in the sun spotting space rocks is not as easy as the guys thought it's kind of tough there's multiple colored rocks out here all about the same size and i'm trying to look for the brown orange burnt rust color it's one of those things you gotta spot the just the one right one out of maybe 50 or 100 wrongs all around it's a little challenge it's worth it sonny goes without even running with a magnet stick he just can spot him what i'm looking for is that out of place rock that may be fractured you're looking for the unique shape you're looking for that rusty color rock oh no wait a minute sunny yeah do some of these rocks stick that are not meteorites yes just doesn't have the look but it sticks uh you know i think you've got nothing all right sorry i thought that was a good one but i know there's got to be something in here they cover an area the size of two city blocks nope nope darn it [Music] you almost have to be right on top of them to see them [Music] and we thought the sunshine was going to make this a nice easy hunting day then steve breaks the dry spell oh got one this meteorite will stick to a magnet but but not super strong so you have to be careful or it can fly off the magnet right color sticks financial value on this could be worth 10 bucks 20 bucks find number one is a tiny fragment but that's enough to get jeff's competitive juices flowing steve found the first one i'm like damn he's already got one i better go get one quick jeff strains to spot his first [Music] i didn't see anything around here there's one right there steve [Music] notice how the color is a a reddish black compared to the ground it's just slightly different in color from the other terrestrial stones around it but it's a tiny difference in the sun it's so difficult to see sweet jeff's first find is quickly followed by another i can see one right there and another we just kept finding them yay each small piece worth 10 or 20 dollars i was quite stunned by the whole thing really whatever the meteorite fragments lack in size they make up for in numbers the guys have never seen anything like it got a twofer one swipe two meteorites oh here's one it was literally a cosmic easter egg hunt there were just hundreds hundreds oh here's one sonny's not shocked by the success over the last few years he's done quite well in this area he's probably sitting on five six ten thousand dollars worth of rock i was tempted to say it was like shooting fish in a barrel but i just hate to use a cliche so i won't say that but i will it was like shooting fish in a barrel yup cha-ching there's a there's a nice little cluster these seven or eight pieces were within about 10 feet that's pretty cool there have been so many times in my life where we go on a big expedition and we hunt for a week and we find one meteorite and go look we found a real meteorite and i had a pocketful after about an hour so that's not too bad that's about an hour's work now that we're doing a little better after a very slow start a very discouraging start it's pretty much as close to meteorite heaven as you can get it's absolutely great but every find comes wrapped in mystery how can so many meteorites survive in such a severe environment suite arid environments in general which can be any kind of desert environment a hot desert like the sahara or a cold desert like antarctica or places like dry lake beds arid environments in general are very good for finding meteorites because they preserve the meteorites if you minimize the amount of moisture that interacts with these rocks you can actually preserve their original composition better and so dry environments in general are very much better for meteorites one mystery is solved but another remains okay here's a good one there's a bit of a mystery about this meteorite and and we hope that our workout here on the lake bed might help us solve that we don't know if the distribution of fragments on the lake bed was caused when the meteorite broke up in the atmosphere and scattered pieces across the lake bed or if it was one or two large pieces that crashed into the lake bed and terrestrial effects caused those larger masses to then break up into many pieces to answer that question scientifically jeff would normally mark all the fines and map out a strewn field the definition of a strewn field is a zone where numerous pieces from the same meteorite are recovered a meteorite breaks up in the atmosphere inertia will carry the big pieces further so the strewn field will have small pieces at one end and bigger pieces at the other in general i would estimate there'd be a two to three hundred pound mass still buried out here but the true trick is locating it i really miss the rock hound [Music] oh yeah it it can almost go without steering so you we could just set it and jeff could look off one side i can look off the other this would be absolutely the perfect place to use it it travels at 15 miles an hour which is just a really good pace it has excellent visibility you can stop it anywhere jump in get back out easily it would be perfect but this is bureau of land management jurisdiction and it's a very fragile environment they have rules and regulations vehicles are one of the things i have to stay off of here yeah we want to find meteorites but we don't want to destroy the environment while doing it so we're doing it the old-fashioned way and hoofing it it's late in the day the guys have to fight the sun to spot the meteorite fragments the sun is killer shadows are getting longer the last minutes of hunting are getting more and more difficult it's so hard to explain the subtle distinctions that these rocks have it's kind of like explaining what apple pie tastes like it it's you just got to experience it yourself i think my pupils are so constricted that it's hard to see i don't know if sunglasses would be better or not too late my sunglasses are too far away the sun is so strong on the whitish surface of the playa that you just can't see a damn thing i think that the the point here is there's only one angle at which you can see them you've got to have the sun to your back and you've got to catch them just the right way and then there's that tiny hint of orange that's different from the earth rocks but it's so subtle i'm just creeping along there's a little guy but something very unusual is happening with the meteorites the guys are finding on the lake bed it's an odd string field the meteorites are almost certainly not where they landed the guys suspect the meteorites are actually moving why because sunny keeps finding more meteorites in areas he's already hunted here's another piece right here hey jeff here's a little piece how could the meteorites move a bizarre clue may be carved in the desert floor 300 miles away evidence of larger rocks moving can be seen in death valley national park there large rocks leave long trails cut in the sediment behind them there are certainly documented cases of terrestrial rocks traveling across lake beds they've taken photographs of the trails we know it happens studies suggest how the rocks move but no one has ever actually seen the rocks in motion there are processes in action on the lake bed that appear to move the stones around perhaps ice moving or by wind blowing them jeff and steve suspect the same thing is happening on the lake bed because rocks are moving the guys can't create a stream field map that could lead them to the big meteorites but sunny thinks they can find them anyway i found hundreds of fragments within this half mile square in here but the larger pieces were running right through here like a snake huh you think there are any larger ones left i'm sure there's going to be a large mass some of the pieces i found had dump prints in them jeff where i could actually put a golf ball half a golf ball in so from your experience what do you think that tells us that tells us that it was a very large mass because the bigger the thumbprints the bigger the size of the original meteorite as the first day of the expedition comes to an end the guy's total haul is more than three pounds of meteorites worth about eleven hundred dollars the guys like finding lots of little rocks but they would love to locate the big one the hunt wraps up and the guys make the drive back to their motel base camp two hours away [Music] day two of the expedition starts with the unexpected wakey wakey i have something to show you this could be a problem oh my site's done the weather could be a real problem but the guys are determined to hunt meteorites you're in two-wheel drive yes might want to switch to four-wheel drive the strategy today is to make their way along a trail where only atvs are allowed to location number two a different part of the lake bed where they suspect the main mass of the meteorite fell there's less snow here but the wind is picking up when we got out to the lake bed to start hunting it was way below freezing and that was without the windshield ow putting my head in this helmet is like squeezing a melon into a matchbox okay guys i'm ready when you are we drove from town to the dirt road and then we took the atvs from the dirt road down to the very edge of the lake bed then we had to leave all the atvs and then we had to hike in several miles in the cold so we are we are putting ourselves out there for this one okay enough talking let's hunt meteorites within the first 15 minutes hey steve gets a hit hey oh cool check it out it's got crust on it i think it's rusty looking and it's a meteorite just what sonny said we should be looking for oh yeah nice there's a decent sized piece that's the largest piece that i've seen so far today and look there there are three more pieces right next to it so this piece was here and then look that's one [Music] and that's one and that's one meteorite's completely untouched by human hands here's one right here this is a piece of a large chondrite that broke up many years ago it's hard to estimate the date on this this could be 500 to a thousand to three thousand to six thousand years old it's just depending on the weather yeah baby oh it's a lot thinner than i thought it would be it looked real big just sitting there there's not much not much thickness to it still a nice piece holy cow they're just all over the place it's totally amazing so i've only been out here for about 10 minutes i already found all these i expect steve and sunny have probably been doing quite well also [Music] i've been hunting for 17 years i've never run across a situation like this i may never run across it again just a fragment but it came from way up there on the other side of mars how cool is that and it likes my magnet you can almost be on mars it's so barren out there and we're all bundled up and it's really windy and there's one and there's one and there's one in just a few hours they've scooped up two more pounds worth at least another 500 the guys are euphoric got one but cold harsh wind from a gathering storm takes a toll it's extremely cold on the thermometer i think it's about 20 degrees but we've got a massive wind chill so it's probably it feels like 8 or 10 degrees fahrenheit i would say this is just brutal i can feel it coming through my gloves it's got to be like 5 degrees with the wind chill boy am i glad i packed my heavier coat because it it's cruel the mountains around the lake bed form a wind tunnel and gusts soon top 35 miles per hour there's no place to hide we got to witness the wind on the lake bed effect first hand and after being out there for a few hours and being buffeted i could completely imagine how that wind could move meteorites around the surface the wind was brutal it was it was so cold i actually was just a little worried to be out there because if someone got in trouble we'd have to carry them back there's no help anywhere near [Music] there's a threat of bad weather coming in so we're under a time limit here and it's a ways out and this isn't one of these expeditions where we can camp in a tent we'd freeze here at location number two the wind is up the temperature is down and conditions are rapidly deteriorating that's not looking too good huge cloud front just rolling in straight down over the mountains it's just getting a little too cold to stay out here and it's getting pretty close to sunset so we're gonna head back to camp tonight go over the maps figure out our strategy after a day 2 total of 80 meteorites valued at about 500 the guys are forced to shut down the hunt [Music] well at least we found some but man that was cold the guys think there's a big rock that's related to the small fragments they've been finding they're eager to look for it out in the middle of the lake bed but the weather has to cooperate supposed to warm up tomorrow let's give it a try i've heard that before day three [Music] the storm passes the sun returns and the hunt is on this is what i was worried about i mean if this happened out there on the lake bed we'd be cooked actually we'd be frozen not cooked if it's not one thing it's another valuable hunting time has to be spent on repairs y'all are good to go all right we're gonna have to drive at 110 miles an hour to make up so that lost time oh well [Music] the guys still have another two hour drive before meeting up with sunny to get the meteorite hunting show back on the road this would have been a pretty good-sized lake being enormous can you imagine living out here five thousand years ago tooling around on your motorboat yeah i don't think they have motorboats that's dude no i think i remember seeing an episode of the flintstones when they were on a boat i hate to burst your bubble but the flintstones was actually a made-up story really i mean it was based on a true story but oh okay [Music] hey it's nice of sunny to wait for us not another one yet another flat more repairs and more valuable meteorite hunting time lost we were lucky we discovered the flat before we headed out of town you need to train your dog how to operate a lug wrench can we go hunt meteorites now please okay [Music] we're rolling location number three is at the center of the lake bed where they think there's a big meteorite the three split up to cover more ground oh there's a nice one pretty oh i like that it's a cool shape there we go all right let me find a bag for it the guys are at odds on the possible age of the fall that left these mysterious lake bed pieces i would guess that this meteorite is probably a couple thousand years old but jeff thinks the fall is much younger i would estimate this dry lake bed meteorite's been on the ground for two or three maybe 400 years it shows some weathering but if if those meteorites had been on the ground for thousands of years i think they would have almost completely decomposed by now only a closer look in a lab can make the final determination ah cha-ching this one's got a little bit of remnant fusion crust on this edge up here it's smooth and a little rounded but down here it's a little more rough so that's probably a little piece of the outside jeff finds something puzzling about the appearance of these meteorites typically when we're out in desert environments looking for meteorites we're looking for black black rocks and they're black because of the fusion crust that is a thin rind they acquire when they hurtle through the atmosphere burning at tremendous temperature something about the fragments out here is a little different whatever it is has caused the meteorite fragments to oxidize in an unusual way and they have a kind of reddish almost brick color to them not the black that we expect oh there's a nice one that's got a really cool shape oh it's a heart-shaped one well kind of steve jeff and sonny spend hours hunting for the main mass a piece that could be as big as a basketball and one right there there's nothing like putting your magnet stick down and coming up with two meteorites on the end of it two for one the small meteorites are plentiful and despite no really big finds the hunters are downright giddy oh wow there's a whole bunch of them together well here's a nice one yeah look at them wow that's pretty cool yeah look at that that's pretty it's nice oh i saw that one first give me that one give me that one look how big this just got a big one i can't i called it first no i called you over to show you you are so mean i want that one that should have been mine no i don't want to hold it i want to give it to me i saw it first see how grateful we are sonny invites the meteorite men out to the secret spot and then we start complaining on the way back to the trucks the trio discovers something with some real size and weight oh [Music] holy cow guys oh wait wait wait let me take a photo before you pick it up here bricks fetch get it bricks get it let's go somewhere who's gonna pick it up first it's mine go get it rick hey come on bricks let's go okay now i've seen everything i quit it was one of the most bizarre things i've ever seen you guys are nuts and steve and sonny were laughing they thought it was funny i was just horrified i wanted to document this important find but the dog got away with it [Laughter] your dog is a menace look at that oh geez no stop come get away from me give me that you're fired he wants it yeah it's not the main mass but by far the biggest meteorite find of the expedition two pounds at auction this piece might draw three thousand dollars way to go good find jeff well thanks but it really was a joint effort this one we we really did walk up on it all three of us at the same time before they leave the lake bed the guys compare their fines nearly 500 pieces worth about eight thousand dollars we've expanded the fall area quite a distance the guys theorized that a meteorite hit the lake bed in one or two pieces then the fragments that they found broke off over time if they're right the big pieces are still out here somewhere two questions remain how old is the fall and what's the story behind the odd coding on the meteorites you're like the best safari leader of all steve and jeff hit the road for the lab and answers a ways into the drive they take a detour for something a meteorite hunter just can't pass up the site of a major meteorite impact that millions of years ago changed the face of the planet jeff why don't we get some gas you never know there might not be any more stations out oh no you're gonna be the sensible one for change it's cold steve and jeff found an estimated eight thousand dollars worth of meteorites on the dry lake bed in nevada now they have to get them to the lab to determine their scientific value there is a fantastic site i would like to show you a site called the alamo breccia it's a field of impact tights earth rocks that have been shattered and melted by an ancient meteorite impact and cool i've always wanted to go to one of those it really is an amazing site let's do it okay jeff takes a quick detour it's really worth it it's a spectacular view to show steve evidence of a cataclysmic meteorite impact a deadly blow from space that wiped out life for thousands of miles this desolate spot is where 370 million years ago an object perhaps miles in diameter crashed into earth it would have made an atomic bomb look like a firework in comparison good times you see this very thick gray layer right through the middle that's the alamo breccia remnant of an enormous meteorite crater the breccia is rock composed of fragments of other rocks minerals and fossils all smashed together by celestial impact [Music] the only part of the detour jeff didn't mention to steve is the climb up the mountain side to get to the breccia exposure and that big outcrop up there is where it's best exposed steve this is the super fun part where you get to do some real rock climbing this expanse of breccia covers hundreds of square miles of the most remote part of nevada isn't this fun yeah plus i knew you'd enjoy it over the next hill is another more infamous landmark oh my goodness that is the rumored location of area 51 just over that hill i have it on very good authority that if you drive down that road and keep going you will eventually be stopped by men with guns who will tell you to go away or they will shoot you how's that for a climb this is it we're standing on the alamo breccia this is the footprint of a gigantic meteorite impact there are no meteorites left here but look what they've left behind this beautiful multicolored rock and all these different colored elements in here white black gray are fragments of different rock layers that were broken up by the meteorite impact and then fell back down were further mixed and distributed by tidal waves that followed the event because the meteorite plunged into water went right through the water and into a coral reef and what if there was another asteroid out there if a meteorite impact on this scale was to happen today probably millions of people would die scientists know these cataclysmic events happened with greater frequency millions of years ago and they can happen again meteorite impacts on the earth's surface are a fact of our existence there has been a huge decline in the number of impacts that have been happening on our planet but they're still happening and in fact the probability of an object the size that killed the dinosaurs that happening again is something like once every 100 million years and so that will happen against an event like that will happen again here's some cool ones too steve and jeff are always on the hunt this time for the perfect brechus specimen oh that's really nice and there's money in these rocks is that nuts yep the guys collect samples and head back to the truck i just brought a small one jeff will be the one paying for overweight baggage [Music] you need some help with that jeff in its raw state jeff's 30-pound piece of breccia looks pretty much like any other rock from the mountain don't strain yourself or anything but a trip to one of jeff's favorite stone cutters can change all that this is called a breccia they're not as valuable commercially as meteorites but there are people all over the world that are very interested in in these impact breaches i would say a big slab that big with a polished face might be worth five hundred thousand dollars for each half five hundred thousand five hundred two a thousand for each piece before the rock will be worth that much it has to be sawed in half without reducing it to gravel i just noticed there's a big fracture on that face that i didn't actually see before so i hopefully helping doesn't fall apart [Music] that's it nice wow that looks amazing look at that oh wow this is gorgeous these white elements are fossils all the bright white ones and the the meteorite hit in it was actually a shallow sea and hit a coral reef and that's why their fossils mixed in with with the other stones i'm kind of glad it didn't break on that fracture that's what i was afraid of fantastic let's polish it up [Music] once the breccia is polished the mix of rock coral and fossils is clearly visible oh this is fantastic what a gorgeous piece how much is this worth now i'm gonna keep it but if if it was to be offered on the market maybe a thousand dollars wow at least five hundred two thousand wow a little gloss and it's showroom ready oh wow oh that's really stunning wow okay now it's worth 1500. we got places to be okay thanks again we really appreciate it you're the best see you next time steve and jeff still have to solve the mystery of their dry lake bed finds they head to the arizona state university center for meteorite studies where were you this time you have no idea where we went and what we did to get these they're carrying hundreds of space rocks and two big questions how old are they and how did the big meteorite break up those all meteorites well not exactly it's a spectacular hall roughly 10 pounds of nevada dry lake bed meteorites so this is all one one fine so we assume it's just one meteorite topped off by 30 pounds of cut and polished breccia you wouldn't happen to have a section would you actually we do i thought you might i'm so glad that you let's have a look at it then by examining a thin cross-section of the breccia in a microscope dr lawrence garvey points out the signature of a celestial impact whoa shocked quartz and you can just make out some linear linear features in here which are indicative of shocked quartz shocked quartz has a microscopic structure that has been deformed under intense pressure like that of a nuclear explosion in fact shocked quartz was not recognized until after atomic bomb testing in the late 1940s the presence of shocked quartz proves that this breccia was formed by an enormous impact dr garvey turns his attention to the incredible pile of meteorites this is quite amazing i mean to get to get a new meteorite find well about a thousand pieces that's quite spectacular usually one brings in like one weathered ordinary conduit somebody gets excited about it but here you got what 500 pieces at least these meteorites are common chondrites the most plentiful of meteorites but the sheer number of pieces make it a valuable find a slide from one of the small pieces reveals some clues i noticed that the outside of the meteorite has this thick weathering ride it almost looks like desert varnish it's really quite odd desert varnish is a coating that accumulates on rocks over time as they bake in the intense desert sun so let's actually have a look at the picture i've actually got to get a photograph of this the photograph reveals a stunning microscopic image i don't know look that looks like a photograph from the hubble space telescope that exactly so this is what i mean this is your media right here i've over exposed it because this is actually fairly opaque so we're talking a significant amount of time tens of thousands of years at least to form that thickness of a vinyl the thickness of the desert varnish allows dr garvey to speculate how long the meteorites have been sitting on the dry lake bed i was amazed when i saw this this thing's been around a reasonable time on the order of hundreds of thousands a good hundred thousand years really that long oh wow the meteorite is older than anyone had guessed gorgeous photo yeah it's really striking so the interesting question is did this break up in the atmosphere and come down like this or did this fall on the ground as one stone and break apart to figure out how the meteorite may have broken up dr garvey examines fractures in the small pieces so this thing has been quite extensively weathered it has experienced some significant wetting and drying cycles over the years an estimated 100 000 years of weather on the lake bed did some real damage but this one's quite interesting if you look at this this you see that that one's got a fracture on it so one more freeze fall cycle and this one could actually fracture right there oh yeah i didn't notice that so it could just be the that the rock was already fractured and the water's been penetrated those fractures and the freezing action has caused them basically to break apart like that all ready to go so by studying this one fragment we can kind of see the the process in action it's indicating that his breakup on earth after the fall dr garvey confirms what the meteorite hunter suspected a meteorite most likely hit the lake bed in one or two pieces over thousands of years larger pieces weathered and broke off into fragments only to be scattered across the dry lake bed over time the main mass or biggest surviving piece could still be out there when we have the opportunity to meet and talk with dr garvey we really learn a lot we're meteorite hunters we get out and find rocks we have an extensive knowledge of meteorites but we're not specialists in every field and we learned a lot about the history and the age of this meteorite we found out that the the the rind on it wasn't a fusion crust rind but it was desert varnish that had built up over the millennia where we're talking in the tens of thousands of years we found out that these things have been out there so it survived the last ice age at least and uh they were still in condition for us to find them be able to bring them in so steve grand valley new nevada find you know i'd say they're probably a buck of gram pretty easy maybe even about 50. so yeah we got four or five kilos here that's not too bad four or five thousand dollars amazing add to that their big find the two pound meteorite it alone is worth about three thousand dollars grand total on the nevada dry lake bed hunt eight thousand dollars good days work well not too bad all in all it was it was a great trip it was successful the meteorites that we found contributed in their own way a small bit of new information to the body of knowledge that exists in meteorite science today

Channel: Spark

Views: 60,861

Keywords: Spark, Science, Technology, Engineering, Learning, education, documentary, factual, mind blown, construction, building, full documentary, space documentary, bbc documentary, Science documentary, meteorite men, meteorite hunting, spark documentary, meteor hunting, meteorite hunters, meteor hunters, finding meteorites, meteor man, how to hunt, meteor men, how to find meteorites, hunting for meteorites, ufo documentary, meteorite documentary, meteorite stone, metal detecting finds

Id: WMZuu-fL5K8

Length: 47min 34sec (2854 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 15 2021