Several dozen meteorite craters are known in different parts of the world, formed many hundreds of thousands of years ago. Some of them are located in Estonia, on about. Saaremaa (Ezel) in the Baltic Sea. The last time a space visitor in the form of a meteorite visited these places was on May 11, 1855. Why did space choose this particular corner of the Earth then? There is still no answer.
In every meteor flying through the night sky, the ancient people saw a dragon with a fiery tail, and in every falling star - either an extinct human life, or a fiery spear launched by one of the invisible air creatures into another, hostile to him.
Kaali crater on Saaremaa island
For example, here are several notes from different chronicles, as they are given in the astronomy of Arago:
586 - "A light like a serpent appeared in heaven."
876 - “On December 13, terrible spears, never seen before, appear in heaven. They say they saw a bloody rain."
952 - "The serpent was seen in the sky." (Frodoard's Chronicle.)
Promotional video:
1462 - "God sent large stones from the sky."
Such messages are found in many chronicles. One can imagine how many superstitious rumors or naive explanations were caused in ancient times by these annually observed falls of meteorites, with the general mystical mood of that time and the complete absence of exact knowledge about the nature of such phenomena.
At that time, the Estonians believed that a meteorite helps people protect themselves from evil spirits, failures, diseases, etc. The locals searched for fragments of a heavenly stone in the vicinity of the crater and wore them on their chests in the form of an amulet. Or they pounded it into powder and consumed it with food. They especially believed in the miraculous power of the space aliens of the peasant women, who supplied even their babies with protective amulets.
Saaremaa (with an area of about three thousand square kilometers) is the largest island in the Moonzun archipelago of the Baltic. The area is hilly (up to 54 m above sea level), covered with forests. The Viidumäe and Vilsandi nature reserves are located here, as well as the Kaali geological reserve with the lake of the same name.
This forested body of water in the center of Saaremaa is the largest of eight unique meteorite craters on the island.
Kaali Meteorite Shards
Eight funnels of different sizes have intrigued researchers for almost 100 years. Scientists from many countries put forward dozens of versions of their origin, broke spears in disputes and disputes, presented dozens of arguments in defense of their hypothesis, until finally, in 1927, the Estonian geologist I. A. Reinvald proved the meteoric nature of craters.
Fragments of meteorite iron were also found in the vicinity, however, quite a bit - just over one kilogram. Nowadays, the town of Kaali is located near this unique place.
Another similar crater, but 170 m deep and 1200 m across, is found only in the United States, in the state of Arizona. It is also called the Devil's Gorge, and it is located in the red-yellow steppe, covered with wretched bushes of thorns. For a view, you need to climb a 50-meter ridge, where an asphalt road leads. The crater itself is surrounded by a wire fence.
There is a souvenir shop at the gate. Here, tourists are charged a fee of eight US dollars - for pleasure and, obviously, to strengthen the bottom and lure the next meteorites from space. The crater is a huge flat-bottomed funnel with an American flag stuck in its center, which you can admire through a telescope.
In the vicinity of this cosmic depression, many thousands of small fragments of an iron meteorite with a total weight of over 20 tons were collected, according to other sources - over 30 tons. The whole meteorite undoubtedly weighed many thousands of tons. The meteorite crater on Saaremaa in Estonia, although smaller, looks much more mysterious - and also free.
But the famous Tunguska meteorite, which fell on June 30, 1908, 65 km from the Evenk village of Vanavara in the region of the Siberian Podkamennaya Tunguska River in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, left no crater or fragments behind. Why? After all, giant meteorites weighing thousands of tons (and the mass of Tunguska is estimated by experts at at least 100 thousand tons) should crash into the Earth's surface, forming significant craters. In this case, a crater should have formed about one and a half kilometers across and several hundred meters deep. But nothing of the kind happened.
The participants of the first expedition led by Professor Leonid Kulik in 1927 saw a lifeless plain, burnt, broken, trees scattered in all directions, like matches. Neither the crater, nor the epicenter, nor any fragments of the alleged meteorite, this expedition, as well as numerous subsequent ones, could not find over the entire vast area of 2000 km2.
During the 1962 expedition, a group of scientists led by Professor Florensky sifted through the soil in search of microscopic particles that could be scattered during the combustion and grinding of the Tunguska object. Their efforts were crowned with success. Scientists have found a narrow strip of cosmic dust 250 km long, extending to the northwest of the scene and consisting of magnetite (magnetic iron ore) and glassy droplets of molten rock.
The expedition found thousands of particles of metals and silicates, which indicated the heterogeneity of the composition of the Tunguska object. For decades, experts from different countries have put forward hundreds of hypotheses about the taiga explosion on June 30, 1908, but they have not come to a consensus.
And in 2004, members of the research expedition of the Siberian Public Foundation "Tunguska Space Phenomenon" even announced that in the area of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite, they managed to find the remains of an alien technical device …
On February 12, 1947, a huge meteorite with a mass of about 70 tons fell in the Far East in the spurs of the Sikhote-Alin. Over the years of research, scientists at the site of its fall have found many debris scattered over an area of three square kilometers, and more than 100 craters.
The artist PI Medvedev even painted the picture "The Fall of the Sikhote-Alin Meteor Shower".
How do such "rains" appear?
Sometimes a rapidly rushing fireball is seen in the sky - a bolide. A fiery tail stretches behind it and a faint trail remains, which in the daytime looks like a gray smoky strip. At night, the fireball illuminates the area brightly. A few minutes after his disappearance, there are blows like explosions, and then a crash and a gradually dying rumble is heard.
Meteorites fall suddenly, at any time and in any corner of the Earth. Invading the Earth's atmosphere at a speed of about 20 km per second, a space body already at an altitude of 100-120 km encounters strong resistance. Due to its tremendous speed, it compresses air particles in front of it, and as a result, a kind of pillow of highly compressed and heated air is formed in front of it.
The surface of a stone or iron meteorite is also heated to several thousand degrees Celsius. At this moment, he is observed as a fireball - a bolide.
When a meteoric body moves in the atmosphere, its substance melts and turns into vapor, and is partially sprayed out in tiny droplets. Therefore, the cosmic guest seems to melt away, continuously decreases in size. From the sprayed droplets, which, when solidified, turn into balls, a luminous trail is formed, marking the path of the car's movement.
Approaching the earth's surface, the meteoroid enters the denser layers of the atmosphere and quickly decelerates. At an altitude of about 20 km, due to the tremendous air pressure, it splits into parts that stop heating and glowing; at this very moment the car disappears. Fragments of a meteoric body - meteorites - fall to the Earth under the influence of gravity.
A meteorite of enormous size, hundreds of thousands of tons, cannot slow down in the air. At a speed of several kilometers per second, it hits the ground and from the impact instantly heats up to a very high temperature. In this case, a significant part of its substance turns into steam.
Rushing with great force in all directions, this steam generates an explosion. A crater forms at the site of the meteorite impact, and the surviving individual fragments of the space guest scatter in all directions and form smaller funnels. Sometimes there can be more than a hundred of them, as in the case of the fall of the Sikhote-Alin meteorite, or up to a dozen, as on about. Saaremaa. The mystery of meteor showers and craters has not yet been fully solved.