Under the Canopy
On Outdoor Journal Radio's Under the Canopy podcast, former Minister of Natural Resources, Jerry Ouellette takes you along on the journey to see the places and meet the people that will help you find your outdoor passion and help you live a life close to nature and Under The Canopy.
Under the Canopy
Episode 82: What Falls From The Sky with Chris Herd
Curious about what happens when meteors collide with our Earth? This episode dives into the wonders of meteorites, from the recent PEI meteorite strike caught on camera to expert insights on their origins, value, and identification. Join us as we explore the cosmic connections to our planet and the regulations that protect these celestial treasures.
• Exploration of the difference between meteors and meteorites
• Insight into the recent PEI meteorite strike
• The identification process of meteorites and common traits
• The cultural significance and laws surrounding meteorites in Canada
• Discussion on the rarity and market value of meteorites
• Fascination with potential extraterrestrial life and Mars samples
• Encouragement for listeners to engage with the night sky and their environment
Hi everybody. I'm Angelo Viola and I'm Pete Bowman. Now you might know us as the hosts of Canada's Favorite Fishing Show, but now we're hosting a podcast. That's right Every Thursday, Ang and I will be right here in your ears bringing you a brand new episode of Outdoor Journal Radio. Now, what are we going to talk about for two hours every week?
Speaker 2:Well, you know there's going to be a lot of fishing.
Speaker 3:I knew exactly where those fish were going to be and how to catch them, and they were easy to catch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it's not just a fishing show.
Speaker 4:We're going to be talking to people from all facets of the outdoors From athletes, All the other guys would go golfing Me and Garth and Turk and all the Russians would go fishing To scientists.
Speaker 3:But now that we're reforesting- and all that, it's the perfect transmission environment for life.
Speaker 6:To chefs If any game isn't cooked properly, marinated, you will taste it.
Speaker 1:And whoever else will pick up the phone Wherever you are. Outdoor Journal Radio seeks to answer the questions and tell the stories of all those who enjoy being outside. Find us on Spotify, apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 7:As the world gets louder and louder, the lessons of our natural world become harder and harder to hear, but they are still available to those who know where to listen. I'm Jerry Ouellette and I was honoured to serve as Ontario's Minister of Natural Resources. However, my journey into the woods didn't come from politics. Rather, it came from my time in the bush and a mushroom. In 2015, I was introduced to the birch-hungry fungus known as chaga, a tree conch with centuries of medicinal applications used by Indigenous peoples all over the globe. After nearly a decade of harvest use, testimonials and research, my skepticism has faded to obsession and I now spend my life dedicated to improving the lives of others through natural means. But that's not what the show is about. My pursuit of this strange mushroom and my passion for the outdoors has brought me to the places and around the people that are shaped by our natural world world.
Speaker 7:On Outdoor Journal Radio's Under the Canopy podcast, I'm going to take you along with me to see the places, meet the people that will help you find your outdoor passion and help you live a life close to nature and under the canopy. So join me today for another great episode and hopefully we can inspire a few more people to live their lives under the canopy. We can inspire a few more people to live their lives under the canopy. All right, good day everyone and thanks for listening to the podcast. As always, our Canadian and American listeners, and those in Switzerland and Ghana and Trinidad and Tobago and all around the world and all the other places we really appreciate our audience out there and, as always, if you have any suggestions for shows or questions that we need to ask, we can try to put it together and get it on, because we want to know what our listeners want to hear about.
Speaker 7:And this morning we have a very interesting guest that I happened to come across actually on the Canadian Weather Network was Dr Chris Hurd. Welcome to the program, doctor. How are you? I'm good. Thanks, good, chris. Really appreciate you taking the time Now. Tell us a bit about yourself, like you know, so our international listeners know, kind of where you're from and things like that.
Speaker 4:Sure, I'm a professor in the Department of Earth and Atm with meteorites and samples from other planets and objects in the solar system.
Speaker 7:Okay, and so how long have you been in the position that you're there and what's the temperature in Edmonton this morning?
Speaker 4:I've been here 22 years almost, and the temperature this morning is, I think, a plus one or plus two oh, really, unseasonably warm. Yeah, we're getting a bit of melting happening, unfortunately, but we still have a good amount of snow around.
Speaker 7:Yeah, I know, this morning when I was out running my chocolate lab, as I always do, get up first thing, first light and we're out and about in the bush and it was minus 13 this morning here where we are just outside of Toronto. So you're into the pluses. That's kind of nice. A little bit different for you Is that a Chinook coming in?
Speaker 4:We don't get Chinooks quite like they do in Calgary, but it's certainly a warmer than we expected. Yeah.
Speaker 7:Well, we just might happen to know an earth and atmospheric sciences specialist that can explain why it's so warm there.
Speaker 4:That's right, I could ask a colleague.
Speaker 7:yes, oh yeah, so I happen to see your name mentioned on the Weather Network here in talking about and you'll have to correct me because you're the one that knows it was a meteor or a strike that was taking place and what happened with that particular case there.
Speaker 4:Chris, yeah, sure, well, some terminology first. We use different terms in this area, but meteor is the phenomenon in the sky that we typically see at night, where there's a fireball, where the rock comes in from space and the outside heats up, gives that bright light that we see. It's known as it's the same thing as a shooting star. You might see you know looking up where, but the shooting star is just a tiny sort of sand sized grain. Something bigger than that will give off a lot more light. That's what we term a fireball, or a bright meteor.
Speaker 4:If anything survives that process of going through the Earth's atmosphere, then it makes it to the ground. The rock itself is called a meteorite. So the most recent event was this meteorite strike on PEI just outside of Charlottetown, and the unique thing about that is that instead of it being a fireball at night and somebody finds rocks that weren't there the day before, kind of the next morning, yeah, in this case the rock actually hit their front walkway of a house, smashed to pieces and was caught on the security camera that was looking out that way. So we think it's the first time that a meteorite strike on the earth happened during the day, late evening, 5.02 pm, atlantic time, the first time that it was recorded on video complete with sound.
Speaker 7:Oh, really, that's kind of yeah, I found it very interesting. Well, to be honest, interesting enough to get in touch with you to get some more details about it, because I believe our listeners would like this kind of stuff. I know I do, and that's what we try to give, what our people like, this here. So when you said that like a sand of grain size gives light when it's going through as a meteor, when it gives off the ones we see in the sky, they're just like a sand of grain. When you get that small bit of light off them, bit of light off them, those are the ones. So so when we have the, those showers, um, the and correct me where you need to please meteor showers, those are all just like small grains of sand going through the atmosphere at that time. Is that what I'm understanding from what you just mentioned?
Speaker 4:that's right. That's right. And there's certain times of year because that, because the earth's orbit takes us through um sand, you know, bits of of of dust and material left over in a particular area of space that we go through, and then those little grains will come through the Earth's atmosphere and give off the light as a meteor shower. Nothing from that ever makes it to the ground, because those are tiny grains, they just burn up in the atmosphere. Other events like this one are completely random. They're not predictable at all. They will just happen, as happened on PEI last summer, and will just end up coming into the atmosphere.
Speaker 4:It'll be a rock, that's. You know, the rock could be a meter size or smaller. Typically it's a lot smaller than that, maybe the size of a basketball or something like that comes to the Earth's atmosphere. But, just like the grains of sand in meteor showers, the reason we see the light is because they're going so fast. Relative to the Earth, those things are going the equivalent of 60,000 kilometers an hour, and so there's a lot of heat friction. That happens with the outside of those objects as they come through the atmosphere, and when it's a rock, it gives off light in the outside it breaks up into pieces. The outside heats up, becomes molten. You actually get a glass, but you also ablate a lot of it away. 90% or more of the actual rock is gone, just literally vaporized, and then what's left over are these meteorites. If anything is left over that makes it to the ground.
Speaker 7:Yeah, I was always worried when you know you can watch these meteor showers in the atmosphere. This is this time of year and I'm thinking isn't that a lot of material coming into the earth that could cause problems that we need to be concerned with? But from what I'm hearing, that's not the case at all, because virtually they never hit the earth in the first place and it's just very, very small pieces that are giving us what we're seeing there at night.
Speaker 4:That's right, and you know we actually do. The earth actually does accrete something like tons, or you know 100 tons per year or something like that. I can't remember the exact number, but we still, you know, we're still accreting material. The earth's still getting heavier from the material that comes from space, but it's still a very small proportion of the total. So so, uh, yeah but.
Speaker 7:But on the same token, we're probably sending hundreds of tons of space junk up there now to balance it out, maybe some way, that's a fair point.
Speaker 4:Yeah, actually I had thought about that.
Speaker 7:Yeah, so what sort of research do you do at the university that you're at, chris?
Speaker 4:Well, I am the curator of the University of Alberta Meteorite Collection. We have over 2,000 specimens of over 450 different meteorites from around the world, and my research is largely based on what. Can you tell about the places where the meteorites came from? My PhD was in meteorites from Mars. I really wanted to study Mars when I was growing up and I thought what a great way to study rocks from Mars until we actually have rocks coming back from Mars robotically would be the meteorites, and so that's been a large part of my research throughout my career.
Speaker 4:But I also study other meteorites from other places, and, for example, the meteorite that fell on PEI is of a type that we know comes from the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, and that's where most of the meteorites around the world come from.
Speaker 4:The vast majority of them come preserving them and then analyzing them to try to understand the geological processes that have happened on the asteroids or, in the case of Martian meteorites, that have happened on Mars.
Speaker 4:There's also meteorites from the moon, so you can study the moon from that perspective as well, to try to understand the geological processes that were occurring on these objects and piece together more of the geological history of these places where we have the samples from. And then another component of my research that's developed over the past few years is actually what are the best methods in so-called advanced curation? So how do you take something that is particularly precious, that might have ices or sort of organic matter or something in that, that would be lost if you kept it at typical room temperature conditions of curation? Even the best conditions of curation at room temperature, you might lose something. So we've pioneered literally pioneered here over the past 15 years, methods for precious certain types of meteorites which is how it started but that are applicable to, let's say, when we do get samples back from Mars or from an asteroid or from a comet in the future. How would you actually work on those samples to preserve them when they require sort of more challenging conditions of curation?
Speaker 7:Well, and how can you? You brought up some interesting. Well, you brought up lots of interesting stuff, but how can you tell a meteorite is from Mars and not somewhere else?
Speaker 4:That's a great question. In fact that's probably the most common question that I get, given my expertise. But yeah, martian meteorites were kind of an oddball group for a long time because they have characteristics that don't match what we see in meteorites from asteroids in the asteroid belt. But it was in the late 70s, early 80s when it was determined that inside of these particular types of meteorites is gas that's trapped, and the gas that's trapped in those meteorites matches the composition of the atmosphere of Mars as determined from the Viking landers in the late 70s. The Viking landers had mass spectrometers on board. They were able to analyze the atmosphere and say what the composition was. And it turns out the atmosphere of Mars is unique in the solar system and it's a fingerprint, effectively. So it told us that that's the origin of these particular meteorites.
Speaker 4:At that time there were only a handful. Now we have over 200 different Martian meteorites and they're all related to each other by similar geochemical characteristics. Things like oxygen isotopes are tests that are done, um, but but yeah, it's, it's mostly they're related to each other as a group. Uh, for for those reasons, yeah, so and okay.
Speaker 7:So how does a meteorite leave mars in the first place? Like what? What happens in mars that puts it out there so that it eventually ends up crashing landing on Earth? However you want to say, it happens.
Speaker 4:Yeah. So what has to happen is that something has to impact the surface of Mars, okay, and during that impact it's a big impact. It's the type of impact where there's a crater that's formed, so the impactor, the actual object that hits the surface of Mars, is completely vaporized and leaves an impact crater. But it's remarkable because around the point of impact, close to the point of impact on the surface of Mars, rocks right at the surface will get accelerated fast enough to leave Mars gravity. So you have, in typical impact, you've got an ejecta blanket. You know the sort of stuff that gets kicked up and around the crater locally. But in certain circumstances you can actually accelerate some of the material to farther distances.
Speaker 4:And on Mars we see craters that have these rays that we see it on the moon too. You can even see it in like with a really good, with a good telescope or sort of an enhanced image of the moon. You can see these rays that we see it on the moon too. You can even see it, and like with a really good, with a good telescope or sort of an enhanced image of the moon, you can see these rays that go hundreds of kilometers across the surface of the moon. On mars we see the same sort of thing. Those are like failed meteorites, because they didn't. They made it back to the surface, but there's some proportion of of rock that actually gets accelerated fast enough to leave Mars gravity. Then those rocks end up in orbit around the sun and then, when we're lucky, they'll cross the Earth's orbit and fall to the ground as meteorites.
Speaker 7:So that leads to another question for me, then so does Mars spin on its axis in the same way the Earth does? And if that spinning action takes place, when you get the impact, the material goes up into the air and the spinning axis would work as a kind of a pitching of it into space.
Speaker 4:I don't think it has a huge effect. Actually, the impact will eject material in all directions from the surface of Mars, and I don't know that there's necessarily a preferred sort of orientation. Mars does spin on its axis the way that the Earth does. Very similarly, I mean, the length of day on Mars is 24 hours 37 minutes, so it's only slightly longer than the Earth. Yeah, but then again I'm not actually an expert in that. I've collaborated with people who are the Earth. Yeah, but then again I'm not actually an expert in that. I've collaborated with people who are the experts. That's how a lot of science works. Is you find the person who's the expert in this modeling of how things get ejected from Mars, for example?
Speaker 4:And that's certainly what we did. In fact, we had a paper that was published last summer on where we an updated view on where we think the meteorites actually come from, Because we think we can link certain groups of Martian meteorites to specific locations on Mars, which is a major advance in the last while.
Speaker 7:So what you just said as well just explains a lot of stuff. Now I understand why Elon Musk wants to go to Mars and others, as just mentioned in the presidential speech, is because they've got an extra 37 minutes in their day, which means an extra 37 minutes of work that they can get out of people, right, yeah?
Speaker 4:potentially. Yeah, that's right. I always say it would be nice to have 37 more minutes in a day. I think that would be. You know, just in a given day is busy enough.
Speaker 7:Yeah, exactly so when these impacts take place, so are you uh, somewhat yeah okay.
Speaker 7:So that was a huge impact that went right down basically to the core large impact and it happened in the sud in sudbury as well, and the new ring of fire is in the far northern reaches, basically in the uh hudson's bay lowlands. That had a huge impact and brought up a lot of the molten core of the earth that has a huge, I imagine, iron ore deposit along with a lot of other materials. So an impact like that would be one that would cause things to get out into space that would then become meteorites from earth.
Speaker 4:Well, I mean, I agree with you there that Sudbury is an impact crater and that there was the mineral deposits there, the result of impact process. I'm not sure that Ring of Fire in Ontario is from that. I haven't heard that particular hypothesis sort of substantiated by scientific research. I think it's an area of significance for mining and critical minerals, for sure.
Speaker 4:With regards to your question about you know material from Earth leaving Earth, that's an interesting one and there have been some studies of breccias on the moon, where there's one study that shows that you know a mineral grain or two in a breccia from the moon from Apollo, I believe, seems to be from Earth. So it's kind of intriguing that there could be material that came from Earth in its ancient history that has been kicked up and incorporated into parts into the moon. Um, it would be really difficult to look for. This is definitely a happenstance sort of thing, uh, but it certainly uh shows that there's this. Plus the fact that we get meteorites from the moon and mars shows that, you know, we're actually exchanging material between different planetary bodies yeah, interesting.
Speaker 7:Yeah, all this, I find this very fast and fascinating. And when you bring up these between different planetary bodies, yeah, interesting, I find this very fascinating. And when you bring up these things, it's just like, oh well, is that part of the reason why? And I just find I have the person that has far more answers than I ever have, and that's good, I find. What do you find is the average value of a meteorite? Um, because I hear some pretty astonishing values for them when they're, when people find them yeah for sure.
Speaker 4:Well, the value of a meteorite is what someone's willing to pay for it, of course, um, so, uh, you know that we we think of per gram values typically, and so it a lot goes into that and it really depends on a number of factors.
Speaker 4:It depends on, um, whether the meteorite was witnessed to fall, you know, for example, like the pei meteorite, or or a meteorite where there was a fireball in the sky and then in the previous night or something or at some point, and then people recover meteorite or meteorites from it.
Speaker 4:Um, so those tend to fetch a higher price. Um, and then, uh, and then in terms of, uh, rarity of type, so, like a meteorite from Mars, there's only 200 meteorites from Mars and sort of equivalent number from the moon out of 75,000 worldwide, you know. So you can imagine that those meteorites tend to fetch a higher price. So it really depends, and usually we're talking about sort of a few cents, 50 cents to a dollar per gram for really common types, to tens of dollars, a hundred dollars, hundreds of dollars per gram for really rare types. Now you also have to caution that if somebody finds something, first of all, if somebody finds something they think is a meteorite, then the first thing you do is to check that it really is a meteorite with an expert like me or somebody, before they get the idea that it's worth a million dollars.
Speaker 4:Okay, let's just put that out there.
Speaker 7:Oh yeah, Everybody's going to get rich quick.
Speaker 4:I get that a lot, okay, so let me just put that out there. Oh yeah, everybody's going to get rich quick. I get that a lot, okay, so let me just put that out there first. The second thing, though, is that if it is a meteorite, then you know, if you have something that weighs 10 kilograms of a particular type and you know your average value is, you know, is $10 a gram, then it's not automatic that it's worth $100,000, right, right, because as you go to higher mass, the per gram value goes down for the same meteorite or meteorite type. Because it's all about a market.
Speaker 4:You know, meteorite dealers and collectors don't necessarily have $100,000 lying around to buy a full meteorite, right, they'll typically have. They'll pay $10 a gram for something that's a lot smaller, right, that's more affordable, and then they'll pay sort of less per gram overall value for something that's bigger. So there's a lot of different factors that go into it, but, yeah, like I said, ultimately it's what somebody is willing to pay for a particular sample. I'll also mention that, of course, here in Canada we have additional factors that meteorites are protected by Canadian cultural property laws. So any meteorite of any value is considered Canadian cultural property and can't be exported from Canada without a permit. And that's a way of protecting meteorites as a cultural resource, cultural property resource, from the dealers and collectors who are mostly outside of the country, who obviously sort of have more purchasing power when it comes to buying meteorites Right.
Speaker 7:So is there valuable material that's found inside the meteorites? Or is there? Is it just because it's a? It's a rare item that can be verified.
Speaker 4:It's mostly as a collector's item. Yeah, I mean, you have meteorites that are that are iron rich, meteorites that have full been made of iron, nickel metal, that have trace levels of platinum and gold and those sorts of things in it. But of course you know, an object like that those are trace amounts and an object like that is more valuable as a collector's item than it is for something that you would, you know, smelt down and use the precious metals from.
Speaker 7:What's an average size of one of these meteorites? Chris?
Speaker 4:Oh, I mean it really ranges. Meteorites, chris, oh I mean it really ranges. Uh, you know, we have fragments of meteorites that are, you know, the size of a dime up to fist size, and some of the larger pieces of sort of historical falls from alberta that we have, you know might be the size of of your head, but but it's uh, yeah, most of the time it's smaller pieces, sort of of fist-sized or smaller.
Speaker 7:Oh, okay. And how often do they strike the earth?
Speaker 4:I've heard estimates that something the size of a grapefruit comes to earth every five days.
Speaker 7:Okay.
Speaker 4:But, when you think about it, the earth is two-thirds covered with ocean, two thirds covered with ocean. And even with our outsized influences human beings on the Earth's climate, for example, we only live on a small surface area. Still, right? So, and especially here in Canada, you know, when you think about it, we live on a small fraction of the total land mass, so, yeah, so the chances of finding something that's just fallen to Earth, for example, are very low, which makes the PI event all the more interesting, right, because it was just right there, caught on camera at that time.
Speaker 7:So yeah, Well, I watched it a couple of times. It's actually pretty small, though, isn't it the one in the? It was kind of like a door cam or something like that where it was on the object was maybe.
Speaker 4:Well, we have to we. 95 grams of material were total, were recovered and if you put that together it might be the size of a golf ball or sort of a Kiwi fruit. So so, um, but but yeah, it's. It's still still being worked on as to how much we're doing. We're doing some analysis of the videos to sort of try to figure that out. But yeah, it it's probably fifth size, at largest.
Speaker 7:Um, yeah, when it hit the surface yeah, and I I recall showing the spot. It was like on a um um a patio stone sort of thing, or it could have been a concrete area. I would have thought it would have done a lot more damage to the stone if it was that large that fast coming in. Was there a lot of damage on that when it impacted?
Speaker 4:It left a two by two centimeter divot, you know, sort of a couple millimeters deep. That's it. That's it, yeah, and so that was one of my questions as well is why that happened. We've had other events. A few years ago there was a meteorite that was much larger, a sort of maybe sort of size of a small football, that punched through the roof of a house in Golden, bc, and hit the pillow next to where the woman was sleeping, and that was a near miss, for sure, and but, but. But that punched through the roof right, and that's actually the more common thing that you hear.
Speaker 4:There've been a few cases where meteorites have fallen and punched through the roof of a house and gone right through house and gone right through the attic, right through the ceiling, into the room sort of thing, and held together, not smashed apart.
Speaker 4:And so what I was wondering about and this is one of the things I looked at when I went to classify the meteorites so after I visited PEI, I was able to get what we call the type specimen to be able to classify the meteorite.
Speaker 4:So after I visited PEI, I was able to get what we call the type specimen to be able to classify the meteorite Is to look at it in a thin section and see what its characteristics were, and it looks like it has fractures in it that existed before it fell. So these are fractures, probably from when it was out there in the asteroid belt, you know, from collisions with other objects which broke it up a bit and so it was already sort of weakened. And then that whole process I explained about coming through the Earth's atmosphere. That's really rough on a rock right. So that's a rough ride, hitting the atmosphere at 60,000 kilometers an hour and getting slowed down, and so it probably was just barely hanging on when it hit the surface and it happened to hit the patio stone. If it had hit the grass, honestly, maybe it would have survived and maybe they would never even have noticed it actually.
Speaker 4:But it actually hit this patio stone and smashed itself to pieces.
Speaker 7:Amazing. Well, with that one, with the football size one that went through the roof there. So are you working on any materials that can meteorite proof a roof and then get the marketing rights on something like that for the university?
Speaker 4:Yeah, not a bad idea, but I'm not sure exactly what you would make it from.
Speaker 7:to be honest, Some people get so paranoid about certain things, oh, now we have to worry about meteorites coming through the roof.
Speaker 4:Yes, right. Oh, now we have to worry about meteorites coming through the roof. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Back in 2016,. Frank and I had a vision To amass the single largest database of muskie angling education material anywhere in the world.
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Speaker 6:Subscribe now and never miss a moment of our angling adventures. Tight lines everyone.
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Speaker 7:And now it's time for another testimonial for Chaga Health and Wellness. Okay, we're here in Lindsay, ontario, with Rusty, who's up from California and visits us every year, and Rusty has been a faithful Chaga user for a long time. Rusty, maybe you can just tell us about your experience with Chaga.
Speaker 2:Well, I feel that it has a significant impact on my health and well-being. I believe in what I'm doing. I think that Jerry is very knowledgeable on it. If he says something, I take that very seriously.
Speaker 2:He has spent most of his life in the health care field and certainly knows what he's talking about. And I like to be around people like that because that's what keeps me healthy. And I'm 80 now and I'm going to try to enjoy what I've created with the motorcycle and one thing or another cycle, and one thing another which will require that I live for at least another 10 years to get back what I've invested in my health and wellness.
Speaker 7:So you're seeing a big benefit from it an overall healthy environment and when you go back to California next month, you actually take quite a bit with you back to California, don't you?
Speaker 2:you? Oh yes, we're going to be there for eight months and we don't want to run out, so we take it back and we take it every day. And you know, like I say, it's not a problem for me.
Speaker 7:Right, so how do you take it, rusty?
Speaker 2:I put a tablespoon or a teaspoon rather in my coffee each morning when I brew the coffee and I put it in as the coffee's brewing. I put that in with it.
Speaker 7:Oh, very good.
Speaker 2:And I put a little bit of cinnamon in with it too, right. And then I sweeten my coffee because, take the bitterness, a little bit of bitterness. I use the chaga and maple mix. Very good that you make up for those that want to be well and stay well, okay.
Speaker 7:Well, thanks very much. We appreciate you taking the time and sharing your chaga experience with you, and we'll make sure you have a safe trip back to California.
Speaker 2:Sure enough, all right. Okay, thank you Jerry. Yeah, thanks, rust. Okay, thank you Jerry. Yeah, thanks Rusty. Thanks sir, my pleasure.
Speaker 7:We interrupt this program to bring you a special offer from Chaga Health and Wellness. If you've listened this far and you're still wondering about this strange mushroom that I keep talking about and whether you would benefit from it or not, I may have something of interest to you. To thank you for listening to the show, I'm going to make trying Chaga that much easier by giving you a dollar off all our Chaga products at checkout. All you have to do is head over to our website, chagahealthandwellnesscom, place a few items in the cart and check out with the code CANOPY C-A-N-O-P-Y. If you're new to Chaga, I'd highly recommend the regular Chaga tea. This comes with 15 tea bags per package and each bag gives you around five or six cups of tea. Hey, thanks for listening. Back to the episode, chris.
Speaker 7:I recall in 1998, seeing a flaming ball come through the atmosphere and figured it was exactly one of these and it was quite large. I mean, the ball looked like the size of a plane and it was blatantly obvious and I was just totally amazed at which is what I had had my camera in my hand, because it was amazing to see. Is there ways that, like the local airport, would be able to track something like that, or do they? And if they do, is it a way to kind of use that information to track down any of these ones like that one I happen to see? I never even thought about it. Then I said, oh, should I check with the airport? They had something coming in and this is where it kind of disappeared. Yeah.
Speaker 4:I mean airports don't generally track that, but because it's an unpredictable, sudden event. But there are camera networks, including one that we have here in Alberta, that are set up to look for those and the whole idea is that you have in our case we have cameras that were developed in Australia at Curtin University where they developed these automated units that sit out. They developed it first for the Australian outback because it's a big area, you know dark sky, and you set them up kind of a couple hundred kilometers apart and what they have on board is a digital SLR camera with a fisheye lens and it just takes 30 second long exposures all through the night, right, and records that, just records that on some hard drives on board. And then if there's an event, what happens is ideally you capture that event on more than one of these observatories, and if it's a particularly bright event there happens is ideally you capture that event on more than one of these observatories, and if it's a particularly bright event, there's a video camera on board that will actually capture that video, the video of the event as well. But the trajectory, the real value, is from that digital SLR long exposure, 30 second exposure, because in 30 seconds you're likely to capture the whole thing, the whole fireball, right, and with that information from different angles, you can triangulate the trajectory of the, the rock coming through the atmosphere and then from that you can then use some models for um, for after the end of the fireball.
Speaker 4:Uh, you can use some models for how the rocks fall in dark flight, because the end of the fireball is actually like 20 kilometers up. A lot of people don't realize that that where the fireball stops, where the rocks slow down and it's no longer hot on the outside, that's still 20 kilometers up, and so from that point the rocks fall like rocks to the earth. They fall like in dark flight and so they'll fall down into from there. But you can use models of that part of the fall to then predict where rocks might be found on the earth's surface.
Speaker 4:And in australia they've done a great job. They've actually partly because it's the outback and there's not a whole lot of vegetation they've been able to go out to really remote areas and find the meteorites within 100 meters of the sort of projected ground track for the meteorite fall. We've had events here where we went out and looked. We couldn't find anything, but at least the cameras narrowed down the area significantly for where we should look. So yeah, there are programs to do that and there's two advantages. One is that you might find meteorites, of course, on the surface that have freshly arrived, and that's really valuable scientifically. And then the other thing is because these observatories capture the fireball and the exact timing, you can calculate the orbit, you can actually calculate where, like basically rewind the tape back and project out where this object came from in the solar system.
Speaker 2:And project out where this object came from in the solar system.
Speaker 4:Oh really, that's a lot of how we know where a lot of these more common meteorite falls meteorites come from. That. They come from the asteroids in the asteroid belt, because you can project it back out in its orbit, around the sun and where it came from it shows you that it was the asteroid belt.
Speaker 7:This is just fascinating for me. I just find it very, very interesting. Wow, so you can actually from those trajectories? Now these sensors, or however you want to call them, that are set up there and you have some in Alberta are there other locations around that do the same thing?
Speaker 4:Yep, there's. Southern Ontario has a network as both both the Australian cameras and then other cameras that, uh, that were designed to look for these meteors, um, and fireballs, uh, the university of Western Ontario, Peter Brown, runs those yeah.
Speaker 7:Oh yeah, and so, and, and how many of these uh sensors or monitors or things would it be to cover an area and how large an area would they?
Speaker 4:cover. Well, we have a half dozen deployed in Alberta, but it's not complete coverage, it kind of covers yeah. Well, I mean, alberta is a big place too. So we're covering most of the area in the southern half of the province, kind of from Edmonton south to south of Calgary, in order to get the advantage there is that the land use it's ranching and farmland, and so there's a better chance of finding meteorites that may have fallen to the surface in an area like that. Once you get to the northern part of the province, in the boreal forest and, and you know, even if you had really precise landing coordinates, it would be very difficult to search and find anything.
Speaker 7:Exactly, I understand. Yeah, and Chris, I see and hear things about things like Meteor Lake, which is up near a cottage that we have, and other spots where I've seen large ponds that were completely out of character, that were completely round, that were completely out of character, that were completely round, and we assume that it was a strike that created these like a five-acre pond. How large would a thing have to be to be able to create a small lake, a meteor lake up near Bancroft in Ontario, or some of these five ten-acre ponds that I see, that you know? I happen to be with a friend and he says, oh, look at that. He says, you know, how do you explain that, other than a meteorite hitting right there? And if they are there, would there be a meteor in the center of those things to look for them?
Speaker 4:Sure. Well, there's two important things here. One is that there are a lot of circular lakes in Canada and not all of them are from an impact. At the end of the last ice age you had the melting of the continental glaciers and a chunk of ice that broke off and sat there, actually would sort of sit there in the sediment and then, as it melted, would produce quite a nice round, circular looking lake. So we see that all the time I've had lots of inquiries saying, hey, I think this could be a meteorite crater and then it turns out not to be.
Speaker 4:In other cases, yeah, there are some places where there are, uh impact craters um that are filled with with water. In that case that you, there's no point in looking at the bottom for for the impactor, because, uh, just like the impact craters that I mentioned on mars that eject meteorites, the impact impact craters most in the vast majority of impact craters um, the object that makes the impact is completely vaporized in the process. So all of that kinetic energy from the thing hitting the surface goes into the surface itself and blasts that hole in the surface. So, yeah, there's nothing at the bottom. It's not like. It's not like if you take. If you take a marble and throw it into some a sandbox, you'll get something that looks like an impact crater and you can recover the marble. But this is a very different process. There's no marble at the bottom, there's no impactor at the bottom of it. That that produced it. It's, it was. It was vaporized in the process.
Speaker 7:Oh, very interesting. So you couldn't take a metal detector to find? Can you use a metal detector to find anything that might be an impact area and determine these things, and is that one of the possibilities?
Speaker 4:if you know these wand kind of things that they utilize, sure Well there is a case here in Alberta, near White Court, which is about a two hour drive northwest of where I am in Edmonton, where there is an actual impact crater, a small one, 36 meters across, six meters deep, that we discovered about 15, 18 years ago, and it's surrounded by fragments of the impactor, so it's of a size that, where the impactor didn't completely vaporize, now there's still no big mass underneath it, but the impactor, instead of vaporizing, blew itself to smithereens, to shrapnel, and so you can go to that area and with a metal detector and search in the woods all around it and up to a kilometer away it's quite remarkable and find these small shards of iron, nickel, metal, because that's the type of impactor that it was. And so that's a case where and that's the only one in Canada, in fact, of a handful in the world where you have both an impact crater and meteorites associated with it.
Speaker 7:Hmm, interesting. Yeah, I just find this all fascinating. So you briefly mentioned earlier, Chris, about finding and actually determining. How do you go about determining if you've actually found a meteorite?
Speaker 4:Well, we have a website, a meteorite reporting system at the U of A Even if you just Google that, you'd find it. System at the U of A even if you just Google that, you'd find it. Give some information there about what typical meteorites characteristics are. The biggest thing is that fusion crust on the outside, that dark crust that forms as a result of the rocks passage through the atmosphere, but that can be tricky to sort of identify to the untrained eye. So that's why we have a in the meteorite reporting system.
Speaker 4:We have a way for people to upload photos of their meteorite or their potential meteorite for myself or other, my students or whoever to look at to be able to see whether it's worth investigating in more detail. I will tell you that 99.9% of everything that's uploaded to that website is not a meteorite. There are a lot of rocks out there that look like it. They have the characteristics. But again, it's about. It's about having that trained eye looking at it and I can tell within seconds of looking at a well-focused photo of a rock whether it's a meteorite or not.
Speaker 7:So this fusion crust that you mentioned, does that appear to look like, say, slag from a mining operation?
Speaker 4:No, that's a thing. So you would think right that it's because it's molten, and that's again that's a misconception. That's the thing. So you would think right that it's because it's molten, and that's again that's a misconception. And oftentimes we get people sending in photos of slag because hey, you know, this looks like it was molten and you know it was. In the case of slag For meteorites it's the outside surface that gets heated up and so it's only the very outside surface.
Speaker 4:And because of that process of going through the atmosphere and breaking up and then the outside heating up, the molten material during a meteorite fireball actually gets carried away and the heat gets carried away. So these meteorites are not even hot when they land. The heat is all on the outside surface and the only telltale of it is this crust on the outside. Now, most meteorites have a sort of a grayish interior. The most common ones look a bit like concrete. So that's one clue. And oftentimes the fusion crust is broken off or flaked off in a spot or two, so you can kind of see the inside. But the outside is black with this crust and it looks like an eggshell. So think of a black eggshell around a grayish sort of rock on the. You know where it's exposed on the inside and that's the most likely thing that you'll see in common meteorites.
Speaker 7:So then it's like an eggshell is very smooth, this black exterior.
Speaker 4:It can be smooth, it can have dimples in it, which is another sort of result of how it ablates in the atmosphere. It has to sort of maybe look like thumb prints, you know, like a thumb where you push your thumb into some putty or something like that all over the surface. Um, yeah, um, if they're not. They don't typically tend to be round, really spherical. That's very unusual. So sometimes I get you know people sending me something said oh, this thing looks like it was completely smoothed and rounded in the atmosphere. That doesn't happen. They tend to be irregular, but sort of with the edges of the corners smoothed off.
Speaker 7:Interesting and just let people know. Is there a site that you can mention that people can go to verify it, or what's the quickest and easiest way through? I believe you have something in the university there.
Speaker 4:Just mention where that is. Yeah, that's right For sure. Our meteorite reporting system is easualbertaca, backslash MRS, which stands for meteorite reporting system, meteorites, uh, meteorites, university of Alberta, and you'll get our main website. That has lots of information there about what meteorites are and how we, how we identify them, et cetera.
Speaker 7:Okay, so. So if people actually find one, they they go through and they verify and all that. Is there a market for people to sell these kinds of things, or where do they go to do that same thing? Or just put it on Kijiji?
Speaker 4:Uh well, you know there's. There is a market, like I mentioned before. If it's found in Canada, there's rules that have to be followed if you want to export it to a buyer outside. There are meteorite dealers and collectors in Canada as well. But yeah, generally speaking, the first step is talking to an expert, having it identified as a meteorite, and then we go through the classification process. I do that on a fee-for-service basis to do the analyses that are required for it to be officially classified and named Right. And that's a process where the type specimen ends up in the universe of Alberta collection. In our case right, it's a, it's a specimen of 20 grams or 20%, whichever is less Right, a minimum basically preserved for science. And then we do an authoritative classification. We basically then get the analyses that we need to say, oh, this is a, this is a meteorite of a particular type, and then that's actually put forward to a committee the Meteorological Society committee has a naming committee that adjudicates these things and then it gets registered as an official meteorite.
Speaker 7:Okay, and so I imagine like a lot of things, because I know I worked with friends that donated stuff to the Royal Ontario Museum and their donations were for tax. What they did it for was for tax receipts. Is it the same sort of thing if somebody contributes or finds places like the your, where you're the curator of that, they do it, or do you just buy them, sort of thing?
Speaker 4:Yeah, no, that's actually, that's a. That's a great mechanism and in fact, because meteorites are cultural property in Canada, there's a process by which particularly valuable or significant meteorites can be certified as Canadian cultural property and then, if it's donated to an institution like ours or the ROM, which are so-called Category A institutions this is a technical term Heritage Canada but we can receive that and then the donor gets 100% of the value of the donation instead of the usual 20% Right, the 100% of the value of the donation for use against their taxes in the year of donation and up to five years afterwards. So in fact it's actually a win-win for everybody, because we don't have to come up with, let's say, the meteorite's worth $100,000. Because we don't have to come up with, you know, let's say, the meteorite's worth $100,000. We don't have to come up with $100,000 to pay somebody. The person actually gets that well, can potentially realize that money back on their taxes. You know, over several years, depending on their tax status, over several years can basically get that money back.
Speaker 7:Right, okay. So when these meteorites come in, chris, do they bring in potential problems like bacterias or viruses or problematic material when they're coming to Earth and contacting and spreading out from there?
Speaker 4:No, they don't, and we think that even you know, meteorites from Mars don't have the characteristics to even record that. There's a bias in the samples that we get from Mars because of that process by which they get ejected from Mars. So what you just said is something that we're really interested in, especially when it comes to Mars. We want to know whether life ever existed on Mars or exists on Mars today. And the meteorites themselves come from. They're all igneous rocks. They come from places like Tharsis and Elysium on Mars, where it's all igneous rocks. They come from places like Tharsis and Elysium on Mars, where it's all igneous material, where the things that the rocks that would preserve evidence of life, or ancient life in particular, are sedimentary rocks, and for that reason, we're collecting samples of sedimentary rocks and other rock types with the NASA Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover, which I'm a part of, where we get to choose, essentially, instead of nature choosing for us. We get to choose where we collect the samples and hopefully, those samples eventually come back to Earth through a series of future missions.
Speaker 7:Oh, interesting. This is more and more fascinating. And, chris, we briefly mentioned about the Ring of Fire in Ontario and we talked a bit about Sudbury. Can you elaborate on some of those? Well, not so much the Ring of Fire, because there's been a lot of research on it, but even Sudbury. I don't even think a lot of people realize that Sudbury was a potential or an impact location in the results of what happens in Sudbury. Can you go on and tell us a bit more about those?
Speaker 4:Sure, you put me a bit on the spot. That's not my main area of research, but I know that Sudbury was a large impact and what happened is it was large enough to melt a portion of the Earth's crust and then, essentially, then you have what's called an impact melt sheet, or essentially a magma body that's produced as a result of the impact melt sheet, or essentially a magma body that's produced as a result of the impact, and it's within that impact melt sheet that you separated out different components, including the mineralization that you see. That makes it a valuable economic resource today.
Speaker 7:Right? Well, I'm sorry about putting you on the spot, but quite frankly, you probably have more expertise about it than anybody else that I would know and be in contact with, so I figured it would might be a good question to ask, For sure. Well, I listen. I really appreciate you taking the time to enlighten us about meteors and meteorites and all the impacts and what happens with it, and maybe can you just kind of let us know how can people get in touch with you or find out more information, or where do they look? Is there books that you recommend? Or where is the research found that people can find out more information about your expertise?
Speaker 4:For sure. Yeah, we have a website, the University of Alberta. Again, you could just Google University of Alberta meteorites and it'll take you there and you'll find my information and a link to the meteorite reporting system. You can also look at the Meteoritical Society website, which is this main international society that deals with meteorites and impacts and all things of that sort, and there's lots of great information there. Yeah, very good.
Speaker 7:Well, chris, we really appreciate you and want to thank you for taking the time to enlighten us. I learned a heck of a lot of stuff here and I very much appreciate that because I found it very fascinating and I'm sure our listeners do. But this is just another way that we can learn about what's happening under the big canopy out there, that people gain some more understanding about all that, and I want to thank you again for being on the podcast.
Speaker 4:Thanks, Chris, you're welcome, my pleasure.
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