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ChinaScience

Asteroid’s ‘unique trajectory’ created world’s longest meteorite field in China

  • Aletai likely entered atmosphere at a low angle and followed a path like a stone skipping across a lake, according to international team of scientists
  • It is not known when the iron meteor shower took place, but fragments are scattered across a vast expanse of more than 400km in the Xinjiang region

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The largest Aletai meteorite weighs 28 tonnes and was found by a farmer in 1898. More have been found in the area in recent years. Photo: Handout
Ling Xin
When an asteroid entered the Earth’s atmosphere – probably long ago – above what is today’s Altay area of Xinjiang, in the far west of China, the thermal shock ripped it apart and created one of the world’s biggest iron meteor showers.

Fragments – some weighing 20 tonnes and some just tens of kilograms – were scattered across a vast expanse that spans some 430km (267 miles), the longest known meteorite field. It was unlike anything scientists had seen before; meteorites from the same “parent body” usually end up no more than 30km to 40km apart.

Using numerical modelling, an international team of scientists have now found that the asteroid – known as Aletai, the Mandarin name for the area – probably entered the atmosphere at a low angle and followed a path like a stone skipping across a lake before hitting the ground.

They reported their findings in the journal Science Advances last week.

Sites where the Aletai meteorites have been found in China’s Xinjiang region. Photo: Handout
Sites where the Aletai meteorites have been found in China’s Xinjiang region. Photo: Handout

“It’s the first time such a unique trajectory has been identified,” said Thomas Smith from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, who was not involved in the research.

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