Two months after a meteorite exploded over the Chelyabinsk region of Russia and slammed into the Ural mountain range, a collection of meteorite pieces gathered in the aftermath is on display at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, RIA Novosti reports.
“This particular event was like one in a century and the fact that there were so many dashboard cameras and so many witnesses, and also because of the close flyby of an asteroid on the same day, space has really captured the public’s imagination,” said Jim Holstein, collections manager of meteorites and mineralogy at the Field Museum, in an interview with RIA Novosti.
“People are fascinated with meteorites this year. It’s the year of the space rock,” he added. Tracking down several hundred pieces of the Russia space rock started with a late night phone call between meteorite collector Terry Boudreaux and Michael Farmer, a meteorite hunter that Boudreaux calls “the Indiana Jones of meteorites.”
“He called me 30 minutes after this hit the press and said, ‘Did you hear what happened in Russia?’ The estimates were 10,000 to 11,000 tons (9,072 to 9,979 metric tons) coming into the atmosphere, so we knew it was huge. And we were talking about it and Michael said, ‘I’ve got to get over there,’” Boudreaux told RIA Novosti.
The two men partnered up for the project, but it took several weeks to get a visa arranged for Farmer to head to Russia. By then, meteorite pieces were popping up for sale on eBay.
“NASA saw a piece blow off on video and they estimated that little tiny dot weighed 10 tons (9 metric tons) and it’s probably in the Ural mountains where it’s heavily forested. At the same time, we knew local villagers were finding pieces, so we knew there was a lot,” Boudreaux said.
Russkiy Mir Foundation Information Service
