Searching For The World's Most Famous Meteor | Meteorite Men | Spark

visitors from outer space they crash land without warning and can lie buried for thousands of years how can i possibly have missed that jeff knotkin and steve arnold live to unearth these space rocks they are the meteorite men on this adventure the guys get special park service permission to hunt arizona's gold basin for a famous fifteen thousand year old fall the restricted area full steam ahead they take to the waters of lake mead to get to an untapped area that could hold the big space rocks that have eluded hunters for years my biggest concern is how steep the cliffs are and if we can even land the boat this big one of our dreams has always been can we get onto the bluffs where probably no one's ever looked for meteorites jim kept this really secret there's a wealth of information here with just 72 hours to hunt they hit the desert armed with a one-of-a-kind map if they can find something big here their lives will never be the same got one [Music] it's great to be back in a classic american stream field definitely jeff notkin and steve arnold are on the hunt for meteorites in arizona's gold basin two hours east of las vegas this is one of the greatest largest meteorite falls in all of the world we're not looking at one big meteorite that just hit the earth we're looking at an event that scattered thousands maybe tens of thousands of rocks over a gigantic area must have been one heck of a fireball that fireball streaked toward earth 15 000 years ago reigning stone space rocks laced with iron down over an area of more than 140 square miles steve and jeff aren't here for just any gold basin meteorites they want the big ones big is something jeff and steve know a lot about over the years they've literally discovered tons of meteorites in 2005 steve used old maps and new technology to unearth a 1400 pound meteorite buried in a wheat field in kansas it's valued at roughly one million dollars but at gold basin the stakes are different the overwhelming majority of stones are smaller than a ping-pong ball of the thousands of rocks found only a few bigger than a baseball have ever been recovered so here's the road we came in on for this hunt the guys feel they have a big advantage this is the original map from the man who discovered this stroomfield in 1995. jeff's close friend professor jim cree hold it up for the camera smile jim cree was a retired university of arizona engineering professor and something of a mentor to me after he retired he took up gold prospecting as a hobby and up here at gold basin he accidentally discovered one of the biggest meteorite strewn fields in history just from the sound that's got to be one pretty good size jim put together a small team that precisely recorded every fine it's a little thin one yeah imagine 100 grams or so anyway a scientist from the university of arizona had come to the gold club and told the guys when you're out with your detectors keep your eyes open for meteorites well jim cree did we basically mapped the field 15 miles by five miles the university wanted the stream field established a map of the area before the public was allowed to come in so for two years they asked us not to say anything we'd pick different areas to hunt and ascertain they were there then pick another area it's just really interesting to find something that you know fell from outer space and has been just sitting here 15 000 years when news of a new meteorite discovery gets out meteorite hunters tend to descend on the spot like a plague of locusts and jim knew that would happen jim kept the treasure trove secret for two years while he and his crew diligently compiled data on the meteorites and the fall that scattered thousands of tiny pieces across the landscape jeff and steve now have jim's treasure map all the finds are marked making it one of the most precise strewn field maps they have ever used jim kept this really secret and even though he and i were close friends i only ever saw this map once while he was alive there's a wealth of information here once they got the map it took months to get the special access they needed to hunt here two pieces were found right there probably on the same day as number 17. this is federal land and it's tightly controlled by the national park service although there are some parts of gold basin still open for meteorite hunting the best areas are completely off limits and the fines are harsh just having a metal detector can get you a five thousand dollar fine and prison term of up to five years all right ranger andrew munoz oversees the gold basin area and eric cotto is assigned to monitor their hunt so we're interested in in hiking on both sides of the road roughly in this area times very limited we've just got a little window and we really want to make the most of it we've got all this permission and all these great things and if we don't find anything would frankly be very embarrassing for us jeff and steve's permit allows them to hunt for just 72 hours and they have a vast stretch of sun scorched desert to cover we've got a big strewn field here at gold basin there are rocks over many square miles and so we've got to choose where we're going to hunt so here we are in the middle of the stream field and here we're looking for smaller meteorites maybe an inch across two to two or three inches potentially location number one is in the restricted area where people can't hunt without a permit the guys have high hopes where gold basin the famous the restricted area i am not going up in that area without my snake gators because in these parts resides the mojave rattlesnake if you get bitten by one that one of them out here it's pretty much all over don't forget the sunscreen it's not even started it's kind of annoying if you get to the top of the hill and go oh i forgot my magnet or i forgot my water or my spare battery [Music] my gps or my spare gps first aid kit that's taking him so long okay i think we actually are finally completely ready [Music] meteors when they break up in the air uh the the rocks will continue to fly but then they slow down to the point where they burn out and that's gonna be from five to ten miles up and then they start in a free fall coming straight down the science of how meteorites fall is based in physics so when you have a meteorite like gold basin it entered the atmosphere as a single piece maybe 10-15 feet in diameter essentially the larger pieces travel of course further as a result of greater momentum and the smaller pieces tend to fall a little bit closer you can learn something about the direction from which the meteorite was coming in and kind of forces that it underwent so just sort of the breakup forces that resulted in the formation of that stream field freshly fallen meteorites generally have a thin black fusion crust a scar from the inferno created by atmospheric pressure and friction as the alien visitors pass through the earth's atmosphere once on the ground exposure to moisture and oxygen take a toll especially after thousands of years these meteorites are stone meteorites but they're also old and weathered so we're looking for earth tone against earth tone it's kind of a where's waldo trying to find that rock but we know they're here it's just a matter of getting a little bit lucky you don't get lucky unless you keep moving and keep looking but it isn't their eyes that steve and jeff must rely on as much as it is their ears these four and a half billion year old meteorites are stone but they're rich in iron nickel which can be picked up by a metal detector the detector that i'm using called the f75 it's one of the most powerful and sensitive metal detectors for its size the control box generates an electromagnetic pulse when those electromagnetic pulses encounter a metallic object they create an echo so this is the kind of sound we're looking for that's the detector reading the metal in my boot it's that sensitive the gold basin meteorite's a very old fall and it's an l4 chondrite and the l stands for low meaning low iron and will generate a very weak audio signal on the detector i'm using a pair of headphones to improve my odds plus then i can't hear steve bellowing at me wow he can move when he wants to it's 9 45 in the morning and the desert is heating up fast there's no hint of a breeze and no shade in sight the hunting technique that i'm using today is a bizarre mix of logic and intuition the gold basin meteorite fell 15 000 years ago it therefore makes sense to look on old surfaces if you look in washes or in rock slides any meteorites that may have been on those surfaces have probably been carried away and buried so what i've been doing is working my way across the ridges so that's the logic part the intuition part is that in your heart you just go i should be over there i should be on that hill no that hill and there's something that just draws you hey i'm starting to sweat i didn't know there was sweat in the forecast [Music] that's sick that's what we want right there but one that's a meteorite one that's real something that big would be nice though three and a half hours into the day jeff gets a powerful hit [Music] that's it right there steve i've got one got one he got one they're often together in a small cluster so i want to have him come over and search with me now i gotta go over and congratulate him steve and i both think it's likely that the meteorite traveled roughly south to north which would be over our heads in this direction come on big one big one help me save face here there could be tiny pieces way down there and big big pieces way up there that have never been found the steering field could be 20 miles long for all we know there's a piece right here on the surface i haven't disturbed it yet so what's all this yelling about i found one oh yeah something there the first test does it stick to a magnet that's a pretty good-sized one not too bad the powerful rare earth magnet on jeff's pick is their field test for meteorites i just had a good feeling about this ridge it just looked nice it looked like a place where meteorites might live i probably was only hunting for 15 minutes at that spot and i i found one nice little piece right on the surface it's a fragment though i mean it's broken got broken faces so i was really good i didn't do any searching after i found this piece okay [Music] no that's yeah it is oh my god see how good i was i should have found that one funny is mine bigger than yours yeah that's so not fair well you know mine's nicer it's a teammate thing jeff's fine is 35 grams worth around 100 steve's is 57 grams worth about 175 dollars i could have been mean and just oh steve's over there how could he find all the bits but we tried to be nice to each other most of the time jeff found the first one and that's cool i mean that's we're a team and it was good and if he hadn't found his first one i sure would have found my first one because it was only 12 inches away let's keep hunting oh are you kidding me oh my goodness okay i spotted that one by eye did you see i didn't even have eyes i guess we're not leaving here for a little while while we were talking wow these meteorites are often found together in small groups or clusters we have a very large body that explodes and breaks into smaller pieces and smaller pieces as it's traveling through the atmosphere they keep traveling together and maybe four five six seven eight pieces land very close together in a small area they might still be sitting where they landed 15 000 years ago or they may have been uncovered by wind blowing the top soil and sand away the ground here on this ridge is known as desert pavement the rocks that are left behind are a kind of hard jigsaw puzzle that have been baked by the sun and blasted by the cold so it's a very old resilient surface all right it's gps time the guys mark the exact location of each of the three meteorites every new find adds more data to the original map created by jim cree and a little photo up not to mention that these three are worth close to four hundred dollars well this is going quite well and remember where there's one there more hopefully hopefully positive thinking one of the best things that ever happens to us is when we get in this groove you're in a you're in a good zone and there's one every few minutes you just you've just gotten over the excitement of finding one and boom there's another one and that is what makes it all worthwhile [Music] [Music] guess what you found the meteor wrong i found a meteorite this really looks like another piece of the one that you found okay it's a rounded fragment from a much bigger stone which would explain why there are pieces all over the place here doesn't that look like it looks really similar to that fragment i don't know oh you're such a pessimist it's not exactly a contest we're playfully competitive but at the end of the day the best thing is if we've both found something [Music] [Applause] steve's got a strong hit but there's no rock visible on the surface [Music] [Music] whoa is i holy cow holy cow i couldn't spot it my magnet missed it and i was just picking it up you know running handfuls of stuff over and and i got the handful with the screaming and slow slowly dropping and that's what was left it was buried yeah we did a very detailed methodical search and we turned up quite a few pieces in close proximity it felt really good and then you just kind of get this rush and go oh thank god we actually found something it's not a complete washout [Music] how about this all right in 20 minutes the guys bagged five meteorites worth around six hundred dollars but there's a hitch their permit requires they donate all fines to a public meteorite collection in this case the monarch gallery at tcu texas christian university it's a tad bit frustrating knowing that we got to get rid of them but if it wasn't for the opportunity to come out here and to hunt with the special privileges we wouldn't have found them anyway so it might not be as bad as some people might have with parting with them well who's partying with them we just won't know up to finding them i i'm just kidding we can uh we can give up a few meteorites for the for the privilege of hunting out here and we can always go to tcu and visit them having successfully searched the part of the stream field where all of the fines were made steve and jeff head off to check it out the northern border of jim cree's map of recorded finds at the edge of lake mead i think we've gone as far as we can go this is it end of the road hopefully not the end of the stream field though no no they can't there's no way it seems inconceivable that with a stream field that's over 10 miles long that they didn't just carry right on over right side right as the fireball broke up the smallest pieces fell first raining down over a huge area flight dynamics dictate that larger pieces must have continued on due to mass and inertia landing farther away possibly on the mesas on the other side of the lake the guys have been dreaming for years about the big rocks they think continued across the lake an area where no one's allowed to hunt and where the fines suddenly stop on the map what we really want to do is think big we're going to get up to the top of those bluffs those mesas and they're going to be big gold basin meteorites sitting up there that's that's what we're hoping for that's the undiscovered country up there and it's calling us jim cree their friend and the man who discovered the gold basin stroomfield never got the chance to hunt the bluffs on the other side it must be nearly 10 years ago that i stood on the south shore of lake mead with jim looking across and he was going i know there are meteorites up there i know they're up there and i've always wanted to go up there [Music] day two less than 48 hours remain on their permit to hunt steve and jeff have come up with what they hope is an ingenious plan to get to the mesas on the north shore of the lake location number two the untouched area of the stream field that could be home to big space rocks full steam ahead it's a big houseboat they dub the uss meteorite one we're cruising [Music] it's a beautiful day for finding meteorites past these flat top mesas is the area that i think will be due north of the strewn field the gym mapped my biggest concern is how steep the cliffs are and if we can even land the boat this big in there okay the only way to figure it out is is try and it's a bit of a dream come true for me protecting this landing the guys look for the fastest route up the mesa's to location number two we got three ways we can go in borrow bay little borough bay or come all the way over to here we should try landing here exactly in the little bay if we can make a landing there we're so much closer right center the steering field and if we fail to make a landing we'll go into the big inlet right and we'll go up very good can you see into the water does that go straight down yeah pulling into little borough bay jeff realizes it's a tricky docking point for their 50-foot houseboat all right little closer that's a lot easier to set the ton with a big thing like this little bro we want to get right there right there i don't know it's even possible if they can scale these steep cliffs they'll be at location number two in no time trying to keep us kind of stationary here but we keep drifting jeff i don't think this is doable i did hear steve but i'm really focused on trying to keep the boat in one piece at the moment if you wreck the boat we're gonna be stuck here damaging the boat on the rocky shore could cost them hours they don't have do the one forward and the one backward and turn it on a dime i have to be careful because if i make fun of him he'll just leave me here he's pretty well sucked in here now whoa good thing i'm part billy goat what's your report oh i think it might be doable but it's just going to take forever that's the hell of a climb up there yeah i don't lose i don't think we should it's too risky those are some wicked canyon walls there they're they're they're pretty but they're not they're not to be hiked on i think we should check the other one out okay the guys are forced to abandon little borough bay and head for a landing spot farther from the area they want to hunt one finger is one mile one two three miles in would probably be the target tell me to scout for yeah that's probably a good idea because i saw some rocks back there pull up a little bit closer where we were before this looks like this is what it would have looked like a long time ago yeah it does look like a very old surface at the top i think it's probably fruitless to search anywhere where the white layers are because that's been submerged for who knows how many years this surface over here there actually could be some meteorites on it this slope yeah the gentle slope they filled this up what 70 years ago it's been underwater for a little bit but this looks like a really old surface over here it does but would would a meteorite decompose 80 years underwater i would think so meteorites don't favor some places on earth over others it's just that you know 70 of our planet is water a lot of meteorites probably fall in the water and so the minerals and the chemistry that that makes up these meteorites is adversely affected by all of the water and moisture and basically degrades the meteorite to a point where it does not those meteorites don't actually preserve their original composition work your way a little closer we'll see i don't want to take this big boat any get any closer than this now he's scared to get close to the edge what we'd be looking for below the water line would be something that'll be a lot more rusty the meteorite's got iron and it's been submerged for 70 80 years it's gonna be it's gonna be real rusty the guys don't have the gear or the time to search the vast submerged areas with only 36 hours left on their special permit they continue on to borough bay borough bay makes for an easy landing but now the guys face more than a three mile hike uphill to the strewn field are you seeing bottom no good keep going jeff [Music] get that driving the big boat right up onto the shore without sinking anything [Music] time to pack on the gear including jeff's trusty snake gators the man who does the boat repairs was telling me that he's seen mojave rattlers out here they have a deadly neurotoxin and uh if we need a medevac it takes two hours and did he say something about you only have an hour if you get bit that's the bad part yeah so he suggested we not get bitten by snakes on this okay i'll make a note of that sorry eric we were so excited to go i forgot about you eric cotto from the park service monitors their hunt in the restricted zone what do we need to know about this place we have uh biter stingers and pokers out here we have bees we have africanized bees we have tarantulas we have scorpions we have rattlesnakes so you definitely want to be aware of all that different type of stuff those bees freak me out just stay calm and just calmly try to leave them well enough about the bees so uh let's head off on our adventure of many years in the making let's find some rocks it's about time it's a brutal climb in one of the world's most forbidding deserts the temperature is a nasty 104 degrees and rising you laughing at me i'm not letting you get a little head start oh thank you why because you need a breather no you know you're the youngster i'm the one who's supposed to have a hard time keeping up well i know that's why i have you out in front pacing this oh cause i know i won't leave you behind this way i know you're always thinking about my welfare look at this old desert pavement this looks great why don't you make your little magnet stick out of a cactus branch or something no that would be against the law damaging a plant in the national recreation area eric you know we usually don't bring people along on our meteorite hunting trips yeah it's only because you're special and because you're with the park service awesome and also because we had to have you no thank you just kidding oh cameraman down cameraman down a crew member has gotten too close to the infamous jumping choya cactus at the slightest touch its needles spring out and dig in deep it's a tight try to get these needles out of you i know it hurts but is there uh are there any side effects it's pretty rare definitely want to keep an eye on it the needles on toyota have sheaths so when you go to pull them out the sheath comes off but the needle doesn't kind of tricks you i hope that connects through i don't know let's get up to the top of this peak over here yeah i think we'll see what we need to go from there after two hours they finally get to the top of the mesa an area they've been dreaming about for years the guys are convinced that this is the northern end of the stroom field a five to ten thousand acre area that has never been searched a big gold basin meteorite from here would make them legends and be worth a fortune the meteorite flew overhead probably from south to north we have circumstantial evidence we know that meteorites have been found all down on the south side so it seems improbable that that the shower stopped on the south side of the lake so one of our dreams has always been can we get over the lake up onto the bluffs and the maces where probably no one's ever looked for meteorites and we're here yeah we're here i'm turning my detector on now oh thank you i shall alert the media it's a nine before they even take a step steve gets the first hit yeah some wire nice find i want some action [Music] if we're correct in thinking that we're at the large end of the stream field here if we would expect to see bigger meteorites but fewer of them and widely spaced and so i mean there could be a half a mile or a mile or two miles in between the biggest meteorites out here you could hike for days and just never come across it so the odds are against us but that doesn't mean we don't try [Music] up here on this isolated mesa the metal detector is the tool of choice but it's how you use it that makes all the difference in meteorite hunting the detector almost acts as a second set of eyes and all the temptation is to follow it but really i need to let it go on its own and be looking for the round rocks the fist-sized rocks maybe bigger ones that would be a little bit rusty ones that just stand out a little bit [Music] oh look at the color on that one looks rusty no attraction whatsoever the definition of insanity you know it's not a meteorite the metal detector does not scream the magnet does not attract you stop and you bend down you pick it up anyway and you just try to keep sticking it to the magnet and you know it's not gonna stick the shadows are getting longer if they're going to find meteorite treasure today they need to do it quickly now it's a matter of just trying to get in as much time is left before sun down [Music] that's definitely what you want to hear no it's an earth rock that was a big tease ah later for that if there are meteorites out here they might be very sparse they might be very widely distributed i keep wanting to go that way further further steve i found the meanest meanest media wrong in the history of meteorology look black black what is that iron ore i think how'd it probably see a dark black rock and bend over and test it with the magnet and it sticks and you go i've got one and then actually you realize it's terrestrial iron ore there are little crystals in there that we don't see in meteorites and looks like a bit of quartz as well which we never see in meteorites but that's uh pretty good media wrong better ones i've seen in a while but it's not what we're looking for [Music] [Music] faced with a long hike back down to the boat the guys are forced to call it a day a frustrating day watch out for the burrow the burrow stuff back at the houseboat steve and jeff discuss their plans for tomorrow with just one day left on their permit and thousands of acres to cover this decision is a tough one continue searching for big rocks in wicked terrain or head back across the lake to where they know rocks have been found i guess somewhat tempting to go back up on the mountains i just feel we spent so much time we must have put in nearly a 12-hour day and we spent at least four hours getting up hiking out in four hours getting back with not that much time in the actual string field what we haven't explored is this middle section of the string field which was lightly researched by jim back in the late 90s so how do we get out there it's a very rough road but it's passable are you good for that yeah all right wake me up at sunrise we made it up some really high hills and there weren't any big rocks sitting out there waiting for us we've been to the small area we were successful we found numerous modest sized pieces we just had one more day we thought you know do we spend 75 percent of the day climbing up and climbing down and only having a little bit to look or can we just go somewhere else where we can spend the rest of the day there's a big area in between the two the two zones that we've searched so we've got a good chance for two reasons one the areas right it should be in the in the medium size to big end of the stream field and and two no one should have hunted there it's illegal eight hours left and the pressure is on the drive to location number three the center of the stream field is brutal no paved roads soaring temperatures and every rock looks like a meteorite hundreds or thousands of little fragments have been found over the years but very very few larger pieces have been found by larger i mean even larger than an orange there must be some meteorites out here waiting for us somewhere when you see nothing and nothing and nothing hour after hour you just get a little discouraged we got permission from the park service they're extremely helpful and gracious to us so sometimes everything can align for you and it just still doesn't work but when the stars do align there's nothing like it [Music] steve i've got one okay and here we go with the magnet it sticks nicely to the magnet whoops wow fairly nicely there's not a lot of iron in these look there's some remnant fusion crust there woohoo [Music] see i get really grouchy when we don't find anything and then as soon as i find something to go i love the gold basin i love hunting here and then an hour goes by and i've done anything like oh find the next piece as time dwindles the decision to move to location number three proves to be a good one no way [Music] jeff what that one oh fantastic check it out here let me see if you can see this thing it's kind of over there are you kidding me right there i can see it from here oh yeah look there's there's another piece there or is that a second is that a second one it's a piece is it a piece of that or a separate oh that's amazing that it is it's a jigsaw puzzle meteorite did you did you see it first or oh i did i did i'm not surprised half of this hilltop it's impossible i mean unless it's under the detector yeah you're not going to hear it well i'll tell you one thing no other meteorite hunters have walked over here because you could not miss that no way that is really something got some maggies oh look we're gonna need more than one 20 grams that's number one huh is that a piece here 4.0 this is so much fun it's just sticking out of the ground and we found a couple pieces oh 12 inches away and then some other pieces right nearby so 15 000 years worth of winners you're going to have a few contractions and expansions so but fortunately it looks like it only affected a couple pieces up on the top oh more is that one yeah 10.4 this is a great opportunity for us to try out this thing okay this is the flare camera uh-huh it's infrared and it's going to allow us to test out another one of our theories that being meteorites contain iron they sit out baking in the sun all day will they heat up more than other rocks around them and if they do can we use an infrared flare camera to spot them clear works on the principle of heat signatures if for example an object is hotter or cooler than the surrounding areas those targets become more visible on the display monitor many police departments use this technology to catch criminals if the same holds true for meteorites the guys could get high tech on future hunts i just got this cold water from the cooler a few minutes ago is that still cold yeah put that next to this oh my god you can see the whole bottle really quick it's just completely white if their theory that meteorites hold in the heat and will be hotter than everything else around them is correct this meteorite should glow brightly using flear can you point at the meteorite the meteorite is appearing to not have a higher temperature than any of the surrounding rocks i'm a bit surprised at that if it worked i thought we could just we could walk around in stern fields holding the camera yeah and actually looking at the view screen no i don't really see any difference well let's dig this thing up it's looking bigger it's getting bigger that's always a good sign the vast majority of meteorites found in the gold basin strewn field are only the size of a ping-pong ball value around a hundred dollars on the surface this rock appears to be at least the size of a baseball holy cow yeah oh you've got to be kidding me after three days of hunting in gold basin arizona meteorite men jeff notkin and steve arnold may have just hit pay dirt wow look at this location number three in the center of the stream field holds a space rock much bigger than most found here this is getting exciting i'm very impressed by the size of this gold basin this is one of the larger pieces i've seen do you think it's gonna fall apart when you pick it up i hope not this meteorite is four and a half billion years old and extracting it is a tricky process if it crumbles this big valuable space rock will be relatively worthless i know i'm a bit worried about some of these fragments are going to fall off when we pull it out wow the bigger it gets the more it's worth yeah for those of us who are financially motivated oh i think it's ready for launching wow [Music] it's a complete stone but look and it's like solid on the bottom just the top part here where there may have been some cracks or freezing and thawing broke a couple right stuff but it's mostly together this rock's worth some bucks okay come on i want to see it hand it over [Music] whatever i want to see oh it's heavy most of the gold basins are so weathered there's just not that much iron left in them but this is really heavy this must be close to a kilo it's a cosmic softball that makes the whole trip work yeah that is amazingly well preserved look there's fusion crust on here oh my that is that is so distinct and the prince little redmood lips so what do you think it's worth with this fusion crust and the thumb printing which is so rare on gold basins i i would say closer to 2 000. oh and then of course we had to have to add this on so the weight there's another almost probably 80 grams here 2 160. okay all right it's worth more than money it's priceless well fantastic job congratulations that is a killer [Music] this is a nice spot yeah let's collect a few stones [Music] i'd left a photo and our rock hammers crossed in the symbol of an old mine i think jim would like that we wouldn't be out here if it wasn't for him that picture it it just so captures who jim was this funny little hat his earphones on um his garb and uh detector and holding a fine it's a good good memory to have with their permit expired they pack up and head to arizona state university before their thirteen fines go on public display the guys take them to asu's world-renowned meteorite studies department for confirmation that they are in fact gold basin meteorites as head of its collections department dr lawrence garvey will put their finds to the test so are they all fragments like this or well these are fragments but steve has something very interesting to show you oh wow a fairly large piece yeah and there were some more pieces did as well yes it's amazing when you see something like this you see the the carbonate collar so you know it was sitting in the ground for many many years oh it was still in the ground yeah so that's what the carbonate collar tells you um and actually i hadn't noticed until you know just turning the stone over it's actually got some remnant fusion crust it's actually a fairly fresh looking stone which is quite amazing because it's the bottom of that part that's in the soil has always been subjected to the moisture under an optical microscope lawrence takes a closer look at the fusion crust that's all fusion crust now it's actually a good two millimeter thick the fusion crust on this material and we always think of fusion crust as being so thin like a like the thinnest rind on the outside of a meteorite after after burning in the atmosphere and this shows us that fusion crust can actually be comparatively thick actually i mean it must be indicative of a fairly long or fairly low angle flight for the atmosphere we know that the fusion crust is fragile and typically decays away over time and a lot of people have said no gold basin specimens have fusion crust and we've always thought that some of them did and now we have proof absolutely i mean here here's actually a higher magnification of one of those areas you still see some of the original almost fluid like movement frozen in time so even after 15 000 years of sitting in the ground it's still been preserved and i think that's quite amazing actually but big rocks are not always better a thin slice of find number four a smaller find reveals incredible secrets frozen in time receive a whole range of beautiful condors whoa look at that that's beautiful you could blow that up and frame it oh absolutely it's absolutely beautiful these are meteorites that have con rules in them conroes are the small glassy melt droplets that we often find in these meteorites come on guys you got to see this one well this is the largest spherical chondral in here it looks like the death star yeah look at that it's beautiful look at it it's so distinct it's just set in this matrix spectacular that is spectacular if you're thinking about the length of the age of our solar system which is currently about 4.56 billion years the conduls formed pretty much right at the start of that oh wow look at that just get it in focus it's not going to fit on the screen it's so big it's actually one that i've never seen before amazing look at that good lord i know that is an amazing in fact there's a lot of barred olivine congos in this one this thing is huge i mean it goes off the side there up here it's the whole thing i mean and it's fairly flattened as well so this was good this was something fairly large that was incorporated into the meteorite at one point but i've never seen a condor like that before it's quite a spectacular example hey that's kind of cool something he's never seen before that almost never happens this new chondrule could help scientists determine how the massive asteroid the parent body of these gold basin meteorites was formed billions of years ago and it shows that you know there's still new things to be discovered such as that really huge radio type condo that we found in this in the section that's something that's unusual that needs to be studied yeah i mean the value in this one what i like actually is it actually shows fusion questions so that adds especially you know if you look at it like that that adds a little bit extra to that piece so all together cache value all the pieces on the table three thousand dollars thirty five hundred yeah four thousand yeah do i hear it i think four thousand not only are there fines gold basin meteorites all combined the stones are worth around three thousand five hundred dollars and they've yielded new scientific information [Music] this expedition was a success it's a dream come true for me to get up onto the north shore up onto the mesa i've wanted to go up there for years and years i had a few good days in the strewn field on our limited window that we had with this uh with this permit and we found some meteorites lawrence said inside one of the gold basin stones he had discovered the largest chondrule he'd ever seen that makes us feel like we're contributing to the scientific body of knowledge as well as having our adventures and finding rocks for ourselves good memories it's a good trip [Music]

Channel: Spark

Views: 30,875

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: wuaJ19IdLwQ

Length: 47min 34sec (2854 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 01 2021