Bold New Theory Offered for Source of Tunguska Blast
An intriguing new theory has been offered for what caused the legendary 1908 Tunguska event. Scientists studying the strange incident, in which a mysterious blast of some kind flattened a whopping 80 million trees over an area of 830 square miles in Siberia, have long suspected that it was caused by a meteor striking the Earth. However, a recently published paper reportedly calls that hypothesis into question and, instead, put forward a rather fantastic alternative explanation.
Siberian scientists studying the case argue that the Tunguska event was actually the result of a sizeable iron asteroid entering the Earth's atmosphere, skimming the planet, and then shooting back out into space. The bold idea was based on mathematical models which explored different scenarios wherein asteroids of varying size, composition, and trajectory interacted with the Earth. Through this process, researchers were able to rule out an icy ball and a rocky object as the culprits for the blast and, in turn, determined that it was most likely an iron asteroid.
The model which best matched what occurred in 1908 indicated that the iron interloper was approximately 320 to 650 feet in diameter and zipped across 1,800 miles of the Earth's atmosphere before exiting back into space. This brief moment, researchers say, would generate the force seen on the ground in Tunguska and explain why there is no crater that can be connected with the event. The scientists behind the paper also noted that the theory accounts for "optical effects associated with a strong dustiness of high layers of the atmosphere over Europe, which caused a bright glow of the night sky."
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...It did enormous damage (Siberian Explosion), for it fell in a forest and knocked down every tree for scores of miles in every direction...if that fall had taken place anywhere in the ocean, tsunamis (tidal waves) would have washed nearer shores and done much damage...if the fall would have taken place there (permanent ice), cause slippage of large quantities of ice into the ocean, bringing about catastrophic changes in Earth's sea level and climate...if the fall had taken place there (populated areas)...millions of people would have been killed...The fall would have completely wiped out any city it struck. Perhaps not more than 5% of the surface of the Earth could have received that 1908 blow without any damage at all being done to human life and property...consider that the fall managed to find a 1 in 20 place where it would do no damage, almost as though someone was humanely trying to avoid...'- Isaac Asimov
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CIA Documents Reveal Russian Scientists Believed Tunguska Meteor Was Exploding UFO - Unknown Boundaries
Recently released CIA documents reveal that top Russian scientists came to the conclusion through radiation testing and carefully revisiting eyewitness accounts that the catastrophic Tunguska Meteor explosion in Siberia was, in fact, an exploding UFO. In a 1969 paper published in the USSR Academy of...
CIA Documents Reveal Russian Scientists Believed Tunguska Meteor Was Exploding UFO - Unknown Boundaries
Cheers.
Yes my old friend, I too favour the 'airburst' explanation, but have read about these witness accounts that claim that 'the object' changed course several times ... [and not just slightly] on many occasions ...I have to admit this hypothesis never occurred to me, it was a huge explosion obviously, yes a nuke type explosion could have caused it, but still, a meteor explosion could have also caused that explosion and subsequent damage...I didn't know there were eyewitness reports of course corrections of the object before it exploded, I wish there were more details because if they were minor corrections it still could have been a meteor hitting the denser part of our atmosphere and shifting around under the stresses before exploding...Nice theory and its possible, we need more data, maybe there are UFO fragments still in the area...I don't know how well those metamaterials hold up under huge stresses like that one...
Great find 1963! I like this theory...
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... Although there were another factor that has to be dismissed in order for the object to have been a meteorite ... namely the eyewitness testimony that stated that the object was 'cylindrical' ["pipe", i.e., a cylinder.] and that the witnesses ...[ just described as a Karelinski village of peasants in the newspaper] testified that they watched 'the cylindrical object "moved downwards for 10 minutes"! ... 10 minutes?? ... meteors according to internet data travel somewhere between 25,000 and 160,000 kph ... and that surely doesn't add up in anyone's mind does it.!? ... 10 minutes at the lowest speed means that they watched the object travel 4166 miles and at the higher speed it would be 26,666 miles ... or any distance between the two.....Yes my old friend, I too favour the 'airburst' explanation, but have read about these witness accounts that claim that 'the object' changed course several times ... [and not just slightly] on many occasions ...
(DOC) The Tunguska Event, 1908: Actually, It Was a UFO | Timothy G Chilman - Academia.edu
... but then the fact that it was so long ago and in so much of a unfamiliar country , makes this fact hard to be certain about. .. And the 'airburst theory' does seem to be the choice candidate of many of the more 'open-minded' analysts.
... But yes! ... I set off learning about this old case many years ago on the old 'Arthur C Clarke' programme [c.1979-ish] and being impressed that it may indeed have been a 'crashed UFO' ... and though i'm no longer swayed to that position, ... I haven't totally written the possibilities off!
Cheers Buddy.
Sibir newspaper, 2 July 1908:
On the morning of 17th of June,[23] around 9:00, we observed an unusual natural occurrence. In the north Karelinski village [200 verst (213 km (132 mi)) north of Kirensk] the peasants saw to the northwest, rather high above the horizon, some strangely bright (impossible to look at) bluish-white heavenly body, which for 10 minutes moved downwards. The body appeared as a "pipe", i.e., a cylinder. The sky was cloudless, only a small dark cloud was observed in the general direction of the bright body. It was hot and dry. As the body neared the ground (forest), the bright body seemed to smudge, and then turned into a giant billow of black smoke, and a loud knocking (not thunder) was heard as if large stones were falling, or artillery was fired. All buildings shook. At the same time the cloud began emitting flames of uncertain shapes. All villagers were stricken with panic and took to the streets, women cried, thinking it was the end of the world. The author of these lines was meantime in the forest about 6 versts [6.4 km] north of Kirensk and heard to the north east some kind of artillery barrage, that repeated in intervals of 15 minutes at least 10 times. In Kirensk in a few buildings in the walls facing north-east window glass shook.