As a result of the fall of a meteorite in 1908, the taiga on an area of more than 2000 sq. km was knocked down and burned. The taiga in the area of the disaster has recovered over the past 100 years.
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The Tunguska meteoroid, or the Tunguska meteorite (Tunguska phenomenon) is a hypothetical body, probably of a cometary origin or part of a cosmic body that has undergone destruction, which, presumably, caused an air explosion that occurred in Evenkia, in the region of the Podkamennaya Tunguska River (about 60 km to the north and 20 km west of the village of Vanavara) June 17 (30), 1908 at 7:00 14.5 ± 0.8 minutes local time (0:00 14.5 GMT). The power of the explosion is estimated at 40-50 megatons, which corresponds to the energy of the most powerful hydrogen bomb exploded.
It was found that the explosion occurred in the air at a certain altitude (according to various estimates, 5-15 km) and was unlikely to be point-like, so we can only talk about the projection of the coordinates of a singular point called the epicenter.
On the morning of June 30, 1908, a body of fire flew over central Siberia, moving in a northern direction; its flight was observed in many settlements in that area, thunderous sounds were heard. The body shape is described as round, spherical, or cylindrical; color - like red, yellow or white; there was no smoke trail, but some eyewitness accounts include bright rainbow stripes extending behind the body [10].
At 07:14 local time, the body exploded over the South Swamp near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River.
One of the most famous eyewitness accounts is the report of Semyon Semyonov, a resident of the Vanavara trading station, located 70 km southeast of the epicenter of the explosion:
… suddenly in the north the sky split in two, and a fire appeared in it, wide and high above the forest, which engulfed the entire northern part of the sky. At that moment I felt so hot, as if my shirt was on fire. I wanted to rip and throw off my shirt, but the sky slammed shut and there was a strong blow. I was thrown off the porch by three fathoms. After the blow came such a knock, as if stones were falling from the sky or guns were firing, the earth trembled, and when I was lying on the ground, I pressed my head, fearing that the stones would not break my head. At that moment, when the sky opened, a hot wind swept from the north, like from a cannon, which left traces on the ground in the form of tracks. Then it turned out that many of the glass in the windows were broken, and the iron tab for the door lock was broken near the barn …
Even closer to the epicenter, 30 km from it to the southeast, on the banks of the Avarkitta River, there was a chum of the Evenk brothers Chuchanchi and Chekaren Shanyagir:
“Our chum then stood on the bank of Avarkitta. Before sunrise, Chekaren and I came from the Dilyushma river, where we were visiting with Ivan and Akulina. We fell asleep soundly. Suddenly, both woke up at once - someone was pushing us. We heard a whistle and felt a strong wind. Chekaren still shouted to me: "Do you hear how many gogols fly or mergansers?" We were still in the tent and we could not see what was going on in the forest. Suddenly, someone pushed me again, so hard that I hit my head on the plague pole and then fell onto the hot coals in the hearth. I was scared. Chekaren was also frightened, grabbed the pole. We started shouting father, mother, brother, but no one answered. Behind the plague there was some kind of noise, you could hear the woods falling. Chekaren and I got out of the bags and were already about to jump out of the chum, but suddenly thunder struck very hard. This was the first blow. The earth began to twitch and swaya strong wind hit our chum and knocked it down. I was crushed by the poles, but my head was not covered, because the ellune was lifted up. Then I saw a terrible miracle: the forests are falling, the needles are burning on them, the dry forest on the ground is burning, the deer moss is burning. Smoke all around, eyes hurt, hot, very hot, you can burn.
Suddenly over the mountain, where the forest had already fallen, it became very light, and, how can I tell you, as if the second sun had appeared, the Russians would say: “suddenly it flashed suddenly,” it hurt my eyes, and I even closed them. It looked like what the Russians call "lightning." And immediately there was agdyllian, strong thunder. This was the second blow. The morning was sunny, there were no clouds, our sun was shining brightly, as always, and then a second sun appeared!"
The explosion on Tunguska was heard 800 km from the epicenter, the blast wave knocked down a forest on an area of 2000 km², the windows of some houses were knocked out within a radius of 200 km; the seismic wave was recorded by seismic stations in Irkutsk, Tashkent, Tbilisi and Jena. Soon after the explosion, a magnetic storm began, which lasted for 5 hours.
In 2013, the journal Planetary and Space Science published the results of a study conducted by a group of Ukrainian, German and American scientists, which reported that microscopic samples discovered by Nikolai Kovalykh in 1978 in the Podkamennaya Tunguska area revealed the presence of lonsdaleite, troilite, taenite and sheibersite - minerals characteristic of diamond-bearing meteorites. At the same time, an employee of the Australian University Curtin Phil Bland drew attention to the fact that the studied samples showed a suspiciously low concentration of iridium (which is not typical for meteorites), and also that the peat where the samples were found was not dated 1908, which means that the stones found could have hit Earth earlier or later than the famous explosion.
