The Fall:

• In 1947, a flaming fireball - trailed by a huge, multicolored plume of smoke and described by one witness as "as large as the sun" - streaked across the sky. The  ground along its path shook, windows rattled, and a huge explosion followed by a thunderlike sound was heard for miles around.

Locality:

• Eastern Siberia. Within days, a total of 132 craters and smaller pits created by the explosion of the fireball were discovered in the Sikhote-Alin mountains, with the largest being about 85 feet in diameter and 20 feet deep.

It's Special:

• What makes Sikhote-Alin meteorite so special is that it produced craters whose cause was known beyond the shadow of a doubt. The fall convinced a largely skeptical world that craters could indeed be created by meteorites - a hypothesis which had been proven only by indirect evidence up until that point.
• Study of the craters allowed scientists to understand far better what happens when a large meteorite slams into the Earth. For instance, they discovered that it is only smaller meteorites that survive their landings intact - the force of the collision is so great that larger bodies splinter into fragments immediately upon impact.

home  I  site map  I  contact us