A 10-ton meteor collided with Earth's atmosphere on Friday morning, sending flaming cosmic debris across western Siberia, an area that is relatively sparse in population but home to factories related to defense technology and thermonuclear-weapons production.  

The Russian Academy of Sciences says the Earth's atmosphere caused the meteor to explode upon entrance and then evaporate 30 miles above ground, but the rubble that remained shattered more than 1 million square feet of glass and injured hundreds in the city of Chelyabinsk.

More than 3,000 homes and businesses sustained damage. The district's governor has dispatched a search team of 20,000 people to discern where the fragments may have fallen. 

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