"Zunhua" China

Fell April 12, 2008 at ~ 4:50 PM.

Zunhua City, Hebei province

(Chondrite?)

Total estimated fall, one stone ~4 kilos.

At 4:50 pm, a bright fireball was seen around Zunhua city, in Hebei province. A single stone crashed through the roof of a farmhouse near the Royal tombs of the Qing Dynasty. The stone penetrated the clay tile rooftop, then crashed through a plaster ceiling reinforced with wooden slats. The stone shattered upon hitting a stone floor and showered the whole room with fragments, damaging a window, a mirror, and a wooden bed frame.

The terrified homeowner a woman, was in another room when this happened. She ran to the room and saw stone pieces resembling cement all over the room which was filled with dust in the air. She called the police, who were already getting reports of the falling ball of fire over the city. They came, took many pieces and contacted government scientists, who came and took nearly all of the meteorite pieces, and informed the woman to protect the roof damage. She kept some of the fragments back and sold some to a few people who came to see the damage.

This story was all over Chinese news, TV and print, and made a big splash. I was in Argentina when Hanno Strufe from Germany called me and told be about the event. He heard about it first and made me aware. Because I was in Argentina, I contacted a source of mine in China, and he was already aware and heading toward the area. Despite searches of the surrounding area, no other pieces have been reported.

He managed to get 62 grams of fragments from the homeowner and those are on their way to me right now. Some of these photos are from Hanno Strufe's source in China and others are from my own guy there.

This is the first public announcement of this new "hammer stone" meteorite fall.
 

This is the large hole the meteorite made in passing through the rooftop.

 

This photo shows the outside of the house, and the damage to the tile rooftop. The stone seemed to be falling vertical and just cut a perfect hole through the roof.

 

This is a close-up shot of the hole. It is amazing how perfectly this meteorite cut through this multi-layer rooftop. Imagine if people had been under that, we would have the first "man killer" meteorite. It is just a matter of time.

 

This photo shows close-up photo of a 10.7 gram fragment of the meteorite. It appears to be a fragile chondrite with thick fusion crust. It is clearly a dual-lithologies brecciated meteorite.