Eight months ago, a massive meteor exploded over Russia (what with Russia being so frikkin’ massive, it was bound to happen), and the world was enraptured by images and videos of the alien rock streaking across the Russian sky. Locals were beside themselves, scouring the snowy landscape to find any little fragments of space-rock. But recently, a team of divers hit the motherload – and hauled up one of the biggest meteorites of all time.

On that fateful day on February 15th, a 17-meter wide, 10,000-ton (how do they know this stuff?) meteor exploded over central Russia when the rock hit the atmosphere. The explosion caused a massive flash, and some residents (being typical Russians) thought they had seen the start of a nuclear war. Thousands of smaller fragments fell throughout the region, injuring about 1,500 people.

One of the largest meteorites fell into a lake, tearing a massive circular hole in the ice. Just yesterday, a team of divers pulled up the half-ton piece of rock from underneath 20 meters of icy Russian water. The chunk broke into three more chunks when it was raised to the surface, which made weighing it tricky – but scientists estimated it to be around 570kg.

Imagine you were just sitting by the lake, doing some casual ice-fishing, and that mofo hit the water at a 1000km/h.

[Source : Time]