Q The recent 100th anniversary of the Tunguska catastrophe has caused a new surge of interest in this mystery, the controversy around which, however, never subsided.
Nothing fell into the tunguska taiga
Let us remind our readers of what happened on the morning of June 30, 1908.
Over the Siberian taiga a fireball flew with a crash. The rumble was heard over a thousand kilometers. The windows in the houses of remote villages were shaking.
The flight of the celestial body ended with a series of explosions at an altitude of about 5-10 kilometers and the fall of a forest on an area of 2150 square kilometers. The explosions were accompanied by an earthquake, the magnitude of which is estimated from 4.7 to 5 points. The total released energy of the explosions was approximately 40 megatons in TNT equivalent, which corresponds to the energy of an average hydrogen bomb.
The disaster also caused fluctuations in the magnetic field over a large area. The Siberian events resulted in atmospheric optical anomalies that spread throughout the world.
The researchers got to the crash site only in 1927. The first expedition was headed by Leonid Alekseevich Kulik, an expert in mineralogy and meteorite research. Having collected the facts, the scientist came to the conclusion that a large meteorite really flew over the Yenisei province, which fell in the area of the Podsmennaya Tunguska river.
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In the area of the disaster, the members of the expedition discovered a tremendous fall of the forest. The trunks and branches of the trees looked like they were being licked by tongues of flame. Kulik was looking for a crater formed as a result of the impact of a meteorite on the ground, and fragments of meteorite matter. The main efforts of this and all his subsequent expeditions were directed at this. However, neither the crater nor the fragments of the meteorite could be found.
The Academy of Sciences sent expeditions to the Podkamennaya Tunguska area up to the beginning of the 60s of the XX century. Then the work was stopped. Since then, only enthusiasts have explored the disaster area.
So scientists faced the main mystery of the Tunguska phenomenon: an explosion occurred over the taiga, but what caused it did not leave any traces. Judging by the power of the explosion, the object that collapsed into the taiga should have had a mass of several tens of thousands of tons. Such an amount of substance could not disappear without a trace …
Plasma clot
In 1995, an international conference was held in Moscow and Tomsk dedicated to various aspects of the Tunguska disaster. Among the hypotheses discussed at it, the most interesting were two, which, along with the cometary, are considered the most promising.
In the early 1980s, employees of the Siberian Branch of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Candidates of Physical and Mathematical Sciences A. Dmitriev and V. Zhuravlev put forward a hypothesis that the Tunguska meteorite is a plasmacide detached from the Sun.
Dmitriev and Zhuravlev, as a working hypothesis, admit the possibility of the existence in space of microtransients - medium-sized plasmacids generated by the Sun. These microtransients are capable of drifting for a long time in interplanetary space. When approaching the Earth, they can be captured by the planet's magnetosphere and, as it were, be directed to the regions of magnetic anomalies. According to the hypothesis of Dmitriev and Zhuravlev, just such a plasma brainchild of the Sun exploded over the Tunguska taiga.
One of the main contradictions of the Tunguska problem is the discrepancy between the calculated flight path of the "meteorite", based on the testimony of eyewitnesses, and the picture of forest felling. Supporters of the meteorite hypothesis reject these facts and many eyewitness accounts. In contrast, Dmitriev and Zhuravlev collected more than a thousand eyewitness accounts and put them into a computer, applying mathematical formalization methods to them. However, the "collective portrait" of the space visitor failed. The computer divided all observers into two main camps - east and south, concluding that the observers saw two different objects.
It turns out that the Tunguska object seems to have doubled in time and space. Two giant celestial bodies flew towards each other at intervals of several hours! But there is nothing unusual here, if we assume that it was a plasmacide, because cosmic plasmacids usually exist in pairs. It turns out that on June 30, 1908, at least two fiery guests invaded the sky over Eastern Siberia. Since the dense atmosphere of the Earth is hostile to them, the "heavenly couple" exploded …
Shifting tectonic plates
Another hypothesis was proposed by A. Yu. Olkhovatov, who believes that the Tunguska phenomenon is one of the forms of … earthquakes.
It would seem difficult to believe in this, because hundreds of eyewitnesses watched the passage of a sparkling ball and heard a roar coming from the sky. However, Olkhovatov gives his reasons: “In the scientific literature, many cases are described that resemble small-scale analogies of the Tunguska phenomenon, when the activation of seismic processes leads to the appearance of various kinds of optical formations in the atmosphere,” he says.
So, on April 22, 1974, before the start of the natural disaster in Jiangsu province (China), a bright streak of light was seen in the sky. Flashing and shimmering from the "lightning" that cut through it, it passed from the south-west to the north-east. In the same China, in the Liaolin province on February 4, 1975, during a catastrophic earthquake, pillars of fire erupted in the sky.
Similar cases A. Yu. Olkhovatov cites many. Quite often, luminous balls appear in them, behind which sometimes tails stretch, as it was in the sky above Podkamennaya Tunguska.
As a rule, all mentioned formations (pillars, balls, stripes, etc.) tend to move along tectonic faults. On the map of the Tunguska disaster area, you can clearly see how all three flight trajectories. compiled according to the testimony of eyewitnesses. just pass along the lines of such faults, intersecting less than a hundred kilometers east of the explosion site. The eastern trajectory of the flown object corresponds to the Berezovsko-Vanavarsky fault, the southeastern trajectory corresponds to the Norilsk-Markovsky fault, and the southern one to the Angara-Khetsky fault.
With Olkhovaty's hypothesis, it would seem. the specific felling does not agree well, but the scientist drew attention to one important detail: the symmetry axis of the felling corresponds to the direction of the Berezovsko-Vanavarsky tectonic fault, and the epicenter of the explosion coincides with the crater of an ancient volcano.
Seismic processes are often accompanied by eddies. Sometimes, in places of increased tectonic activity, these processes are accompanied by a series of sounds resembling explosions. - the so-called barisal volleys.
Other "symptoms" of the Tunguska catastrophe are also consistent with Olkhovatov's version. Disturbances of the geomagnetic field have been observed repeatedly during earthquakes. For example, during the earthquake of January 19, 1845 in the West Indies, the compass arrows on the Thames were rotating at a tremendous speed. And the unusual glow of the sky, noted by many witnesses of the Tunguska phenomenon, began long before the disaster. The next night it sharply increased, and after a few days it came to naught. Such phenomena often accompany earthquakes.
According to Olkhovatov, the scenario of the Tungus events was as follows. The first stage began with the appearance of luminous formations in the atmosphere over the southern part of the Siberian platform. Eyewitnesses mistook some of them for a bright meteor.
The formations moved along the fault line converging to the east of the future epicenter. Around the same time, seismic processes began on a vast territory, which most likely covered only the near-surface layer of the earth.
In a place that almost perfectly coincides with the mouth of the ancient volcano of the powerful Berezovsko-Vanavarsky fault, endogenous energy (i.e., the energy that arises in the bowels of the earth) was released in the brightest, explosive form, which led to a huge felling.
Of course, Olkhovaty's hypothesis has many vulnerabilities. The main one is the complete lack of clarity with the mechanism of formation of Barisal volleys and luminous objects. At this point, by the way, his hypothesis intersects with one of the hypotheses about the origin of UFOs. Some researchers consider these mysterious flying objects to be a product of our planet, arising precisely in the places of fractures of the earth's crust.
Igor Voloznev. Secrets of the XX century magazine