By the beginning of 1951, the Russians had sent three more expeditions to the site of the Ussuri fall. Their scientists found, in all, 122 craters (the largest more than 80 feet in diameter) as well as numerous funnels resulting from the penetration of smaller meteorites into the earth. By means of both visual and instrumental searches, they also recovered 20,000 meteoritic fragments and individual meteorites. The smallest Ussuri specimens weighed no more than the thousandth part of a gram. (There are 453.59 grams in a pound.) Some of these tiny masses were found lying cupped in leaves. The largest individual meteorite recovered weighed about 3,839 pounds. Altogether, approximately 23 tons of meteoritic material from the Ussuri fall are now in the collection of the Meteorite Committee of the Academy of Sciences, Moscow, while another 47 tons are believed to still be buried in the Ussuri crater field.
COURTESY OF E. L. KRINOV An individual Ussuri meteorite with fusion crust and characteristic surface sculpturing produced during high-speed flight through the resisting atmosphere.
The Russian scientists carefully mapped the locations of the individual craters, penetration funnels, and meteorite recoveries. They made geologic and magnetometric surveys of the crater field, took aerial photographs of the entire area of fall, and prepared a documentary motion-picture covering the activities of the various expeditions. The area of the crater field has been set aside by the Russian government as a sort of scientific preserve, and is being made into the equivalent of what is termed a National Monument in the U.S.A. Several of the typical craters are protected by overroofed shelters to preserve these features for generations yet to come.
2. A METEORITE FALLS IN THE WHEATLAND, U.S.A.
February 18, 1948, had been a pleasant day in northwestern Kansas and as the supper hour approached, the sky remained blue and cloudless. Shortly before 5:00 p.m., a few people were still out of doors. An eleven-year old girl was hanging up the last of the family wash on a high clothesline. In the late afternoon sunshine, a woman and her son were enjoying a walk around the back yard of their home on a large Kansas ranch. Outside his house, a ten-year old boy was playing basketball with friends. A veteran of World War II was loading fodder in a silo. In the feedlot of his ranch, a farmer was stacking hay. A filling station attendant was working outside at the pumps, grateful for a spell of milder winter weather.
Without warning, a large and very bright fireball streaked across the clear sky from southwest to northeast. Ominous-looking white smoke-clouds mushroomed up from points in the fireball’s path. Shortly after the fireball disappeared, loud explosions and rumbling sounds drove thousands of people out into the open. The whole astonishing luminous display was over in a few seconds, but the strange clouds and the frightening sounds that followed the fireball’s passage continued much longer.
Although startled by the brilliant fireball and the strange thundering noises, the young girl, whose face had been turned skyward as she hung up the clothes, noted very carefully where she had seen the fireball disappear behind the tallest building in her home town. (Her sighting was later of great value to field parties from the Institute of Meteoritics of the University of New Mexico.)
The woman and her son were amazed to see an angry, boiling white cloud tinged with red developing overhead in the blue sky and to hear strange whizzing noises in the air around them.
The boy playing basketball heard a peculiar whistling or hissing noise just as he was ready to shoot a basket and, on looking up, saw the ball of fire slanting earthward. (This boy’s report was of particular interest, since it related to an unusual type of “sound” that travels at the speed of light rather than at the velocity of ordinary soundwaves.)