News article about the fall of the Juancheng meteorite. This translation was provided by Jim Hurley, who writes, "The following is a loose translation of the essential parts of this newspaper article. A few small liberties were taken in the translation to make it more colloquial in English. My wife was born in Canton, China - she did the translation and I did the editing. We didn't translate everything, some parts didn't seem that interesting."

A small amount of editing was also done by the Editor of the Meteoritical Bulletin.

Meteor Shower over Juancheng

In the late evening of 2/15/97, people were awakened by a loud noise and a bright light across the dark sky. They thought it was an earthquake. [Translator: there had been earthquakes before in this area.]

The Heze district seismic chief and his assistants quickly checked all readings but found no signs of an earthquake. Gathering reports from the surrounding 15 000 square km they concluded that it was not an earthquake but some other natural phenomenon. They formed a three-man crew to investigate.

They had a rough idea of the area from sightings: North of Heze, SW of Yuancheng, W or S of Juancheng.

They ran into an old farmer at Juancheng who told them about the rocks that fell from the sky the last night and showed them the location.

The villagers there witnessed a bunch of bright lights strike down from the sky for about 1 minute. They heard a roaring sound for 2 to 3 minutes, then burning [sic] rocks fell like hail.

The rocks were smooth with thin black crust and thumb prints. Inside, the rocks were light or dark gray in color. They found the largest stone, 2.7 kg, and small ones the size of peanuts. They proved it was a classic meteor shower at Juancheng province.

The meteor shower news broke out immediately. All broadcasting stations reported about it. It was the fifth recorded meteor shower since the founding of the PRC (1911). The other 4 were: Shuangyang province, Jilin; Jilin City, Jilin; Changde, Hunan; Suizhou, Hubei. (The one in Jilin city on 3/8/76 was the most significant).

Wang Si-Chao, member of the international Meteoritical Society's nomenclature committee, came from Nanjing to Juancheng on 2/19/97 after he learned the news. He believed it travelled from E to W, was originally about 0.5 km in diameter, and entered the atmosphere at 200 km/sec. It exploded twice in the atmosphere, first over the town of Si-Shuang-Mau. In that area all the meteorites were small, peanut-sized, and plentiful. The meteor continued and exploded the second time over Deng-Kau. In that area the meteorites found were much larger - 200 to 300 g. The entire strewn field is approximately 5 km long (E to W) and 3 km wide (N to S).

Meteor showers are natural phenomena. China has been able to trace about 360 meteor hits on its territory in the last 3,000 years.

Meteoroids travel in the solar system, fall into the atmosphere with very high speed, and at a temperature of 1,000 to 2,000 K. The outside melts creating the bright light from atmospheric friction. They create a vacuum behind them which makes a roaring sound.

The uneven surface of the meteorite struck by the air flow and high temperature causes it to explode, usually about 20 km above the ground.

Wang said that meteorite study helps to understand the structure of the earth, the origins of life, and how to avoid future collisions, etc.

Wang asked the public not to collect or keep the meteorites because they belong to the Chinese government. He reminded everyone that all meteorites contain certain amounts of radiation, though weak, and that one should not keep them close to the body.

There were no injuries from the fall, although one person's tiled roof was cracked. People should not worry about the meteor falls, but they should not go unrecognized. Since 1994, meteor falls have increased. The US built many observatories to watch and calculate their entry in our atmosphere.