The fall of the Tunguska meteorite still raises many questions. Actually, was there a meteorite? If we discard exotic versions (such as the crash of an alien ship or the explosion of a hydrogen bomb), then, all the same, there are hypotheses that are not on solid ground. But first things first.
June 17 (old style - 30) June 1908 will be remembered by the inhabitants of the planet Earth for a long time. An explosion occurred in the eastern part of Russia near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River. It was so strong that even a hundred kilometers away, glass flew out. People who lived tens of kilometers from the explosion described a powerful blow that knocked down, in front of which there was a strong heat. By the way, the same is observed in a nuclear explosion. The heat wave propagates faster than the shock wave. A strange glow was recorded for several days from central Siberia to the Atlantic. The clouds looked glowing.
It is assumed that the power of the explosion was 40-50 megatons. This is quite comparable to the Tsar Bomba. It is considered the most powerful of all detonated nuclear weapons. It was specially set in motion on Novaya Zemlya so that the consequences for the inhabitants of the USSR were less tangible and noticeable.
But back to the Tunguska meteorite. For the first time, it was decided to investigate in detail what had happened in 1927. An expedition headed by L. A. Kulik was entrusted with this.
The reader may wonder why this was done almost 20 years after the incident. The fact is that this region is sparsely populated and transport communications are underdeveloped here even now, but then things were even worse. The real problem was getting to the blast site. By the way, its exact coordinates have not been properly established until now. Different researchers have named different numbers.
The picture that Kulikov and his team saw was amazing. Around the epicenter of the explosion, trees were felled over an area of 2000 km². But the crater, which should contain the remains of the meteorite, was not found. This gave rise to many versions. Many of them today cannot be 100% confirmed or disproved.
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Consider the most likely hypotheses of what happened
- Fall of a meteorite or a group of meteorites. The absence of a crater can be explained by the fact that the meteorite collapsed in the sky. In 2013, the results of a study by a group of scientists from different countries were published. At the site of the alleged epicenter, a large number of minerals were found that are contained in diamond meteorites: troilite, sheibersite, lonsdaleite and taenite. This is an additional argument in favor of this hypothesis.
- Fall of a comet or part of it. The version resembles a meteorite. But the ongoing study of the substances found at the site of the explosion does not confirm it.
- Explosion of natural gas or gas and dust emission. In this region, the phenomenon of paleovolcanism is indeed observed. But could he have caused such a powerful explosion? The question is debatable. However, the theoretical possibility of this does not mean that this was actually the case. The same applies to the natural gas version. For an explosion of such power, it had to accumulate 2.5 billion m³. Most likely, in the near future we will not know exactly what really happened on June 17 (30), 1908. It would have greatly simplified the task - the detection of a crater in the epicenter of the explosion, but, alas, no one has found it.