Topic summary

Chondrites

Chondrites

Extracted from the Wikipedia article Chondrite.

Chondrites can be distinguished from iron meteorites by their low iron and nickel content. Non-metallic meteorites that lack chondrules are achondrites, which are believed to have formed more recently than chondrites. There are currently over 27,000 chondrites in the world's collections. The largest individual stone ever recovered, weighing 1770 kg, was part of the Jilin meteorite shower of 1976. Chondrite falls range from single stones to extraordinary showers consisting of thousands of individual stones. An instance of the latter occurred in the Holbrook fall of 1912, in which an estimated 14,000 stones were grounded in northern Arizona.