Meteorites: They Came from Outer SpaceMeteorite hunter and TV personality Geoffrey Notkin travels the world digging for space rocks

In 1969, five year-old Vicki Allison was living with her American missionary parents in an old adobe home in Chihuahua, Mexico, on the eastern edge of the Sierra Madre mountains.

Around 1 am on the morning of February 8, the family was awakened by a bright light and shaking. The shutters flew open and the night was illuminated by a tremendous fireball, followed by a loud boom. “It was almost like high noon,” Vicki recalls. Vicki remembers her father getting a radio or news report, of some kind, about where the impact site might be. The family piled in their van and drove 60 or 70 miles, which took several hours.

The Allison family in Mexico, around the time of the Allende fireball

Shortly after daybreak they arrived at an open field, where several locals were wandering around in a daze. The meteor had exploded in the air and showered the area with multiple pieces, but nobody yet knew exactly what had happened. Mr. Allison saw an odd looking rock on the ground, and “knew it was something unusual,” Vicki remembers. He carried it to the van, and put it in the back.

The family later returned to the United States, and the “unusual rock” was given to Vicki. It was used as a doorstop for many years, until Vicki’s brother saw a show about meteorites on the Discovery Channel and decided to have the Mexican rock examined.

The Allison Allende carbonaceous chondrite (CV3.2) fell to earth on February 8, 1969 in Chihuahua, Mexico. Specimen weight is 4,467 grams, making it one of the largest of its type offered for private sale. As the stone was picked up immediately after the fall it still exhibits a fresh fusion crust.

The owners contacted Aerolite Meteorites who offered to work with the family and find a good home for this important meteorite. The Allison Allende was a featured exhibit during the 2008 Tucson gem and mineral shows. It was recently purchased by a private collector in the United States and can look forward to a brighter furture than its previous life as a doorstop.

Following the success of the one-hour pilot, which has aired about twenty times since its premiere during May of 2009, Science Channel has ordered a new series of Meteorite Men episodes.

The new series of one-hour science/adventure programs will continue to co-star meteorite hunters Steve Arnold and Geoff Notkin as they search for rare and valuable rocks from space. Eric Schotz and Ruth Rivin return as executive producers for LMNO Productions of Encino, California, and Bob Melisso will continue on a supervising producer. Sonya Bourn and Kathy Williamson joined the production team in August.

The cast and crew of Meteorite Men on location in Kiowa County, Kansas, filming the pilot in early October, 2008

Pre-production work is already underway at some top secret sites and there will be some surprises in store for viewers in the new episodes. The new series of Meteorite Men will air in 2010 on the Science Channel.

Co-host Geoff Notkin will be writing a behind-the-scenes “Making of Meteorite Men TV Diary” as part of his daily science blog, The Logical Lizard, for TucsonCitizen.com.

We meteorite enthusiasts are passionate about our space rocks, and also pretty much anything else related to them, especially books. It has been a while since a major new meteorite book appeared in our telescopes. The last was The Field Guide to Meteors and Meteorites by O. Richard Norton and Lawrence A. Chitwood published in 2008. The release of any work on the subject is a treat for us, and the wonderful new meteorite book The Fallen Sky: An Intimate History of Shooting Stars by Christopher Cokinos is both a joy to read and a revelation.

To most people the study of meteorites might perhaps seem as “hard science” a topic as one could find. Planetary geology, the formation of asteroids, the theories of chondrule creation, how meteorites heat up and break up in our atmosphere, where they fall, and what they are made of are just a few of the topics we research and ponder. So, what a delight it is to find a book that does not deal, primarily, with the composition and classification of meteorites, but rather delves deeply into their mystery, history, and allure.

Christopher uses meteorites as a vehicle to embark upon his own journey of discovery, at the same time considering the astonishing journeys they have made. While visiting some of the most famous meteorites sites in the world including Cape York, Greenland; Antarctica; the Brenham, Kansas strewnfield, and Meteor Crater, Arizona; he ponders the motives and passions of brilliant and eccentric scientists, researchers, hunters and entrepreneurs who made the study of—or the acquisition of—meteorites the pivotal moments of their lives. And he makes some significant discoveries about his own life along the way.

“We each have found ourselves lost in the dark wood, whatever we thought the true way had been or can be, but for me, in no small measure, I found the path out because it was lit at times with the passage of shooting stars. This book is an exploration of lives, including my own, caught in such light.”

The editor of Istope: A Journal of Literary Nature and Science Writing and a professor of English at Utah State University, Christopher is a literary writer in every sense of the word. His prose is unique and lyrical, full of imagery and contemplation. There is also plenty of humor and plenty of adventure, and rich portraits of characters who played critical roles in the history of space rocks.

The Fallen Sky is an intensely personal book. Christopher digs into the lore of space rocks and shooting stars and then uses what he learns about them to examine his own life. It is the most personal and most moving book about space rocks since Harvey Harlow Nininger’s great autobiography, Find a Falling Star, published in 1972 and now long out-of-print.

A beautiful and thoughtful work, The Fallen Sky belongs on the bookshelf or bedside table of everyone interested in meteorites, astronomy, the study of obsession, and the history of science.

On olivine-rich pallasites:

“The olivine, which on Earth is the gemstone peridot, seems to glow from within. Slices of pallasites look a bit like the coat of a metal leopard with green spots . . . Brenham olivine is autumnal and ethereal, like an October forest and sky in a luminist painting. The curves of metal look like sinuous paths connecting lakes seen from on high. A slice of Brenham? It’s a silver sponge that soaks up light.”

The Fallen Sky: An Intimate History of Shooting Stars by Christoper Cokinos is published by Penguin USA on July 30, 2009
Hardcover
9.25 x 6.25 in
528 pages
$27.95

A small oriented meteorite, untouched by human hands just as found in the West, Texas strewnfield.
Photograph by Steve Arnold.

Anyone who took part in the Great Texas Fireball Hunt of February, 2009 will remember it for as long as they live.

On the afternoon of February 15, while the Aerolite Meteorites team was hard at work breaking down our showroom at the close of the 2009 Tucson gem and mineral show, a spectacular fireball was caught on film by a cameraman covering a sports event in Austin, Texas. We couldn’t have imagined it at the time, but that fireball was approximately 120 miles away from the man filming — somewhere over McClennan County, near Waco.

Forty five minutes after receiving news that Ron Dilulio of the University of North Texas had recovered two fragments, my close friend and expedition partner, Steve Arnold, was in the car headed from Arkansas to central Texas. He drove all night and arrived in the vicinity of the suspected strewnfield shortly after dawn. Steve stayed up all of that day hunting, without success. On his second day he found a small freshly fallen meteorite and called me immediately. I got up at 4 am the next morning, packed my gear quickly, and headed to the airport with Suzanne Morrison, a fellow Tucson-based meteorite hunter and member of the Aerolite team. We rented a Toyota truck at Dallas, Love Field, and blasted down Interstate 35E, eager to get to the fall zone as quickly as possible.

I often wonder what we used to do before cell phones. We never could have found our colleagues out there without one. I was on the line with Steve for much of the trip. As we neared the small town of West, Texas he told me to leave the highway at an obscure exit and to “look for us by the side of the road.” We found Steve’s car parked haphazardly on a grass bank and were delighted to learn that our great friend Sonny Clary — a highly skilled meteorite hunter from Las Vegas — had already connected with Steve, and both were in hot pursuit of the new fall.

Suzanne Morrison laughs, Sonny Clary makes the secret sign, while Steve tries to act serious and figure out where the fireball went. Photograph by Geoffrey Notkin

“Welcome to the strewnfield,” Steve boomed, shaking our hands — dressed as usual in a khaki shirt, baggy blue jeans, florescent yellow sunglasses, and sneakers.

Our first duty was to interview a farmer who witnessed the fireball and heard multiple sonic booms, while out trimming a tree. He pointed to the exact spot where he saw the brilliant bolide, and he was quite adamant that the meteorite had rocketed straight over his head, leaving behind a slowly fading smoke trail.

“You say it was this big?” Steve Arnold discusses the February 15 Texas fireball with a local landowner who witnessed the spectacle. Photograph by Geoffrey Notkin.

We followed Steve to a site east of West (yes, I know that sounds wrong, but it isn’t) where a rival team had recovered a few meteorite specimens. More of our friends were arriving by the hour, and we hunted with them until sunset, with no luck. However, we did have the unexpected pleasure of meeting Hopper The Meteorite Dog, a petite female collie mix who somehow located a 71-gram stone meteorite which she proceeded to deposit on her owner’s porch.

Steve and our friend Ruben Garcia took off late that evening to scout, and I really should have gone with them because Steve discovered a new area of the strewnfield just around dusk. Once he’d shared this information, everyone in earshot was eager to join up with us. We agreed to meet in front of a supermarket north of Waco at 5:30 am the next morning, in order to arrive the new site by sunrise. When Suzanne and I rolled up at 5:29, we were rather surprised to find four other vehicles waiting for us, each with several passengers. It was one of the greatest meteorite hunting teams ever assembled. In addition to Steve and Sonny, Suzanne and myself, waiting for us were hardened hunters Mike Miller and Ruben also from my home state of Arizona, Rob Wesel and Patrick Thompson from Oregon, and Jason Philips from Illinois. Noted collector Jim Schwade joined us the next day, and soon after Mike Bandli arrived from Washington State.

As the sun crept up through damp hazy clouds on that first morning, we hit the ground hard. Sonny found three meteorites within ten minutes, and by 11 am, most of our team were carrying around one or more freshly fallen space rocks, reverently placed inside plastic baggies. My first find was an 18.8-gram quarter stone which was lying face up. I was standing in the grass talking to Mike Miller and complaining that I hadn’t found anything yet, when I saw it sitting about eighteen inches from his right foot. “Hey! Is that one!?” I exclaimed. And there it was — a brand new arrival from the Asteroid Belt.

A complete oriented meteorite, just as it fell in the fields of Texas.
Photograph by Geoffrey Notkin.

We spent that day, and the following six days hiking across fields, ravines, through woodlands, and along white gravel roads. As we fanned out and began mapping the strewnfield I started to realize what a very bizarre strewnfield it was. After studying the fireball video, and noticing what appeared to be four separate fragmentations, I suggested to Steve that we should probably be looking for four overlapping strewnfields. We repeatedly found large and small stones mixed together. Five miles north of what we considered to be the little end of the strewnfield, we discovered stones tinier than the ones at the small end. In addition, nearly all stones were spaced far apart, and in only a couple of instances did we see two meteorites in close proximity. Stone meteorite showers often produce small clusters of meteorites which landed near each other (example: Gold Basin), but even in the most densely packed section of the strewnfield, stones were, on average, about 0.2 miles apart.

Sonny and Steve hiked off on their own and found an encouraging open space with flat, dry, hard, yellow/ochre soil. It was such a promising spot that the entire team spent the next 2 1/2 days gridding every inch of it, and the field produced over sixty stones, with our team collecting over one hundred stones total, from various different sites. The best part: the vast majority of the stones were perfect 100% fusion-crusted individuals. Many were oriented, and a few showed flow lines and rollover lips. The crust was so fresh it almost glowed blue black in the bright Texas sun. Only about one stone in ten was broken. A few were found face up, their white interiors difficult to spot against light colored earth.

Who said meteorite hunting is serious business? [left to right] Jason Philips, Rob Wesel, Steve Arnold, Jim Schwade, Suzanne Morrison and Patrick Thompson goof around for a few minutes while celebrating another new find. Photograph by Geoffrey Notkin.

My great friend John Sinclair rolled in from Virginia and it was a treat to see him again. We hadn’t hunted together since the Park Forest fall of 2003. Most nights, our entire gang got together for a raucous dinner — eight, nine or ten hungry and thirsty meteorite hunters who had hoofed it for at least ten miles across rough terrain in record high temperatures for that time of year. Mike Bandli kept his GPS attached to him at all times and clocked eighteen miles during one day’s hike.

I was walking right beside Mike, early in the chilly morning of our sixth day on the ground, when he suddenly dropped to his knees, and shouted out: “Oh my god, I found one!” He is an experienced collector but it was his first-ever personal find. He almost went into orbit for a moment himself, but kept his wits about him and immediately handed me his digital video recorder. “Geoff, would you do the honors?” And it was a real treat to document that moment for him.

Patrick Thomspon, son of veteran meteorite dealer Edwin “E.T.” Thompson stunned everyone by finding more stones that some of the pros. It was his first successful meteorite hunt, and I’m going to have to keep a very close watch on that guy in the future : )

“I know it’s windy, but try not to blink.” Geoff doing an on-site interview for Austin Channel 8 News
Photograph by Mike Bandli.

Sonny found a gorgeous oriented individual next to a wire fence that looks uncannily like a black flying saucer. But it was my good friend, and fellow Tucsonan, Suzanne Morrison who won the prize. While scouting with Sonny she came across a large complete individual, completely crusted and highly oriented. It’s one of the most fabulous stone meteorites I’ve ever seen, and I shall remain pleasantly jealous for many years.

I hiked over a hundred miles, and put almost 900 miles on the rental truck, driving around the strewnfield. Most of the landowners we met were extremely gracious and generous in giving permission to hunt on their properties, but we did encounter a couple of lunatics who shouted and ordered us off their land. We were careful and respectful of our hosts’ land, packed out all our trash and kept landowners posted regarding our finds.

When planting began, the big tractors rolled in and tore up the pristine flat surfaces in just a couple of days, making it almost impossible to find additional pieces but, hey, I got to ride with the owner in his big planter, and that was almost as fabulous as finding meteorites.

One night, near the end of the trip, I was too exhausted to hunt past sunset, and started heading back to the truck an hour earlier than usual. On some odd whim, I decided to backtrack, and cut diagonally across a section of ground we had not fully covered. And there it was, plain as day: a triangular, 100% crusted, perfectly oriented stone half buried in the dirt. It was my favorite find of the trip.

Look at that impact pit. A 100% fusion crusted individual from the Texas meteorite fall, smacked into the hard, dry soil. Photograph by Geoffrey Notkin.

I returned to the Aerolite Meteorites HQ in Tucson with thirteen new arrivals to planet Earth in my field pack. Eleven were complete individuals, with one half stone and one quarter stone. The total recovered weight of this fall is very low. Estimates are currently around two to three kilograms, which is a tiny amount. There are a lot of collectors out there, and specimens are changing hands for good money.

My thirteen West, Texas black beauties will stay with me as long as I’m around. I worked hard to get them, and they are worth more than money to me. Steve Arnold has a few left for sale, and if you want one, contact him soon and tell him Geoff sent you. Maybe I’ll get a kickback : )

One of my best expeditions — ever. I’ll never forget those long sunny days east of West.

With my birthday twin and expedition partner, the mighty Steve Arnold.
Photograph by Suzanne Morrison.

WATCH THE SKIES!

Sunburned and a little haggard after a long day of meteorite hunting in the Arizona desert.
Self portrait by the author.

During my childhood years in London Monty Python’s Flying Circus was the most controversial and talked-about show on television. My father wryly encouraged me to stay up until 9:25 pm and watch each new weekly BBC episode. It aired on a school night, which worried my mom and, anyway, she found the racy and provocative content entirely inappropriate for a young lad. My mom was a brilliant woman, and that was one of the few times I remember her being clearly in error. I remain a Python fan to this day and recently, as a most thoughtful gift, received the entire collected episodes in a DVD boxed set.

The other night, I once again found myself watching the “Vocational Guidance Counselor Sketch.” Michael Palin — my favorite Python — plays a delightfully timid chartered accountant who visits a career advisor, acted out in a typically snide and officious manner by the uniquely weird John Cleese. Mr. Palin’s sweet and mousy character complains, delicately, about how bored he is after twenty years as an accountant, and how he yearns to switch to a truly exciting new vocation, such as lion taming.

Palin’s lament reminded me of how often I hear the remark: “What an exciting life you lead,” from people I meet while pursuing my unusual profession. Yes, it is exciting, at times, and yes I am lucky to be able to follow my passion, but the realities of international adventuring can be quite taxing. So, I thought I might share with my readers a tongue-in-cheek overview of some less glamorous moments in the exciting life of a meteorite hunter.

Whilst in the pursuit of space rocks, I have suffered from sunburn, windburn, sun stroke, altitude sickness, exposure, exhaustion, food poisoning, concussion, dehydration, along with plenty of other everyday, run-of-the-mill maladies.

Not at my best. Catching my breath after a hot day of hunting in the deep south. Note the snake gators held together with duct tape, to protect my legs from dangerous reptiles. Photograph by Sonny Clary.

I have been accused of being “overenthusiastic” in the field, and even though I do my best to stay focused and act in a semi-sensible manner, the sheer number of days spent in remote areas has resulted in my exterior surface being scratched, cut, burned, or otherwise injured by barbed wire, regular wire, rusty vintage farm machinery, a portable gasoline stove, ATVs and 4WD trucks, poison ivy, scorpion weed, other unidentified allergens, rocks, rock hammers, bamboo, corn stalks, every type of thorn, bramble and cactus, and shocked by electric fences. I also got knocked senseless by a heavy truck door blown shut by a micro burst, and had a finger crushed between two shockingly powerful rare earth magnets.

I have been bitten by mosquitoes, gnats, chiggers, black flies, robber flies, fire ants, various types of spiders and a cattle dog. I have experienced close encounters with rattlesnakes, many kinds of other snakes, alligators, tarantulas, scorpions, two angry bald eagles with very large talons, Lynx rufus (the Sonoran lynx) and more than one pack of hungry wily coyotes.

Arctic swamps. Hiking inside the Popigai Crater, Siberia in full anti-insect gear. The ground freezes solid in winter, and during the brief Arctic summer, the air is alive with oversized, and very hungry, mosquitoes. Photograph by Geoffrey Notkin.

During the execution of my duties I was very nearly arrested and incarcerated by three armed and jackbooted Chilean police officers (it got as far as the hands on the guns part), after getting into an altercation with a crooked bar owner. I have been accosted by uniformed Russian soldiers and police, and the Mexican Army, and twice had my passport confiscated. While meteorite hunting or transporting meteorites, I have been stopped and searched by police, customs and/or security officers in numerous different countries, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Border Patrol, accused of being a terrorist by an Illinois Sheriff, and barked at by a Park Ranger who thought I was using a metal detector on the site of a national monument (I wasn’t; it’s illegal).

Items stolen from me during regular operations include: the Aerolite Meteorites company checkbook, pens and field notebooks, maps, sunglasses, a Nikon camera, a suitcase, an Acculab digital scale, important business records, the charger for my cell phone (!?) and a recently worn (and likely smelly) “I Dig Space Rocks” t-shirt. Really, who would want such a thing?

Jungle survival training with Rob Reisner and Sonny Clary (actually, we were hunting for meteorites in the American deep south). Photograph by Geoffrey Notkin.

While traveling in strange parts of the world, and when there was literally no alternative, I have been required to subsist on Cliff Bars, reindeer burgers, porridge with flies in it, steamed abalone which had the consistency of truck tires, and some type of large, slimy and hideous freshwater eel plucked from a frigid lake far north of the Arctic Circle. While this dietary supplement list may not sound too appalling to some, please consider that under normal circumstances I am a strict vegetarian!

I survived a drinking competition involving vodka, wine, “And now the Georgian brandy!” with the field support staff of the Siberian Geological Survey (a tougher bunch of guys I never met) and then foolishly accepted a challenge which resulted in me leaping into a Siberian river at 2 am and swimming a few hundred yards. I received a standing ovation and round of applause from our comrades, so I did it a second time.

The author and Steve Arnold rescuing equipment after our truck got stranded deep in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile, while traveling to the Imilac meteorite strewnfield.

I have lived through one substantial earthquake, two hurricanes, a stranded truck in the heart of the Atacama Desert, a dead ATV in the middle of a winter blizzard in the snow belt of upstate New York (we had to tow the ATV home behind another quad), an encounter with desert pirates in Nevada, a gurgling uncapped oil well at the bottom of an excavation hole in Kansas, an impromptu margarita party at the edge of Area 51, and an unexploded air-to-air guided missile which somehow came to rest atop a large rock outcrop in the Arizona desert.

While hunting, or on the way to suspected hunting zones, I have traveled by foot, horse, mountain bike, scooter, dirt bike, ATV, regular cars, vans and buses, 4WD vehicles including Steve Arnold’s canary yellow hummer, a wooden raft hand made from pine trees, life rafts, a hydrofoil, an Mi-8 cargo helicopter, and every type of airplane from a Cessna to a Jumbo Jet.

While searching for meteorites with metal detectors, I have accidentally found or helped excavate Frontier-era wagon wheels, two coyote traps, Civil War bullets and belt buckles, a 30-gallon steel drum inside of a 55-gallon drum, artillery shrapnel, bullets, shotgun shells, ball bearings, hot rocks, unidentifiable pieces of machinery, 19th-Century forged iron tools, a chain big enough to hold down a battleship, beer cans, cans of beans, rusted buckets, and part of several old cars.

With my pal Rusty Johnson on board a Russian Mi-8 helicopter, en route to a hunting site.
Photograph by Katya Rossovskaya.

So, I know you’re asking yourself something along the lines of: “Then why do you keep doing it?” Simply: there really is nothing more exciting that digging space rocks.

Except maybe working as a lion tamer.

WATCH THE SKIES!

As Sherlock Holmes used to say to his pal Watson whenever a new chase began: “The game’s afoot!”

Two independent groups led by my colleagues Ron Dilulio, and Mike Farmer, have found small freshly-fallen stone meteorites on the ground near Waco, Texas. They are almost certainly associated with the bright daytime fireball witnessed over Austin, TX on the afternoon of February 15.

Where there’s one meteorite, there are often more, and we’re not missing out on this adventure. My long-time friend and expedition partner, world famous meteorite hunter Steve Arnold, is already in the strewnfield, and I’ll be heading out there within a few days along with Aerolite Meteorites team member Suzanne Morrison.

We’ll be fireball chasing in the Lone Star state and will post news when we have it.

In the meantime . . .

WATCH THE SKIES!