A search team arrives at the frozen Lake Chabarkul in the Chelyabinsk region of central Russia on Saturday to look for fragments of a meteorite that hit Friday and injured more than 1,000 people. Adam Brauner reports.
RUSSIAN scientists said they had discovered over 50 fragments of the meteor that struck the Urals last week, creating a shockwave that injured 1200 people and damaged thousands of homes.
The giant piece of space rock streaked spectacularly over the central Russian city of Chelyabinsk on Friday before exploding with the force of 30 of the nuclear bombs dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima during World War II.
There was initial disappointment when Russian emergency ministry workers who scoured a lake where at least some of the fragments were believed to have fallen were unable to find anything in their initial search over the weekend.
But members of the Russian Academy of Sciences who conducted chemical tests on some unusual rock formations they found on Sunday said the pieces had come from outer space.
"We confirm that the particles of a substance found by our expedition near Lake Chebarkul really do have the composition of a meteorite," RIA Novosti quoted Russian Academy of Sciences member Viktor Grokhovsky.
Mr Grokhovsky's Urals Federal University separately posted a statement on its website that featured a photograph of a person holding a tiny piece of a black shiny rock between his index finger and thumb.
A Urals Federal University scientist examines pieces of porous black rock, reportedly fragments of the meteor that spectacularly plunged over Russia's Ural Mountains. Picture: AFP/Ural Federal University/ Alexander Khlopotov
"This meteorite belongs to the class of regular chondrites," the university statement said, referring to specific term for a meteorite that contains small mineral granules.
Mr Grokhovsky said the rock in question - one of a set of 53 that measure no more than a couple of centimetres (less than an inch) in length - was composed in part of iron as well as chrysolite and sulfite.
The meteor's shockwave blew out the windows of nearly 5000 buildings and left 40 people - including three children - still recovering in hospital Sunday with cuts and more serious injuries.
About 24,000 emergency workers and volunteers spent the weekend replacing smashed windows in time for the resumption of school classes and work on Monday.
"The southern Urals are gradually returning to the usual rhythm of things," Chelyabinsk region governor Mikhail Yurevich said in a statement that announced the opening of the region's elementary schools.
A circular hole in the ice of Chebarkul Lake where a meteor reportedly struck. (AP Photo)
But the elusive meteorites - meteor fragments that have hit Earth - have generated almost as much attention as the enormous repair and restoration work.
Russian space debris hunters have posted ads on websites offering as much as 300,000 rubles ($9,700) for an authentic piece of the latest space rock to hit the planet.
Chelyabinsk authorities responded by cordoning off the area around the lake and not allowing any media or independent researchers hunting for meteorites near the hole that developed in its thick sheet of ice.
The region's police said they were also investigating reports that some people have put up advertisements for the sale of space fragments that were essentially guaranteed to be fakes.
Mr Grokhovsky said the tiny rocks and the others like it were found by his team in the snow not far away from the lake.
He also expressed confidence that a much larger meteorite was buried in its waters despite claims from the authorities that it was empty.
"Since we found the fragments - traces of the upper layers of the meteorite - that means that its main mass is resting in the lake," he told the Interfax news agency on Monday.
Mr Grokhovsky added that his research team had not been commissioned by the Russian government but was acting on its own because the event was so rare and required immediate inspection.
"We decided to do this on our own," he told Interfax. "I simply could not stand idly by."
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Russian authorities estimate the meteor that exploded in the sky caused more than $29.12 million in damage.
Russian authorities estimate the meteor that exploded in the sky over the Ural Mountains region caused more than $US30 million ($29.12 million) in damage.
"Around 100,000 homeowners were affected (by Friday's incident). The damage is estimated at more than 1 billion rubles ($US30 million)," the governor of the central Russian region of Chelyabinsk, Mikhail Yurevich, said at a press conference.
The meteor explosion appears to be one of the most stunning cosmic events above Russia since the 1908 Tunguska Event in which a massive blast most scientists blame on an asteroid or a comet ripped through Siberia.
Scientists at the US space agency NASA estimated that the amount of energy released in the atmosphere was about 30 times greater than the force of the nuclear bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima during World War II.
``We would expect an event of this magnitude to occur once every 100 years on average,'' said Paul Chodas of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office.
"When you have a fireball of this size we would expect a large number of meteorites to reach the surface and in this case there were probably some large ones,'' he said in a statement published on the NASA website.
A plunging meteor which exploded above central Russia has hurt almost 1000 people.
The drama in Russia developed just hours before an asteroid - a space object similar to a tiny planet orbiting the sun - whizzed safely past Earth at the unprecedented distance of 27,000km.
That put it closer to the ground then some distant satellites and sent off alarm bells ringing in some Russian circles about this being the time for joint global action on the space safety front.
"Instead of fighting on Earth, people should be creating a joint system of asteroid defence,'' the Russian parliament's foreign affairs committee chief Alexei Pushkov wrote on his Twitter account late Friday.
"Instead of creating a (military) European space defence system, the United States should join us and China in creating the AADS - the Anti-Asteroid Defence System,'' the close ally of President Vladimir Putin wrote.
The US space agency said the 2012 DA 14 asteroid's passing was "the closest-ever predicted approach to Earth for an object this large.''
The meteor is seen over Chelyabinsk in Russia's Ural Mountains. (AP Photo/Chelyabinsk.ru)
NASA estimates that a smallish asteroid such as the 2012 DA 14 flies close to Earth every 40 years on average while only hitting the planet once every 1200 years.
The meteor just before it exploded above the Chelyabinsk region in Russia, breaking windows and causing injuries.
A local shop that was damaged by a shockwave from a meteor in the Urals city of Chelyabinsk. Picture: AFP/74.RU/Oleg Kargopolov
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