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Divers In Russia Dredge Up A Half-Ton Chunk Of Meteorite

People look at what scientists believe to be a chunk of the Chelyabinsk meteor, recovered from Chebarkul Lake near Chelyabinsk, about 930 miles east of Moscow.
Alexander Firsov
/
AP
People look at what scientists believe to be a chunk of the Chelyabinsk meteor, recovered from Chebarkul Lake near Chelyabinsk, about 930 miles east of Moscow.

Remember that bus-sized meteor that stunned thousands and injured hundreds across Russia when it entered the atmosphere and produced a massive shockwave last February?

Well what survived the incredible temperatures came crashing into Lake Chebarkul in central Russia, and today, divers dredged up a 1,255-pound chunk.

The BBC reports:

"Live footage showed a team pull out a 1.5-metre-long (five-foot-long) rock from the lake after first wrapping it in a special covering and placing it on a metal sheet while it was still underwater.

"The fragment was then pulled ashore and placed on top of a scale for weighing, an operation that quickly went wrong.

"The rock broke up into at least three large pieces as it was lifted from the ground with the help of levers and ropes.

"Then the scale itself broke, the moment it hit the 570kg (1,255lb) mark."

It may take awhile for the rock to be certified as coming from space, but the curator of meteorites at London's Natural History Museum tells the BBC the rock has all the markings of a meteorite.

RIA Novosti, the official state news agency of Russia, quotes Viktor Grokhovsky, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences' meteorite commission, which examined other fragments, as saying: "It's a typical meteorite, judging by its appearance — [I'm] 105 percent [sure]. There's no doubt about that, [it has] a thick melted crust, while dents reveal typical structures of the Chelyabinsk meteorite."

Here's a video report via the BBC:

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Eyder Peralta is NPR's East Africa correspondent based in Nairobi, Kenya.

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The independent journalism and non-commercial programming you rely on every day is in danger.

If you’re reading this, you believe in trusted journalism and in learning without paywalls. You value access to educational content kids love and enriching cultural programming.

Now all of that is at risk.

Federal funding for public media is under threat and if it goes, the impact to our communities will be devastating.

Together, we can defend it. It’s time to protect what matters.

Your voice has protected public media before. Now, it’s needed again. Learn how you can protect the news and programming you depend on.