It is highly likely that for the first time cometary matter was in the hands of mankind.
At the Zigel readings held in November, the head of Cosmopoisk Vadim Chernobrov called the research of the “Karelian phenomenon” an amazing event in 2015. What it really was is still not known for certain, but there is a chance that we will soon witness a real sensation.
In the north of Karelia, not far from the Arctic Circle, there is a mysterious and amazing place - Meteorite Island. And although the tablet with a large handwritten name stands firmly driven into the frozen soil, it is not easy to find the island without the help of local residents. Everyone who lives here or regularly goes on expeditions is sure that this place is unusual. Unidentified flying objects in the vicinity appear more often than airplanes, although there is no one to observe them, except for Arctic animals. The edges here are harsh, there are few people, they don't like to chat in vain, so there is no need to talk about the influx of tourists and possible business.
The event took place on December 1, 2014 at eight o'clock Moscow time, in the remote Karelian taiga, not far from the small village of Polgi. Something fell from space into Vygozero, famous for its anomalies. Versions immediately rained down: a spent stage of a space rocket (fortunately, near Plesetsk), the tricks of poachers, an old aerial bomb … The public-scientific association "Cosmopoisk" decided to check even the most implausible versions by equipping its expedition to the lake.
On thin ice
Vygozero, which ranks tenth by area in Europe, greeted the guests with epic tranquility and … a thaw, despite the fact that the polar winter had come. Local rescuers have even been banned from going out on the ice, as three fishermen have recently died. But scaring the locals with such dangers is not easy, and they offered to take the expedition members to the right place on snowmobiles with trailers in order to transport all the equipment needed for research at once. Local residents also had their own interest: people were afraid that it was really a rocket, because of which the radiation background could increase, which means that drinking water from the lake and fishing would become dangerous. “We drove on the ice, which was cracking behind us, at a breakneck speed and did not even have time to get scared,” recalls Vadim Chernobrov.
We arrived at the site and immediately began research. The hypothesis with the fall of the rocket was quickly sent to the archive. “We were looking for traces of leaked fuel that could not be hidden,” says Chernobrov, “wreckage of equipment, but there were none. So there was no rocket either. The background radiation turned out to be normal, which made the local residents very happy.
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There were no traces of the exploded aerial bomb. All versions gradually disappeared, and the UFO flyby remained the most reliable. The fact is that this story strongly resembled what happened not far from these places, on Korb Lake in Karelia in 1961, just on the eve of Yuri Gagarin's historic flight. Then people talked about the appearance of an incomprehensible celestial body, which sharply hit the ice, leaving many large and small cracks on it, and then quickly soared into the sky and disappeared behind the horizon. The wreckage of the "alien" was searched carefully, but they found nothing but a strange greenish powder that remained at the site of the impact.
There are traces, but others
In such cases, eyewitnesses are extremely important. And they were found. The people turned out to be serious, and they were engineers by training, which is probably why their testimonies were credible. And the more details accumulated, the more obvious the version of the UFO became for Chernobrov. The fact is that people saw how an unknown object flew over their heads from the east towards the lake, heard a strong blow against the ice, and then a receding sound. True, the view obscured the island, and, besides, it was dark. In winter, the polar night reigns here; in December, the faded daylight hours are about three hours.
What happened was very similar to the event of 1961, when a UFO pushed hard into the ice, but managed to get up and fly away. Terrestrial aircraft are not capable of this, emphasizes Chernobrov. The researchers hoped to find traces of green powder, or others, left after similar incidents.
But there were only traces of recently cracked ice, cracks along which diverged tens of kilometers to the west. But soon the echo sounder caught that under the ice, at a depth of about four meters, there was something massive. Moreover, mobile!
Natalia Leskova