Russians race to find precious meteor fragments

Monday 18 February 2013 13.30
One amateur space enthusiast estimated chunks could be worth anything up to €1,642 per gram


Friday's blast and ensuing shockwave shattered windows, injured almost 1,200 people and caused about €25m worth of damage, said local authorities.

It also started a "meteorite rush" around the industrial city of Chelyabinsk, 1,500km east of Moscow, where groups of people have started combing through the snow and ice.

One amateur space enthusiast estimated chunks could be worth anything up to €1,642 per gram - more than 40 times the current cost of gold.


Meteorites are parts of a meteor that have fallen to earth.


The fragments were only 0.5cm to 1cm across, but the scientists said larger pieces may have crashed into the lake, where a crater in the ice about 8m wide opened up after Friday's explosion.


"These are classified as ordinary chondrites, or stony meteorites, with an iron content of about 10%," he told RIA news agency.

He did not say whether the fragments had told his team anything about the origins of the meteor, which US space agency NASA estimated was 17m across before entering Earth's atmosphere.

Nasa estimated it weighed about 10,000 tons.

The main fireball streaked across the sky at a speed of about 30km per second, according to Russian space agency Roscosmos, before crashing into the snowy wastes.




"I will keep it. Why sell it? I didn't have a rich lifestyle before, so why start now?" a woman in a pink woollen hat and winter jacket, clutching a small black pebble, told state television Rossiya-24.

The internet filled quickly with advertisements from eager hunters hoping to sell what they said were meteorites - some for as little as 1,000 roubles.

The authenticity of the items was difficult to ascertain.

One seller of a large, silver-hued rock wrote in an advertisement on the portal "Selling an unusual rock. It may be a piece of meteorite, it may be a bit of a UFO, it may be a piece of a rocket!"

Keywords: meteor, russia
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