Meteorite Men | Australia 1: Henbury Craters | Full HD Episodes

[Music] steve arnold and jeff knock in our modern day treasure hunters yeah they travel the world in search of meteorites the alien invaders that have been crashing into our planet for the last four and a half billion years yeah i think it's right under that flat rock this is a little pool heart even by my standards on this expedition jeff and steve go down under to hunt ancient meteorite craters wow henbury craters at last over treacherous land oh this looks like fun despite adverse weather and dangerous roads we can't get to the site we can't hunt if we can't hunt it's a total waste steve and jeff hunt down a large rock from space worth thousands eureka oh my god that's what i'm talking about [Music] jeff and steve are in the northern territory of australia to hunt one of the best preserved crater fields in the world the henbury meteorite craters [Music] halfway around the world we're finally pulling up on the bike to the hambury meteorite crater one of the most famous sites in the world one of only a couple that have a crater and meteorites next to it somewhere around 4 600 years ago a giant fireball came in broke up at the last second breaking up into 12 or 13 pieces causing the craters that are right here at the himbery field and there are at least 15 distinct meteorite craters in a very small area ranging in size from not much bigger than a kid's paddling pool to a gigantic awe-inspiring crater it's the only place in the world where you can stand on a little summit and be in the center of adjacent meteorite craters of substantial size jeff and steve have been granted a special four-day permit to hunt part of the preserve and the nearby land because of the hunting restrictions in this protected area jeff and steve are confident large pieces of the henbury meteorite potentially worth thousands of dollars remain here before beginning their hunt the guys meet with ranger barrett to get a tour of the crater preserve and learn the lay of the land ranger barrett i presume how's it going it is an amazing experience to have thought about this place study this place looked at photographs for 15 years yeah welcome to hamby and finally here i am today it's magical and then some so michael if i remember the story correctly the the features were first noticed around 1901 by a local yeah landowner rancher yeah that's when it was first documented but of course the local aboriginal people would have known about it much earlier local aboriginal folklore refers to the area as a resting place for devils from the sky i would imagine that the fireball would have been able to be seen maybe on all the coasts it would have been that bright henbury craters that last crikey jeff's enjoying the craters i'm want to get honey i can't get over this there's nowhere else in the world you could have this experience there's a threat that there might be weather coming in some rain need to make the most while the sun's out well jeff can die a happy man okay this is really spectacular really an extraordinary treat to be here now i know we came to see the craters but we also came to hunt for meteorites so we have to balance it out but look how amazing this is how can you stand to leave is there rain in the forecast ah yes yeah we have taken up a lot of your time it's been a genuine pleasure thank you so much for sharing your time expertise thanks certainly never forget this day all right let's let's go find some meteorites all right i think the obvious thing is to look around those little craters outside the preserve and then i think uh there's supposed to be a couple up on that on that hill but and i want to see those little craters anyway so i think that's as good a place to start as any we're at the little craters we can see the big one we can backtrack figure out where on the ridge we want to be okay sound good sounds great [Music] a fence surrounds the main craters to protect them from erosion caused by camels and kangaroos as well as cattle from a neighboring ranch hunting within that area is strictly prohibited steve and jeff's permit allows them to hunt everything outside the fence they begin with location one the small craters to the south where they expect to find iron shrapnel from the ancient collision [Music] hey man it's a crater all right i think we need to check this area out most definitely there are three types of meteorites stony stoney iron and iron because henbury meteorites are iron steve and jeff use metal detectors to locate any pieces left behind from the impact metal detectors broadcast an electromagnetic field when that signal encounters a metallic object there's a change in frequency so if it came in from this direction hit exploded there should be pieces all around it but especially this direction agreed hey i got a little 13 here 13 should be good iron registers somewhere between 4 and 15 on the metal detectors oh there it is jeff got one excellent cute little guy all right numero uno how cool is this okay got a little guy here most definitely a piece of this impactor that happened oh 25 feet away from me from outer space to the outback to my magnet i got something here steve what do you got dude [Music] huh well they're the first few pieces but i need bigger and better these are tiny look at the little one i got two little ones all right so the strewn field's not all been hunted out i agreed all right let's get to it i'm going this way a strewn field is created when a meteoroid enters the earth's atmosphere and breaks up into pieces typically the small pieces land first while the large pieces with greater mass and inertia fly farther but this is no typical stream field it's a crater field and the only one of its kind on earth scientists believe the henbury meteorite entered earth's atmosphere on a steep slightly northeast trajectory and broke up just before it landed causing the pieces to hit in an unusually tight pattern [Music] this is a meteorite crater wow and you can really see the direction of flight the meteorites came from the southwest and they were traveling northeast and you can kind of see how it almost hit at an angle and that side is more splayed out and this one's almost flat and it's straight in a line with that little one that we looked at earlier which means i'm going that way a crater impact ejects meteoric shrapnel in all directions usually in a pinwheel pattern with a greater concentration accumulating ahead of the impact in this case towards the northeast jeff believes that by lining up these two smaller craters with the biggest he can determine the exact direction of flight and put himself on track with the largest remaining meteorite pieces oh that's a bit better holy crap look at that there is the classic henbury meteorite very angular twisted wow that sounds different [Music] you know what makes this really sweet this is one that jeff just walked right by jeff has a method of detecting where he goes really wide and he walks really fast if you go really small take small steps you can cover all the ground he walked right over this and missed one so that makes it sweet how are you doing oh a few little ones nothing spectacular yeah i'm not finding much i only found one you missed you're a genius somebody dropped some money what does that say pesos i'd say some foreign meteorite hunter's been out here probably without permission it's very naughty i still have to report that after i kill these flies these flies are just i've had enough it's a mosquito hood i'm securing my manhattan i don't care what i look like i'm here to find meteorites not to be fly bait something down there in the water let's see if we can find something well i'll be look at that fishing for meteorites underwater oh i see you're wearing a very stylish fashion yeah these uh flies are starting to get to me you look like a beekeeper how big are the ones you were finding up there find a lot of okay 10 grams average i suppose it's a lot of digging for little guys no kidding with 500 worth of smaller fragments jeff and steve are faced with a tough decision so you want to come back tomorrow well that's a really good question um there's this eternal tug award you you stick around where the little ones are or do you go for bigger i say we go for bigger we already found little ones it's not satisfying jeff and steve pack up to leave location one tomorrow they will hit location two where they expect to find much larger pieces that were ejected from the violent impact [Music] the evening of day one brings a torrent of unseasonable rain leaving many roads closed or difficult to pass we're here at the hotel restaurant uh home base and the weather is looking horrible for the next several days well all the heavy gear we've brought out not gonna be able to use them in the rain right yeah well you know when the ground gets wet we get full signals anyway we've got a motorcycle that's great for for being off-road if it's dry i mean if we're driving around in quicksand that's not going to help us any if we can't get to the site we can't hide if we can't hunt this this is a total waste waste of time waste of money the game plan now is just to uh try to get it as close as we can and and see what it's like we're just hoping it's just not so bad at the crater and on the road getting to the crater so we won't know till we get there exactly how bad it is [Music] rain or flies which would you prefer how about a little rain a little flies a little rain a little flies we already had that too much of one is just too bad i think you have to view any meteorite find is a success and we're finding a lot of small pieces here at hembury small's the operative word i'm going to do a little scouting while you're assembling all right he loves building the coil loves it oh i do do it [Music] thanks for the help jeff i think there's something wrong with your detector man so i was so looking forward to coming out to the outback where it's dry and between the cold and the hot seasons and nice and mild yeah it's pretty crazy isn't it it seems that wherever we go we get some sort of freak weather conditions that arrive just about the same time we do i wonder oh this looks nice yeah let's lower it this way i guess that setting's no good it's hardly reading something this size well it may be the rain the one downside using the big coils is that when it starts to rain it starts to mess up the signals so as of right now with the rain coming down it's not working okay go hey good news is there's no flies out right now it's incredibly frustrating to travel literally halfway around the world if the rain keeps collecting it's going to be really difficult to get out with the detectors not working and the rain flooding the roads jeff and steve have no choice but to pack up and head for safety oh what's going on is it's pouring with rain one of our vehicles is stuck everyone's soaking wet um the police are going to close the road that we came in on and we're still on the side of the road we don't want to be on when it gets closed so we're trying to dig this truck out it's really amazing how quickly this surface turns into kind of jello i guess it's because there's so little rain here that when it does rain it just all turns to mush and uh i mean really it's awful it's like custard you just you just cannot drive in it let's see if we can do it it's absolutely terrible when the going gets tough the tough go to the local bar good evening sir good evening how's it going good thanks shopping in july drinks please drinks we're trying to make the best of a miserable day so steve and i are hanging out at the bar here and it turns out that our bartender is a very experienced didgeridoo player or as they say here in australia the ditch so i heard a rumor from um one of your staff that you're an amazing didgeridoo player is that is there any truth to that i know about amazing but i can make a bit of a noise well uh i heard glowing reports about about your talents is that something that that you've studied yeah or did you take classes or no no i'll just just let myself here start off with a bit of psvc piping and really yeah pvc piping oh steve this would make a good didgeridoo i bet a didgeridoo hey i'm impressed we could use that in australia i'll probably blend right in yeah you'd blend right in [Music] [Music] wow that's really amazing so the idea is just to find a raspberry [Music] sounds like a plague of big raspberry [Music] [Music] i could see his shoulders shaking his laughing's heart [Music] stop that you're distracting me this is my turn your lips are too tight too tight here okay you gotta have loosely wait till you try to break down okay i'm sorry that's better [Music] aha yeah getting better this is exciting now i'm starting to get the hang of it a little bit okay i'll have to go and buy one now [Music] fantastic he can't break this that was better yeah thank you so much what do you think i wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole what's this called when you breathe in and breathe out at the same time it's circular breathing that's good the beeswax is getting caught i think i need to be clean-shaven [Music] yeah [Music] it sounds like a bit from dumbo i was gonna say that like a dying elephant [Music] [Applause] to safely reach location 2 jeff and steve enlist the help of an outback guide an ex-gold prospector with the equipment and skills to navigate the dangerous roads we've got a lot of factors working against us bad weather problems with our gear time's running out are you jason i am jason good morning how are you going guys i'm jeff this is steve nice to meet you nice to meet you hang out so we're taking the unprecedented step of bringing someone onto the team that we actually don't even know we've been told that the road to the henry craters has been closed yes and um yeah we want to get there anyways so when they close the road do they actually barricade it shut yeah generally they put one of those yellow and black barricades saying uh road closed to uh to warn you off it so hopefully we won't be seeing any of those today and we can get in amongst it and have a look well we want to get in and then we want to get out so we'll get you in there and we'll get you back out all right boys time to get a little bit sideways just about to leave the sealed road and hit the dirt rock and roll [Music] nice and slippery isn't it fun this is the giant henbury cattle station the cattle station surrounds the henbury craters preserve we think there might be meteorite fragments outside of the preserve ross how are you going guys this is uh ross pleasure to meet you sir ross steve how are you going to love you so you're the owner of the famous henry cattle station that's right yeah well we're very pleased to be here thanks for meeting with us the henbury cattle farm surrounds the crater preserve and covers over 3 200 square miles more than five times the size of the city of los angeles so and so your property extends all around here on all sides yeah yep what a huge spread that's the size of a small country it is there is another one down there another meteorite crater yeah the one bit further down really far away yeah that one there like they're all part of this meteorite crater and that's something you've seen yourself yeah was that was that ever researched or established shoemaker follow he he dug down in it just to see the impact and all that the great gene shoemaker yeah the astronomer and geologist was here dr eugene shoemaker was a founder in the field of planetary science he and his wife carolyn spent much of their careers searching for undiscovered meteorite craters all over the world gene shoemaker was an astronomer a geologist he helped train the apollo moon mission astronauts and he was really a pioneer in impact studies in studying large meteorite craters on the face of our planet he died tragically here in australia in a road accident in the outback if the story that ross told us is true and gene shoemaker discovered additional meteorite craters far from the known impact site it dramatically increases the size of the strewn field the fact that ross actually met gene and saw him working down there it's very intriguing something we may have to check out if the mystery crater is related to the henry meteorite fog it could expand the strewn field by 9 to 12 miles of potential hunting area and possibly contain even larger iron fragments if the crater is unrelated it could be an entirely new find to science the crater will have to wait because the roads to this potential new hunting ground are for now impassable jeff and steve stick to their original plan of hunting location 2 because it's in line with the largest known crater so what we've decided for you um because you're you've got prospecting experience and you're a rock hound and general all-around tough guy we're gonna give you the big powerful detector the pulse star now this detector won't pick up little things but if you go over something big listen to that you know it so these are like the sniper's rifles and this is the cannon so if you hear that sound um you let us know craters behind us to the southwest the debris field is supposed to have been in the northeast so i would say anywhere from about that hill over that kind of quadrant could be good all right let's go i got another target right here that's reading number 10 which is iron [Music] holy cow rock and roll whoa i dropped my detector i was so excited rock and roll whoa i got one right here that's more like it that is a henbury iron meteorite nice good-sized shrapnel fragment about between half a kilometer and one kilometer from the craters beautiful that is what i'm looking for let's see how we did wow almost 89 grams that is very exciting one of the things we want to do out here is explore the northeast of the craters because it's called the scatter zone and this is where fragments are believed to have been thrown out of the craters following the cataclysmic explosion all right where there's one there's more see what you you detect there oh a little bit maybe just a little nearby novice meteorite hunter jason is catching on quickly to the tools of the trade and the terminology is that 10 it is ah what's this doing out there media wrong here assistants [Music] all right that's not so good jason speaking how close are you yeah come over here and see if you can right there close to the white rock [Music] okay good good [Music] okay let's see [Music] oh okay there we go okay that was a couple inches down jeff's 360 dollar fine proves there are bigger space rocks to be found here but steve and jason continue to dig up meteor wrongs and small meteorites i wonder if there's any big ones out here it's a good good start [Music] oh i think this guy's right on the surface look at that there he is untouched for 4 600 years how about that what'd you find jeff i got a target here and i just pulled an 89 grammer out of the ground so this is kind of very typical of a henry meteorite um it's got some little sort of points and features on it's got that kind of reddish color obviously feels like a piece of iron right heavy for a size oh got a letter j here nice that's what we want spice rocks he doesn't even care about mine oh i'm so sorry steve please let me see yours it is a letter j j for jason you should probably give it to us [Music] now i gotta find a bigger one 90 grams or bigger he didn't even care about mine well this is a real good sign 89 grams is a lot bigger than anything we found over on the other side around the little craters ah you guys make this look so easy if you have the right tools and the right intelligence it just really comes down to luck if we were gonna grid this out we're gonna spend you know a week or two here we could set up flags and we could make sure every square centimeter is covered then that takes the luck out of it a little bit of luck a little bit of perseverance but we know they're here so we just got to stumble on them [Music] it's an old three-hour casing it's from uh from a rifle someone's obviously been out he's shooting uh probably kangaroos and maybe uh maybe camels an official media wrong congratulations my first video wrong and it worked right in there see if anything jumps off oh oh now we got a bunch of shale here which means this is there used to be a big rock here and the outside of it is kind of crowded away over time okay so these are pieces of meteorite these come from outer space outback guide and novice hunter jason is a quick study with the equipment and strategy he hopes to make his first find before the sun sets so how are you feeling about that overall i'm feeling good i'm thinking of trying to increase my chances and i thought i might concertina across the blast zone rather than heading out along it good thinking and i feel that meteorite hunting is about 50 science and strategy and about 50 i just think there's gonna be one over there eureka did you just say eureka isn't that what the uh 49ers used to say when they struck gold [Music] stevo hey what's up i got my very screaming first meteorites congratulations you know there are a lot of meteorite hunters there are a few meteorite finders so i tell you finding your uh your first media right a little bit finding your first gold nugget it's bloody special and uh picking up a piece of rock that didn't come from here it's come from somewhere out there it's exhilarating did you get some eureka no that's my spot i was on my way there right there in the mud cutting is right she looks like we've got some pretty heavy showers on their way in yeah i think we're gonna have to hit the road boys and um get ourselves out of here okay you're the expert gold the inclement weather forces an early end to an otherwise successful hunt bringing their two-day total to two thousand dollars well maybe it's all hunted out now ten minutes into their drive the storm hits and presents treacherous flood all conditions good water crossing coming up here guys so just keep a nice steady power run start to lose traction give her a little bit more grub [Music] navigated like a true professional there jason makes good on his promise to return the guys safely to home base today we get the chance to meet up with dr o'neal who's a crater impact specialist good to see you yeah good to see you we've got some questions about the crater formation process and i wanted to demonstrate something a little similar to that and the henbury impact today so i've got a good chunk of flour here and we also have dutch cocoa powder and what a meteorite does when it impacts the earth it excavates a lot of rock and blast it out and leaves a crater behind so we've got this set up here where we've laid a nice little thin layer of cocoa over a bunch of flour and so with an impactor actually hitting that it should punch a hole through the cocoa in the flour it will spat out all this ejector and what you'll be left with is in theory really nice clean crater where you've actually seen through to the rocks underneath do you guys want to do the honors oh yeah that's exactly what happened here look at the ejector to the northeast yeah yeah it's just sprayed everywhere and a little bit less on other sides much like the actual site here i'd say that's a very effective experiment now after i got to see how that flower splattered out to the northeast um i'm kind of wanting to go back there to see if there's some more pieces that were missed dr o'neal's scatter test suggests the objective from the violent impact may have flown much farther than jeff and steve first anticipated they head deeper to the northeast to location three where they're certain the larger meteoric shrapnel would have landed nice strong target it is really touched down in the rocks here all right let's see what we got here wow nice shape on this one very triangular flat back classic bit of henvery there it is wow oh this is a cool looking one i mean it's one of the biggest ones i've found on the trip after listening to dr o'neal it made me say hey there's got to be more pieces out here and so uh that paid off sometimes it pays pays off to listen to your instructors this very well illustrates what i mean about meteorites being in the most inconvenient places i got a target right at the edge of the cliff here okay this is a little pool heart even by my standards oh there it is [Music] there he is that was a tricky one to get my great friend steve arnold is uh what i call a speed hunter he likes to blast out there cover as much ground as he can i may be a bit more methodical i like to figure out an area that i think is promising and really buckled down whoa yeah all right gritting pays off steve's diligence also leads him to one of the most unusual discoveries of the trip [Music] wow this is cool hey jeff that looks like impactite this is cool steve for jeff go steve in your research did you um re read anything about um impactites i know that impact tights have been found here i have a small piece in my collection but i think they're quite rare you know they look a bit granular yeah exactly that's what i'm finding out here they look like charcoal bubbly little pieces i will pick some of them up impactites are earth rocks that have been altered by a meteoric impact oh here's one when a large meteorite hits the earth the heat and pressure generated by the impact transforms the terrestrial rock where the meteorite landed ooh wow yeah this most definitely hey so it started out good found a couple pretty quick and then just ran out of everything but then i found these this is amazing i've always been told it was extremely rare i've only ever seen one piece it took me a while to find these and they were pretty few and far between well done found a lot of little stuff and i found one nice one oh good job all right well let's pack up head off into the sunset once again on the final day of the hunt steve and jeff are determined to make a big find before they return to the states they want to test a theory that may lead them to large meteorites southwest of the main craters in location four so the craters just about there if you imagine the meteorites flying that way and crashing down into the ground just on the other side it's quite possible that some fragments whacked into the side of the range so we may be completely within the zone of material that was dropped as the meteorites were flying towards their final destination our real plan here is to try and establish an accurate direction of flight if we can find even one piece out here we line that up with the craters and then we've got a really rock solid hunt line so my suggestion would be drop you guys here and split up and i'm gonna drive around to the other side take a bearing on on the most southerly crater walk up over the range and then wave to you from there this is a bit of a gamble but i can't resist hiking up that range it could be undisturbed meteorites up there there's a little guy well that's a good sign there's one of the small craters and the big ones are behind that and that means i want to be headed up there somewhere it looks pretty steep jeff believes his largest find is waiting for him on the jagged cliffs of the bacon range so he takes the high road while steve and jason cover the lowlands there he is well i'm rather cautiously optimistic about how this strategy is working out i'm heading southwest from the craters up the bacon range and i've already found four pieces of which one is really quite nice [Music] oh my god that's what i'm talking about wow [Music] that is why we're up here on the bacon range good lord what a beautiful piece almost completely buried [Music] come on take a break good idea look i get a drink of water out of that rain water nothing better than rhine would uh jeff for steve steve here what you doing i just took a drink of water out of a hole in a rock what are you doing i just found a beautiful piece maybe 400 grams oh wow really yeah really right way up here on the range almost at the edge of the cliff okay so where are you at on this ridge i'm i'm on the bacon range on the north side all right well we'll kind of zigzag around here and uh see where your head pops up over the top here roger that well i'm kind of thinking he's going to pop out over here but if he found something just over the ridge he found something up on the uh up on the bacon there's got to be something down here in the frying pan jeff's finding these things left and right and i haven't found any all day getting skunked i know i say it's not all about finding the meteorites but at the end of the day you still want to come home with meteorites oh watch it these boulders are a little loose how about start an avalanche here i'm getting good at this [Music] here we go out of the ground sweet good size target one of the larger pieces we found so far yeah that's a gorgeous piece on the cliffs jeff's plan is paying off as he makes multiple large fines worth about two thousand dollars steve and jason however are having little success down below sounds pretty good [Applause] oh yay well not a giant one but i didn't get skunked today oh that sounds really good it's exposed on the surface i think this is a mostly buried meteorite wow no way oh wow what an amazing shape that is stunning talk about shrapnel that is an exquisite piece that's one of the nicest henry's i've ever seen and it's been sitting there for 4 600 years that is extraordinary and there's nothing on earth like this that is a 10 out of 10 piece one of the most fabulous meteorites i've ever found [Music] hey jeff it's steve what's up why don't we meet right at the top of the ridge and then i can show you where i've been hunting very good see you in a minute how's it going mate oh couldn't be much better really i'm having an absolute blast up here all right i want to see something cool sure wow wow have you ever seen a more shrapnel piece of shrapnel than that wow amazing yeah i was pretty floored good on you mate thanks mate well boys i feel like i've done 10 rounds with mike tyson that's hard work yes now you know the truth about meteorite hunting oh yeah not as easy as i thought it was pretty fruitful day for you there young jeff i'm very pleased before steve and jeff head back to the states they have one more piece of unfinished business you'll remember during our meeting with ross he mentioned these supposed mystery craters west of the known crater field and gene shoemaker was apparently here researching that site with his wife carolyn and i've met her a couple of times over the years so i thought it would be worth asking if she remembered jean actually doing any research at that spot hello hello carolyn yeah good afternoon this is jeff knocking and steve arnold calling you all the way from australia good afternoon good afternoon to you ross had mentioned to us that you had investigated two possible small craters we wondered if you had uh any recollection or thoughts about the about that site one of those small craters probably was the result of a meteorite impact but we were not able to prove it steve and jeff are very excited by the prospect of an unconfirmed crater in the area they hope to be the first hunters to conclude if it was indeed caused by a meteorite in order to get to the side of these mystery craters we've got two obstacles to overcome the first is we do not have exact directions secondly we don't even know if we can physically get there we have to travel a long distance on a dangerous road all right go to the tree and take a laugh hang a lift exactly that's the way we do directions out in the bush uh so essentially uh up here is uh where the suspected crater may be unfortunately today i i don't think she's gonna be uh safe to get up there we finally managed to make our way down to the dirt road that leads to these suspected craters and it's been completely blown out by a flood there's just no way through there is no way a vehicle is getting down that road well it'll be nice to try to figure this mystery out it doesn't look like it's going to happen on this trip the mystery crater will have to wait until their next adventure but this trip has been a great success jeff and steve weigh out their total findings from the henry crater hunt in total they recovered one hundred dollars in shale one thousand dollars in impact heights and a whopping eight thousand seven hundred dollars in henry iron meteorite fragments for a grand total of nine thousand eight hundred dollars overall not a bad expedition especially considering all the rain we had to fight through and some of the pieces are just exceptional well partner i think it's time to head off hit the road [Music] i guess it's about time to start the long trip home yep we came we saw we conquered we found some stuff it's been a good trip and uh a very very memorable trip at that memories are worth something aren't they

Channel: Meteorite Men

Views: 21,502

Keywords: space rocks, scientific tv series, factual tv, meteorite men full episode, meteorite men, meteorite men series, meteorites documentary, meteorite men tv show, meteorite men season 2, science channel tv shows, science channel, science tv shows, meteorites

Id: KaA2-_AODrc

Length: 47min 30sec (2850 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 27 2020