Meteorite Men | Wisconsin Fireball | Full HD Episodes

steve arnold and jeff knock in our modern-day treasure hunters these are for sure the real thing look at this they travel the world in search of meteorites alien invaders that have been crashing into our planet for the past four and a half billion years on this adventure a massive fireball blazes a trail across the dark sky over wisconsin there was an explosion and the house shook and rattled we thought we had been nuked the guys dropped everything and head for the midwest to find freshly fallen extremely valuable extraterrestrial gold yeah baby something less than two days ago was up in space and now the first one to it gets it but mother nature reigns on their parade and the hunt stalls as their brand new meteorite hunting machine [Music] breaks down in the end jeff and steve actually find themselves standing in their very own field of dreams april 14 2010 above southern wisconsin a giant fireball streaks across the sky [Music] overnight rural wisconsin is thrust into the global spotlight this meteorite fall is the most famous meteorite fall in the history of the world it's a big statement to make but more people around the globe know about this fall than any other fall in the past the incoming meteor is about three feet across and weighs close to one and a half tons it blows apart nearly 18 miles above the earth's surface with a force of 40 000 pounds of tnt as it crashes to earth jeff and steve are getting ready for the northeast astronomy forum in new york when the guys receive confirmation that the fireball lands on the farmland around livingston mifflin and nearby mineral point wisconsin the conference is in jeopardy it's so much fun when you're there the first time a kid holds a video right here just get so excited is it really from outer space in the end jeff honors their new york commitment i promised that we would be here and um it's it's really important that we keep our word steve on the other hand has dropped all obligations to pursue the wisconsin fireball he starts by contacting doppler radar expert rob matson to begin to track exactly where the fireball may have hit the earth so um when i get there where do i need to hunt you got some good doppler on this i do we got about four different radars picking this up i'm video conferencing with my friend rob madsen who's an expert in taking doppler radar information and crunching the numbers his information is telling me there's rocks on the ground uh 15 maybe even 20 miles long looks like it just skirts over the north side of this little town called livingston is it going northwest or is it heading southeast it's definitely heading southeast okay 120 degrees there's four different doppler radars that picked up the small so it's looking like a pretty positive signal [Music] doppler radar can track the location of an object and the speed at which it's traveling based on this information i'm going to go get to the small end see what i can find maybe drive around on the road see if there's anything just visible you know on the dirt roads or even the paved roads then start going you know towards the medium and getting larger and larger and larger but a meteorite comes into the atmosphere oftentimes it breaks up into more than one piece and those pieces will get scattered across the ground that's what we call the strewn field typically the smaller more plentiful pieces fall first creating the small end of the strewn field the larger pieces fly farther because of their greater mass and inertia steve decides to begin his hunt in the small end of the strewn field to increase his odds of a fresh find we know where we gotta go a little bit of wind's gonna maybe move him a little bit but we know where to start i've got to get up there start finding these rocks with that steve hits the road for an all-night drive to wisconsin as steve approaches the strewn field he begins to scour the land for signs of meteorites this is what it's all about it's almost like a fire alarm going off there's just a thrill uh you know if something that that less than two days ago was up in space and now it's on the ground and first one to it gets it that's that's what it's all about right here first of all the more pristine a rock is the more valuable it is and there's a chance there could be thousands of pieces and if there are you want to be the first one in the celestial easter egg hunt essentially this was a really bright fireball the sought from a long distance away a slow angle it lasted for a long time we know where the car was roughly when it's long ways away you can you can triangulate you can get a a direction a bearing on where the thing started and where it ended you get a couple of those from different directions and you can pinpoint the spot doppler radar gave us a real shortcut on that because people heard the sonic booms around here and the images showed up on the radar real quick so it gets you excited that and and it doesn't happen every day and a lot of times a fireball will happen and it'll be over really wooded area or it'll be over a national park girl be over mountains or it'll be over water and yeah you know something probably landed but you know your odds of finding anything or nil and so we saw this look looked at the map and went hey it's farmland which can be good it can be bad something little can hide in the grass real easy real easy uh there's also the wind that plays a role in in moving the pieces a little bit so um we we factor that in a little bit and uh so here we are for a meteorite hunter there is nothing more sacred than a space rock that has been on earth for just a couple of days such a fine could have a value of up to one hundred dollars per gram the scientific value could be unlimited on march 22 1998 two meteorites were recovered in monahans texas nasa scientists analyzed the space rocks within days of the fall revealing the first ever samples of water from space a thousand miles away from the wisconsin stroonfield at the astronomy forum in new york jeff has his hands full fielding questions about the wisconsin fireball and explaining the absence of his meteorite hunting partner oh he goes on his own he doesn't need my permission he's a loose cannon i hate to hold him back you know he's such a maniac i've got to get out there he jumped in the car and drove all night to get to the strewn field steve's out there now he's supposed to be here with me he's very naughty i mean it was mainly a big boom to begin with when investigating a fireball and forming a hunt strategy eyewitness accounts and permission to hunt private land are invaluable first steps because the wisconsin fireball happened at around 10 p.m a lot of people saw the night turn today for a brief moment and then it kept getting closer and closer and in brighter and bright white and then after it peaked in its whiteness it turns yellow and then orange and then just kind of burnt out and did you hear any sonic i did not i was i called my wife we live in town here and uh and the girls answered the phone and i said what are you doing out of bed it's after 10 o'clock well molly saw a big lightning and it's gonna storm i said oh it wasn't lightning and then they started to scream and deb grabbed the phone and said there was an explosion that's usually the very end of it the loud rumbling that racked nerves that night was the result of the meteor's speed as it entered the earth's atmosphere when an object reaches a speed faster than the sound it's making it pushes through its own sound waves the sudden equalization of air pressure forward and aft of the disturbance creates a sonic boom anytime you have a solid mass going faster than the speed of sound you have a sonic boom created when there are multiple pieces as in a meteorite breaking up into a bunch of pieces sometimes you can have multiple sonic booms all on top of each other it can be a very loud experience if you're close to where the fireball is steve gets his first big clue from a local farmer that hunters have already found pieces of the supersonic space rock neighbors here this morning they found two of them just west of us here okay yeah oh um how far west they say well less than a half mile okay they say we were right in the past here okay only two days after the fireball news of other hunters in the area is bittersweet for steve competition means he needs to speed up his reconnaissance and focus his hunt the good news is the other hunter's fines offer him the perfect starting point so this fireball came in uh wednesday night about 10 o'clock the report started hitting the internet uh shortly afterwards people saw this thing come from from six or seven states and it came in really slow lasted for um six to seven seconds long which is extremely long for a lot of fireballs and there was multiple flashes so there's a there's a decent chance that shows that this could have broke up and and right where we're at right now it's where this thing came over moments later steve spots something in the road excuse me a minute let's see if there's something out there oh jesus white rock with black tar on the outside of it it's his first meteor wrong of the trip a small terrestrial stone covered with tar back on the road steve heads to where the initial finds were reported he hunts using one of his favorite tools of the trade time to break out the magnet stick magnets are a meteorite hunting staple steve's walking stick has a high strength rare earth magnet attached to it which allows him to separate iron-laden media rights from the non-metallic meteor wrongs a thousand miles away in new york jeff's holding down the fort and still explaining his partner's absence i'm sorry my evil twin isn't here you are so right he is in wisconsin in the stream field right now jeff is exactly right steve's in the center of the stream field perusing the intersection of two country roads where he's convinced the meteorite intersected with earth his friend and fellow meteorite hunter brad wagner arrives at the strewn field about a mile to the northwest with instant results hey brad what's going on you found one don't touch it oh that dog freshly fallen meteorites command a premium if they're untouched by human hands look at that oh it is look at that way to go oh it's got a little bit of brown secondary crust wow you got a baggie yeah let's not touch it oh it's got a broken face look at that that's probably about 10 grams there's got to be more here brad's find is all the evidence steve needs to continue hunting in the area the light road also proves to be an ideal backdrop to spot the dark burned fusion crust of a freshly fallen meteorite and it doesn't take long to find his first space rock brad got one oh that's not as big as mine no it's not but it's prettier look at that look at that guy it's got a little broken face to it woohoo we don't know if there's three of these out here or if there's 300 or 3 000 it just time's gonna tell this is such a great place wow gotta look for more meanwhile back in new york jeff finishes up his obligation and boards the next plane to wisconsin he picks up the team's custom-made american chopper and heads for steve and the strewn field but jeff's ride goes dead just as he pulls into the hotel parking lot a mechanic is called engine parts are tweaked and there are multiple attempts to get the bike started the old fashioned way soon push comes to pull but in the end nothing works the prognosis is bad so jeff and steve call the equivalent of an automotive ambulance to get their meteorite hunting bike the attention it needs the loss of valuable hunting time causes tempers to flare here let's we can we can we can straight down oh don't pull it down again i'm way too tired for this well we got to get it on straight jeff i mean i know your attitude's not good about it but well that kind of puts a damper on the day's operations yeah that was gonna be so perfect we want to use the motorcycle as part of our hunting strategy and it's a big blow to have it conk out just as i get into town and we're ready to go but we'll have to figure out how to carry on one way or another we'll go and hunt on foot if we have to with the bike in the shop jeff and steve climb into a rental and head to the strewn field there are three basic types of meteorites stony iron and stony iron like most meteorites the one in wisconsin likely came from the asteroid belt between mars and jupiter their fall to earth begins when they're knocked out of their orbit either by other objects or by the pull of the sun's gravitational field these space rocks are all that's left of the material that came together to form earth and the planets they're about the same age as our solar system around four and a half billion years old [Music] steve and jeff make their way to the center of the stroom field guys are convinced they will find larger rocks here if they can get access to search the private property of local landowners they begin to make the rounds meeting with property owners to access their land while gathering info about the fall to help them form a hunting strategy wanting to do some hunting today and then maybe even on monday didn't know if we could get your permission to do that yeah that's fine all right well appreciate it what are your plans for that piece of ground i'll put it in the corner here within a week within a week okay okay not the news steve was hoping for farmers are out planting the crops for the coming season right now and we spoke to a farmer and he said he had over a million dollars of potential income from his crop and there is no way he could delay these small meteorites will be lost forever once the tractors have gone over this ground and turned the soil over so it's it's do or die we don't if we don't get them today or in the next couple of days they're they're going to be gone for good with a new sense of urgency jeff and steve meet farmer scott moneypenny sir jeff founder great pleasure and here comes bearing gifts oh wow where's the other bit look at the appreciation on that brachiation happens in the asteroid belt between mars and jupiter when two space rocks made of different materials collide the force combines them into one single mass a close look at the stone shows the different rock formations inside but there's something else interesting about this particular meteorite isn't that just awesome it looks a lot like park forest park forest is the name given to a meteorite that crashed to earth in the chicago area seven years earlier if the wisconsin meteorite's connection to park forest can be verified it would suggest that the two falls separated by seven years and strewn fields hundreds of miles apart could have originated from the same parent body this phenomenal coincidence could increase the value of both meteorites congratulations you're a meteorite hunter he's graduated from meteorite hunter meteorite finder where did you find it it was up to my place how close to a building was it right next to it oh wow that looks like it waxed something and broke it it really does yeah there's absolutely no traces of secondary crust on that the lack of a secondary fusion crust suggests this space rock broke apart after the fireball extinguished that and its proximity to a nearby building means this space rock may have collided with a man-made object this would make it extremely rare and even more valuable and there are collectors who are fascinated by meteorites that have hit something and they only collect they're called hammer stones if it's if it hits something that's man-made a five-pound hammer stone that hit a house near chicago during the park forest falls seven years ago sold for more than fifty thousand dollars hammerstones aren't the only valuable items the damaged piece of roof windowsill and closet door it hit sold for 2 700 a mailbox hit in claxton georgia was auctioned for an astounding 82 750 and when a 27 pound meteorite punched a hole in the trunk of a chevy malibu in peak skill new york its value skyrocketed it's now worth nearly 100 thousand dollars [Music] [Music] so if we can find a dent or a little mark in the roof of your building this is suddenly going to go up in value for you they head to location number three the farm where the meteorite was found they're looking for evidence of an impact to determine if it's truly a hammer stone if it is the value could skyrocket now how did you know what to look for we're just reading the paper or local stories oh okay so i kind of knew what it looked like i saw black and picked it up and i checked it with a magnet so you could feel see you know all the tricks excellent so you found them just right down here right by the side of the building amazing you've got a good eye people search their whole lives and never find a meteorite could have hit the roof and bounce back maybe maybe so here are the the two fragments that this gentleman scott found on his property broken right next to a building we think it's uh likely or possible that it hit the building some interesting things to note the fusion crust's very fresh it's sort of blue black we're rather intrigued because it really does seem like this meteorite hit this building behind me and there there could very well be some other pieces very nearby it could be a an authentic barn smasher [Laughter] one of only a couple known in the world here he found two fragments right next to each other and they cut together yeah the other ones have got to be around here somewhere somewhere i am inclined to think it hit the pavement despite their best efforts the guys find no evidence that farmer scott's meteorite is a hammerstone in their continued search for strewn field information jeff and steve touched base with another local farmer named keith who also saw the fireball so you were in the silver building here you were working this building right here i was working in there and the flash was like a set off to that it looked like it was right straight up there in the sky that flash was first and then just seconds that's when the boom and that illustrates perfectly how light travels more quickly than sound you see the flash and then the sound he's got some advice for the guys based on what he saw that night and what he's learned about some of the meteorite fines i'm sure fellas here you're just a little bit too far north right here i'd say half mile to a mile too far north to find anything right on here it lit the whole sky that that silo up there was like it was broad daylight like a big flashback just like a big flash ball based on where farmer scott found his broken space rock and with keith's new information the guys adjust the size of the strewn field they now have even more farmland to cover the fireball came in like this and yes this is further to the south and west so it does it stretches the streamflow out a little we need to see keith's other property on the other side of the street he said no one's been on that okay let's do that now but before the guys leave another local man approaches them with space rocks he found with his son amazing these are for sure the real thing look at this wow an unusual shape this stone broke up in flight this happens during uh explosive fragmentation in flight and then it started to melt again and so this this kind of rough black covering is called secondary fusion crust we're visiting with wisconsin's youngest meteorite hunter it was right next to the waterway fantastic inspired by local success stories the guys are confident that somewhere in this idyllic farmland there are a lot of big space rocks just waiting to be found [Music] day two in southern wisconsin begins with a morale boosting delivery the newly repaired chopper jeff takes it for a quick test drive before picking up steve then it's off to the strewn field armed with a new intel collected from the locals the clustering of the nearby finds made by farmer scott troy and his dad has the guys convinced they have located the sweet spot of the nearly two by twelve mile strewn field they begin at hunt location number four a privately owned farm in the middle of the stream field they cover acre after acre on foot with magnet sticks in hand and a sense of humor in tow have a little natural music for a change out in the field of makes me hungry for frog legs yeah i knew that was coming not that i think you're predictable or anything no i've got a hunch there's something else there better watch what i say the guys cover part of the 160 acre parcel but find nothing steve's hunch is wrong and this area of the sweet spot proves not so sweet after all they depart to greener pastures in location number five farther downstream toward the large end of the strewn field they split up and hunt land in an area that according to their acquired intelligence should be prime space rock real estate this is probably about the best possible place to hunt the fireball went right over my head going that way jeff yeah we got some clouds coming this direction they're looking dark but should we keep on hunting and if it starts raining we'll just run back to the truck [Music] well a little rain doesn't hurt anyone it's lighting bolts that i'm afraid of standing on a hilltop yeah you should try holding the stick up above your head like this perfect the wisconsin meteorite is a stony meteorite but it also contains about 20 iron which will begin to corrode once contact is made with moisture so despite the threat of lightning storms the guys regroup and keep hunting hey steve yeah um something just caught my eye then i went back i was going that way i saw a black stone and i walked by it and i thought now that isn't one and then i thought no i've got to go back and just check it but it's one of those things where you see a rock and you go man and then it starts annoying at you and i go no i got to go back and check that dude that is that what you saw but that could be it yes yeah baby wow that's fabulous we're out here hunting and there's a lot more meteorons and there are meteorites and jeff calls me over i don't know what he thinks he saw but it's not like i'm finding anything over on my side of the field anyway four eyes are probably better than two and uh we score their second find is considerably larger than the three gram rock steve found in the road it weighs 42.2 grams and is worth about four thousand dollars this meteorite has an unusual cone shape it's got a rounded leading edge and a flat trailing edge and that means it's oriented as it hurtled through the atmosphere burning the surface melted back and it acquired this shape it also has a rich black fusion crust the the exterior has literally been fried as it burned in the atmosphere and finally it has a rollover lip and that's created when some of the molten surface of the meteorite literally rolls back onto the reverse side all of these characteristics are unique to meteorites and it's got everything orientation fusion crust a rollover lip it's a fresh fall it just landed on the earth it's everything that a meteorite collector could want with more storm clouds on the horizon jeff and steve ride back to the hotel to trade their three-wheeler for the shelter and safety of something with four wheels the race is on for the guys to find large and valuable space rocks before the rain and its corrosive effects come into play [Music] but in this case the rain wins that was a nice welcome [Music] rain it's been a while since i've been meteorite hunting in the rain so we don't know if this stone is a ruster or not i remember those stones that we picked up in park forest back in 2003 after the first rain they started to oxidize noticeably yeah so not only are we not doing any hunting our meteorites might be rusty as we speak at this moment with limited time remaining and only two small fines the guys head directly to the large end of the strewn field intent on bagging bigger more valuable meteorites in location number six steve has a new secret weapon perfect for locating the valuable bounty [Music] well steve asked me to come up here to the top field so i could see his new metal detector but he's not here and that's our landowner coming this way in the big tractor i suppose all that skin where steve is hey is this your idea of work yeah i thought you said you were hunting up here i am oh right i am this is my new metal detector really really check this out so like this 250 000 machine you think it's picking up the ride what it does that right there is a metal detector little pieces of metal will freeze this and this is one that got caught in there and we found it just a little nail set it off so any meteorites that landed in these rye fields that would have got cut and sweeped together tossed up the metal detector on this rye harvester is meant to protect both the machine and the cattle that feed on the grain from any metal objects that might be picked up the grain is gathered by the spinning rates and is fed toward the center metal detecting unit by two horizontal augers when the detector encounters metal of any kind the mechanism instantly shuts down and spits the grain and the metal objects back out for collection it's the ideal hunting tool to cover this massive field the guys think could hold more four thousand dollar rocks i was gonna say that it seems like cheating but i think actually steve was being quite resourceful certainly a good way to cover a lot of ground i just wonder if that metal detector would really pick up the iron in a stone meteorite but i guess it would if it could pick up a nail it's quite clever really i just think it's a bit unfair that he gets to ride in the tractor the whole time i never get to ride at the tractor oh well i suppose i'll go back to the other field he'll have this done in about an hour it would take us about a week to walk this field he does come up with a good idea every now and then [Music] just a few minutes into the harvest the machine encounters a target it's not long until steve gets a look at the machine's first find wow all right so a meteorite this big you want to have that much metal in it i'm sure 20 metal in it probably so if this thing would pick up a meteorite [Music] all right all right let's get back to work [Music] the metal detecting harvester was a great idea but after four hours of searching all it finds are pieces of barbed wire a couple of nails and other meteor rods probably went another 100 feet and found another piece of metal and then we found another piece of metal and it was starting to get old pretty quick but jeff and steve get an idea for another unconventional hunting approach so jeff's been jonesing for he needs he needs a rock and there's a lot better chance that there's something small more small ones and so i've brought him back here just a little ways away from where i found my little one at the beginning it was my idea to come to this spot i know but i got him here he didn't know how to get here and um so we've got this really cool corn field that hasn't been searched and it looks like some other ground here so um jeff's gonna get at it we just got word steve's going in the airplane hello hello are you my ride maybe i'm steve steve how you doing doing good nice to meet you yeah [Applause] looking for volleyball basketball watermelon sized rocks in some of these green pastures [Music] right now we're over the line there you go okay can we get a little lower from 500 feet they fly down the middle of the stream field and in only minutes steve zeros in on several foreign looking objects yeah there looks like there's a couple something there there was something there that and right there too yeah sure what is that right there steve's just spotted what might be the big payoff to his high-flying search okay bye so steve just called i just landed from their scouting trip in the airplane and he said that they saw a dark spot on the ground very close to where we were hunting earlier at the large end of the stream field he's going to go check that out i like it here we're for sure in the line of flight from the from the fireball and we have super nice light ground has not been plowed if they're black rocks here they should be lying right on top of this straw it's nice and light it's dry it's hard it looks good let's just hope there's some rocks here [Music] once the flight's over steve hits the ground running anxious to get a closer look at what he saw from a few hundred feet up so this airplane trip was amazing got to cover quite a bit of land crisscrossed over the bulk of where the big zone is i'm going to go check this black spot out that i saw in that field hopefully the landowners are there now let me get down there and we'll find out what that was [Applause] [Music] oh gotta be kidding what steve saw from the plane was a meteor wrong courtesy of mother nature i guess from 500 feet up this is what green looks like oh well [Music] i'm always a bit skeptical about what we call fireball chasers and this is a fireball chase a media event is witnessed in the sky meteorites are reported to be on the ground we rush out there as quickly as we can try and recover some of them reports of meteorite falls are often exaggerated and people go oh my god there are hundreds on the ground maybe thousands they're all over the place and you get there and you find out that only a handful have been discovered and that is what usually happens just a little over a year ago i was in canada and in two days my small team recovered over 100 freshly fallen stones and so when it's good it's really good but that kind of thing only happens maybe once in a decade so i try and be practical when i come out on these things i don't really like fireball chases i would much rather go to a strewn field that we had discovered or that we have worked in before and spend our time mapping it hunting it methodically this is um it's pretty nerve-wracking we knew the odds of finding meteorites here are pretty poor not much materials fallen and so we thought we'd try and use everything at our disposal upshot of all of this scouting truck a quarter of a million dollar metal detector tractor nothing all the pieces we found by eye with a magnet stick i don't know how we can still not find stuff even with that enormous device out there working for us there's just nothing here i guess that fireball was so bright that it indicates nearly everything burned up in flight and very very few pieces made it to the ground that's why we're having such a hard time well we've got a few hours of daylight left i'm gonna go back to the old school this is this is wrong normally it's really slim pickings early and you start to learn where the meteorites are not you're putting this piece of the puzzle together one at a time brad got one the irony here is right off the bat i found one and then the next day really early in found another big one yes yeah baby and you get the hopes up that it might get a little bit easier we can only do what we can do there is only one thing left to do split up again to cover as much of the nearly 24 square mile strewn field as possible steve is off to location number seven a nearby farm whose owner has granted him permission to hunt he also recruits some additional help the farm owner's granddaughters emma taylor and olivia what we're gonna do is make you some magnet sticks okay girls it's a little bit luck but it's a little bit skill too and i'll show you a meteorite and see how it picks it up i like cornfields you know why because there's rows and we can line up in rows and we can walk and then you know what you covered and what you haven't it's called gridding okay so let's go line up in a lane and make this happen let's go that's right we're burning daylight as they say it's kind of hard to find meteorites in the dark i think my chances of quadrupled now with this team it's best if you see anything that's even questionable just stick your magnet on it steve and his hunting apprentices put it into high gear covering the cornfield several rows at a time look what's in my row [Music] that's a real one oh my goodness look at that so this thing like three days ago was out in outer space steve's find is their biggest space rock yet 175 grams worth about 12 000 he's anxious to track down jeff to show him the fine hey hi what's up any luck just some cow droppings how about you funny you should ask seriously wow i was over there with this farmer and his granddaughters were out there with me we were gritting this cornfield and uh just sitting right there waiting for us this has to be one of the largest ones or possibly the largest one found here well i'll wrap up here you want to meet back at the truck okay all right well done thank you that makes it all worthwhile just that the guys walk away from this hunt with three rare and valuable finds they still have a few unanswered questions about the striking similarities between the 2003 park forest meteorite and their wisconsin fines they ship a sample to nasa's dr zolensky for further analysis and head to texas for the results every time there's a fireball like the one that plunged into southern wisconsin it's given a name based on the location of the stream field it's also assigned a scientific category based on its specific mineral contents scientists classified the 2010 fall as an l 5 6 chondrite l meaning low iron that's the same classification as the park forest meteorite of 2003. so what are the odds that these two fireballs originated from the same asteroid as for the official name scientists chose mifflin the name of the town where at least two meteorites were found after the april 14 2010 event [Music] we're here in houston here at the johnson space center with dr mike zielinski he's a meteorite specialist and what better place than the headquarters of the american space program to study things that have fallen on the surface of our planet from outer space one of the things that we were kind of wondering about was the similarity between this rock and the appearance of the rock that fell in park for chicago in 2003. well you can see it again so you've been taking a look at uh our mifflin wisconsin meteorite right it's a lot like park forest so here's a section of park forest meteorite so one of the really interesting things that's come up about mifflin the meteorites produced by the great wisconsin fireball is that the structure really looks similar to park forest there's that britiation right it's so different the same so they could have come from the same parent asteroid so one thing we don't know is are all the l-chondrites are they all from the same asteroid or are there several different l-chondrite asteroids that we don't know the alcondroids probably all come from a small number of asteroids not every asteroid sends rocks to the earth they have to be in special positions to dynamically be possible to send rocks to the earth and only a small number of asteroids are like that mike was able to do some side by side comparisons uh visual comparisons and pointed out that yes some of the same factors were at play in both parent bodies and that maybe these did come from the same parent body didn't know it conclusively but it was pretty pretty interesting the real little meteorite that i found i ended up selling for right out 100 grams so a three grammar at about 300 the other pieces and slices were selling from 60 to 120 130 a gram yeah baby in the world of meteorite collectors one hundred dollars per gram nearly double the price of gold is a premium price the final values also have a lot to do with the rule of supply and demand if the wisconsin fireball had produced hundreds of pounds of meteorites the value would have been much lower but the massive fireball above mifflin wisconsin has only yielded about eight pounds of meteorites so far the combined weight of all three fines is 220 grams with an approximate value of sixteen thousand dollars a very good week on one hand we're fortunate that we found anything but on the other hand it'd be nice if we found something really huge and we can get a big premium on something huge but at least the little bit we found we're getting a little bit more program out of it the wisconsin fireball that we chase so hard worked so hard to find pieces from has now become a part of history it's officially been named it's officially been classified and so this long and rather strange adventure has finally come to an end here at nasa it's been really a great way to close it [Music]

Channel: Meteorite Men

Views: 25,232

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

Id: Tt69RsBGC6M

Length: 47min 30sec (2850 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 20 2020