Meteorite Men | S02 E06 | Swedish Meteor Balls

steve arnold and jeff notkin are modern day treasure hunters wherever the meteorites fall that's where we must go they travel the world in search of meteorites the alien invaders that have been crashing into our planet for the past four and a half billion years i feel like lawrence of arabia out here on this adventure jeff and steve travel north of the arctic circle there's something magical and alluring about being this far up towards the top of the world they're in sweden to conquer one of the largest and most challenging meteorite stream fields on earth you have a strewn field but you don't know where it stops and you don't know where it starts it's a good detective story exactly they hunt deep in the forest like a maze battle cold rain i think ah this is gonna be difficult and endure endless excavations i've heard stories where people had to dig for three days to get these out but their perseverance pays off the guys find more buried treasure than ever on one of the richest hunts of their careers oh oh yes oh yeah surprise jeff and steve are in the remote region of norbotton in sweden's northern territory we fly eight or nine or ten time zones away drive up north of the arctic circle our baggage is lost we've lost our metal detector coils at some sites it wouldn't really matter that much because we could go out and hunt by eye or use the handhelds but of all the sights to lose the big coils this is the worst possible one because this is where the meteorites are most deeply buried nearly eight hundred thousand years ago a sixty thousand ton meteoroid blasted into the earth's atmosphere slamming into northern sweden meteorites land in an area called the strewn field years of glaciation and melting have moved the meteorites from their initial impact sites munya nalusta is one of the largest known meteorite falls in history the meteorites aren't sitting where they fell they've been transported by long vanished glaciers the meteorites have endured several ice ages over thousands of years sheets of ice would inch along slowly picking up meteorites and other debris for years some of the rocks tumbled into each other grinding down their rough edges when the weather warmed up the glacier would retreat creating a ridge of debris called the terminal moraine we're north of the arctic circle which means for most of the year the ground is frozen solid and for several months each year this area is in 24 hour darkness there's a pretty narrow window in the spring and summer when you can actually hunt here and for a large part of that window the area is infested with mosquitoes so we're here in this little sliver of time after the mosquito season before the darkness in the freezing with no gear or quick way to get it this hunt begins with the hunt for equipment through a mutual friend jeff and steve make contact with swedish meteorite hunter thomas usterberg who spends summers here with his family pleasure to meet you sir thomas steve arnold nice to meet you yes welcome to the moon thank you usterberg made headlines back in 2008 when he unearthed a 1.2 ton meteorite it's the largest find on record in all of europe and is valued at an estimated half million dollars okay i have something for you it's um that's when i heard that you lost your yes thomas is taking his daughter meteorite hunting tomorrow and invites jeff and steve to join the hunt not only is thomas immediately a charming and delightful gentleman he's agreed to go out in the field with us and almost unbelievably he's agreed to lend us his own coil his spare coil so an operation that seems doomed from the start has now been saved by his kindness [Music] the next morning the guys meet thomas and corinne at location number one oh it's starting to rain yeah it's a sight the oosterbergs have never revealed jeff and steve agree to keep their whereabouts a secret this area is interesting that's been found in meteorites south of this area and north of the area i know and you know to the west there's been a rice fountain really big ones the paper said the third one was found on the road actually quite far east of here yes so five kilometers from here yeah yeah so we're we're in the heart of where there should be things exactly the first one yunalusta meteorite was discovered in 1906 in a small village not far from this site since then others have been found including one 35 miles northwest of here time to open up the magic meteorite hunting chest metal detectors are illegal in sweden unless you have a permit fortunately the usterbergs have an arsenal of hunting equipment at their disposal there are many different types of metal detectors but they all operate on the same basic principle which is they send a signal down into the ground searching for a target the detectors that we're using here at munya nalusta are called pulse induction metal detectors one of the real advantages of pulse induction technology is it allows you to build a coil of almost unlimited size so the bigger our coil the deeper into the ground it can see i suggested that we split up steve and i always hunt together so steve went off with karin and i went off with thomas this is a really interesting system having two people work the coil like this so the idea of course is to keep all the metal which i have on me as far away from the coil as we can by separating the metal from the coil the detector can be calibrated to hunt at various depths some meteorites found here have been 30 feet deep because this unit has greater depth capability there's a chance that we'll find a meteorite that previous hunters have missed steve and corinne already have a signal do you get a number 45 yeah that's iron metal detectors are a must in this region because juan yanalusa meteorites are composed of 90 iron they make up less than seven percent of all known meteorites other types include stone and stony iron they took all the shovels [Music] over the years so many munoz meteorites have been found and my hopes are really high that we would be getting here and every hour we'd be digging up a new rock oh uh the same thing it's official meteor wrong that's mean a meteoron basically is anything that sets off the detector that isn't a meteorite okay pick it up and one move on okay let's try with this okay thomas and i are walking through the deep forest down a gentle slope towards a kind of a marshy area and it's getting more and more wet and it seems almost too wet to proceed and just at that moment as i start to turn around well well raise the quilt please very promising very promising very promising like very promising [Music] stanley and i signal jeff nutkin and steve arnold are in northern sweden hunting the rare juanian alusta they're searching location number one with local experts thomas usterberg and his daughter corrine one of the coil detectors just went off jefferson do you read me over hey jeff hey but i was wondering if you'd like to come dig it with us okay we're on our way oh there we go uh the lights are not going on but it's reading two on the ferris scale ferris is any material containing iron iron meteorites are composed primarily of iron and nickel and once formed the core of a planet or large asteroid then the red light went on now the green one went on whatever let's dig it i like this thomas takes us out to side and he does the digging just about standing it's like peeling back the scalp hey that's pretty good and everywhere else in the world you would go this is not a good sign rock's on top of a meteorite i mean i punched a hole that's a good sign yeah it's a good sign that's a good size the glaciers have pushed these rocks back and forth and it's buried these meteorites with the rocks down deep and so the deeper we go this is a good sign because the signal's still there that means the rock's bigger oh no it's yeah okay i owe you each one a nice bottle of scratch malt whiskey if it's not that right i promise right now and you owe me each one if it isn't right i'll straight boost for meteorite anyway oh yes yes yes when we uncover a target at the bottom of a hole when we're digging one of the first things we do is place a magnet on it to see if it sticks oh [Applause] he really didn't expect that magnet to jump out of his hands and when it did you could see the smile on his face now you can move it [Music] what an amazing color it's not very much rust on it it's quite clean oh there she is our our first ever it's a really weird color sort of crimson and red and white mixed together that's a lot heavier than i expected it was gonna be i've never found meteorites in the arctic circle before i've never dug a meteorite out of a swampy marshy forest floor and i've never found a meteorite in the terminal moraine of a glacier it's just been a fantastic experience all across the board when it comes to the value of meteorites several factors come into consideration including size rarity aesthetics and overall quality such a nice piece i would estimate 30 between 25 and 30 cents per gram the 44 pound 20 kilogram meteorite is valued at an estimated 6 000 [Music] my great-grandparents were from sweden so i've got roots here in sweden and so it's exciting to get back here to the motherland have a chance to hunt for meteorites i love to do that get a taste of uh where i came from so the four of us are eating lunch having a nice little conversation and karen pulls out this can of something when she puts that can opener into that can and punctures the top of it yes oh it's time for some swedish speciality can you smell that i can smell that an aroma comes out of there that i can't even put into words it was bad it's fermented uh herring it's supposed to be a the berdell catadish up here and up here so we open the lid [Music] the smell's enough to make my eyes water i mean it it smells worse than rotten fish all right i'm going to take a little walk you guys enjoy your fish it's really wonderful i'm so tipped do i smell it or do i just eat it just try to focus on on showing it a little bit and then swallow swallow it as fast as you can cheers yeah it's not too bad i mean the smell is worse the taste is not that hey you survived still not so bad now you're a real real mature man i need to go find a meter the next morning jeff and steve meet the oosterbergs at their chalet the four want to find another big space rock to add to yesterday's 44 pound find so before the new road was built this would have been a very difficult area to get to in a popular strewn field like juan yanalusta difficult areas make for good hunting because it's less likely to have been picked over by competing meteorite hunters you see here is almost a river as well so maybe there were like two two ice rivers one here and this is just between them so this is very rich area jeff and steve along with the euster birds strategize location number two an area less than a quarter mile from where they made their first find valued at an estimated six thousand dollars the new area is hard to get to which is why the group is sure big meteorites are here [Music] it's reading 51. uh that is iron between 40 and 60 siren well uh that sounds pretty good yeah but it could still be a trash ah well i think it's some kind of hook that's a pretty good media wrong though wow no wonder it gave such a loud signal steve and corinne pick up their second signal what's that oh that is like off the charts yeah it is [Music] jeff notkin and steve arnold are hunting space rocks north of the arctic circle in juan yonalusta sweden location number two is a wet marshy area located between two rivers steve and corinne have logged a couple of miles before they hear the sound they've been waiting for what's that oh that is like off the charts yeah it is maybe it's like some metal yeah like meteorite metal yeah perhaps we could come in from this angle right i found oh [Music] wow a file yeah it could be a hundred years old but we found something this is so not right yeah i think i think you have to have a little bit of a sixth sense to be a successful meteorite hunter definitely will you and i share that view steve is more interested in in gridding everything oh well hunting out here is is a little bit frustrating in that i like to grid i like to have a plan weren't we here before we were here before we're going over and over and up to now we're not finding anything the new music [Music] it's like a maze no dog you bet you ride so far it's could be a good sign or a bad sign the good thing is that maybe we are first here what was it you i hope not what do you think it sounds promising but they could still be trash do you get any readings um not as promising as they hope but it's still it could still be a method right there so of course i have to dig here what berries can i eat these uh hunting with steve is like hunting with uh i don't know bear or something four blueberries in one swipe he always found like joy in the berries in the mushrooms he always like noticed details in the nature this meteorite gig doesn't work out i might become a berry picker you can pick berries up here right yeah exactly meanwhile jeff and thomas are still trying to pinpoint their target oh there they are over here it's up to that tree there let's give a very clear and sharp signal all right i like this here let's see if we can find your target while there's four of us working together and we can take turns with the shovels so we're not all getting too tired there's only really room for one of us in the hole at a time and so it's going painfully slow well now you'll see it's not like it's about this bad three hours of digging and still no meteorite i'm getting discouraged i'm gonna get undiscouraged all right ladies and gentlemen let's see what we got here [Music] [Applause] very promising could be bigger than i expected yeah we're right on it yeah you have almost 10 on the scale it's all right maxing out yeah the deeper we get into the ground the more excited we get that's not it is it oh okay the further we go underground the less likely it is that we're going to uncover a piece of man-made trash oh we're over 10 now over 10 that's wow amazing either it's a very big one or it's very very close to it or maybe both yeah okay who wants to know what's happening should i sure yeah you should you're a little bit smaller you can fit down in the hole and still have room to dig around your feet i have the opportunity to dig the last inches so i just jump down and slowly slowly digging digging i think let me stand over here jeff and steve are deep in the woods in northern sweden hunting the monumental meteorite one of the oldest and most mysterious strewn fields in the world we'll probably never fully understand how and where they were transported by the ice all we know is they're no longer where they fell and that adds to the mystery and the challenge of finding them the guys are hunting with locals thomas and corinne usterberg they've been digging at location number two for several hours and just hit what they hope is meteorite gold i think i see it yeah [Music] that is like iron to me when i do see the meteorite it's like it never gets all this feeling it's like your heart starts pumping and you like almost want to dig and if even faster you want to test it oh yes please rusty rust the iron okay my favorite part you never know how big it is how it looks until you get it up so just this first look you know that all the work is worth it because yeah there it is the meteorite you've been like searching for for hours here she comes oh yes a little bit more than 210 kilos maybe 14 15 yeah wow look at that color it's lavender yeah it's nicely shaped also very nice here we are not only successful in finding treasure but successful in rescuing a meteorite that's been buried for many many centuries deep underground it's a fantastic moment it's rare for meteorites yeah that they are shaped they're more usually more or less surrounded lamps could be elongated than like the discus but this is attitude yeah really this rock weighs 22 pounds and is valued at about thousand dollars so far the guys have tallied up an estimated nine thousand dollar haul after just two days of hunting when iron meteorites are traveling through our atmosphere they typically heat up to thousands of degrees fahrenheit and that sudden increase in temperature can cause the surface to melt and form fabulous interesting even sculptural shapes you know what we do here oh yes thank you now they are so difficult to find here you have to thank somebody up there for every find nowadays motivated by the find they get right back to hunting it's only a matter of minutes before the detectors go off again oh it must be some trash sounds like they might have something the blaring signal catches the attention of steve and corinne hunting nearby hey guys did you find something uh probably trash 95 fresh trash i we'll see that's the bit rich but if the small coil is not picking it up wouldn't that mean that it's deeper yes it is but you think it's deep trash very very deep trash the bigger the coil the deeper the signal goes but the more difficult it is to pinpoint your target what we can really tell is that it's within a two square meter area that's a big hole if you have to dig it we hit right away a sand layer and i think well this is going to be easy it's just sand but that doesn't last long a few inches down we hit clay and the deeper we go the more dense the clay layer becomes it's much harder than most sites we've dug out before and then when we're about three feet down i hope we don't have to move that rock oh so do i we don't hit a meteorite we hit a pile of rocks that are really densely packed together and i think ah this is gonna be difficult we're digging down and we get down about a meter three feet or so and we run into a boulder we got a big rock on a big that on that side and always more this is what we are familiar with hello friend now boulders out here can be the size of a car or they can be the size of your fist this one's somewhere in between all i know is this is going to be a tough one to move i'm going to dig the folder out or the b oh you have to see but i'm trying to expose it it seemed pretty easy because you couldn't see how big the boulder was but the more you dig the bigger the ball became [Music] really close it's really but and also really close to the boulder i have a feeling this is not good it's right against that edge of the rock jeff nutkin and steve arnold are having success hunting in northern sweden with expert thomas usterberg and his daughter corrine they've found two meteorites valued at nine thousand dollars now they find themselves between a rock and a hard place literally i have a feeling this is not good we run into this really big boulder and we don't know if we can even get around this thing the signal indicates the meteorite is right under this rock how are we going to get it out well we can either dig out this way or try to get enough of the boulder exposed to move the boulder we might be able to just turn the boulder up on its end i think it's the first choice to uh to decide to free the boulder's upper surface we're running out of daylight and up here north arctic circle it takes a lot to run out of daylight it's been a long day we don't have time to have to spend five or six or ten hours digging this boulder out oh rust well my friend wow it's time for your the magnet test the magnet procedure all right let's give this a try much oh yes finally we expose it we see a little bit and there's a little surface about this big and it's rusty and it's metallic and the magnet sticks to it and yes it's a meteorite this is not a ten maybe three or four well you know they can't all be awesome no why not no matter what it takes the guys are determined to get this meteorite out from under the boulder if it's like the first two finds this rock could be worth thousands of dollars it'll be a tricky thing to get this out we find out this boulder is much too big to even think about moving and so plan b what are we going to do now we're going to start digging the hole out the other direction and then we dig underneath the meteorite and hopefully we can push the meteorite down and out from underneath the boulder so we start this strategy we get most of the way down and what happens we hit a second boulder that's right on the other side of our target trying to estimate how big this boundary is if it's possible to lift up or you have to let it be we've got bad weather we've got a target that's stuck almost underneath the tree we have a giant boulder here a giant boulder there they're not moving the only thing that will allow us to get this meteorite out is determination and smart tactics and we just keep going and we keep going and we're not going to give up i'm not leaving that target in the ground until i know what it is [Music] [Applause] [Music] nicely done congratulations team oh yeah oh look at that looks like a triangle that's impressive [Music] finally it comes out of the ground and it's a beautiful sculptural piece it's completely atypical of the type of rounded character-less meteorites that usually come out of the ground here this one's a beauty it was a struggle it was worth every bit of effort we put into it here it is very nice top quality and unique morning alusta meteorites can sell for as much as 60 cents a gram at 67 pounds this space rock could go for an estimated 18 thousand dollars i want to grab it yes i do sir i know that ah it's not so bad with two guys i think all the guys are happy and especially my dad because yeah he feel like stephen yeah like really got a good trip here in sweden another good day partner after another long and successful day in the field the guys estimate the value of their three fines at twenty seven thousand dollars the eusterbergs aren't able to join the guys tomorrow so jeff and steve are on their own the help that thomas and karin have been giving us and the practical help of of working with us in the field it is invaluable to getting this hunt and getting it successful nobody can argue that they produce meteorites they pull them out of the ground every time they come out one of the real pleasures in my work is benefiting from the knowledge of academics specialists in their field hello kloss are you there yes hi today we have the great privilege and pleasure of speaking with a glaciation specialist dr class hedistrand spent the last two decades studying scandinavia's glaciers and reconstructing the ice sheet patterns of northern sweden in his research dr hettistrand has done what no other scientist or meteorite expert has been able to do by compiling gps coordinates of fines from meteorite hunters he has reconstructed the muan yonalusta stroom field i definitely can see the original stream field in the pattern is it your opinion that maybe there is a strewn field pattern here that's only been mildly disturbed precisely as you say in the central parts of ice sheets such as in this case the ice sheets are quite often frozen to their beds that means that an original stream field in this area doesn't necessarily have to be transported away just because we have had ice sheets over the area one of the research papers that we have talks about a terrestrial age of 800 thousand years is is that still regarded as as accurate personally i doubt that it is that's old actually and if that was the true age i don't think that we could have seen this original stream field anymore i think that we would have been completely proliferated do you have any advice for us where to go and where to hunt that might uh put us in a better shot of finding something one of the largest meat right fragments have been found in the south southwestern part of this german field so that's a place where i would be looking well that's good advice thank you my pleasure my pleasure i'm very excited to get back out into the field and put some of that knowledge to use jeff and steve head right to where dr hedestrand suggested the southwest corner of the stroom field location number three is the heaviest hunted area the guys are banking on a new way of unearthing big iron space rocks so steve here's my new strategy you want to hear it sure um instead of going to the places where you that you can actually walk through we go through all the most difficult to reach spots yeah figuring that people are gonna hunt the easy bits first uh-huh i'm with you is that you no i like that houston we have a signal wow is it in the tree under the tree i think it might be right between these two trees if a meteorite's three or four or five feet underground even our powerful 18 inch pulse star is not gonna see it so we have to try and pinpoint a medium-sized meteorite that's deep underground with a gigantic detector and it's really difficult you have to move this way and that way and try and zero in and it's part guesswork and and part brain power [Music] it's in there i like the sound of that i say it's here i think it's right there steve says it's here we're only about six inches apart so we split the difference and start digging the rocky soil is good because that's evidence that it's part of the glacial moraine right we have to be prepared to spend a minimum of one hour possibly three hours digging three four five feet down into this hard clay and shifting big boulders as we go uh-oh what now boulder it's no cakewalk don't break my hammer it's my goal and there's another walk on top of this rock how lucky can you get yeah we have to get this jeff notkin and steve arnold are hunting the muan yanalusta stroomfield at location number three houston we have a signal using state-of-the-art metal detectors they've pinpointed a potential target but a pair of boulders stand in their way yeah we're reading ten and a half out of ten i bet it's right under that boulder i thought you're right we have to get this boulder oh no we dig into the wall a little bit and we see that there's this other boulder on top of the big boulder i think we've reached an impasse never and so finally we're able to wiggle the bottom one just enough to get the top one out you weren't kidding there's a big rock at the bottom of the hole that sounds fantastic it should be right there it should be right there it's not right you said it was gonna be right under the boulder this is a tough dig this is as hard as it gets it's in a very difficult spot our target's right up against a tree the ground's very dense they're roots we have to be careful of ooh there we go that looks red that's it where's my rock pick just stick it down there all right come on let's get it out of the ground is it moving is it moving are you really putting some pressure into it oh cool oh yeah look at that that's bigger than it looks that is so yeah it is it's like a big brain it's a potato wow it's amazingly rounded this thing's 40 50 pounds this is a big rock that would be a cutter i would say i would say it would be a cutter it'd be perfect for slices yeah there's some meteorites that are aesthetically beautiful and it hurts to decide do i want to cut this or not this rock there's no question about it it's round it's lumpy it looks like a potato there's nothing really special about it aesthetically so it's going into the saw we're going to be able to cut slices of this thing the interior the munonalusta meteorite is one of the most beautiful iron meteorites on the planet one of the things that makes samuno and alusta meteorite so desirable for collectors is the whitman statin structure that that appears on the interior of these meteorites when cut and etched it's one of the most beautiful etches known to man iron meteorites are composed of the minerals camisite and tinite when a differentiated asteroid cools kamasite and tinite crystallize at different rates the low nickel camasite cools slowly truncating on the corners of the faster cooling tinite the result is equilateral triangles called an octahedron that creates the widmanstadten pattern this meteorite as a whole stone is probably worth around 30 cents a gram in slices though it's worth about a dollar a gram this 44 pound iron is valued at about six thousand dollars whole or up to twenty thousand dollars in slices good job it's a battle and every time we win that battle i can't help but feel joyful and victorious you want to hand with that yeah i'm all [Music] right we walk up to the tip of monuna lustre island where it sticks out into the oncoming river it's an incredibly beautiful spot and we start washing off the meteorites and mud and dirt sand comes off revealing a remarkable kaleidoscope of colors it's one thing to pull them out of the ground but when they're washed off for the first time you really get to see the color and structure this one's definitely got more of an orange patina and that's got a little bit more of the brown look to it and it still has a little bit of that violet color on it here yeah we don't really expect iron meteorites to be so colorful and and the colors are a result of oxidation in our atmosphere after cleaning the rocks jeff and steve are eager to get a rough idea of their total weight 30.3 now so about 64 pounds 65 pounds something like that the four meteorites add up to 175 pounds worth an estimated 36 to 56 000 depending on how they've been prepared 175 pounds in one trip rocking it is rocking one unique thing about iron meteorites is hidden within the rock a fingerprint that forms over millions of years really characterizes the eye meteorites is that wonderful vitamin starting pattern that we see on them and that's the result of very very slow cooling and it cools down to about 1500 degrees centigrade and starts to solidify but something happens something very strange happens at about 800 degrees centigrade the crystal structure changes and we get these linear features so if somebody brings in what they think is an iron meteorite and it's got a well-developed vitamin starting pattern we know it's extraterrestrial jeff and steve are anxious to test a slice of their mononolusta rock oh good lord it's already coming up using a ferric chloride solution jeff and steve test a slice from their expedition so now if we leave this agent on here it'll just slowly continue to darken the etch and so to remove the last traces of the chemical we put it into an alcohol bath the type of bands that we see within an etched meteorite helps us identify what kind of meteorite it is so examining the vitamin statin pattern of an iron meteorite is not only a journey into the mysterious and otherworldly beauty of iron meteorites it's also a step towards understanding and classifying what type of meteorite it is there's no faking that one okay you might say it's the acid test to prove whether or not it's a genuine meteorite [Music] before they head back to the states the guys make one last stop well not only have you been such a good new friend and shared your knowledge but thank you for lending us the equipment as well most meteorite hunters would not do that and i seem to think there was a moment where you said well if it's not a meteorite i'm gonna buy both of you a bottle of scotch and then i think you might also have said well if it is a meteorite you're both going to have to buy me a bottle of scotch and so as a thank you for your many kindnesses here are two bottles of scotch oh don't don't drink it all at the same time okay no i take one today in another tomorrow our first expedition to sweden my old motherland has been a tremendous success couldn't be happier the rocks are solid they're not rust balls they're not falling apart this has been incredible i have a lot of fantastic experiences in my life as a meteorite hunter but today was a really great day [Music] [Music] hey [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: Geoff Notkin

Views: 22,831

Keywords: Meteorites, Meteorite Men, Aerolite, Geoff Notkin, Desert Owl Productions, asteroids, Geoffrey Notkin, Muonionalusta, iron meteorites, space, astronomy, Arctic Circle

Id: YOXWbGl0t3A

Length: 44min 22sec (2662 seconds)

Published: Wed May 20 2020