Meteorite Men

Summary

The show follows Steve Arnold and Geoffrey Notkin as they travel worldwide searching for meteorites. Arnold's background is primarily in business, while Notkin is a passionate collector and science writer. In the pilot, they traveled to Brenham, Kansas, where Arnold had previously located and recovered the largest oriented pallasite ever found. The series has won two bronze Telly Awards and has been credited with inspiring a modern-day gold rush of amateur meteorite hunters. Some specimens found on the show were sold to collectors, while others were donated to university collections.

Notable finds

The pilot episode of Meteorite Men was shot in Brenham, Kansas, at a strewn field where, back in October 2005, Steve Arnold and geologist Philip Mani unearthed the biggest oriented pallasite ever recorded, a 650-kilogram specimen. To locate it, Arnold relied on a metal detector he built himself along with a custom mapping method. This massive pallasite later went up for auction in April 2016, having been shown at the 2006 Tucson Gem & Mineral Show, the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History in 2006, The Exploration Place in Wichita, Kansas during 2006 and 2007, Kansas City Union Station in 2007, the Center for Earth & Space Science Center in Tyler, Texas in 2011, the U.S. Space and Rocket Center’s Space Mania event in Tel Aviv, Israel in 2013, and Space Center Houston in 2015.

In 2011, while filming Season 3, Episode 1 at Poland’s Morasko Meteorite Nature Reserve, Arnold and Geoff Notkin recovered two iron meteorites weighing about 544 grams and 34 kilograms, buried 30 centimeters and 156 centimeters deep respectively. Because these pieces were found deeper than any previously known specimens, the discovery indicated that more thorough surveys with better metal detectors were warranted. The larger iron was lodged in Miocene clay, confirming it landed exactly there rather than being carried by glaciers, which overturned an earlier hypothesis.

Cultural impact

In the early 2010s, the show Meteorite Men is thought to have sparked a surge in public fascination with meteorites and the hunt for them. Dr. Laurence Garvie from Arizona State University’s Center for Meteorite Studies noted that after he appeared on the program, his team began receiving roughly six boxes of rocks weekly from viewers convinced they had found a meteorite. Decades earlier, around 1950, a farmer uncovered a 1,724.8-gram rock while plowing, which had regmaglypts and a fusion crust.

It wasn’t properly identified until 2012, when the farmer’s son, having watched Meteorite Men, brought it to Dr. Garvie for examination. The specimen was later purchased by Ruben Garcia of Mr. Meteorite and Geoffrey Notkin of Aerolite Meteorites and Meteorite Men. Also in 2012, Detective Ryan Piotrowski of the Grand Junction Police Department, who had watched the show, charged Steve Curry with misdemeanor theft and fraud for peddling fake meteorites.