The Jilin Shower: A Mass Budget in Which the Recovered Stones Rival the Incoming Body

This paper computes a complete entry budget for the Jilin meteorite shower, working only from published values and stated assumptions. The nominal body has a diameter of 1.4 metres at a bulk density of 3.40e+03 kilograms per cubic metre, giving an incoming mass of 4.88 tonnes. At the published entry speed of 12 kilometres per second its kinetic energy is 0.0841 kilotonnes of TNT equivalent. At the characteristic altitude of 17 kilometres the exponential atmosphere has a density of 0.116 kilograms per cubic metre, the ram pressure on the body is 16.6 megapascals, the stagnation heating flux is 9.98e+04 megawatts per square metre, and the aerodynamic deceleration is 534 times terrestrial gravity. The ram pressure first reaches representative material strengths at computed altitudes of 53.8, 37.2 and 25.7 kilometres for the weakest, intermediate and strongest cases examined. The recovered material, the largest recovered stone of the shower, amounts to 4.00e+03 kilograms, which is 81.9 percent of the computed incoming mass. The largest recovered piece, at 1.77e+03 kilograms, has a characteristic diameter of 99.8 centimetres, a terminal velocity of 278 metres per second, a fall time of 36 seconds from the end of the luminous path at 10 kilometres, and a wind drift of 360 metres under a representative wind. Over the mapped strewn area of 72 square kilometres, the recovered mass corresponds to 55.6 kilograms per square kilometre. The fragment census gives a mean collected mass of 29 kilograms per fragment. The largest stone, at 1.77e+03 kilograms, carries 44.2 percent of the recovered total. All values are computed by the deposited program from the stated inputs; scenario calculations accompany every headline figure so that the sensitivity of each conclusion to its inputs is visible in the same record.