In the early morning of June 30, 1908, a huge aerolite flew into the Earth's atmosphere from west to east over the upper reaches of the Yenisei, and after 30–40 minutes the inhabitants of Eastern Siberia felt a shaking of the soil. Those who lived in the places near the Vanavara trading post saw the flight of a luminous body and a flash, which was accompanied by a series of powerful explosions … The incident was reported to the authorities, but since this natural phenomenon did not cause unrest among the people and did not cause significant damage (explosion occurred in a remote taiga), the event was soon forgotten, although some information was collected.
The study of this unusual natural phenomenon began only nineteen years later, and already the first finds stunned the researchers. The radial fall of the taiga covered an area of 2,150 square kilometers. Humanity has never known explosions of such power in its history. Further research aimed at finding the meteorite body itself continued over the years, but not a single gram of matter was found that could be confidently attributed to that alien from space.
- The fact that preceded the event at the end of June 1908, when even before the fall of an unknown body on the planet, unusual atmospheric phenomena were observed, was a consequence of the coincidence of the trajectories of our planet's flight around the Sun and a certain comet. For at least 40 minutes (this is almost 70 thousand kilometers), they flew side by side, and the comet seemed to be in front, crossed the Earth's orbit in its northern part (from 40 to 62 degrees), - suggests the Krasnoyarsk engineer Gennady Ivanov. This joint flight (the comet flew in the direction of Central Asia - Chukotka) ended with their intersection. Prior to this, the comet approached our planet - it was first seen in the south of Altai. But this was not yet the fall of the comet, but only its passage of the meridian directed at that moment towards the movement of the Earth around the Sun. This meridian can be considered as a kind of equator,largest diameter in the path of a comet. Having flown it, it began to move away from the surface of our planet, but almost parallel to the trajectory of the Earth. Some distance from the Earth's surface was facilitated by the movement of the comet to the northeast, since, as you know, the northern parallels are much smaller than those located closer to the equator: the curvature of the Earth affects.
The name of Gennady Ivanov for those interested in the Tunguska mystery says little. Among such scientists as M. Florensky, E. Krinov, I. Astapovich, V. Bronstein, A. Yavnel, M. Zotkin, F. Siegel, V. Zhuravlev, A. Dmitriev and many others who have devoted dozens of people to the study of the Tunguska phenomenon years, as well as the enthusiasts of the Tomsk complex amateur expedition to study the Tunguska meteorite, headed by Nikolai Vasiliev, his name until recently was not. The boldness of his judgments sometimes irritated the pros of the Tunguska disaster. This is especially true of the dynamics of the trajectory of a celestial alien.
“Such a close approach to the Earth did not remain without consequences for the comet,” continues G. Ivanov. - She fell into the field of gravity, and then, once in the thermosphere, the comet was actively evaporating. Comets, as the practice of their study shows, is surrounded by blocks of frozen gas with a temperature close to absolute zero, and all this environment revolves around a single center of mass and is measured in hundreds of kilometers. So, getting into the denser layers of the atmosphere, these pieces exploded, creating the effect of cannon fire, which was noted by eyewitnesses along the entire route of the comet's flight in the dense layers of the earth's atmosphere.
The mistake of all researchers of the Tunguska problem is that they study the effect, not the cause of the event, - G. Ivanov is sure. - Timber felling is one of the factors of the meeting of two space objects. All trajectories were built based on the symmetry of the taiga in the shape of a butterfly and interviewing eyewitnesses, which led to the construction of a large number of flight trajectories. The authors of these trajectories cannot come to an agreement and work out a single line. Trajectories are built based on the fact that during the day a meteorite can be seen when it is at an altitude of less than 100 kilometers, and, taking as a reference point the flight over the village of Preobrazhenka or the village of Mironove, they build the trajectory slope lines to the horizon, which is obtained from 7 up to 20 degrees!
Such constructions are incorrect, and that is why, says the Krasnoyarsk engineer. In the morning, the Earth is directed towards its orbital motion, and all comets and other cosmic bodies will be oncoming for it. It travels 100 kilometers in its orbit in 3.3 seconds. For the Tunguska body to fly the distance from the village of Preobrazhenka to the explosion site, it had to rush at a speed of 200 kilometers per second. Cosmic bodies flying in the area of the Earth's orbit do not have the same speeds. G. Ivanov recalls that Halley's comet on its way to the Sun had a speed of 34 kilometers per hour, and from the Sun - 36 kilometers. That is why he is sure that all the previously proposed "oncoming trajectories" of the flight of the Earth and the Tunguska body have no physical meaning. With the oncoming traffic for our planet, a global catastrophe would occur!
Let's return to the key point of G. Ivanov's version.
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The earth and the comet, he suggests, flew in parallel, and at a conventional place in the area of the village of Mironove, their speeds began to level out. And then the Earth began to "catch up" the comet, slowly approaching it. Even above the village of Preobrazhenka, the height of the alien was 130–140 kilometers above the surface of our planet. As it approached the Earth, the comet, entering increasingly dense layers of the atmosphere, began to slow down according to the laws of ballistics.
At an altitude of about 30 kilometers, having already fallen into a dense (by the standards of outer space) atmosphere, the comet split: from the loose "snow-ice" environment, a heavier nucleus with a large mass and, with a relatively small volume, flew out (as if hatched out of the shell), a large supply of energy. The upper gas shell, red-hot from the collision with the atmosphere, exploded as it were when the nucleus exited. This moment is fixed by the forest. A radiation burn was found on the surviving trees. According to all the laws of physics that all researchers obeyed, the shape of a forest of burnt trees should be in the shape of an oval, and numerous data show that this shape, rather, can be compared with the shell of a eaten egg, as it were, put on the table. The shape of the burnt tree felling shows the direction of the further flight of the nucleus.
Over the taiga there was an explosion of detonating gas, more precisely, several explosions, a hurricane swept through. An air explosion can cause a baric wave, knock down a forest, but it cannot cause an earthquake! Nuclear air tests confirm just such a picture. But the shaking of the soil is one of the most striking factors that accompanied the Tunguska disaster. Recall that in the summer of 1908, some English owners of gold-bearing mines in the Angara region sent a protest to the governor of the Yenisei province in connection with the fact that he, allowing them a concession for the development of subsoil, did not warn about possible earthquakes here, as a result of which part of the mines collapsed and they, the owners suffered heavy losses!
5 points - such was the earthquake that did not have a deep character, and therefore did not spread far. What caused it? Only one thing, says G. Ivanov: the fall of the comet nucleus. In the taiga, at least a million tons of cosmic matter fell, having lost space velocity. For comparison: the Sikhote-Alin meteorite weighing 70 tons, which fell in the Far East in the late 1940s, was not recorded by seismographs.
What was in this core? A rock? Iron? Solid gases, then evaporated? No one can really say, because all expeditions were looking for the remains of the Tunguska alien at the site of the shell explosion, and not at the site of the fall of the core.
Question to Gennady Ivanov:
- In the early 90s, in a number of publications you spoke about the supposed place of the fall of the remains of the Tunguska meteorite. Has your point of view changed?
- The time of the publication of those publications unsuccessfully coincided with the upheavals throughout our country. Then there was no time for the Tunguska riddle … But I am still sure that the very place of the fall should have been sought not in the place of the explosion in the Vanavara region, where the Tunguska state reserve with an area of 3000 square kilometers is now organized. The separation of the celestial body took place in an area with coordinates 103 degrees east longitude. Continuing to move eastward, the comet's nucleus flew away 150 200 kilometers from the explosion site, decelerated and collapsed to the ground. The place of the fall is on the border of the Krasnoyarsk Territory and the Irkutsk Region. It was in those places, literally hot on the trail of the disaster, that an expedition took place, in which V. Shishkov was, later a famous writer, who, in his report on the expedition, reported about a huge felling of the forest,which had by its nature not the features of the local soil, but all the signs of some kind of cataclysm. About V. Shishkov's observations, which they did not believe - and did not check! more than once recalled his colleague on the expedition P. Lipai. It is a pity that at least a share of all funds spent on research in the area of the "Kulikovsky" fall was not used to study the "Shishkov" fall,”complains G. Ivanov.
Reflecting on a different than the generally accepted version of the dynamics of the flight of the Tunguska body, Gennady Ivanov came to a conclusion that seems paradoxical for many. Speaking about the Tunguska catastrophe, one must understand the obvious truth: it was not the meteorite that “fell” to the Earth, but our planet, as it were, “crushed” this heavenly wanderer. As a result, one more conclusion: the comet, flying in outer space, and not the Earth suffered the catastrophe. The coincidence of their trajectories made this collision almost harmless for earthlings and did not lead to a global catastrophe.
Official science, having sent the last expedition to the site of the "Kulikovsky" dump in the 60s, searched, as usual, for the crashed spacecraft, but found nothing, made a negative conclusion about the prospects of continuing research and gave the Tunguska riddle at the mercy of lovers of taiga secrets.
- Do you consider it necessary to continue serious scientific research?
- Today it is hardly possible, although in the 1920s funds were found for a multi-month expedition led by Kulik. I'm talking about the more advantageous aspect of the fall of the Tunguska comet. If it was possible to find the initial funds for the sensible organization of tourist routes to the explosion site near Vanavara, funds would also appear for the search for the comet nucleus in the area of the "Shishkovsky" fall. Then, I am sure, world science would have woken up. And there would be millions of dollars and billions of rubles for deep research, and other millions could be easily earned on the endless thirst of people in dozens of countries to see the place of the Tunguska cataclysm - the place of calming of a comet that arrived from the depths of space. Or maybe not only see the place of the fall, but also get at least a piece of what fell into the Siberian taiga in the summer of 1908 …
Our region, continues G. Ivanov, could become a kind of Mecca for both Russian and foreign lovers of the unknown. Let me remind you that here, in the upper reaches of the Yenisei, is the site of the discovery of the world's first scientifically recognized meteorite, which entered the annals of history under the name “Pallas Iron”: it was Pallas who, with the help of dozens of local peasants on carts, transported part of the meteorite from the wilderness to the Russian capital. Its samples, meteorite particles, are carefully kept in many museums around the world, and two of its blocks still lie in the Novoselovsky district, near Mount Big Emir, forgotten for the reason that we have a lot of everything in our country.
THE FLASH OUTSIDE EVEN THE SUN
Numerous expeditions that studied the vast area of radial forest fall on the Podkamennaya Tunguska did not find any impact craters or meteorite matter. Therefore, the researchers came to the unanimous opinion that a very real explosion, corresponding in power to the explosion of one or two thousand atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima, is explained by the explosion of an icy comet when it enters the dense atmosphere of the Earth at cosmic speed. It is generally accepted that cometary matter did not reach the surface of our planet; it all evaporated in the fire of a high-temperature explosion.
However, is this hypothesis correct? There is evidence that the comet's debris may have hit the Earth's surface and left unusual craters on it. Let's turn to the facts. The long flight of the fireball, shining brighter than the Sun and moving in a northeastern direction, was marked by numerous observations, including by passengers of a train traveling along the Trans-Siberian Railway on June 30, 1908. It should be emphasized that a strong explosion shook not only the village of Vanavara on Podkamennaya Tunguska, where all expeditions that study this mysterious phenomenon usually begin. The inhabitants of Kirensk on the Lena saw a gigantic vertical column at least 20 kilometers high above the horizon; a bright fiery flash that eclipsed the Sun was seen at the Lena gold mines and in the area of the village of Bodaibo on the Patomsky highlands. Seismographs of Irkutsk,Tashkent, Tiflis (Tbilisi), Jena (Germany) noted the shaking of the soil, which is also characteristic of a ground explosion.
An expedition of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR under the leadership of L. Kulik established in 1927 a gigantic zone of forest felling, where the trees lay oriented as the blast wave laid them. The diameter of this zone reached 60 kilometers, which is larger than the area of Moscow with its suburbs! For many years, all subsequent expeditions conducted prospecting work in this area. And only much later they remembered that a similar area of forest felling, located to the southeast, at a distance of about 100 kilometers from the "Kulikovsky" fall, was discovered back in 1911 by road engineer Vyacheslav Shishkov, who later became a famous writer. But they did not pay attention to Shishkov's message about this strange phenomenon, since at that time no one came up with the idea of the relationship between the felling of the forest and the explosion of the Tunguska meteorite.
In 1991, information appeared in the press about a find made in the Evenk taiga by the hunter V. Voronov. Approximately 100 kilometers north-west of the zone surveyed by L. Kulik, the hunter discovered a huge crater 200 meters in diameter; the sides of this annular crater rose 15–20 meters above the ground. Maybe this crater arose from a fragment of the Tunguska meteorite?.. There is no exact answer to this question, expeditionary studies of this area are required. However, attention is drawn to the fact that the "Voronov crater", "Kulikovsky" and "Shishkovsky" forest fallouts form a single zone oriented to the west - northwest, with a length of about 200 kilometers. And if we extend this zone to the east - southeast, then after 700 kilometers it will run into a mysterious formation - Patomsky crater, described in detail,studied and named by us for its location on the Patomsky Upland, also known as the Lensky gold-bearing region. The crater is located in a deep taiga, on the southwestern slope of a mountain 1350 meters above sea level, 50 kilometers from the village of Perevoz.
Among the terrestrial relief forms known to specialists, the Patomsky crater is distinguished by an amazing originality, since it looks like a volcano, but does not contain any traces of igneous igneous rocks. It is a fill mound, the top of which is an annular rampart with a central hill, as from lunar craters. It consists of fragments and large blocks (up to 3-4 meters in diameter) of local sedimentary rocks - Precambrian limestones. The entire mountain is also composed of these limestones, and there are no traces of rock changes in the crater and beyond. The crater did not have time to be overgrown with forest, the limestones are fresh, undisturbed.
This mysterious landform is not at all like a classic explosive meteorite crater. For example, the detailed study of Devil's Canyon in Arizona (USA) is a crater about a kilometer in diameter, from which the rock was thrown out by an explosion and a negative relief form appeared. And Patomsky crater is a positive relief form, resembling in shape either a volcano or a lunar crater.
Rising 40 meters above the endless taiga, this crater makes a stunning impression on a specialist, since neither a geologist nor a geomorphologist can explain the cause of its occurrence. Geological survey showed that there are no analogues in the entire Patom Upland. And now, unexpectedly, the hunter V. Voronov finds something similar in the area of forest falls on Podkamennaya Tunguska!
In terms of size, the Patomsky crater is similar to the crater discovered by V. Voronov: the height of the annular shaft is from 10 to 40 meters, the upper diameter is 86 meters, the base in the form of an ellipse is 140 by 220 meters, the height of the central hill is 6 meters, the diameter at its bases - 35 meters. The crater is oriented to the southwest, that is, in the direction from which, in the opinion of many observers, the Tunguska meteorite was moving. The total volume of limestone thrown out is 250 thousand cubic meters, at least 600 thousand tons of rocks. Something similar in shape occurs when a stone is thrown into a thick liquid mud.
It is obvious that the crater was formed quite recently. This is evidenced by the sharp, well-preserved ridge of the annular shaft. In conditions of permafrost and abundant annual precipitation, the annular rampart looks very "fresh": it did not crumble, it was not overgrown with taiga vegetation, blocks of limestone seem to have been blown up only yesterday. In other words, the birth of the crater may well be attributed to 1908. In this regard, it should be recalled that a bright fiery flash was observed precisely at the Lena mines, that the inhabitants of Kirensk on the Lena saw a giant column of smoke going into the stratosphere … And at the same time, at the end of June 1908, an expedition headed by a member of the Geographic Society of Russia A. Makarenko, whose report does not say a word about the incredible phenomena that accompanied the fall of the Tunguska diva! It is possible that some of the soundlighting and other effects is also associated with the Lensky district, they simply did not pay enough attention to it! It can be assumed that a huge cosmic body, consisting, like the nucleus of Halley's comet, of ice and solid gases such as methane and carbon dioxide, crumbled in dense layers of the atmosphere at an altitude of 30-40 kilometers, and separate solid debris scattered like cluster bombs, forming a vast "Affected area", elongated in the northwest direction perpendicular to the movement of the space body.forming an extensive "affected area", elongated in the northwest direction perpendicular to the movement of the space body.forming an extensive "affected area", elongated in the northwest direction perpendicular to the movement of the space body.
Of course, the question remains: why the Patomsky crater has no analogues? We think that the shape of this crater is characteristic of much rarer "cometary" craters, the formation of which is associated with the impact on the Earth not of an "iron ingot" of a meteorite, but with the intensively degassing matter of a "small comet". Imagine that a whole rock made of heavy hard “stone” carbon dioxide, well known to all ice cream lovers, has hit the limestone with cosmic speed. If it gets stuck at a depth of 200-250 meters and continues to evaporate after falling, then a huge volume of gases can cause the appearance of a "swollen" landform. This phenomenon is rare - after all, the Tunguska phenomenon also has no analogues in the foreseeable history of mankind!..
By the way, the shape of the Patomsky crater was quite unexpectedly repeated during a mysterious explosion that occurred quite recently, on Cosmonautics Day, April 12, 1991, in the Ryazan region, on the outskirts of the city of Sasovo. At 1.34 am the whole city was awakened by a powerful explosion. Glass, window frames and doors were broken in the houses. In the morning, a funnel with a diameter of 28 meters was discovered in the fields outside the city - it was a ring shaft with a central hill. All newspapers wrote about this strange event, dozens of scientific commissions walked around the crater … and could not say anything concrete.
The similarity of the Patomsky crater with the Sasovsky crater (although the scale, fortunately, is incommensurable) suggests that we are meeting with some new and still unknown phenomenon. It is possible that an ice meteorite also fell on the outskirts of the city of Sasovo.
Do not forget that a huge amount of frozen gas and ice flies around the planets in space. For example, a whole "frozen ocean" revolves around Saturn, making up the famous rings of this planet.
Such ice rings have also been found in Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune, that is, in almost all the giant planets of the outer group. Jupiter's powerful gravitational field "rocks" piles of space "icebergs"; pictures of the amazing and inexplicable interweaving of ice rings near Saturn have been established … Is it not from here that cometary gas-ice matter comes to the Earth? Its main feature is that as a result, "ghost meteorites" fall on our planet, leaving no "material evidence" and disappearing without a trace both in the atmosphere and upon impact on the Earth's surface. Only craters of an amazing "lunar" shape remain a reality - with ring ramparts and central hills.
XX century. Chronicle of the inexplicable. Opening after opening. Nikolai Nepomniachtchi