Italian geologists insisted that Lake Cheko in the Krasnoyarsk Territory is a trace of the Tunguska disaster.
The Expeditionary Center of the Russian Geographical Society reported on its Facebook page that Lake Cheko in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, located just 8 kilometers from the epicenter of the Tunguska disaster, has nothing to do with it. It was formed hundreds of years before the Tunguska meteorite arrived.
This is what Lake Cheko is from a bird's eye view
Lake Cheko resembles a crater filled with water. This was announced several years ago by Italian geologists led by Luca Gasperini, who surveyed the lake. Its bottom turned out to be conical, the depth was impressive - more than 50 meters. And the close proximity to the epicenter only aggravated the assumption that the reservoir was formed as a result of a catastrophe, namely the fall of the Tunguska meteorite, which happened on June 30, 1908 at about 7 a.m. local time over the territory of Eastern Siberia in the interfluve of the Lena and Podkamennaya Tunguska.
As a result, the Italians decided: until 1908 there was no Lake Cheko. And after the fall of the Tunguska meteorite, it appeared. Therefore, it was there that he - the meteorite - fell. If not all, then at least a large fragment of it. There one must look for what they cannot find in any way - even the smallest fragments of a fallen celestial body.
Lake Checo, "dissected" in the report of Italian researchers
Promotional video:
The Italians made a kind of map of the bottom of the lake and saw that it was conical
In June-July 2016, scientists from Krasnoyarsk and Novosibirsk worked at Lake Cheko. We took samples of bottom sediments - they took out a core with a height of 120 centimeters. We gave it to colleagues for analysis.
And the other day the Expeditionary Center of the Russian Geographical Society reported: “Novosibirsk researchers from the Institute of Geology and Mineralogy. Sobolev SB RAS completed the determination of the age of lacustrine sediments using modern reliable radioisotope methods - by the distribution of radioactive elements cesium-137 and lead-210. It turned out that the deepest point of the lacustrine sediments we took is about 280 years old! And further into the depths of the lake sediments, it is not known how long, the pipe was just 120 cm long. Now scientists have no doubt that the lake existed long before the Tunguska catastrophe, and its origin is not connected with this event."
A forest felled in the area of the disaster. The picture was taken almost 20 years after her
Expert opinion: the origin of Lake Cheko is geological. As well as many others - even deeper and almost round lakes, similar to Lake Cheko from among those available in the Tunguska reserve.
BTW
The Italians were not immediately believed
As soon as the message about the hypothesis of Italian geologists appeared in the scientific press, "Komsomolskaya Pravda" turned for comments to a specialist, a member of several expeditions to the supposed area of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite, candidate of physical and mathematical sciences Andrei Olkhovaty.
Here's what he said:
“The message of the Italians looks very convincing, if you do not know that in 1960-1961 in the same places the most ambitious expedition of the USSR Academy of Sciences was looking for traces of the Tunguska meteorite - more than 70 specialists worked here. One of the points of the program was a survey by divers of the bottom of Lake Cheko and a search for meteorite matter in its vicinity. It was our divers who were the first to establish that the bottom of the reservoir is cone-shaped, but no traces of the meteorite could be found.
Moreover, dendrologists examined trees on the shores of the lake and came to the conclusion that most of them were more than half a century old, and in the event of a meteorite falling, they would be much younger. We managed to find a local resident, an Evenk, who knew these places well. It turned out that on the site of the lake there was always a swampy reservoir. Therefore, the version that Lake Cheko is a trail of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite has long been out of favor with researchers.
But initially there were still suspicions. And even more fantastic.
In 1960, one of the participants in that large-scale expedition, Boris Vronsky, wrote a poem-dedication to his friend A. Koshelev, who, as part of a group of divers, descended to the bottom of a mysterious lake.
It began like this:
“Look for a clue on Lake Cheko!
In its inaccessible depth.
You will most likely find leftovers
An interstellar rocket amid the silt at the bottom …"
Alas, neither the meteorite nor the rocket was found.
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WHAT IS THE TRUE?
The secret of the heavenly guest was revealed 55 years ago
Let me remind you again: on the morning of June 30, 1908, in the deep taiga on the Podkamennaya Tunguska River, about 66 kilometers from the village of Vanavara, something exploded with great force. The power of the explosion is now estimated at 40-50 megatons, which corresponds to the energy of the most powerful hydrogen bomb.
More than a hundred hypotheses about “what was it” have been put forward - almost every year a new one appears. But the enthusiastic researchers have not yet come to a unified version. And they don't want to come. Therefore, they argue, hold conferences and write books on the same topic: "Secrets of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite." But there have been no secrets for 55 years.
In 1962, representatives of the Committee on Meteorites of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR officially declared that the problem was unequivocally solved. The Tunguska meteorite was a so-called small comet, which consisted of ice, snow and mud. She evaporated on approaching Earth. That is why not a single fragment of the heavenly guest has been found so far.
“Imagine a block of snow that flies into the atmosphere at a terrible speed,” a senior researcher at the State Astronomical Institute named after V. I. P. K. Sternberg (GAISh) Felix Tsitsin. - Its mass is millions of tons. But they were not enough to fly to the surface of the Earth. The body heats up to several thousand degrees and explodes at an altitude of 5-7 kilometers.
The Academy of Sciences decided to consider the Tunguska meteorite an icy comet that exploded at high altitude
In the soil of that time, traces of cometary water and mud have been preserved. The search technique for this extraterrestrial substance was developed by specialists from Tomsk State University.
In the area of the Tunguska catastrophe, sphagnum mosses grow, which form layers of peat year after year. Scientists found a layer that appeared in 1908, and found in it an increased content of dust of cosmic origin.
- Partially the substance of the Tunguska comet fell out in the form of acid rain and was "preserved" to this day. - said botanist-bog scientist Yuri Lvov. - Samples taken from the crash site contain too much nitrogen and its heavy isotopes. We estimate that acid rain brought in nearly 200,000 tons of nitrogen. But the main thing is that we found in the 1908 peat layer isotopic anomalies of carbon and hydrogen, which can only belong to an icy comet.
The cometary hypothesis is supported by the bright and long glow of the sky. For several days, on the territory from the Atlantic to central Siberia, eyewitnesses observed a glow and glowing clouds. Academician Vasily Fesenkov assured that such optical anomalies are caused by the scattering of light from the particles of the comet's tail.
Already in the early 1970s, the very culprit of the disaster was identified. Igor Zotkin, an employee of the Committee on Meteorites of the Academy of Sciences and the SAI, comparing the orbital elements of the Tunguska body and the beta Taurid meteor shower associated with comet Encke, found a close similarity between them and suggested that in 1908 a piece crashed into the Earth that broke off just from the comet Encke. This hypothesis was later confirmed by his calculations by the Czech astronomer Lubor Kresak.
Vladimir LAGOVSKY