Mystery Of The Ring Meteor In Tucson, Arizona | Meteorite Men | Spark

visitors from outer space crash land without warning and can lie buried for thousands of years oh my god jeff notkin and steve arnold live to unearth these space rocks let's go hunt they're the meteorite men their quest is part science here's our first image and part treasure hunt that is the real thing on this adventure the meteorite men reveal secret maps we don't show these to anyone to solve a 160 year old mystery of science the landing site of one of the world's most famous meteorites the tucson ring watch out for scorpions he's right on my target if they can find even a small piece of this mysterious space rock look at that they'll become a part of meteorite lore definitely need to bag this one and get rich beyond their wildest dreams this is the bumpiest road in the history of the world officially steve arnold and jeff notkin are modern day treasure hunters they're in southern arizona to solve one of the greatest of all meteorite mysteries the tucson ring is the single greatest mystery and legend in meteorite lore it's one of the most beautiful meteorites in existence it's probably the most famous meteorite in the world and it was found somewhere around here in a canyon that was unofficially named the valley of iron that peak right in the middle with the rocks on the top the tucson ring is the holy grail for meteorite hunters the 160 year old mystery is no one knows where it was found but legend says more pieces are out there finding even one would be worth a fortune coming off of one of these mountains with a piece of the tucson meteorite is worth a lot more than a really big stack of money but um this is this is the quest to solve the mystery more than it is about the money do you never say that but it's true wow steve's decided on something that's more important than money just the one thing yeah the one thing it's so admirable the site that we're going to is on the other side of this mountain range it's really difficult to get to it's some pretty spectacular scenery up there and it's also really steep sometime in the 1850s two giant iron meteorites were dragged out of these mountains today at the smithsonian museum they are the stars of the world's most fantastic meteorite collection one is a 630 pounder named the carlton mass the other is 1400 pounds the enigmatic tucson ring under a microscope you can see what you might call meteorite dna small silicate inclusions like a fingerprint the matching inclusions prove that these two pieces broke apart from a single mass if one giant meteor exploded in the atmosphere over what's now arizona the breakup must have scattered many other pieces creating a strewn field when the rock would have come in it would have been one piece and then when it hits the atmosphere it's a very violent occurrence with the rock and it will break it up the larger pieces will have more inertia and they will go farther and then the smaller pieces start to drop off getting bigger and bigger and then the larger one will end up hitting farther off here is everything that we have on this site these mountains have been crawling with gold prospectors since the 1500s so if there are these big irons lying somewhere in view wouldn't one of these prospectors have stumbled across them in all these decades it just adds to the mystery we're in this area assuming that guys with a couple of horses towing a rock that weighed almost three quarters of a ton couldn't have pulled it over these mountains one of the things that interests me are all these steep canyons down here okay on the on the west side and the south side the best bit i have to show you are the secret maps jeff has a special map he inherited from his good friend and mentor professor jim cree the professor inherited the map from a prospector known only as leon and these maps we are not showing to anyone because these three documents show all of the specific vines that leon made they're real treasure maps they're almost priceless the maps have been blurred to conceal the exact location of the marks he actually according to the stories i've heard used one of those doodle bugs on a map in the mountains did you say doodlebug i know but you don't exactly believe in this sort of stuff but he used one of these little swinging doodlebug pendulums and he would hold it over a map and wherever the pendulum came to rest he would go and hunt there wait wait wait you brought me to chase no no it gets better okay believe me if that was just the story we wouldn't be out here he found irons up in the mountains i've seen a couple of the pieces it's not that big elite to go well could those irons that leon the prospector found somehow be linked to the tucson ring this is what really interests me and this is where we're going today get me there that's exactly where we're going we'll see if he missed a couple we're we're down here here's the truck we're going to take it goes up through here it's as crazy as anything oh yeah which is why we've got the rock count today's meteorite hunters don't go by horse or burrow they go by hound rockhound it is a multi-purpose all-terrain vehicle and when they say all terrain they mean it we can take it in the water not there's a whole lot of it out here in arizona it's got tracks it's got heavyweight rubber tires so the tires are uh cactus proof i hope so [Music] leon's map is marked with what he called hot spots places he once detected a lot of iron and pieces of iron could be the best clues possible to finding the place where the tucson ring was found 160 years ago jeff and steve aim right for hot spot number one the really intriguing part is the reports from the finders say that when they located these irons and removed them from the valley they just took three of many that there were other irons in the same valley or canyon and they just took three that they thought would be useful for their purposes they weren't even the biggest ones i think that's about as far as we're going on this let's go hunt the valley of iron if it exists is in country that can easily kill you it's hot dry and home to some notorious wildlife rattlesnake country steve's got his incredible snake-proof boots but they're too hot and heavy for me so we use the old-fashioned snake gators they do work i haven't died yet they're ugly enough to scare off the snakes you're just jealous because you don't have i'm not jealous i've got snake boots if the rattlesnakes don't get you the scorpions will don't forget the gloves you don't want to get dirt under your fingernails wouldn't it look awful i should get my bag i've got gloves in my bag too if i really need them oh now you're going to wear gloves no only if i need them well how do you know when you need them when it's too late oh i was bitten by a scorpion i should probably start wearing gloves yes that that's that's right that's right do you think we should lock up the rock cam take the keys it's not like there's anyone up here track log is on steve and jeff rely on gps to record where they are and precisely locate the position of anything they find look steve there's no use pretending that you understand it any better than i do i'm not trying to pretend even 68-73 and two veggie burgers and an extra large fries please hold the mayo [Music] jeff and steve split up to cover as much terrain as they can as quickly as possible we're very close to the mexican border i've met rangers out here and they've said don't come down here on your own it's not a bad idea to be armed if you're in a small party so watch out for rattlesnakes and drug smugglers nothing yet most meteorites have a high iron content so metal detectors are the meteorite hunters stuck in trade that low sound when it growls like that that means it's iron and that's what we're looking for metal detectors work by emitting an electromagnetic field from a coil at the end of the wand and then when a piece of ferrous metal encounters that zone under the coil you get a signal this isn't the metal detector your grandfather uses to find coins on the beach this particular detector is smart enough to differentiate between iron foil nickel zinc dimes quarters and so that would be a very strong signal we know we want to dig there but steve and jeff also rely on a thoroughly low-tech trick to pick hidden bits of iron from dirt and rocks they attach powerful rare earth magnets to the heads of their field picks when they dig the magnets attract anything that contains iron be it meteor right from space or earth-bound meteor wrong just a little piece of wire but it was iron said it was iron it's neat somewhere in these mountains and canyons those gorgeous big irons were found and there have to be other pieces somewhere the payoff would just be enormous it would be the biggest feather in our caps that we could possibly come up with i think financially if if jeff found it it would be priceless because he would never sell it no if if i found it uh then we have to do a little bit of supply and demand calculations it's worth looking for and it's more than the financial um it's it's the quest it's the final unwritten chapter to one of the best stories in meteoritics how do you put a price on that [Music] not long into their search of hot spot number one on the secret maps jeff gets a hit that sounded like something [Music] well that's definitely a target is it a piece of the famed tucson ring a clue to the legendary mystery look at that oh wow it's the back of a cartridge but a big one like a armor-piercing or anti-tank round i think look at that that would have been a big shell all right onward a little boot thingy another media wrong when we pick up a target with the detector and we get all excited and we dig down and we find that it's not in fact a meteorite we call it a meteor wrong and that's a really bad one it doesn't even look like i'm here this must have been a deer stand nice the prize is so big that it's it's worth going through the media wrongs to find the meteorite check this out well i think you should think in the meteorite world size really doesn't matter discovering even a small meteorite paired to the tucson ring would be a scientific wonder and a financial windfall oh oh another hit a big staple another miss another letdown jeff and steve have a lot of money and their reputations riding on this expedition huh a belt buckle all the meteor wrongs and then i found this can of tobacco make it tough for jeff to stay optimistic okay this is driving me nuts somebody else has been here steve's a very good influence on me because he's very good-natured and positive and he thinks there's always a meteorite just on the other side of that hill where sometimes i go there are no meteorites left in the entire world it's a waste of time god there's a lot of trash down here i don't even know what that is a piece of an old can that looks like an aircraft part it's a mullet oh come on [Music] what's your secret well you just you make the most of the daylight and you try to get as much coverage as you can in a day don't you ever get fed up um no stop being so reasonable holy cow it's a clip of live ammo that's not something you see lying around every day as far as media wrongs go that's one of the more interesting ones i found plenty of old spent bullets and cartridges but uh never found a clip of live ammo before coming up here onto the side of this mountain where this long deceased prospector apparently found some iron it's kind of a long shot but you don't find anything by staying at home the first search area was the number one hotspot marked on the old prospector's secret map so far the targets are turning out to be iron but only terrestrial iron possibly from an old testing ground so we found a tin can aluminum aircraft part we found one too aircraft part aircraft part of this is very cool we think this is part of a anti-aircraft shell or something a old sardine can a belt buckle um a i don't know what that is what's discouraging is this old prospector 20 years ago may may have discovered an old bombing range jeff and steve are left wondering is the valley of iron for real or were leon's fines all meteor wrongs this the story that i've been told from a reliable source is that a couple of pieces were sent to an assay lab and they came back very high in nickel and to the best of my knowledge they didn't put nickel in artillery shells they were almost definitely meteorites the presence of nickel is what separates the iron found in meteorites from terrestrial iron why nickel before the earth cooled nickel iron sank to the earth's core any nickel iron on the surface rusted away over time in space iron won't rust because there's no oxygen so with very few exceptions any iron found on the earth that has nickel fell from space [Music] convinced that the old prospector's fines were real jeff and steve continue their hunt there's got to be some more pieces of the tucson meteorite well i thought it might be a good idea to let steve drive the rockhound on the way back whoa uh-oh i broke it and um within the first minute he blew the tire out i mean not even a minute it what it boils down to really is that steve's a maniac and he should not be allowed to drive any expensive equipment allegedly the tire popped um you got a triple a card for your him i don't think that they cover tracked vehicles on non-paved roads in the middle of the mountains in arizona the tucson ring is a huge iron meteorite that was dragged out of these mountains around 1850 even then at 1400 pounds with a hole in the middle the ring was priceless as an anvil it was dragged first to tubac which is a small town south of here probably by horses or oxen and then later into the town of tucson where it was used as an anvil in the old presidio it was half buried in the sand in the old presidio and they used to beat iron on it and then after a number of years it was recognized as a meteorite and it lived at the smithsonian ever since it's very unusual to see a large hole in a large meteorite it's possible that as it flew through the atmosphere creating atmospheric pressure and generating tremendous heat the middle just melted and burned right out there may have been a softer inclusion such as a large piece of carbon or something softer than the iron that melted at a low temperature another possibility is after it landed on earth moisture accumulated in the iron and there are documented cases of terrestrial weathering causing holes or large scoops to form in iron meteorites terrestrial weathering caused that hole slowly to form also known as rusting yeah could have just rested away the tucson ring is rare for more reasons than just its shape all meteorites are one of three types stone iron or stony iron irons are the rarest of the three only one in seven meteorites is iron even among the irons the tucson ring is in a class all its own not only is it a beautiful piece it's a very unusual type of iron it's it's an anomalous iron meteorite it's so unusual it doesn't even have its own class so you combine the beauty of the piece with its unusual makeup and the mystery of its find it it becomes a pretty interesting detective story it's interesting to me that leon found a lot of stuff down kind of in the lower okay ground after one day all steve and jeff have so far are a bucket full of meteor wrongs but they decide not to abandon leon's maps and focus on another area that the old prospector had marked we know for a fact that things have been found what we don't know 100 for a fact is whether or not they were meteorites but the evidence is really strong jeff's late mentor professor cree also had these maps and he also searched but he too kept a meteorite hunter's code of silence jim was not prone to exaggeration he thought there was something interesting going up here on this mountaintop and the only reason he didn't tell us about it while he was still alive is because he was sworn to secrecy if it works for him it might work for us they are where we find them that's right let's find them they pick up their hunt at the second hot spot marked on the maps okay jeff before we get started let's just get our bearings this is the road we came in on and yesterday we we hunted in this area here i would just say let's work our way around up on the slope and then work way back up by the end of the day [Music] steve he's he's what i would call a speed searcher he's a strong tough guy and he's got a short attention span and uh he likes to just cover as much ground as he possibly can good thing i don't need that eye i'm a little bit more on the kind of existential side yeah he he paces himself and he's a little more methodical and and that's okay that's okay i i get in a kind of a trance and i'm detecting and i go oh i think there might be something over there or no it's that way and meanwhile he's like he's just tearing across the plane [Music] and sometimes communication leaves a little bit to be desired i said i i think we should head south and go up onto this slope and i look up and there he is way the heck up there on the top of a mountain and he'd gone west not south southwest i said go south steve hey what you doing up there looking for me to arrive what direction is that it's uphill did you find anything no i'm not singing i said south too late steve and jeff have vast stretches of land to cover before nightfall the mountain range is not huge it's not the rockies but it's big there ought to be a lot of small pieces somewhere and so the big prize is two thousand three thousand five thousand pounds which there could be bigger pieces than what are known of the two remaining tucson specimens no matter how badly they want to keep hunting they have to be careful out here because they're not alone just earlier today we took we stopped and we're taking a breather look out steve goes look look is that a bear and there's a brown bear scampering across the mountain it's the first wild bear i've ever seen in arizona almost ran over rattle snake driving home last year yeah we stopped and helped him across the road because we don't believe it he did he wanted to drive over it i don't believe in interfering with the world i would have made a good hat band day two was feeling a lot like day one it's more of that aluminum then three hours into the hunt with temperatures close to 110 degrees hey got something here and it's right there on top right there cool it is the first find of the hunt wow now that doesn't look like shrapnel this looks really promising and it's it's it's all iron i mean it's it sticks to the magnet steve bags the possible meteorite for safe keeping and marks the gps coordinates to pinpoint its locations it's iron it looks like a meteorite but only testing for nickel in the lab will determine if it is a space rock i wonder if this is a piece of a tucson ring this up here nice and safe button it up so it won't fall out [Music] a short distance away jeff works another prime area on the old prospectors map that sounds good it's right on the surface even after hundreds of years meteorites that fall here tend to stay on the surface because the desert terrain is as hard as pavement well find number two less than a mile from steve's first find yet another indicator that they could finally be inside a meteorite strewn field possibly even the tucson rings strewn field look at what i found what just now a quarter mile away maybe they can't be a hundred percent sure their fines are meteorites but it looks like the secret maps have led the guys to a hot spot if it turns out that this small iron is paired with the tucson ring it's a huge discovery oh thanks on the count of three one two now they believe leon was on to something oh with two fines bagged hot spot number two looks like it's panning out here it is fine number three look at that these things might be related um and hopefully from something very very old not something just a little bit old definitely need to bag this one thanks to a dead man's treasure map jeff and steve may well be on their way to meteorite fame and fortune i got something that's encouraging is hot spot number two the valley of iron the site where the tucson ring hit earth we're enmeshed in a great mystery here of almost mythic proportions discovering even a tiny piece would be big news the gold medal would be to find a bigger piece silver medal would be to find a little piece the bronze medal is finding a new meteorite that's not related but it's a new find and these maps we are not showing to anyone jeff's secret maps have led him to a location somewhere in the mountains of southern arizona near the border of mexico after finding pounds of meteor wrongs at the first location their luck has changed at the second hot spot oh look at that oh my god [Music] okay he's not happy [Music] we'll just shoo him away shoe shoe little guy leave him leave him there's a meteorite down there oh oh oh oh there it is number four if it's a meteorite this tiny piece could be worth more than its weight in gold if it's a piece of the tucson ring it could be priceless where's that scorpion now let's give him some space don't you step on that i saw that oops stop looking at it go stand over there it's not that i'm a huge fan of scorpions but there's no need to kill them well that's pretty exciting as small as they are these fragments could give jeff and steve a place in meteorite lore but only if they're confirmed as relatives of the tucson ring today it's perhaps the most famous and enigmatic meteorite in the world this gorgeous giant ring steve and jeff now have four pieces they think are meteorites all found in hot spot number two and there are still two hot spots to be searched if the guys make discoveries in these locations they'll be able to connect the dots and show the outline of a strewn field and that in turn could point the way to the missing pieces of the tucson ring hot spot number three is on the other side of private land one thing leon's map doesn't show is who owns the land and that creates a problem the guys play it safe before crossing the land of ranch owner joe robinson and introduce themselves there's some really dandy stuff here that i found over the time i don't know what it is it turns out joe likes to hunt for meteorites terrestrial very rare i'm sure terrestrial though this was my big find at one time but uh and in these parts you're looking for something that would be solid iron so it would be the density of a sledgehammer steve and jeff are happy to cash in on their common bond and with nothing but a stick and a magnet and then we're just gonna tape a powerful magnet onto the end of it very good there is your real frontier rustic magnet cane hey that's pretty neat and with joe's new magnet stick the guys buy their way across his land don't mind we're gonna do a little hunting and if we find anything you'll be the first to know well i appreciate that and you can go right ahead and go go do her if the tucson ring strewn field is here it's spread across rugged arizona mountains this search can only be done on foot in 100 degree plus heat today we're going to be at about 5 500 feet it's gonna be hot unfortunately we've got no cloud cover the altitude combined with the dry air will will will pull moisture out of your body really fast are you there yet we've got to hike down this wash up there aways and then we'll work the exact spot where leon the old prospector discovered one or more irons 3 15 emergency water break [Music] even though it seems like it's a lifetime away from from up there it's only a couple of miles in a straight line fancy meeting you up here being out in the boonies with uh your hunting partner looking for rocks from space it's it's a pretty interesting way to spend the day and it's an adventure and and if it was if it was always easy it would there wouldn't be any memories with that i got a target what you got sounds like iron here why don't you do the honors still there that was it smashed that bullet oh well thanks for digging that up for me there oh don't mention it it's the least i can do for you you're a real good prospector hours of searching turns up nothing remotely resembling a rare iron meteorite you don't find a meteorite every day or sometimes not even every week they try to keep their spirits up it helps to maintain a positive attitude and i think we get through some of the hardships and difficulty and disappointment by joking and goofing around excuse me sir could i ask you to step over into the uh security inspection room please before you board the aircraft i was in the war it was a it's a steel play to my buttocks there of course is always the hope in your heart that that next target's gonna be something really amazing on the other hand you can just say well yeah if you can't hack it then stay home and watch television despite the heat jeff and steve trudge miles up a canyon they finally arrive at hot spot number three right where leon marked a key find on the secret maps from here they can map out a possible tucson ring strewn field this is it right here in this little subwash uh-huh is where leon found the biggest of his pieces steve marks their present location we are logged in and compares it to the coordinates of hotspot number two where they found the four small pieces right now we are 1.4 miles away in his computer steve plots a course between the two hotspots the area in between maps out a possible tucson ring strewn field that's the area to hunt next and it runs us right up over the hill i would have thought we were further south well that's why we do it this way yes if i guess we go and walk in the wrong part of the desert and die well yeah but it's all for a good cause that's where i want to be one mile straight up if the heat or the snakes don't get them first i can feel the meteorites pulling me psychically or maybe it's just sunstroke the guys could be on their way to becoming the most famous and wealthiest meteorite hunters ever that might be something any pieces they find here could lead the guys to where big pieces of the tucson ring landed untold years ago [Music] uh [Music] okay i lost it yes it's difficult yes it's hard sometimes it's expensive and dangerous and frustrating but the payoff is potentially huge [Music] [Applause] there it ends right there hey jeff there's something down there it's a similar thing maybe we should bring in the backhoe i don't think we'll keep going look it's like charcoal maybe it's a lightning strike oh why would charcoal set off a metal detector yeah it is that stuff right hold on steve thought it might possibly have been a lightning strike but there's loads of lightning up here mate loads of it thanks for calling me over for that i really appreciate it shut up you don't find a meteorite every day or sometimes not even every week on the other hand if we found a meteorite out here an iron meteorite but it's not part of the two sun ring in a way it's even more intriguing meteorites are very rare iron meteorites are very very very rare the possible strewn field between hot spots two and three comes up dry they find nothing jeff and steve need help so they turned to warren lazar who knew leon the old prospector this is where you used to mine for a gold nuggets back in the 80s this is it well we didn't call them gold nuggets back then we call them uh you know raw gold uh we started this operation back in uh 83 with my uh friend leon but leon also was uh he was a metal detector person and he had found irons you came here looking for gold found gold found gold yeah and then your your gold prospecting partner maybe discovered meteorites by accidents at the same time good possibility he said well i found this target i i think it's iron where i found this target i think it's gold and he'd never come right out and say it you know so i'd like a cautious man yeah he's very cautious now you said that leon had found some some pieces he had said that he had found what he thought was pieces of iron back up on this ridge okay where's the valley of meteorites he's quite certain it's just over that hill ladies and gentlemen armed with new insight steve and jeff head back to what they hope is the strewn field so far the guys have four possible space rocks to take to the lab for testing they have one last spot on the secret map left to search hotspot number four their last shot at finding any more possible pieces of the legendary meteorite oh that's something yeah a piece of an old can nothing yet steve jeff i got one oh my god i've got one [Music] i don't see anything if this is a piece of the two sun ring the value would be astronomical take a photo a couple of photos of it that is the real thing we log the position with the gps and that is so we are able to record the exact fine position wow looks like a little flying saucer well i don't need to do the magnet test but i'm going to do it anyway [Music] wow that's what makes it all worthwhile find number five could it be a fragment of the tucson ring oh mine's a media wrong you want to see something cool ooh jeff we need to test that oh yeah if it's a meteorite that's great if it's connected to the tucson would be one of the biggest discoveries of our career there's only one way to verify that jeff's new find and the other four are actually meteorites we think they're meteorites we think but we can't tell for sure without an analysis conducted by an academic specialist they have five chances at matching the legendary tucson ring five chances at cashing in on a meteoritic fortune their fines will be tested by meteorite specialist dr lawrence garvey fortunately for us the center for meteorite studies at arizona state university is just up the road hello hey good to see you guys oh it's quite a big piece this time can i take it out of the bag yeah please do oh first thing to do is to polish a small window on this and then you know we can have a look on the scanning electron microscope and see what we can see to do that the would-be meteorite has to be ground a nightmare scenario for a passionate collector like jeff i can't really look [Music] the scanning electron microscope has approximately 250 times the resolution of a normal light microscope and so by examining these fragments once they've been cut and polished under the sem the scanning electron microscope we're going to know for sure what they really are so that's all you're doing on that you're not taking off anymore no that's it that should be enough i can breathe now the next step is to do some chemical analysis it can go into the sem with an edx okay the sem scanning electron microscope provides an image of the physical structure the edx energy dispersive x-ray quantifies the actual elements the specimen contains and displays them as spikes on a graph all the sophisticated equipment focuses on answering one question did the guys find a piece of the world's most fascinating meteorite the tucson iron is probably one of the most enigmatic meteorites in existence structurally textually and mineralogically it's one of the most unique meteorites ever no other meteorite even approaches its composition and structure okay we're gonna put in sample number one first up find number one steve's most exciting find this looks really promising and it's it's it's all iron they're looking for nickel the element that is abundant in iron meteorites so we've just loaded it in the microscope um here's our first image if they find nickel steve and jeff may have discovered a piece of the tucson ring yeah right there so we'll collect the spectrum the results could make them meteorite rock stars so these are the x-ray peaks that are coming up hey what's that nickel we have our iron our iron and no nickel no now okay zero zero nickel if there was any nickel you would get a peak well you get a pink we don't get a p nothing there's no nickel no knuckle okay what is it a piece of iron oh okay one down four specimens to go we're just holding our breath waiting to find out let's do it find number two one of jeff's fines is next it's right on the surface check this out [Music] and we've got to collect the image there's no nickel we don't get a p again no nickel another meteor wrong i am remaining optimistic the next specimen find number three here it is look at that uh has no nickel in it it's iron it's pure iron just a bit of steel more junk just two more shots at fame and fortune find number four look at that oh my god okay he's not happy we've got to change the magnification up here your you're taunting us a little bit it's essentially iron pure iron certainly a terrestrial piece of iron nothing but another earth rock the results are devastating hours and hours of hunting in extreme heat and they have nothing to show for it steve and jeff are down to their final chance find number five from the last search area look at that we need to test that oh yeah right now he's just focusing and aligning the microscope so these are the x-ray peaks that are coming up okay um look at that nickel and iron [Music] we have 9300 percent iron and seven atom percent nickel that actually looks like an iron meteorite okay that was about a month's work to find that guy so we're really on to something i guess we're really i'd like to do one of those now the biggest test of their meteorite hunting careers does fine number five match the tucson ring now we get to wait until we get that test done [Music] pairing the meteorite to the tucson irons rests on examining the physical structure of the meteorite seen through an optical microscope the tucson irons have an abundance of what are called small silicate inclusions they appear clear or white jeff's new meteorite has none you can tell immediately just by looking at this that this is unlikely a tucson iron piece it does not have the abundant silicate inclusions no inclusions it's not a part of the ring but it's a part of space it's part of the asteroid belt there is some good news with the bad dr garvey's analysis reveals something unexpected this iron cannot be paired with any other meteorite it's one of a kind from a previously undiscovered fall a very big deal in the world of meteorite hunting it's quite amazing to find a new iron it's really really rare as you both know i mean people can hunt their whole life to not find a new iron so it's quite it's quite an amazing find i look forward to seeing more of it at auction this meteorite might go for a hundred dollars a gram making it worth more than twice its weight in gold but for jeff the fact that it is a new iron puts its value off the charts we found a new meteorite the expedition was a success we're going back if you add up all the hours it took to find this one and divide it by how many grams it's a very expensive meteorite just in what it took to find the one piece maybe in some perfect universe the mystery the tucson ring and the mystery of leon's maps will join on the road and we'll finally get to the bottom of all of this but the legend and the mystery of the ring continues still out there somewhere

Channel: Spark

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

Id: -83citXHuWI

Length: 47min 34sec (2854 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 10 2021