Meteorite Men | Utah Fireball | Full HD Episodes

steve arnold and jeff knock in our modern day treasure hunters we love the thrill of the hunt 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 meteorites are worth a lot of money on this adventure the guys blaze a trail to utah to catch freshly fallen meteorites after a fireball streaks across the night sky well let's get out there and see what we can find quite before somebody else finds it jeff and steve track its path to the massive great salt lake desert 40 degrees windshield 30 below they get special permission from the pentagon to hunt one of the most dangerous places in the united states live ammunition bombs chemical weapons biological weapons have been tested here and the guys are blown away by what they find there's no other thing in the world that's as exciting as this it's my passion it's what keeps me going [Music] november 18 2009 a mysterious fireball lights up the midnight sky over utah a burst of light so intense night turns today for a few brief seconds the blazing space rock burns an image on security cameras from nevada to utah to almost 300 miles away in grand junction colorado the dash cam of a police cruiser captures the spectacular show many witnessed the blinding phenom and 9-1-1 operators are bombarded with phone calls and lit up the whole freaking neighborhood this was a big fireball this wasn't just some shooting star this is a massive massive event perhaps one of the biggest fireballs in decades steve arnold and jeff notkin are hundreds of miles apart when they hear about the incredible fireball steve is in texas jeff is in arizona there is an urgency to finding these meteorites overnight meteorite hunters from around the world will likely converge on western utah when a fireball hits the earth the race is on to find the first freshly fallen meteorites that's because the sooner they're found the more valuable they are one of the exciting things about chasing fireballs is that it's it's on the fly jeff and steve want to be the first to strike meteorite gold there are no guarantees it's a costly risk few hunters take oh got one the guys are willing to gamble they had success hunting similar terrain near here in 2009. sweet touching it was literally a cosmic easter egg hunt there were just hundreds hundreds because the utah fireball was so massive the guys hope this hunt will be an even bigger success we're playing a very complicated chess game here and we don't have all the pieces on the board steve is on the ground first and gathers the necessary research to start the hunt as soon as jeff arrives he heads to the clark planetarium where director seth jarvis is waiting to show him some video that may hold clues to help the guys focus their hunt from my perspective the shadows are more valuable than direct observation of the meteorite itself into this street light right here yeah now watch it's on yeah it goes out it's so bright it turns off the street light that looks like noonday there's the wasatch mountains now this has lit up the entire salt lake valley which is a good sized piece of real estate it also lit up the utah valley area just as bright 50 miles to the south of here okay i've got eyewitness accounts saying that he was looking from i-15 to the east seeing the mouth of spanish fork canyons and the giant wind turbines that are always spinning there so if you're seeing mountains several miles away lit up like it's noon i'm sort of privately betting that it's farther west than most people think steve and seth analyze the footage frame by frame looking for anything that will help narrow down the hunt area so here's frame number one street light on notice the break in the roof line right there look at the location of this roof shadow relative to these parking stripes then you go to a half second later now everything's lit up notice that there's the peak there right instead of being there it's moved over to there and it's moved up and it's showing so it's getting lower it's going lower and it's going south right before half a second after because i know that these two images are taken exactly a half a second apart that means i can get a speed it looked like it went a little bit west of right someplace out in here not too far from fish springs kaleo if i were a betting man that's where i'd sort of start looking around what is the train in the great salt lake desert like flat and restricted because it's a military test area seth is referring to the dugway proving grounds an 800 000 acre army controlled munitions testing facility they've been doing biological chemical testing since world war ii i'm a little bit concerned about scuffing up some little dust clouds walking out there because it might not be a place i want to go with less than an hour until jeff arrives steve and seth head to one of the secured camera locations to take actual measurements that will help pinpoint the altitude and direction of the fireball okay you want to come you want to go that way more and more we're able to tell the telephone pole some of the other markings on the parking lot itself to know where the fireball was when it started and where it ended using a little bit of math we can figure out where these meteorites are what we want to do here is find out exactly which way the camera is pointing and once we know which way the camera is pointing then we're going to go outside and start making measurements and putting little marks on the ground to try and figure out where the shadows are falling and then we're going to take angles back to here and see if we can't get a location in the sky for where the meteor would have been there's the button okay so get it on the roof on the building wow see how well that is so get it right on the corner tell me when you got it 18 maybe 18.2 18.3 okay okay the point is i think you're for this level of accuracy calling it 18 degrees is good okay so 18 degrees and this is for the frame one and now we're gonna do the same thing here 250 degrees that's your line that's it nailed it cool okay all right we're going to calculate a westerly distance based on that very low elevation because that low angle pushes the location way west which makes us think utah nevada border and it dropped 2.2 degrees in half a second boom hey what are you doing [Music] finally finally yeah i was ready for you in front of the hotel it's now almost four o'clock in the afternoon the guys still have a two-hour drive to the desert and the area where they believe the meteorite hit the ground so we might want to start by driving these roads or covering dirt trucks and then working east over these ridges and down into that low-lying area the guys narrow their search but there's still one last piece of intel to get and how did you find this lady was this through contact with the observatory with the planetarium yes jeff and steve want to talk to eyewitnesses who saw the fiery space rock hurtling through the air with their own eyes it was late late at night when we happened to be up it was like the lights on the front of the of the airplanes it was that bright so do you know if your house is square north south east west so this space is directly west right what shana saw confirms the guy's research the meteorite was in fact heading north to south even though when you witnessed this fireball it was traveling at a tremendous speed it was also slowing down and then you saw the flame go out at that point the pieces are still moving the fragments are still moving and they'll continue some distance and that's called dark flight and that's where it gets really complicated for us because we have to try and calculate how far they traveled after the fireball went out day one of the hunt steve and jeff are up early right away they're hit with a dose of reality we have thousands of acres to cover we only have so many hours to do it in the guys are headed to an area about 100 miles east of the utah nevada border it's flat dry desert terrain covered in white sand it's white because of the high concentration of salt the ground absorbed as the massive saltwater lake dried up the tan the brown dusty color is an ideal backdrop for black burnt freshly fallen meteorites to stand out visually and it looks like this is going to be almost exclusively a visual hunt stop stop stop we're the first people here we took an old dirt track to get out to this spot and there were no tire tracks at all false alarm that's what we're looking for but not actually that but something that looks like that but is actually from space we're the first ones other than the very local people to be on the ground here our first media wrong so we're paying the price we're scratching off options we're doing what's got to be done hopefully it'll lead to some meteorites oh stop being so optimistic no he's so good natured it's disgusting steve and jeff start their hunt in an area near the small town of khalil about 100 miles east of the nevada border they'll work their way west toward the goshoot indian reservation then north toward the dugway proving grounds so that doppler signature's actually right over the road here yeah the utah space rock hurled through the atmosphere fortunately it was detected by doppler radar doppler uses relative motion and frequency of sound to pinpoint location and speed of an object this data that we're getting is very helpful but they're just clues they're not telling us where the meteorites are they're just giving us an indication of where they might be and there's always the chance there's no meteorites at all that they all burned up we don't know yet that's part of the risk that you take on fireball chases especially if you're the first people on the ground if the doppler signature is that way then there probably aren't meteorites that way because they're still coming down maybe the the doppler's taking a slice and there could be based upon weight and when something dropped off something could could have been a little lower we should expect maybe a mile maybe two miles wide of a stream field the search area is massive jeff and steve begin an exhaustive visual hunt i think this might be a good time for me to try standing in the bed of the truck okay what you think it's a waste of time no i don't think you can handle the cold come on it's not that bad is it really it's a 40 degrees windshield 30 below standing in the back of the truck jeff can see up to 200 feet in any direction we don't know what kind of meteorite caused the fireball because we haven't found any yet but statistically speaking it's probably a stone they're the most common type scientists believe most meteorites originate in the asteroid belt between mars and jupiter stone meteorites the most common form the outer crust of an asteroid the second are irons once part of the core then there are stony irons which account for less than two percent of all known meteorites vt rights are a modern day gold rush to a few people and and more and more people and so there is an urgency to get out here jeff out there to the south [Music] i don't i don't know it's really big well yeah kind of okay i'll go have a look i still can't get the rusty orange brown rocks out of my brain although if there are some meteorites from hundreds or thousands of years ago they sure would be easy to find out here as well hey i'll tell you one thing i'm really good at spotting volcanic rocks okay back up my heart guys wow and it was totally out there on its own it's lunar man you're right you're a lunar you want to keep it or you know we'll leave it here for the next person to drive by that's really cool yeah right there [Music] this is a pretty terrific surface for meteorite hunting it's hold it hold it hold it hey steve yeah joe i have a really stupid media rung to show you you want to see it coming this was standing up it had blown against the actually it was like that against the bush way out there a black plastic bag doesn't it look like a little oh yeah it sure does and if it's if it's like a ukrite or a lunar or a martian it would have the black shiny crust doing a little bit of de-littering while we're out all right our civic duties but that i saw that from probably 50 feet away jeff braves the cold for another 40 minutes no success the guy stopped to rethink the hunt here let me see if you can help me there's supposed to be a road here so we're we're here right if the fireball was traveling north to south the guys are confident meteorites are in this vicinity i would say let's just try to dart down here this is where we want to eventually get also there's a doppler reading crossing the road right here so let's see how long it takes us to get down here to the pony express road if it's traveling north to south it's possible that it came right through here but we might be a little off the pony express was a mail service crossing the great plains and the rocky mountains from saint joseph missouri to sacramento california from april 1860 to october 1861 we're just going on our best educated guesswork at the moment it's all we can do the guys decide the best way to cover as much ground as possible is to split up and venture out on foot is this the end of the line well the end of the path let's go find some rocks then you get all excited ah there's a new fireball let's get out there and see what we can find quick before somebody else finds it and then you get out there and start walking and go and say to yourself well actually maybe there aren't any meteorites here a meteoroid can hit the atmosphere going up to 70 000 miles an hour but 90 of the time the fireball burns out completely if they survive like this one over west texas in february of 2009 they can be very valuable meteorites are also worth a lot of money on the collectors market and we're not the only people in the world interested in finding meteorites steve here i got one the guys hunted the west texas stroon field in 2009 and tallied up a nearly 2200 payday after finding two meteorites they found one weighing 37.8 grams worth almost two thousand dollars and a rock weighing three grams worth about 150 bucks the guys hope for a bigger payday in utah our strategy at the moment is to scout is to go to numerous locations that look good get out do about half an hour 45 minutes at each location if we don't find anything move on and keep doing that until we find something we only need to really find one meteorite to kind of set us on course who's this steve and jeff aren't alone in their hunt for meteorites with any fresh fall comes the inevitable competition oh it's a friendly sunny clary is a competing meteorite hunter and a friend of jeff and steve's he too knows the value of being the first to find these new meteorites potentially worth tens of thousands of dollars how are you it's good to see you where you guys been i've been calling you we've got no cell phone reception out here sonny and his four-legged partner bricks spent the day hunting an area farther south of where the guys are but didn't find a thing i spent most of the morning right through here oh wow you were down southwest of here yeah okay oh wow so we got pretty big streamfield to check right now that looks like it's actually also kind of west what we need to do tomorrow possibly is check up into the base of the foothills or out into the flats here and where is this in relation to to where we are now or we are repping a saddle right here oh so it's southwest of here he's thinking now right okay the sun is starting to set and steve and jeff don't want to navigate the roads after dark they head back toward the highway and their hotel the game plan this morning was to find some meteorites it didn't work though but we used our best logic and strategy if it stays dry i'd like to get back out here and and push it a little bit maybe both direction because we were kind of in in the heart of where we thought it was go shoot yeah where is that it's right over the county line there really could be something there the guys bury themselves under a sea of maps in steve's hotel room and come up with a new game plan that might be a really good road to to start on we could crisscross that whole area well not whole area but i mean we could get a good grid going going southeast off that road location number two is west near the goshoot indian reservation the guys doppler intel shows this area to be the farthest west where meteorites would have fallen all right well i'm gonna pack up my stuff and let you have some peace and quiet see you in the morning you bet it's been four days since the huge fireball blazed across the night sky over utah eyewitness accounts and doppler radar have helped jeff and steve track the trail of the meteor but so far they've found nothing the guys are starting to feel the pressure you don't mind going through the hardship and hassle and putting the time in and all the other aggravation and expense involved in meteorite hunting if you actually find something but when it drags on day after day in the cold and you don't find anything it gets a bit depressing i'm keeping track of our route here and this is called setting the map steve pulls it holding the map upside down but that's just because he doesn't understand what i'm doing but you orient the map in the direction in which you're going and it's easier to spot landmarks that way we have just got on the pony express route the trail came through the mountains there and this highway's laid on top of it for a few miles anyway do you mean the pony express route but route is r-o-u-t that's as if we routed them during combat to route someone or to use a router indeed whereas a route if i'm not mistaken r-o-u-t-e is a road so wouldn't it we've got a sheet block don't do that it makes my heart stop hey big doggie come here big doggies he looks mad wow it's like being back in scotland they're so great okay big doggie can we go now thanks buddy that was great this is go shoot airport jeff and steve come upon a small airport landing strip if there are rocks on the road they quickly get kicked off to the side by tires but a runway would be ideal this is one place they ought to be they stop to canvas the area on foot driving around in a four-wheel drive truck is not the best way to do this it's one way to do it we would like to be on motorcycles or atvs this is blm land they don't want us tearing up the environment with atvs i need a break i'll be ready in 10 minutes i thought we were at some altitude yeah almost 6 100 feet ah tell you what you finished that up i'm out of here this is unbelievably nice [Music] jeff what are you up to now look what jumped on the stick i don't think it's heavy enough to be a meteorite no i think it's a piece of volcanic rock you called me all the way over for this happy christmas this is a lesson that not everything that's black is a meteorite not everything that's basically smooth and rounded is a meteorite not even everything that sticks to a magnet and even something that's black rounded and sticks to a magnet may not be a meteorite [Music] it's probably not a meteorite [Applause] [Music] the guys have crossed on to the goshoot indian reservation hello how you doing doing all right um my name's steve arnold and um i'm out here looking for the meteorite only 31 of the 125 go shoot native americans actually live on the reservation tommy pete saw the spectacle in the sky first hand well i was sitting there watching tv and i seen this really bright light outside so i thought it was somebody shining a flashlight outside or something that's why i got up and i ran to the window and i just caught the end of it seeing it land back way over there somewhere on the other side of that mountain why did you hear anything yeah actually i heard like like a sonic boom or something really yeah like right after i saw the light wow so you were pretty close to it in that case yeah it had to be pretty close it was right around here it's where i saw the big flash at okay where it went over the hill i'm thinking and that would be right down there see where them houses are at right there yeah probably just directly above those now is that gold hill there yeah yeah that's actually gold that's gold hill yeah okay sometimes the meteorites will still keep flying even after they slow down and they stop burning um they're still moving pretty fast so we're trying to pinpoint where it stopped burning and then try to determine where the pieces may have landed so so over eight mile over ibapa over gold yeah over gold hill okay okay yeah that's about where they saw the the flash so we should take this paved road north yeah take the paved road north until you get to that gold hill turn okay then that's the pony expressway yeah pointy express road and it turns into a dirt road and it's dirt road all the way back there yeah yeah if you get lost just come back thank you it's really a pleasure in our work to meet people that have witnessed these events personally thanks so much all right you guys have a good day yeah if tommy's report is accurate then the fireball may have exploded right over gold hill tommy was our first ear witness and that is an extremely good sign that there are rocks on the ground because it takes a physical rock to create the sonic boom and we've got now just a few miles to go to the projected bullseye right in the southwest corner this would be a good time to keep our eyes open if our projected bullseye is the projected bullseye and we are in the strewn field when meteorites fall to earth the area where they scatter is called the strewn field stringfield could be quite small it could be 10 15 20 miles long some of the largest stream fields in the world are literally hundreds of square miles [Music] jeff and steve have hit a roadblock i don't think i'm going to be opening this one literally this is about as far as we go on this track dead end road no trespassing government property the dugway proving grounds is location number three eight hundred thousand acres of secure land controlled by the army for defense munitions testing we're reasonably sure that any and all meteorites that landed landed in there in the base and we cannot get there i'm gonna start banging my head against the fence literally there's a phone number you don't think we could call the installation commander and ask him ask him what if this is a gate if we can enter the area they don't say you can't you just can't without explicit permission i don't know the aerial bombing live ammunition part makes me think they probably say no it could be right out there we could be doing it tomorrow it's a little aggravating the seismic coordination the triangulation through the fixed camera videos puts it between a peak just on the other side of this hill and that peak right over there and that's the strewn field it's a little frustrating i mean this is an opportunity for the first time ever for a hundred percent of a strewn field to be captured on ground that 99 100 percent of it could be found if the guys are right and the entire stream field is on the other side of this fence the meteorites have the potential to be worth tens of thousands of dollars a huge incentive for steve and jeff we've got it all except the most important piece of the puzzle what do you do what do you do the guys are certain the strewn field is on the other side of this fence they need to get onto the dugway proving grounds and the utah test and training range to find the meteorites that could be worth thousands of dollars it's the most unbelievably perfect meteorite hunting surface in the history of the known universe you could measure and record the location of every single stone that fell theoretically and it would be the best mapped strewn field ever it would be an amazing piece of scientific knowledge that would have far-reaching ramifications in in the science of meteoritics these signs are up here for a reason they're dropping live bombs out there we saw some go off earlier actually we heard them first it's a tremendous sonic boom explosions getting access to hunt two military bases isn't going to be easy jeff and steve believe the small end of the stream field is on the southern edge of the utah test and training range then crosses onto dugway where the majority of the strewn field lies dugway is a u.s army base comparable in size to the state of rhode island for more than 50 years the military has tested much of its equipment here as well as chemical and biological weapons defense systems we really want to see this strewn field and ideally recover a few pieces and get them to one of our scientific colleagues for study the sooner the better time is of the essence the alkali in these flats will cause meteorites to decay more quickly than if they had landed in regular sand the fireball that we're chasing will have originated up there somewhere maybe a little to the west and gone very close to overhead and right over there towards that mountain that's in silhouette i'm actually probably looking right out the stream field because the guys are asking to hunt faces controlled by two different branches of the military jeff and steve's request for clearance onto dugway and the utah test and training facility has to be approved by the pentagon in washington dc there's no telling how long this could take unless we can get permission from the base commander to get on this may be the closest we get to the string field ever it was in 2008 during the same week in november that a 10-ton fireball streaked a fiery path over the sky of saskatchewan in canada the first piece was found in a frozen pond i got one jeff and steve hunt the site a year later and find eight meteorites worth thousands of dollars oh ah excellent three months later jeff and steve finally get the news they've been waiting for i think my military escort has arrived because of the special circumstances hello how you doing roger cannon roger steve arnold the pentagon is giving jeff and steve a one-day clearance to hunt both the air force and army installations which means the guys have to split up i have never hunted with a military escort before getting the official permission to come in uh is is exciting i don't think this has ever ever happened before where where something has landed clearly on a military base and something as off-limits as this is changing weather conditions you know we're going to go out there so everything you brought just take it where okay before he can hunt steve is briefed on what to expect every once in a while somebody finds an old bomb that may or may not contain chemicals okay and uh that's all i got an escort takes jeff into the desert where a safety ordinance officer is waiting from here jeff will be taken to the army approved areas he can hunt it's amazing to think this was all under water once lake bonneville was a giant lake that existed nearly 14 000 years ago it was about 325 miles long and nearly 135 miles wide its deepest point was over a thousand feet lake bonneville was huge this whole area was underwater the lake contained many islands that today are the mountain ranges of western utah this area is now called the bonneville salt flats last time i was in this area they had targets set up oh really we don't have targets now so i just want to make sure we're safe well i appreciate that critical for your safety and mine meteorites are important but they're not important enough to get blown up for jeff is about 90 miles onto dugway when he meets officer cameron mcrae cameron hello hello can i ask for the benefit of your expertise any areas that you feel are safe and accessible that are west of here that's our target is it possible that we could we could drive to the edge of the salt flat and maybe scan with binoculars to see if we see anything no okay jeff is quickly finding out that a lot of dugway is off limits due to dangerous testing that's done here this is a paved road that is paved to this point here at a site they call triple seven and beyond that it is an improved gravel road well any areas that you feel are safe and accessible that are west of here that's our target that purple line that that's what we project to be the center of the fall and so pieces could have fallen some distance either side of that line this is where the guys are confident the stream field is located if they can get to this spot jeff and steve are certain they'll find meteorites this red ellipse here is the kind of projected full area and we draw a line to approximate the direction of flight of the incoming meteorites and that was our original projection but since then it's shifted a bit to the west we can take you up to berm that would be great it's a natural occurring okay the berm is a ridge that overlooks the bonneville salt flats is the berm something that i could walk up onto the top of and binoculars oh really i think that would be ideal that would probably give us a good vantage point over over the salt flats from there the little ones moved a little bit to the east off which is is kind of where we're at steve is hunting an area of the utah test and training range he and jeff believe the small end of the strewn field is here our projection showed that if this thing broke up high and started to drop off little pieces a few might have landed on the air force side uh this thing was uh went in somewhere uh-huh and it does what it's called a porpoise out okay it does that then it starts flipping okay okay and that's where it landed and then uh the eod the explosive ordnance disposal guys and what they did is they blew the back half of this off sometimes you'll find these out of nowhere because they can skip for a mile okay so this is where eod uh actually did the detonation and you can tell that but that box right there is a c4 box this was probably their last shot and they they put some explosives around to blow the back end off a little dark black rocks are what we're looking for because of the ordinance tested here steve is only allowed to use his magnet stick in designated areas to cover this vast area in a short amount of time the air force rolls out the big guns steve gets on his air force atv and accompanied by a military escort takes off to find space rocks [Music] wow so what is this thing well it's a it's a uh intel part of a jet engine uh from i would say at least 1970 that criteria military aircraft okay uh the main part of the debris field surrounds us and this is just the heaviest part of it and least likely to break apart so they wouldn't try to crash this as an accident this was a an accident so the closest road would have been eight miles away um so they would have had to fly people in here had a colonel on one side of me i had a lieutenant colonel flanking me on the other side we were on our mission looking for rocks trying not to get blown up not by enemy combatants but by very delayed friendly fire because there's unexploded ordinances everywhere and it was exciting steve spends almost three hours exploring the air force grounds no signs of meteorites he makes the decision to stop his hunt and join jeff at dugway found some unexploded ordnance found some shrapnel found old 50 caliber shells but nothing that turned out to be from outer space what keeps the guys going when they're not having any luck finding meteorites is knowing what could be out there [Applause] jeff and steve have had a lot of success hunting huge meteorites their biggest find as a team is this fifty thousand dollar two hundred and twenty three pound stoney iron that they recently unearthed at their top secret alpha site in kansas it's a monster in 2005 steve discovered this record-setting 1430-pound meteorite in brenham kansas the media dubbed it the million-dollar rock on a fresh fall like the one in utah with a strewn field that has been untouched jeff and steve remain confident there are meteorites worth hundreds of thousands of dollars there's the salt flats fantastic wow it really does just suddenly start boom doesn't it at dugway jeff has made it to the ridge that overlooks the salt flats how far really is it safe to hike out what i'd like to do is head northwest from here i would i would aim to go one or two miles out probably okay if that we don't know if there's anything on the ground but if there is it's right out there and we're gonna find it [Music] the question is will i be allowed to go far enough towards the strewn field based on our calculations right now i'm at the very eastern most possible point for any material to have fallen and we're estimating the width of the strewn field could be one to three miles jeff takes his time as he makes his way through the brush that's something interesting and definitely man-made looks like part of a something that was fired at something and i promised cameron i wouldn't touch anything so i'm not gonna poke it [Music] this is where the united states military tests chemical weapons biological weapons drones bombs missiles and they've been doing that since world war ii [Music] steve eventually finds jeff hunting deep in the salt flats hey what's going on nothing much on the air force side how about down here well i haven't found anything but it sure is a fantastic area boy it is the guys will hunt as much as they can together before the sun goes down this has been a long and exhausting hunt and they're hoping their luck will change we did an 11 kilometer hike we found lots of man-made shell casings and bits of missiles and parachutes and some amazing native american artifacts arrowheads and axe heads which we weren't allowed to touch but we did photograph it's very very fascinating after four hours the guys get to an area where their escort tells them to stop they can't go any farther there's been testing for so many years out here so many different things just the other day we found a 2 000 pound bomb and so it's something to be concerned about but steve still has one trick left up his sleeve what is that you've got a lunar rover yeah that's brilliant and this is going out into the danger zone a camera mounted on top of the traxxas truck will replace jeff and steve's eyes for the dangerous mission all i see is a lot of really flat surface and a few uh bits of green stuff there's a can you slide it slow it down a second there's a there's a dark shape up ahead to the right wait wait wait wait wait hold it hold it look look look go to your left um slowly slowly that looks really interesting look is that a showcase you know better than me yeah no it's nothing i think it's a piece of wood uh from greecewood damn that looked really good from a distance it anything appears really dark against the soul the guys use the truck for about 45 minutes before they have to leave the proving grounds okay all right well this was a very fun project [Music] i think ultimately i just got to say we got to give up on this one we have been to every bit of the perimeter of this base all the way around we've searched extensively out in some cases several miles from the perimeter fence found a few unexploded bombs and missiles kind of exciting and then we finally really did actually get to the spot where we thought the meteorites would be and there just weren't any so it is certainly possible that everything burned up in that gigantic fireball and there just aren't any meteorites you don't take something home every time and there's always disappointment and there's always a little bit in the back of your mind the guys but what if they were just a bit further in but the truth is we really can't go a bit further in so it's part of meteorite hunting [Music] what happened to that blazing ball of fire that turned night into day just after midnight on november 18 2009 to find out jeff and steve travel to johnson space center in houston texas to meet with meteorite specialist dr mike zolensky well mike we're we're we're excited to show you what we found wow nothing um there's a chance this thing totally um um burnt up coming in i don't know well if it was a sea icon or something like that it could easily just been totally destroyed in the dust you know i think that these days they've gotten really good at calculating where they were expect to find things on the ground within a kilometer or two so my guess is either it was unrecognizable for some weird reason or it was just it just burned up into dust it is likely that a meteorite could have totally disintegrated when it came in broke apart it broke into such small pieces they easily burned up there's also the possibility that it it landed a little farther from where we were at and uh based upon what we're using to triangulate the the area it's tried and true methods of drawing a line from here here and here and that's where it needs to be and we went there and there was nothing there [Music] on average about 10 fireballs are recorded worldwide every year an estimated half of those actually produce meteorites this is the fifth fireball we've chased in the past year and we were successful with two of them so i think that's the end of the dagway story it's been quite a story and i just can't think of anything else to try

Channel: Meteorite Men

Views: 33,421

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

Id: yNiSCORhjz4

Length: 47min 30sec (2850 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 16 2020