The UFO of 1808 could have been a meteorite that nearly destroyed Moscow.
We have already talked about a unique document that specialists from the State Historical Museum discovered in their archives. At the beginning of the 19th century, Andrei Chebotarev, an associate of chemistry and technology at Moscow State University, noticed a strange object in the sky above the Kremlin. The young teacher wrote down everything he saw and even made a sketch on paper (however, historians believe that a drawing based on Chebotarev's story could have been done by a professional artist).
On September 13, 1808 at 20.07 something luminous rectangular floated over the Kremlin. It hovered in the center above the Kremlin, and a bright fireball flared up and burned for 5 seconds nearby. After that, the object began to smoothly rise vertically upward and was visible for another two minutes. The vision was accompanied by a strange sound like rustling.
We invited the readers to figure out together what the adjunct Chebotarev saw. Many hypotheses have been expressed: from the presence in the Moscow Kremlin of a loophole to parallel worlds to the existence of a certain electromagnetic form of life - intelligent plasmoids. However, the authors did not provide any reasonable evidence for their theories.
It was a pleasant surprise that the historical document of the adjunct Chebotarev served as an occasion for scientific discussions at the State Astronomical Institute named after A. Sternberg and at the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics SB RAS. Scientists came to the conclusion that a fireball flew over Moscow and exploded - the townspeople did not even suspect that they were on the verge of death.
- An eyewitness writes (translating into modern Russian) that something luminous flew by, as a result, a rectangular figure with dimensions of about 6.35 x 0.35 meters remained in the sky, - says the senior researcher of the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics SB RAS Sergei YAZEV. - The length is 18 times the width! Draw such an object - and it immediately becomes clear that it is just a long glowing strip.
Sergey Yazev was the scientific leader of three expeditions to find the Vitim bolide that exploded over Siberia in 2002. He interviewed several dozen eyewitnesses of that event, and some said that after the meteor passed in the sky, a reddish bright strip glowed along its path - a tube of incandescent ionized air.
“The further description of Chebotarev,” Yazev continues, “is quite consistent with the hypothesis about the car. "Track" still continued to glow, and the car itself exploded approximately above the observer's head. Naturally, a bright flash was seen, described as "the glow of ignited phosphorus in oxygen," which faded after about five seconds.
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Then it seemed to Chebotarev that the "glowing rectangle" began to rise vertically upward. Imagine that you are watching an airplane flying horizontally at high altitude. If it flies over your head, it will seem to rise - from the horizon to the zenith. The same happens with fireballs. If it flies directly over you, it may appear that it is not going down, but going up. We can only record the displacement across the sky, but the object actually goes up, down, or maintains its height - it depends on the specific observation conditions. It seemed to an eyewitness that the object was moving - and "very smoothly", and he interpreted the displacement as a rise. But gradual extinction in itself may well look like removal, this is a common psychological effect when observed in the sky.
According to scientists' calculations, it turns out that an alien from outer space exploded over Moscow. And when asked why no one heard the explosion and did not notice the falling fragments, Sergei Yazev also has an explanation - they say that the explosion occurred too high.
- The description of the UFO in 1808 was made very unskillfully - the scale of the object remained unclear. After all, an eyewitness indicated linear dimensions, not angular ones - it is clear that a six-meter-long strip shining in front of the observer's nose will look exactly the same as, say, a six-hundred-kilometer-long strip, but at an altitude of three hundred kilometers!
We know from the manuscript that the observer did not hear the sound of the explosion: this is another argument in favor of the fact that the car was flying very high. A faint sound should have reached in a few minutes, when no one was looking at the sky. By the way, according to modern data, fireballs begin to leave a glowing trail at an altitude of about 90 kilometers. Let's assume, having no other data, that the "Kremlin car" began to collapse and then shattered into pieces at a great height. And this, in turn, explains why a meteor shower did not fall on Moscow. The explosion blew the stone into small pieces and dust. These fragments, falling from a height of several tens of colometers by no means vertically, scattered over great distances in all directions. If any pebble five minutes after the explosion and clicked on any roof,it is unlikely that this event could get into the Moscow newspapers … In general, the Muscovites were lucky: if a heavenly guest were larger in size, he could fly to Earth without exploding. Or fly to pieces at low altitude. In this case, Napoleon would not have had to conquer the white stone. Because in the four years left before the French invasion, Muscovites would not have had time to rebuild the destroyed city.
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"Belozerskoe miracle" - a mystery for astronomers
It turned out that the "Kremlin UFO" was not the only strange celestial phenomenon that was recorded in old Russian documents. Another mysterious story took place in 1661 in the Vologda region.
"In the formal replies of the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery" (this handwritten document was discovered by historians back in 1842) there is a strange record about "meteors that appeared in the Belozersky district": "… November 29, Saturday, after sunset in our village of Novaya Erge and in the villages many people saw a terrible sign in the sky: as soon as the sun went down, a long star appeared from the place of sunset, and fire appeared in the sky. Many in the heavenly light saw the figure of a man with outstretched arms. This went on for half an hour, then a cloudy cloud thickened in place of the "human figure", and balls of fire fell from it. They rolled on the ground, but did not burn anyone. And then a terrible noise came from the cloud and stones flew down … ".
Astronomers know about the "Belozersk miracle". Recently, an expedition of the Committee on Meteorites of the Russian Academy of Sciences even visited it. But no traces of meteorite matter were found. Likewise, those of the heavenly stones, which, according to the chronicle, were taken out of Novaya Yerga and built into the walls of the Kirillo-Belozersky monastery, were not discovered either. However, something happened here - at a depth of 14 centimeters, the soil layer is enriched with iridium and nickel of such a high concentration that it is characteristic only for the invasion of space objects.