A glass lid at a Russian museum mysteriously rose above the famous meteor that in 2013 exploded over the city of Chelyabinsk this weekend.
The 500-kilogram fragment, which was fished out of a lake several months after it crashed to earth, is on display at the city’s museum of South Ural history. The meteor caused window-shattering shockwaves and injured several hundred people when it fell.
Surveillance footage shows the meteor’s glass lid spontaneously rising by a few centimeters and floating over the meteor as some museumgoers and security staff watch in bemusement.
The dome then rises again before returning to its original position, the sped-up video published by the Baza social media news channel Tuesday shows.
Visitors barely noticed the lid’s mysterious elevation when it happened Saturday because it happened so slowly, the museum’s director told the state-run RIA Novosti news agency.
“It could have been a technical malfunction. Our equipment lifts the dome, so it was somehow involved in this,” museum director Vladimir Bogdanovsky told the agency.
Bogdanovsky ruled out foul play because the only remote control that raises and lowers the glass dome was locked inside a box under video surveillance. “We have no explanation as to who gave the command and how it happened,” he said.
“The fact remains, but we can’t explain it yet,” RIA Novosti quoted Bogdanovsky as saying.
