Near the villages of Deputatsky and Pervomaysky, an hour's drive from Chebarkul city, whole families of meteorite hunters are hard at work.

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The meteorite passed over the area before reportedly crashing into the Chebarkul lake, and the snowy fields are covered with human footprints.

BBC: Chelyabinsk gripped by 'meteor fever'

Part of the celestial rock fell through an icy Chebarkul lake.

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Local police described how one piece smashed into the ground near Lake Chebarkul, throwing up a column of ice, water and steam and creating a 26-foot crater.

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"We have just completed the study, we confirm that the particulate matters, found by our expedition in the area of Lake Chebarkul indeed have meteorite nature, " Mr Grohovsky was quoted by Russia's Ria Novosti news agency as saying.

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While some 9, 000 people have been helping in the clear-up and rescue operation, scientists have been concentrating their search for fragments of the rock around Chebarkul Lake, where a 6m (20ft) wide crater had been found following the strike.

BBC: Meteorite fragments found in Russia's Urals region

The search was hampered, Dr. Grokhovsky said, by officials of Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry, which sealed off the area around an 25-foot-wide hole in the ice of Lake Chebarkul, near Chelyabinsk, where a chunk was believed to have fallen.

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Dr. Grokhovsky said the search was hampered by officials of Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry, which sealed off the area around an 8-meter-wide hole in the ice of Lake Chebarkul, near Chelyabinsk, where a chunk of the meteor was believed to have fallen.

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Using the footage and the location of an impact into Lake Chebarkul, Jorge Zuluaga and Ignacio Ferrin, from the University of Antioquia in Medellin were able to use simple trigonometry to calculate the height, speed and position of the rock as it fell to Earth.

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