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3 Ton Meteorite Stolen
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Mon Aug 13, 2007 11:53 AM
from the now-in-frat-boys-basement dept.
from the now-in-frat-boys-basement dept.
morpheus83 writes "Russian news agency Interfax is reporting that thieves have stolen a three-ton meteorite from the yard of the Tunguska Space Event foundation, whose director said it was the part of meteor that caused a massive explosion in Siberia in 1908. The massive three tonne rock was bought to Krasnoyarsk after an 2004 expedition to the site of the so-called Tunguska event- a mysterious mid air explosion over Siberia in 1908 was 1,000 times more powerful than the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. The foundation's director Yury Lavbin claimed to have discovered the wreckage of an alien spacecraft during the expedition."
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I am thinkink.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I am thinkink.... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:I am thinkink.... (Score:5, Funny)
Look, I know he's Slashdot's favorite whipping boy, but would it be possible to leave Ballmer out of just one discussion!?
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Re:I am thinkink.... (Score:4, Funny)
Nope. Not Ballmer. My money's on Karl Rove. This rock of kryptonite dissappears and he resigns? Well, isn't that con-VEEEEEEEEEEEn-ient? His reason of "spending more time with my family" rings completely hollow, as one has to have a soul to enjoy family, and according to Wikipedia, Rove sold his in a deal to get a SECOND term for GWB. More likely, he's going to be using it in a plot to taint consumer products to cause tree huggers, gays, strict constitutionalists, and other riff raff to keel over. My spidey senses tell me so.
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Re:one prime (bald) suspect... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:I am thinkink.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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How? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How? (Score:5, Funny)
About 15 ft up, It was about 7 to 8ft long and weighed probably near 1000 pounds with the mount. Steel cables attaching it to the building amongst other things.
One Sunday, a few guys showed up with a cherry picker and somehow detached, lowered it and carted it off. More than a few people saw it, but people just assumed they must be ok to cart it off, because who would steal a giant wooden alligator in the middle of the day?
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:How? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, good grief, I'll just let the mispelling be the joke in and of itself...
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Wreckage (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Please, end the meme (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, except maybe "I, for one, welcome our new asteroid stealing overlords from Soviet Russia."
Re:Please, end the meme (Score:5, Funny)
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what (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Unsolved? (Score:5, Funny)
My current understanding of the Tunguska event was that there were still at least three really good potential theories and that they were still researching. Asteroid, meteorite, etc.
Anyway, glad to see the Aliens got their rock back. No tin-foil-hat-wearing clown should own Alien property. If my car parks on an ant hill, the ants suddenly don't own my car. And this guy had no right to "own" that rock. This guy has got to get a clue regarding species relations.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Unsolved? (Score:4, Informative)
Apparently their idea is a large stony or iron object was the cause of the blast, but part of it made a big divot in the landscape downrange. Because of the nature of the ground, it didn't look like a crater, more like someone sticking a broom handle in the mud. (Cracks and a hole, not ejecta, rim and round hole.) I think the link came from Slashdot or Fark.
But, based on surveys of the rest of the area looking for stony or iron debris have not found much.
So I call "Typical Russian BS" on this as well.
It would be a HUGE discovery to have pegged the event with some physical remains, that's a popular subject amongst science-geeks, conspiracy theorists and Slashdot.
For something to have been sitting in a museum (not studied?!) for three years and not noticed makes this look like insurance fraud more than anything else.
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Re:Unsolved? (Score:4, Informative)
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Yes, I have a response (Score:3, Funny)
Sought for questioning (Score:5, Funny)
Cry Wolf? (Score:2)
It's not like you can stick it in your pocket and walk away, even if you are that Russian boxer dude that killed Apollo Creed......
The foundation's director Yury Lavbin claimed to have discovered the wreckage of an alien spacecraft during the expedition.
And the article goes on to say that it just disappeared. (I'm not clear if it was the spaceship or the rock..... or maybe the rock was the spaceship....) Damn, and we were so close to proving the Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith are real.......
Tunguska Event (Score:3, Informative)
Obvious (Score:3, Funny)
I can't believe such an obvious answer hasn't been expressed yet.
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(This is funny, I promise.)
BadAstronomy has covered it already... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/08/12/thi
Re:BadAstronomy has covered it already... (Score:5, Informative)
Covered? The "coverage" consists of:
I don't think that's particularly good coverage
Anyway, here is a 2004 story from what looks to be a reputable science website [physorg.com] on the discovery of the meteorite, with photo
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Re:BadAstronomy has covered it already... (Score:5, Informative)
2. Ok, Russian is my native language, so I searched for this 'foundation'. Here is the original news: http://www.radiomayak.ru/tvp.html?id=87757&cid= [radiomayak.ru]
This foundation is called 'Fond Tungusskogo Kosmicheskogo Fenomena' in Russian. So I've searched information about it in the most popular Russian search engine (it understands Russian morphology and works much better than Google): http://www.yandex.ru/yandsearch?text=%D2%F3%ED%E3
This is the report about the initial "discovery" of this stone: http://www.membrana.ru/articles/misinterpretation
One of the first entries: http://www.newslab.ru/news/174070/print [newslab.ru] - basically, this "foundation" was being kicked out of a museum.
After that, there was exactly ZERO publications in reliable magazines about this discovery. For me, this smells of pseudoscience.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
See, already we've got more coverage than this badastronomy site. Good stuff.
And as for this well known "fact", it's a fact provided you discount this 2004 supposed meteorite find. So using this "fact" to in turn discredit the find is circular.
Re:BadAstronomy has covered it already... (Score:4, Informative)
Covered? The "coverage" consists of:
I don't think that's particularly good coverage
Anyway, here is a 2004 story from what looks to be a reputable science website [physorg.com] on the discovery of the meteorite, with photo
If the Bad Astronomer is not good enough for you, how about articles from Space.com [space.com] and MSNBC [msn.com] which were written in August 2004, when the foundation claimed to have found the alien spacecraft parts. Neither article gives much credence to the claim that the team's claimed dicovery. The foundation said at the time that they would be providing evidence (the recovered "spacecraft parts") but 3 years later they have yet to do so. The Bad Astronomer did not write a lengthy article because any rational being already knows that this foundation is full of shit. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and they have provided none.
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Re:BadAstronomy has covered it already... (Score:4, Informative)
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Useless (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah right. (Score:3, Insightful)
And now, almost a 100 years later, we suddenly get to hear that they lost a 3 ton meteor (how the hell do you lose a 3 ton rock?) and oh yeah, btw, that was the meteor that caused the incident!....
No worries, we had it lying in our backyard all the time, never felt a urge or saw the reason to let the rest of the world know....
Yeah, right.
It's the ooze, stupid (Score:3, Funny)
Wait a second, it's all so much clearer now.
Obviously, Yury didn't bring the alien ship back because he himself is possessed, and the alien-Yury decided it would be much smarter to bring the meteorite back and tell a few oligarchs that it was filled with oil! Yes! So they go and steal it for their own ends, but they'll all get possessed, and the black ooze will be walking in the corridors of Russian power. And all this when there is talk of a new Cold War developing with the West.
Coincidence? I think not.
The joke's on us (Score:5, Funny)
The problem is (Score:3, Interesting)
They haven't recovered anything from that blast, let alone a 3 ton meteorite.
Why you chain up your $500Million lawn ornament (Score:5, Interesting)
Martian Meteorites have sold for $85k/ounce [spacetoday.org], and this source [redsofts.com] claims $3600/troy ounce for more garden variety space rocks. This is more valuable than gold, platinum, maybe comparable to Rhodium.
So, (3tonnes = 128,602.986troy ounces)*$3600/ounce = $467 Million, just sitting around in your backyard. No chain, or Kryptonite lock, or even post-it note saying "please don't steal." Just asking for trouble from the neighbor kids, they were.
Have they checked Ebay? (Score:5, Funny)
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I did. Nothing yet. Chopped up into little ebay sized pieces, that would be a lot of lots of Tunguska meteorite. Perhaps they're hacking it up even now. Though the question would be how would one know it was authentic? I guess it would be one of those things where they provide a 'certificate of authenticity' to guarantee it...
Just had an idea. Time to fire up the old printer.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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HOW? (Score:5, Funny)
You have to understand Russian culture.
The expedition was under pressure from the government to produce its quota of evidence.
When they could only find a few kilograms of meteor material, they forged a report stating that they had a 3-ton meteor (step 1). Then they bribed the right inspectors to confirm the existance of said meteor (step 2). Later, they realized that they could purchase property theft insurance from U.S. insurance companies (step 3). They then reported the meteor missing and filed a claim with Travelers (step 4).
Step 5? PROFIT!
It wasn't stolen... (Score:4, Funny)
It's still on his desk, right where he left it (Score:3, Funny)
According to this [spacedaily.com] article, the meteorite went missing last June, but they only reported it now. HELLO? It's still on Lavbin's desk, right where he left it, but his desk is actually MORE MESSY than mine.
Mirror! (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Not to be picky, but its probably fairly smooth, due to the melting going through the atmosphere. Admittedly I haven't seen a picture of the thing, since the site is not responding.
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Re:In other news... (Score:4, Funny)
His mother has issued a desperate offer of $20,000 and a complete collection of Star Trek memorabilia to the kidnappers to keep him. "I just want my basement back", said the distraught woman.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)