A rather unusual lot was put up on eBay on September 30. It was a little rock only nine centimeters long and six centimeters high. It weighed a bit less than one kilogram. The owner sells the rock for “only” 2.400,000 US dollars. The description of the lot says that it was the only fragment of the meteorite that fell down in Russia’s Siberia in 1908 – a piece of Tunguska meteorite that is. You can see eBay the lot here. 

Tunguska meteorite still remains a great mystery for the scientific world. Documented evidence says that several families of native residents saw a giant ball of fire flying across the sky at about 7:00 a.m. on June 30, 1908. The ball exploded somewhere on the uninhabited territory. The blast wave circled the Earth twice and was registered by quake -detection stations all over the world. The explosion triggered a strong magnetic storm that continued for four hours. The next night was marked with an unusual phenomenon that could be observed in Russia and Western Europe: people could see luminous clouds. Nothing else is known about the mysterious impact .

The first scientific mission visited the Tunguska crash site in 1911; the last group of scientists returned from the area at the end of August 2007. No one has every succeeded in finding even one piece of the so-called Tunguska meteorite.

It is generally believed that the Tunguska blast was caused by an ice comet which exploded about five or ten kilometers above Earth. The ice immediately melted and evaporated and therefore left no traces on the surface of the planet.

 Source : Pravda