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Re: Searching for meteorites in deserts
Hello George
I am meteorite searcher and turn into a meteorite hunter after my first
find, but i will more likely say that I am a traveller and that I love
remote places and deserts. I have been hiking biking motobiking driving
camelling, etc .. in Sahara. For years. I decided to hunt for
meteorites. In fact you don't hunt for meteorites all the time. You hunt
for places to hunt for meteorites. It is easy to hunt for meteorite in a
good place, and it it is an horrible nightmare when the place is
inadequate. (I never experienced a nice nightmare!)
To hunt for the right place is THE QUESTION. Dry lakes, hamadas,
paleosoils. The best method is to go there and to hunt. With some
experience you will select better zones but you will never be sure
before starting the on a new zone/place that it will be meteorite dense.
And hunting is only time consuming.
I hunt without technical help, only a rare earth magnet, no metal
detector. We know that some meteorite are not attracted by magnets
(among which the rarest like mars or lunar rocks, some achondrites,
etc..) But a rare earth magnet is a good tool.
About how weasy it is:
it is easy when your efforts are rewarded with a meteorite. From my own
experience -most meteorite hunters do not tell- when I start a hunting
session in a possibly promising place, the problem is that I do not know
what is my future target. Will it be a inch size camel dungs, beer can
size, coconut size, five gallon jerrican size?. What will be the
dominant colour of the meteorite: black dull chondritic old crust, nice
shiny achondritic crust, orange rusty iron crust, blueish reflects of
some fresh irons, or white cement like broken matrix? All are possible.
You should reject pink and green colours. On a uniform field, first I
just look at the dominant colours of the stones and rocks, I collect
them and record their main caracteristics. After some hours, my brain
get used to it and I am able to recognize many of the usual stones of
the area. then I start to be able to discriminate some meteorites among
the terrestrial rocks. Every strange shape/colour/reflect is a possible
target. On some hunts, I have recorded all my moves after the adaptation
period. How many stones are checked by hand before a meteorite is found.
200 selected stones per meteorite seems to be a average ratio. Then
comes the human factor: hunting meteorite needs concentration. In very
dense places the first day you can find one or two. The second day 3 to
5. the thirds day up to ten. then the per day number of finds decreases
to zero after a week of continuous search. The most reasonable behaviour
will be to hunt during the best hours and to relax for the rest of the
day. to take a good break after 3 to 4 days of hunting. But it is hard
not to look for meteorites when you have found some promising ones. One
thinks he is loosing his time after a long journey to reach the hunting
fields. It takes about 5 days driving, crossing broders, sleeping
outside, from home (in France) to reach the hunting places in Sahara.
Some places are more remote and will need a week or more. If you plan a
3 week expedition, you wish to optimize you trip, then on the field you
get exited by the possible find and really exited by the first one and
you create a self excitation. meteorite hunter should be really calm
people. They must breathe always very slowly. I may start sophrology to
increase my starting skill. Another factor, very important is the human
pollution: the Sahara has been prospected for Oil and so many debris
have been left that you will meet old cans, pieces of tires everywhere.
they look like meteorite from far and you MUST check them. My biggest
find was quarter tire shape H5. With my wife, we thought it was a piece
of junk, she insisted to go and see it. It was 300 meters from where we
where. It was so big that we had the doubt until we saw regmaglypts, 2
meters from the piece.
But there is also the other way of hunting: discussing with people that
live outside. In Africa, most of the people live outside. Then it is
more an investigation work than a visual search. Haag was one of the
first to do that. I started this game this year. It works, the main
problem is that africans like to talk. Very often the story turn into
the man who has seen the man who has seen the man who has seen the bear.
There is also a typic psychology behind this way of hunting. I have some
ideas about it, but they are too fresh and I need to gain some other
experiences to write about them.
Hope this help.
Michel Franco
FusionCrst@aol.com wrote:
>
> In a message dated 3/22/99 2:30:30 AM Eastern Standard Time,
> lxh@hitsat.hit.edu.cn writes:
>
> << Who have the experience of searching meteorites in desert? Whether it is
> easy to find
> meteorites in desert? please let me know. >>
>
> Hello Lin and List,
>
> Lin, I believe that hunting meteorites in general is an easy thing to do.
> Your luck in finding any meteorites will certainly depend on where you are
> looking. For example, if you are trying to find meteorites in a wooded area
> or an area with thick ground cover you may be unsuccessful. And you may get
> lucky. On the other hand, if you are searching an area with sporadic
> vegetation like a desert, you will definitley raise your chances of finding
> something. So in comparison, deserts are an easier place to find meteorites
> than any other place except the vast ice fields of Antarctica. With a little
> persistence and a lot of patience I think you will do well. Hunting
> meteorites is easy, finding meteorites can be hard. Even though some(not all)
> think hunting meteorites is a waste of time, I happen to think that there is
> an overabundance of stones just waiting to be discovered by a creative and
> eager meteorite hunter like yourself.
>
> Hope this helps,
> George Nicula
>
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