Fragments of a fireball meteor, which exploded last week over southwest China's Yunnan Province, currently on sale online at a price tag of 3,000 US dollars per gram are fake, a Chinese scientist has stated. 

The meteor was detected on October 4 and illuminated the night sky of Shangri-La county before exploding in mid-air. It was moving at about 14.4 kilometers per second and was ranked by NASA as the fifth most powerful fireball of 2017 (among 20 in total spotted this year), releasing an energy equal to 540 tonnes of TNT when exploding.

The beautiful scene wowed gazers of the full moon that marked the Mid-Autumn Festival Day in the country, and gave fodder to fraudsters to make a fast buck online by selling what they claimed to be pieces of the meteorite.

But a lead scientist at an astronomical observatory in China has warned online shoppers of falling for the trick.

Xu Weibiao, chief scientist at Purple Mountain Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said "unburnt debris may have quickly reached the ground" after the explosion, but noted that taking into consideration the speed at which the bolide was racing over the province and the intensity of the blast, which took place at about 37 kilometers above the ground, it is unlikely that any debris would be found with such ease.

Xu noted it was still hard to precisely identify the trajectory of the asteroid, and analysis of the rock could only be carried out after fragments were found.

On Taobao, China’s most popular online shopping platform, numerous sellers began pricing the "meteorites" between 1,200 US dollars and 1,500 US dollars per stone and even 3,000 US dollars a gram. 

One seller went as far as claiming the meteorite came from Mars.

"The real Shangri-La meteorite hasn't been found yet. Moreover, 99 percent of the meteorites sold online are fake," Xu said.