Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Another odd science-related theft:

3 tonne meteorite stolen in Russia

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 and felled an estimated 80 million trees over 2,150 square kilometers (830 sq mi). The foundation's director Yury Lavbin claimed to have discovered the wreckage of an alien spacecraft during the expedition.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

There's something rather hinky about this story--it's supposed to have been originally on the Russian Interfax news agency website, but a search using several search terms on the two Interfax sites shows nothing under Tunguska, meteorite, or Yury Lavbin.

And why, if someone(s) were even able to steal a 3 ton meteorite without being seen, does the Lavbin group only report it to the police two months after the fact?

Lavbin also reported after an expedition to the Tunguska site that his team had found alien spacecraft debris, and had sent a piece of it to a lab in Krasnoyarsk in August of 2004, which alleged "preliminary analysis" found to be iron silicate mixed with an unknown compound. Why hasn't there been any further confirmation data available for the last three years?

See for details:
http://www.physorg.com/news819.html

Excerpt: "The new theory suggests that the event was a collision of a meteorite with an alien spaceship. “They exploded this enormous meteorite that headed towards us with enormous speed,” Yuri Lavbin said. Now this great object that caused the meteorite to explode is found at last. We will continue our research, he said."

http://ufologie.net/htm/tunguska2004.htm
(French site with rough English, disputing the original "debris" claims)

http://www.newlaunches.com/archives/3_tonne_meteorite_stolen_in_russia.php
(this site is the one that seems to have origated the story many other sites have keyed on, and there's a link to Interfax, but nothing is on that site about this story. AFP is also cited, but again, nothing there)

http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/08/12/thieves-steal-giant-rock/

Anonymous said...

AFP = Agence France-Presse
http://www.afp.com/english/home/

Mac said...

I think it's a media stunt. I think I remember the expedition to retrieved the alleged crashed spacecraft.