Jilin

In 1976 a meteorite shower over north-east China included a single stone of about 1,770 kilograms – the largest stony meteorite ever seen to fall.

Key facts

Type

Ordinary chondrite (H5)

Fell or found

Fell (witnessed)

Year

1976 (8 March)

Country

China

Mass

about 4 tonnes in total; main mass about 1,770 kg

Official name

Jilin

On the afternoon of 8 March 1976, people in Jilin Province, in north-east China, saw a huge fireball sweep across the sky, followed by a series of thunderous booms. The meteoroid broke apart, and a shower of stones fell across a wide area of farmland near the city of Jilin. It was one of the most spectacular meteorite showers of the 20th century, and it produced the largest stony meteorite ever seen to fall.

A giant from the sky

The biggest stone struck the frozen ground with such force that it punched a hole several metres deep, throwing up a fountain of earth and causing the ground to shake. When it was dug out, it weighed about 1,770 kilograms. Iron meteorites much larger than this are known, but most of them were not seen to fall. Among stony meteorites seen to fall, the Jilin main mass is the heaviest single stone on record.

Around it, more than a hundred other stones were collected, ranging from small fragments to masses of more than 100 kilograms. Altogether, about 4 tonnes of meteorite were recovered, making Jilin one of the largest recorded falls of stony meteorites.

A rapid response

Chinese scientists and local people organised a large search effort. Many people took part in collecting and reporting fragments, and researchers mapped the strewn field, the area over which the fragments fell, which stretched for tens of kilometres. Because the fall was witnessed and the stones were collected so quickly, they were exceptionally fresh.

The main mass and other large specimens are displayed in a dedicated meteorite museum in Jilin City, where they remain a source of local pride and a popular attraction.

What it is

Jilin is an H5 ordinary chondrite. Ordinary chondrites are the most common meteorites seen to fall. The 'H' stands for high iron: H chondrites contain plenty of small grains of iron-nickel metal, which make them heavy for their size and attracted to a magnet. The number 5 means the rock was heated strongly inside its parent asteroid, enough to blur the outlines of its chondrules, the tiny rounded grains that are typical of chondrites.

A long journey through space

Scientists studied how cosmic rays had affected the Jilin stones. When a meteoroid is travelling through space as a body only a few metres across, cosmic rays penetrate its outer layers and create new kinds of atoms. By measuring them, researchers can tell how long it travelled through space and estimate how deep inside the original meteoroid each sample lay. Jilin's results revealed a complicated history: the evidence suggests that it spent a long time near the surface of a larger body before being broken off into a smaller meteoroid relatively recently, on a cosmic timescale, before reaching Earth.

The size of the stones and the area they covered also helped scientists estimate how large the meteoroid was before it entered the atmosphere.

Why it matters

The Jilin fall was a major scientific event. It provided a huge amount of fresh material for study, it demonstrated the power of even a stony meteoroid when a large piece survives to the ground, and it showed how valuable it is when communities quickly report and collect fallen stones.

It also serves as a gentle reminder of scale. Each year, many meteoroids enter Earth's atmosphere, but very few produce stones as large as Jilin's. When they do, the results can be dramatic, yet in Jilin's case nobody was injured.

If you visit the museum in Jilin City, you can stand beside a single stone that weighs as much as a small car and that, not long ago, was hurtling through space.

Did you know?

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Jilin in the catalogue