June 30, 1908, Evenkia. At 07.14 minutes (00.14 GMT) the sky over Podkamennaya Tunguska lit up the second sun. It was gigantic, brighter and hotter than the first. The earth shook: there was an explosion of monstrous force, flame and smoke seemed to cover the whole sky. The incident entered world history as "the fall of the Tunguska meteorite." … Since then 110 years have passed, dozens of volumes of scientific papers have been written, but the debate does not subside: if it is a meteorite, then where are its traces? And the versions keep multiplying. There are more than a hundred of them. On June 26, Krasnoyarsk will host an international conference of specialists who have devoted more than a dozen years to the study of the mysterious phenomenon. The journalists of "Komsomolskaya Pravda" talked to them and found out unique details that are not yet known to the common man in the street.
The "guest" warned earthlings about his visit in advance
A few days before the explosion over Tunguska, many kilometers from this place, in Europe, an unusual glow was observed at night. The next day, all of Eurasia became witnesses. This data was later collected and processed by the Russian astronomer Igor Zotkin, who determined the area and scale of the glow. Night turned into day over an area of 15 million square kilometers (from the Atlantic to the Yenisei). The brightest thing was in England, whose residents could read newspapers for three more nights in a row without additional coverage. Why did the mysterious glow begin on the eve of the explosion?
“These comet harbingers reported the movement of something more,” is sure the radio engineer and publicist, who headed the Krasnoyarsk regional branch of the All-Union Astronomical and Geodetic Society, Gennady Ivanov for several years. - True, the reason for the glow of the night sky has not been clarified to this day. I adhere to the version that our space alien is a huge comet accompanied by a large number of satellites (satellites) of different sizes. Considering that comets are relatively small celestial bodies, consisting mostly of a mixture of frozen gases, dust and meteoric matter, it becomes clear why we cannot find matter in its traces left in the vastness of Siberia. The comet moved around the Sun in its own orbit, the Earth in its own. In the Transbaikal region, the speed of the Earth and the speed of the comet became equal. The space alien lost his marathon. In the Transbaikal region, according to the calculations of the famous physicist Lilia Epiketova, who studied this phenomenon for many years, the distance from the Earth to the comet was 1,100 kilometers.
Researcher Gennady Ivanov is sure that the comet was moving along this path. Photo: Gennady Ivanov's archive.
By the way, none of the researchers of the phenomenon paid attention to a seemingly simple and obvious detail - according to the recollections of witnesses, the size of the cosmic body was comparable to the Moon. And knowing the height at which the comet was above Transbaikalia, you can calculate its approximate area. This is what the scientist did when he found out that it was a "snowball" about 8 kilometers in diameter.
- Already in the area of the Lena River, the size of the comet has decreased to five kilometers in diameter. At the same time, mind you, the Earth's speed is stable, but the comet loses it, which means it starts to lag behind, visually moving in the opposite direction,”continues Gennady Ivanov. - Therefore, many eyewitnesses pointed out a completely different direction of the object's movement. As a result, the comet collapsed into the taiga.
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The most striking thing is that there was no explosion as such. An earthquake of 4.5 points on the Richter scale lasted for an hour and a half, it was recorded by almost all seismological laboratories in the world. An astrobleme with a diameter of twenty kilometers remained on the ground and fell out forests of three and a half thousand square kilometers.
On a clear sunny day, twilight was observed over an area of one million square kilometers. These billions of tons of cosmic matter were dissolved in the planet's atmosphere.
Noctilucent clouds were observed over the entire Northern Hemisphere.
- Everything fits into such a scenario! Perhaps for others this is just a hypothesis, for me it is a belief, and not only mine, says the researcher. - Many, of course, dream of spaceships and aliens, but still it is worth relying on facts, not fantasies.
In search of metal tank armor
A detailed study of the Tunguska phenomenon began only twenty years after the events. The USSR pursued rather ambitious goals: industrialization began, and the country needed metal, and in order to melt it, nickel was needed, which later, in the Great Patriotic War, would be called "the metal of tank armor." It was decided to organize an expedition to Evenkia in the expectation that an iron meteorite fell there. Scientists already knew that this group of meteorites contained more than 7 percent nickel. The head of the search expedition was the mineralogist Leonid Kulik, a talented, in a good way stubborn explorer. At the end of the 20s of the last century, Kulik arrived for the first reconnaissance in Evenkia and, according to fragmentary information, relying on eyewitness accounts, he calculated the place of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite.
Scientists, enthusiasts and ordinary romantics are still looking for fragments of the Tunguska meteorite.
The largest and, without exaggeration, the most difficult expedition of Kulik to Evenkia lasted from spring 1929 to autumn 1930. An ordinary hunting expert Konstantin Yankovsky got a job on that expedition, whose archive was preserved in Taishet (Irkutsk region), where he later lived.
“All the expeditions organized by Kulik before that were more of an ordinary" intelligence ", - said the former director of the Taishet Museum of Local History Georgy Bulygin, who preserved Yankovsky's archives. - This time they went to Tunguska with equipment for geological and meteorological surveys, hydrological works, and carried drilling rigs. The team included an astronomer, a swamp scientist, an experienced drilling foreman. This is not mentioned anywhere, but the route was on foot, and it began in Taishet. We hired carts and went. Imagine for a second: this is almost 600 kilometers of not the easiest road! In April 29, they arrived in Vanavara, where the dearly exhausted Yankovsky fell seriously ill and dropped out of the group.
Having survived the operation in Irkutsk and barely recovered, Yankovsky rushed to Kulik on the checkpoints. On the way, I learned that the expedition had collapsed, and Kulik was left alone in the taiga. This did not stop Yankovsky.
- He came himself to this capture, and the two of them finished the research. We sat there practically without getting out, Yankovsky conducted meteorological observations and carefully recorded everything, - says Bulygin. - By that time, there were already conditions for life: a log hut, a bathhouse, a store for food … For food we had to get to Vanavara, otherwise we lived by hunting.
Suslov funnel. Leonid Kulik was sure that the meteorite fragments should be looked for near her / kp.ru
One day, when Yankovsky was on duty at the hitch and once again inspected the territory, he was bitten by a viper. Of the antidotes, he only had a bottle of alcohol, which perfectly removes snake venom. Yankovsky spent three days in a fever and delirium. But as soon as I came to my senses, literally through force I went to take meteorological measurements.
“He was still too weak and felt very bad, lost his orientation in the taiga,” says Bulygin. - It happened on the day when, during his round, he found a huge stone of a strange kind - possibly a fragment of a celestial body. Later I tried to restore the road to him, but could not …
It was at such a price that the first researchers of the Tunguska phenomenon got their discoveries. In the Great Patriotic War, Kulik died, and research stalled for a long time.
John's stone
42 years after Kulik's expedition, on July 19, 1972, Tomsk explorer John Anfinogenov, together with a group of associates, discovered a strange stone in the area of the meteorite fall. The lump overgrown with moss and lichen went down in the history of the study of the "Tunguska meteorite", like a deer stone, or John's stone.
- I found the stone in the next route, - says the Tomsk researcher, then the deputy head of the sociological laboratory of TSU John Anfinogenov. - Experienced Krasnoyarsk geologists worked in the area of the disaster in those days. One day, together with the head of the geological party Nikolai Sapronov, we made a radial ascent along the flat top of Mount Stoykovich, at the foot of which there is the Kulik castle. Sapronov, together with his comrades, returned to the base on the Khushma River, and I decided to run along the mountain again. And on the way back I found a deer stone.
Deer stone or John's stone weighs about 10 tons. Photo: personal archive of John Anfinogenov.
A giant of 10 tons in weight, covered with moss and lichen, a huge furrow in the ground, which by that time was already thoroughly overgrown, lay on the very surface. Some unknown force broke it, because nearby, about 15 meters away, the researchers found the "nose" of a stone, weighing another one and a half tons.
- He jumped out very gently from the ground, most likely at the time of the fall of the cosmic body. At the same time, the direction of the groove coincided with the direction of movement of the space object - the riddle of the stone still haunts John Fedorovich, and he is sure, despite the assertions about the earthly origin of the stone, this is a guest from space. - Unusual in composition, it is an exotic breed for those places. It is 98 percent silicon oxide. I think with a high probability it can be argued that he still flew from the sky.
The place where the giant stone was discovered, scientists have marked with a star. Photo: personal archive of John Anfinogenov.
This idea prompts John Anfinogenov that the rock of the rock belongs to the one that is in the composition of the terrestrial planets, say, on Mars.
- The largest volcano in the solar system, known to mankind, - Olympus is located just on Mars, - the researcher explains his hypothesis. - Its sole is 500 kilometers, its height is 27 kilometers. Volcanic tubes are like giant tools. And if, say, an asteroid struck the crust of Mars, its internal energy could be triggered, and a powerful ejection happened. That is, perhaps our space alien is a guest from Mars, although it is known that the Martian meteorite is a rather rare type.
In general, John Anfinogenov is a unique person and in a good sense of the word obsessed with a meteorite. Perhaps that is why he, along with other members of the free search group, managed to significantly advance science in solving the riddle of the meteorite.
- I took up the problem at the end of 1963, a couple of years later I went on an expedition for the first time. I have had more than 20 such expeditions, - the researcher recalls.
And the hobby of John Anfinogenov began by chance: the results of aerial photography (which Kulik made in 1938) fell into his hands. Since in the army, John Fedorovich was engaged in decoding such pictures, he became very interested. And, as they say - away we go!
- When I began to decipher aerial photography in 1949, I established the area and configuration of the continuous felling of the forest. This indicator is important for calculating the strength of the shock wave, - says John Anfinogenov. - In general, I think that at the initial stage of the research little attention was paid to the testimony of the indigenous people about the destruction in the area, and they said very interesting things. For example, that the water from the ground gushed with a fountain for several days, forming a boiling lake. And I managed to find several such lakes.
When Anfinogenov built a picture of a forest felling, it turned out that in shape it is very different from what scientists had relied on earlier (ground survey). They thought that there was the center of the explosion, from which a radial fall was formed.
“I came to the conclusion that the damage was caused by a shock wave similar to a spindle. This was confirmed in the 70s by the results of laboratory modeling, says John Anfinogenov.
Giant trees uprooted after explosion / kp.ru
In the area of the Tunguska disaster, a large number of peat samples were taken.
- In the layer that includes 1908 (and peat is deposited annually), silicate balls were found, containing, like John's stone, silicon, - says John Anfinogenov. - So far, no scientific answer about the origin of the balls has been found, but I am convinced that they are associated with the Tunguska phenomenon.
Spaceship savior
It seems that scientists will never stop breaking spears about the origin of the Tunguska phenomenon. Moreover, the versions for the most part come into conflict not only with each other, but, most likely, with reality.
The Krasnoyarsk researcher, ufologist Yuri Lavbin, founder and director of the Tunguska Meteorite Foundation, believed that the cause of the disaster could be the collision of a comet with an alien starship (Yuri Lavbin died in 2017).
According to Lavbin's version, a comet moved from space to Earth, which became known to a highly developed extraterrestrial civilization. The aliens decided to save the earthlings by sending their starship to the rescue, which, as in the movie "The Fifth Element", was supposed to destroy the space body. But something went wrong, and the aliens only managed to split the comet into pieces. Probably, many will smile at this version.
All versions of the trajectory of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite / kp.ru
- You know, Yuri Dmitrievich was not afraid to be funny, - says the mineralogist and constant opponent of Lavbin in search of the meteorite Nelly Kravchenko. - He just really admitted the existence of other civilizations and was looking for scientific confirmation of this. I went with him on numerous expeditions to search for the remnants of cosmic matter (he believed that the researchers were looking in the wrong place, that the comet fragments had scattered a giant distance). Therefore, we found unusual stones and examined them (we did a whole range of analyzes, including spectral ones). Unfortunately, in all cases what we found turned out to be, as a rule, sandstone with a large proportion of quartz in the composition. By the way, they took me to the group on purpose so that I would express my skepticism about Lavbin's findings. But despite everything, he believed in the success of the search.
Another constant participant in Lavbin's expeditions, Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences Ivan Holgin, believes that there is a rational kernel in the researcher's ideas.
- You know, I have a grandmother from Krasnoturansk, and she was a witness of those events, she remembered that day. I do not share the opinion about the spacecraft. But I sincerely believe that in the region of Krasnoturansk there may be fragments of a cosmic body, because in childhood we found strange stones on the nearby hills. This year I want to visit my native places and go around these hills, suddenly something remains, - the researcher shares his plans. - Now it is difficult to say what exactly it was in reality, therefore, I think, in each version you can find something valuable. But I want to say something else: modern science and equipment make it possible to carry out a lot of important research, to comprehensively study the fall site and the trajectory on which the fragments may be. I understand that this is a lot of money. But the event is rather big - after all, the biggest mystery of the 20th century …
Members of the expedition "Komsomolskaya Pravda" and the Russian Geographical Society hung a plaque on Kulik's hut / kp.ru
Nadezhda ILCHENKO
