Meteorite Hunting In The Desert
by Eric Wichman
Most people don't know you can own a meteorite much less find one practically in your own back yard.
 If you live in the southwest U.S. you are in prime meteorite hunting territory. This area of the country lends itself to the preservation of meteoritical material. Because of the southwest’s arid climate, and low annual rainfall, meteorites are more preserved here than in any other part of the U.S. Meteorites contain iron and iron is prone to corrosion, therefore a dryer climate will preserve meteorites for a longer period of time.
That's why more meteorites are found in the Sahara desert than any other place on earth! Northwest African meteorites (better known as NWA meteorites) are plentiful because the climate is perfect. The Sahara desert covers the entire northern region of Africa! This desert is almost as big as the United States! That's huge. You can only imagine the number of meteorites that have fallen there over the last 10,000 years much less the last 1 Million years.
Anywhere there's "Old Ground" and the climate is arid, you'll most likely find meteorites. They're hard to find and rarer than gold but when you find one there's a good chance there's more in that area. If you find one, be sure to mark the spot with a GPS (global positioning system) so you can come back later to the exact spot. Be sure to search the entire area where you found your meteorite. You may have found only a single meteorite from a single fall, but there's a small chance you might just have discovered what scientists and veteran meteorite hunters call a strewnfield!
A strewn field is a section of ground -usually in a long elliptical shape- covering a large area, sometimes tens or even hundreds of miles long by tens of miles wide. Most strewnfields are smaller 5-10 miles in length and width. The fact is the larger a meteoroid is that enters our atmosphere the larger the strewnfield.
As a meteoroid enters our atmosphere it begins to heat up. This is due to the friction caused by it's tremendous speed. The air can’t move out of the way fast enough and produces a fireball. As it heats up it creates a phenomena called a meteor. This is what you see at night when you witness a "shooting star". Then, somewhere around 10-20 miles from the ground it begins to break apart and cool. The meteor seems to disappear as if it burned up completely. This is true of most meteoroids are smaller than a pepple and usually burn up in our atmosphere never reaching the ground. If a meteoroid is large enough, some pieces may even impact the ground and any that survives this entry and remains intact on the ground is called a meteorite.
So all you people out there who never knew anything about meteorites, now you know you can not only own a real rock from space, but you can actually find one too! So, what are you waiting for? Get out there and hunt!
Happy Hunting!
Copyright 2008 Eric Wichman – MeteoritesUSA.com & MeteoriteWatch.com |
