They say that Russia is the motherland of conspiracy theories, and public reaction to the sudden meteor strike a week ago that stunned people in the Ural mountains, and injured more than 1,200, seems to be proving that true.

A survey published today by the fairly staid Moscow daily Noviye Izvestia found that barely half its readers believe the official report that the blast was caused by a meteor.

According to the newspaper, the other half prefer to believe in an assortment of bizarre explanations, including that the blast was a secret US weapon test, an off-course ballistic missile, a message from God, a crashing alien spaceship, or even an extraterrestrial trojan horse carrying a deadly space virus to wipe out the Earth.

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