At 9:20 am on 15 February 2013, the people of the industrial town Chelyabinsk in Russia were starting their mornings when a light streaked across the sky. Bright enough to outshine the Sun, people ran to windows to see the trail it left in the sky. A few minutes later, a boom swept through the town, shattering windows, bringing down walls, and knocking people to the ground.
That shocking sound was a meteor exploding overhead, but it wasn't just the noise. Fragments of rock were blasted across the landscape by the blast, falling down on the snow like rain.
Videos from dashcams and CCTV cameras soon appeared on news channels around the world, sending meteorite hunters and researchers flocking to the town. Among those who arrived after the airblast was a young Ph.D. student just getting started in her journalistic career - me.
I'd been asked to present a documentary about the event with the rather dramatic title of Meteor Strike! Fireball from Space, which was how a film crew and I found ourselves knee-deep in snow during the Russian winter, three weeks following the explosion. However, it was the very snow-freezing my toes that made Chelyabinsk the perfect place for a meteorite hunt. When the rocks fell onto untouched snow, the heat they picked up from their journey through the atmosphere melted a clear, obvious hole. Find a hole, dig to the bottom and there's a good chance you'll find a meteorite.
The area had been picked over by the time we arrived, but our director did manage to find a 1cm wide pebble. It was pure black, covered in a fusion crust created by the heat of entry melting the surface. There's something magical about holding a freshly found meteorite in your hand. This was a fragment left over from the birth of the Solar System.
It had been in space for billions of years until just a few weeks ago. And by this point, there was even a pretty good idea of where it had been.
This story is from the February 2023 edition of BBC Sky at Night Magazine.
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This story is from the February 2023 edition of BBC Sky at Night Magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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