found a 2.5 ton meteorite

In outer space there are no borders, but once an extraterrestrial flying object (whether identified or not) falls to Earth, things change. And even more so if we talk about a meteorite, an authentic precious stone that fell from the sky because well, apart from being a space souvenir that helps decipher what is in outer space, they are made of materials as coveted as pallasite or even remains of other celestial bodies. Thus, anyone lets a meteorite escape from their domain and it is not because they do not try: without going any further, a 2.5 ton meteorite almost travels halfway around the world pretending to be a decoration for the garden.

Where you see a meteorite, I see a garden ornament. In the middle of a routine inspection at the Customs of a port in Saint Petersburg, the Russian Federal Service was found with a large wooden box in which there was supposedly a garden statue. Discrepancies in its declared origin and value led staff to open it and find a large gray rock. The relevant forensic examination confirmed that the fragment came from the Aletai meteoritediscovered in 1898 in northwest China, and has an estimated value of 323 million rubles (about 3.8 million euros).

Why is it important. Because if that sample is sold to a private collector, that sample disappears and Aletai is an enormously valuable meteorite:

• belongs to an extremely rare chemical group, IIIE-an, which contains anomalous amounts of gold, cobalt and iridium, making it unique and irreplaceable.
• It is 4.5 billion years old, the same age as our Solar System, so it constitutes a good source of information on the formation of planets.

Context. The Aletai is anything but just another meteorite (if there can be ordinary meteorites). With a total recovered mass of approximately 74,500 kg, it is one of the largest known iron meteorites. Its fragments are scattered over a radius of more than 400 kilometers in the Xinjiang region, which constitutes another exceptionality: it is one of the largest dispersal fields known on Earth, which has given rise to curious hypotheses about his careerlike it was similar to that of a bouncing stone. That would explain why there is no central crater and why the fragments are distributed linearly.

The unanswered questions. The customs authorities have not revealed the identity of the people who were going to export the piece or who was going to receive it in the United Kingdom, nor have they explained how that fragment arrived in Russia or where it was before, given that the meteorite was originally discovered in China.

What we do know is that the rock had entered Russia from an unidentified country belonging to the Eurasian Economic Union (where Russia itself is located, but also Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan), which allowed the shipment to be moved with few controls until it reached Saint Petersburg. Russia has launched a criminal investigation for smuggling strategic goods, a crime punishable by up to three years in prison.

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Cover | jun jin luo and vkvideo