Meteor suddenly moves in museum, frightens staff

Moscow: A fragment of a meteorite displayed in a Russian museum suddenly started moving, triggering alarms and causing panic among those present.

Visitors were extremely frightened upon seeing the meteorite fragment move. This piece is from the Chelyabinsk meteorite and some people believed it was preparing to leave the Earth.

The museum staff had no idea what was happening and visitors bombarded them with questions but they had no answers.

The Chelyabinsk meteorite struck Earth on February 15, 2013 injuring 1,500 people. It was approximately 20 meters wide and weighed 12,000 metric tons. A metric ton equals 1,000 kilograms. Upon entering the Earth’s atmosphere, it exploded creating a massive ball of light.

The explosion occurred in the Chelyabinsk Oblast region and the shockwave from it was so powerful that windows in several cities shattered. Fortunately, the area where the meteorite struck was largely uninhabited.

Months later, scientists retrieved a 654-kilogram fragment of the meteorite from the bottom of Lake Chebarkul. This is considered the largest piece of the meteorite to date and it is on display at the Southern Ural State History Museum.

The incident of the meteorite moving by itself occurred in 2019. The head of the museum’s public relations department, Ivor Vilev humorously remarked that they joked about the meteorite wanting to say goodbye. However, many of the female staff members still haven’t fully recovered from the shock.

When the alarms went off, the staff quickly sealed the dome-shaped room. The museum’s director, Vladimir Bogdanovsky said that they still have not been able to determine why or how the meteorite moved.