As you can see, it’s actually not that bad a case of pareidolia. The image on the left is the so-called Shroud of Turin, the long-debunked cloth that people erroneously think has the face of Jesus in it. Right away that gives you a sense of the level of accuracy of the Pravda article (of course, the article in the sidebar with a picture of Viveca Fox in a bikini labeled “The chocolate side of Hollywood” gives you even a better sense of their journalistic integrity).
Anyway, the meteorite is real enough. It fell in eastern Russia in 1916, and is called – and you just simply have to love this – Boguslavka. The total mass that hit was 256 kilos, which is a substantial fall.
It’s a nickle-iron meteorite (and very very pretty!) with what looks to me to be a very tight metallic crystal pattern called the Widmanstätten pattern; some have large structures in them and some very thin ones. You can find this by slicing the meteorite and getting a flat surface which is then washed with a weak solution of nitric acid; the crystal pattern then pops right out. It can also leave other patterns in the surface, which I strongly suspect is what we’re seeing here, as opposed to an image of, say, Jesus.
And from another angle, well, it looks just like Darth Vader. Some people see their religious icons in random patterns, and some see movie icons. I guess it just depends on how you were raised.