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Iron meteorite, coarse octahedrite – IIAB
Maritime Territory, Siberia, Russia
97 mm x 39 mm x 37 mm
197 grams
The Sikhote-Alin meteorite shower is among the largest since the dawn of civilization.
320 million years ago an iron mass from the core of an asteroid broke away from a larger mass and roamed interplanetary space at a cosmic velocity of nearly ten miles a second until it encountered far-Eastern Siberia at 10:30 AM on February 12, 1947. First, there was a fireball brighter than the Sun—i.e., it created moving shadows in broad daylight. And then sonic booms were heard hundreds of kilometers away. As a result of the pressure generated when impacting Earth’s atmosphere, small individual meteorites broke off a large mass. A massive chunk continued earthward, and when it was only six kilometers above Earth’s surface it exploded into thousands of pieces of shrapnel. The pressure wave from this explosion uprooted trees, shattered windows and crumbled chimneys. Many of the larger fragments produced impact craters and hundreds were catalogued with the largest being 26 meters in diameter. Gratefully, there were few inhabitants in this region of far-Eastern Siberia, but those who witnessed the foregoing were terrified and went on record as having believed the world was coming to an end.
As referenced above, there are two types of Sikhote-Alin meteorites: shrapnel-shaped specimens from the low altitude airburst and the 'complete individual' meteorites which broke apart in the highest reaches of Earth’s atmosphere. This specimen is an enthralling example of a rare hybrid specimen. One side of this meteorite reveals very large regmaglypts (thumbprint-like artifacts which result from frictional heating while penetrating Earth’s atmosphere), while the other side evidences metallic crystalline lathes which were revealed when the larger mass exploded apart in the atmosphere.
Needless to say, when a meteorite is torn apart, only a small fraction of the specimens will feature some exterior surface area and this is one such example. This particular specimen was not from the massive low altitude explosion previously mentioned, as evidenced by additional melting and smoothing of the lathes; clearly this re-melting lasted for only a very brief period of time just before this meteorite hit terminal velocity. Its appearance also implies this meteorite was not from a mass that broke up in the highest reaches of the atmosphere, as it would have been covered in regmaglypts. The large regmaglypts seen, however, reveal that it indeed originates from a large mass.
Sikhote Alin meteorites with such a range of characteristics are most sought-after, and this is a superb example—the result of a cataclysmic event frozen in time from one of the greatest meteorite showers of modern times.
From the Macovich Collection of Meteorites, New York City.
