3 Ton Meteorite Stolen

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."

Tunguska Event

[karlmiller]

Wikipedia: Tunguska Event [wikipedia.org]

Re:Unsolved?

[ruiner13]

Yeah, I have to call BS on their claim it was part of the big explosion, since it is currently commonly thought that it was an air-burst event which would not leave a 3-ton object behind. If this rock was really from the event, I'm pretty sure the mystery would be solved, which it isn't.

BadAstronomy has covered it already...

[Cyberax]

In short, this news is bullshit. Not a single meteorite remain from Tunguska event has been found.

http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/08/12/thie ves-steal-giant-rock/ [badastronomy.com]

Re:Unsolved?

[MobyDisk]

Depends how fast it is moving. There's been research into using ballistics instead of nuclear because you can do more damage while leaving no fallout. You just have to accelerate something really really fast.

Re:Unsolved?

[jafiwam]

Well, there IS a group that has picked out a "potential crater" that went previously unrecognized that has done some expeditions and drilling in the lake to see if they can establish this for sure.
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.

Re:BadAstronomy has covered it already...

[Al Al Cool J]

Covered? The "coverage" consists of:

• the claim that no meteorite remain from Tunguska has ever been found (proof by bold assertion)
• a comment that the writer couldn't find the foundation's website. Gee, I wonder if the writer was searching for websites in Russian?
• mockery and sarcasm as soon as the subject of aliens arises. After all, scientists know that aliens can't be visisting the earth, because the Fermi Paradox says so.

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

Re:Unsolved?

[dbrecht]

Hiroshima's "Little Boy" gravity bomb: 12-15 kt -- gun type uranium-235 fission bomb. EC17/Mk-17, the EC24/Mk-24, and the B41 (Mk-41) (most powerful US weapons ever: 25 Mt Wikipedia Link [wikipedia.org]
Little Boy is around 20,000 smaller than the largest nukes the US has ever made.

Kinetic energy equation is 1/2*m*v^2
1 Kiloton of dynamite is 4.184x10^12 joules of energy

A little bit of algerbra determines that a 3 ton object going over 56,000 meters per second would have more power than the "Little Boy" bomb. To make it 10,000 times larger just increase velocity by 100 fold (since velocity is squared). That means it would have to be going 5,600,00 meters/second, or approximately 1/50th the speed of light. I don't know if objects fly through space at that speed though... I just know how to work the math.

Re:BadAstronomy has covered it already...

[srmalloy]

Actually, there is some conjecture that the meteorite may have been found, but not obtained. See this BBC science [bbc.co.uk] article; the premise is that Lake Cheko near the center of the region displays an unusual bottom formation with an anomalous feature about 10m down that might be a meteorite fragment. A fair degree of controversy exists, and an expedition is planned in 2008 to drill down to the anomaly to determine whether it is meteoritic in nature, which would settle the question.

Re:BadAstronomy has covered it already...

[Cyberax]

1. That's a well known-fact. Several expeditions conducted by USSR have not found any remains except for small spheres of molten glass and rock (consistent with aerial explosion).

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% F3%F1%F1%EA%E8%E9+%EA%EE%F1%EC%E8%F7%E5%F1%EA%E8%E 9+%F4%E5%ED%EE%EC%E5%ED+%F4%EE%ED%E4 [yandex.ru]

This is the report about the initial "discovery" of this stone: http://www.membrana.ru/articles/misinterpretation/ 2004/08/10/223900.html [membrana.ru]

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.

Mirror!

[antdude]

The link is showing errors. Here is a mirror [dotcache.com].

Re:Cry Wolf?

[TheMadcapZ]

Actually depending on it's density it could be smaller than you think. If it is a rock, say with the density of concrete it would only be 1.48 cubic yards in size.
That mean 4.5 ft length on each axis roughly (since it is irregular and all). It is nothing a hoist and a few straps couldn't lift into a suitable truck.

If the density was higher as they say the composition maybe iron, those dimension will be even smaller.

Re:BadAstronomy has covered it already...

[Enigma2175]

Covered? The "coverage" consists of:

• the claim that no meteorite remain from Tunguska has ever been found (proof by bold assertion)
• a comment that the writer couldn't find the foundation's website. Gee, I wonder if the writer was searching for websites in Russian?
• mockery and sarcasm as soon as the subject of aliens arises. After all, scientists know that aliens can't be visisting the earth, because the Fermi Paradox says so.

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

Hmm, the PhysOrg story is just a press release by the foundation, there is an official statement in the comments below the story stating "this new theory was announced at the press conference on results of the recent expedition to the crash site. It is not our own conclusion, but theory made by scientists who claim they found some proving evidences. As scientists, we truly believe that even some irrational theories have the right to be announced."

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.