Russian Chelyabinsk Meteorite Pulled From Lake Chebarkul

A half-tonne chunk of the meteorite that spectacularly descended on Russia earlier this year has been recovered from the bottom of Lake Chebarkul in central Russia.

One February 15th this year, a huge 10,000 tonne meteorite exploded in the sky above central Russia, an incident so powerful that the resulting shockwave broke windows, rocked building and even destroyed a factory, all total around 1000 people were injured.

Despite the injuries, the meteorite put on an impressive light show, with one of the clearest fireballs caught in video in recent memory and scientists have been working hard to recover as much of the material from the meteorite as possible, this chunk from the lake is known to be the biggest and the recovery has proved more than difficult given that it was at the bottom of an often frozen lake.

The 1.5 meter rock was wrapped in a special covering and put on a metal sheet while it was underwater. It was found at a depth of 13 meters, not 6-8 meters are originally thought, it was pulled ashore before the rock broke into three pieces, then the scales used the weigh the rock broke, only adding to the troubles of the day.

Sergey Zamozdra, an associate professor at Chelyabinsk State University, told the Interfax news agency: “The preliminary examination… shows that this is really a fraction of the Chelyabinsk meteorite. This chunk is most probably one of the top 10 biggest meteorite fragments ever found.”

Thank you BBC for providing us with this information.

Image courtesy of BBC.