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 Each
year ten of thousands of meteorites hit the earth. They are worth big
dollars to the finders. In fact they are worth more than gold. You might
say they are
black gold. This is your chance to find one. You also will be able to
say that you have entered the Twilight Zone.
Did you ever go on a strange
vacation? Well this one is out of this world. When you come to Truth or
Consequences to see the new space station that will launch tourists into
space, do a little walking to find space junk...meteorites on our ranch.
Hunting for meteorites does not have to be a bone chilling adventure to
the Antarctic where the temperature is 50 below zero F and 50 mile per
hour winds. Meteors enter the earth atmosphere everywhere. They impact
everywhere. The trick in finding them is to look where they have had a
good chance of impacting or where they have been concentrated by natural
forces of the earth and have not been destroyed by weathering.
This means deserts are a good place to search
for meteorites. Deserts can change over the centuries. But deserts don't
alway have major weathering. Thus if you want to find meteorites you may
want to come to our Truth or Consequences Ranch. It is located in
New Mexico
adjacent to the Chihuahuan Desert. There are trillions and trillions of
terrestrial rocks for each meteorite that could be in this area.
Metal
detectors are used by many professional meteorite hunters around the
world.
Metal detectors can easily distinguish between ferrous and non ferrous
rocks. Since not all meteorites are ferrous only the ferrous meteorites
will be found by the metal detector. Modern
metal
detectors can balance out dominant background rocks. This enhances the
detector to find the meteorites.
Metal
detectors create a constant hum. The volume and pitch of this hum
increases as the detector passes over the metallic object. There are hot
rocks which produces a signal but is a false positive. Thus detecting
requires concentration and you will see lots and lots of hot rocks.
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