In 1908, on June 30, a terrible explosion was heard in the air over a distant section of the Siberian forest, near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River. According to some reports, the volume of the fireball reached a hundred meters in diameter. The explosion destroyed two thousand square kilometers of forest in Siberia - about 80 million trees. Fortunately, the area over which the explosion occurred was practically uninhabited, and there was not a single mention of deaths.
Tunguska explosion
The Tunguska phenomenon is the most powerful explosion in the atmosphere attested in recent times. The release of energy from it amounted to about 15 megatons in TNT equivalent, which is 185 times more than that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Seismic waves caused by this energy release have been recorded in the UK.
But, despite the strength and uniqueness of the phenomenon, even a hundred years after the explosion, scientists are still looking for answers to the question of what exactly happened on June 30, 1908. Many of them are convinced that the big bang was caused by a meteorite or comet, but during this time too little physical evidence has been found to support this idea. Despite the lack of evidence, this theory is mainstream in the scientific community. However, that doesn't stop other incredible explanations from circulating in academia from time to time.
First expedition
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The area of the Tunguska River, which flows in the Irkutsk Region, is remote and inaccessible. The climate there is very harsh - long cold winters and a very short summer period, when heat turns solid earth into a liquid, deadly swamp. This is one of the reasons why no one went on a scientific expedition to the site of the explosion immediately after the incident. In addition, 1908 was not the most prosperous time in the history of Tsarist Russia.
Only 20 years later, Leonid Kulik, an expert in mineralogy, convinced the scientific community and the government of the need to send a research group to the epicenter of the explosion. When the team reached the area of the incident, scientists were amazed at the scale of the destruction caused by the energy wave. On an area of 50 square kilometers, trees were piled in the shape of a butterfly.
Kulik's first suggestion was a meteorite fall, but the group was unable to find a crater or any remnants of the meteorite. Perhaps all significant parts of the asteroid that exploded in the atmosphere drowned in the swamp.
Subsequently, scientists who read Kulik's publication about the expedition suggested that it could be a comet, not a meteorite. Comets are composed mostly of ice, not rock like asteroids, which perfectly explains the lack of mineral fragments.
Subsequent research
Another expedition in 1958 discovered silicate and magnetite elements in the soil. Further analysis showed that these elements had a high nickel content, which is typical for meteorites.
In 2013, a group of scientists from the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine analyzed microscopic samples of stone from the epicenter of the explosion, collected in 1978. These samples were recognized as meteorite remains and, in addition, they were collected from the peat layer corresponding to the explosion period.
It seems that all the more or less confirmed finds support Kulik's first theory that the Tunguska phenomenon was caused by a meteorite explosion in the atmosphere, just above the Earth's surface.
The secret of the Tunguska phenomenon
The drama of the phenomenon lies in the fact that this is the only megaton explosion of a supposed cosmic body in the earth's atmosphere recorded in recent centuries. According to various sources, its strength ranged from 15 to 50 megatons. The burst of energy caused the formation of a shock wave of incredible force. Upon collision with the earth's surface, this wave caused not only the destruction of the forest, but also strong seismic waves recorded within a radius of hundreds of kilometers, from Irkutsk to Tbilisi. After the explosion, a prolonged magnetic storm and unusual light effects in the atmosphere were observed.
And, despite the importance of this event, the scientific community knows so little about it. In fact, there is not a single conclusive evidence that the explosion occurred as a result of the disintegration of a space object in the atmosphere. Many scientists still publish work speculating on the possible causes of the explosion.