The staff of the Volgograd planetarium have spent the latest state holidays in a state of nervous unrest. On November 4th, 2003, a 50-kilo piece of the famous Sikhote Alin meteorite was stolen from the display of the planetarium. Scientists just shrug their shoulders and say it?s impossible to estimate the loss in exact money terms. One gram of meteorite costs up to $20,000 on the black market. The theft may have been pulled off ?by request?, according to the police in Volgograd.
Tamara Ushakova, lecturer of the planetarium, can?t hide her dismay: ?The meteorite was sitting in the usual place at 5 p.m. on the previous day. It was on the pedestal under the glass cover screwed in. It was a janitor who raised the alarm. She showed up at 7.30 a.m. next morning to clean up at the second floor. She noticed that the heavenly body had been gone.?
The perpetrators seemed to have conducted meticulous preparations for the crime and set up their targets in advance. They didn?t take a ?local? meteorite ?Tsarev? sitting nearby. The one that fell out in the Volograd region and belongs to the group of stony meteorites as by scientific classification. Similar meteorites constitute almost 90 percent of all found meteorites whereas the Sikhote Alin one is an iron meteorite. That?s why it?s so highly valued.
?The content of iron in the Sikhote Alin meteorite is more than 90 percent. It also contains nickel and cobalt,? says Vladimir Frolov, director of the planetarium. ?But I have my doubts that any scrap hunters could have taken it. No scrap collecting station will buy it from them. Judging by its shape and structure, one can tell that it?s not an ingot out of a smelting furnace. I believe the thing was stolen to cash in on it big time.?
It?s easy to find lots of commercial offers for the purchase and sale of meteorites in the Internet. Both the number of offers and the demand for meteorites have been recently increasing on this black market. A certain Stas from Saint Petersburg even held a virtual auction on the Web for a piece of meteorite weighing 0.036 kilos. ?The best bidding price hasn?t yet reached the minimum selling price!?
Prices vary greatly. The asking price for one gram may vary from $1,000 up to $20,000 if meteorites of a rare kind are on offer. In other words, the specimen from Volgograd may net hundreds of millions dollars, if not a billion, on the basis of the lowest price brackets of the black market. According to www.meteorite.narod.ru, ?the hunt is on for the pieces of an iron giant that fell out in 1947 in the Sikhote Alin Reserve.? The meteorite holds a great amount of prestige because it?s one out of the ten most largest, hundreds of monographs and scientific articles were dedicated to it. That?s why the police believe the criminals acted by request placed by some collector.
The piece of the Sikhote Alin meteorite was transferred from the USSR Academy of Sciences Committee on Meteorites to the Volgorgad planetarium some 50 years ago.
Police investigators are now trying to figure out how the thieves could snatch a unique exhibit. It?s not that easy to slip away from the planetarium carrying a 50-kilo piece without making any noise. A watchman who was on duty claims that he neither heard nor saw anything suspicious on that night. No signs of burglary were found by visual inspection.
No alarm system has ever been installed in the Volgograd planetarium. Now it?s going to be installed. In the meantime, the meteorite ?Tsarev? has been removed from the exposition for safekeeping.
