1kg meteorite piece found in Russian Urals, biggest chunk yet discovered

The fallen meteorite has turned into a cash cow in the Urals. Both experts and amateurs are aggressively searching the area for remnants, while entrepreneurs sell dozens of 'meteorite fragments' online, print t-shirts, guide tours and bake cookies. The biggest officially-confirmed fragment of the meteorite was found on Monday by a local ski expedition. "It weighs about a kilogram," Viktor Grokhovsky from the Urals University says, "We haven't precisely weighed it yet, since it needs to be conserved first so not to get acidified."Text



www.rt.com...

Wonder how much $$$ they're getting for these things?

reply to post by canucks555


In Russia there is now gold at the end of the rainbow. At hundreds per gram, this is good Siberian payday. You can see the fusion crust on it, and the little broken chip reveals a stony variety. Can't wait to see a sizable piece of this thing cross sectioned!

Make that thousands per gram...

$2,220
Price per gram of recovered fragments of the meteorite — 40 times the price of gold — according to Dmitry Kachkalin, a member of the Russian Society of Amateur Meteorite Lovers

theweek.com...

edit on 26-2-2013 by intrptr because: link

Holy crow! That's crazy!

I'll bet docs will be made about the meteorite search itself...

Here's a link to a meteorite that was found in Oslo, Norway. Hans Amundsen (NASA's expert on Mars meteorites) said that these type of meteorites typically value $5,000 NOK (about $877 USD per gram). The value of meteorite is size, of course, but composition - namely rare earth metal content. That's what he's looking for. He was also called in to analyze the Russian meteorite. All of them are being analyzed at the University of Oslo.

www.newsinenglish.no...

BTW, he is also the principal researcher that found "The Lost Continent of the Coast of Africa." Although it's been known about for a long time and first reported in 1996 by the BBC. I believe that he's looking for a rare earth mineral contents on the Kerguelen Plateau in order to mine mineral sands.

Too bad we cant recover and sell meteorites here. Would be fun hobby. By law anything that falls from the sky here belongs to the government

Originally posted by PsykoOps
Too bad we cant recover and sell meteorites here. Would be fun hobby. By law anything that falls from the sky here belongs to the government

Well that's a stupid law. How far "up" does that law reach into the sky? If you throw a soccer ball up into the air, does it become the governments as soon as it starts its way down? What if your wife jumps up a few inches, is she now the governments when she lands? And if they want to own all the meteorites in Finland, then anyone who has one should call it a stone age mortal and/or pistal and dare them to prove different.

It doesn't cover things that orginate from ground. Just stuff that falls.

So if that's the cause, sue the crap out of the government for any damages that occur due to their so called property

Originally posted by PsykoOps
It doesn't cover things that orginate from ground. Just stuff that falls.

I think it does actually, like say if its a piece of a russian or NK satelite that fell to earth, pretty sure there would a stream of black cars making their way to you before you got a chance to cash in...

reply to post by Trigger82


We dont really sue the crap out of anyone around here. Our legal system doesn't work like that.

reply to post by redshoes


We had discussion about this when that big satellite was re-entering last year. Afaik the concensus was that the property either belongs to Finnish government or whoever owned the satellite. Thing was that the satellite was considered "abandoned" by US so we never were sure.