Big metal detector
I had heard about Steve Arnold and one of his meteorite finds before but this article at
The Kansas City Star goes into some good detail on the process:
Finder of big meteorite says he’s only scratched the surface
Bouncing over the dirt rows of the newly planted wheat field, Steve Arnold’s contraption of plastic pipes mounted on four lawn-mower wheels looks mighty strange.
Then there is Arnold — pulling the rig behind him while a plastic bucket containing a metal detector hangs around his neck.
Odd as he looks out there in the field, Arnold has brought a new and lucrative form of farming to south-central Kansas: He harvests meteorites — with the cooperation of landowners.
“A cash crop,” Arnold, the professional meteorite hunter, said, beaming.
Here is the rig in question.
The technology is pretty simple with two basic ways to implement it. Never heard of someone going with such a big coil though -- being able to locate something 20 feet deep is impressive although (from the article):
While Arnold has found a few meteorites, he also has collected a tub of rusted metal items from bygone days of farming — including a buckle from a horse-drawn plow, horseshoes, a ring from a bull’s nose and steel wagon wheels.
Most items are near the surface, but the big meteorite was much deeper. Arnold dug 2 feet by hand and then got a backhoe. Seven feet below, he unearthed the meteorite of a lifetime.
This particular one is where I heard about Arnold. Here he is with his find:
From the article:
Last month, Arnold announced that he had dug up near Greensburg a 1,400-pound pallasite meteorite, the largest of its type ever found in the United States. It could be worth up to $3 million, experts said.
The owner of the land where Arnold found his prize will get a nice cut of the sale price. Arnold has signed leases with the owners of nearly 3,000 acres to look for meteorites. He pays them up front for hunting rights, and each gets a share of his sales.
Nice for the farmers as well!
Posted by DaveH at December 13, 2005 8:31 PM