There are many versions explaining the nature of the mysterious explosion that occurred on June 30, 1908 in the area of the Podkamennaya Tunguska River.
The explosion power ranged from 40 to 50 megatons, which corresponds to the explosion of a hydrogen bomb. None of the natural versions put forward over the past years (comet, meteorite, explosion of a methane cloud, a clot of antimatter) explains all the strangeness of this tangled case.
It was not a meteorite
In the 1950s, the hypothesis about the artificial nature of the Tunguska object gained unexpected popularity in the scientific community. This hypothesis was first proposed in 1945 by the famous Soviet writer A. P. Kazantsev. After the news of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the writer suggested that an alien spacecraft with an atomic engine crashed over the taiga. It would seem that such a fantastic hypothesis was supposed to sink into oblivion over time, but everything turned out exactly the opposite.
In 1959, geophysicist A. V. Zolotoe established that the deforestation on Tunguska was not caused by the explosion of a mysterious object in the atmosphere itself. This excluded the possibility that the Tunguska body was an ordinary meteorite. Similar results were obtained by Soviet specialists back in 1949 during a secret expedition carried out on the personal instructions of Beria, who oversaw the atomic project.
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Secret cases
The joint venture told about this expedition. Potapov, who worked in those years under the leadership of the head of the Soviet atomic program I. V. Kurchatov. It turns out that a year after the test of the first Soviet atomic bomb, Beria spoke at a secret meeting with a proposal to organize an expedition to the area of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite. The expedition members were given a specific task: to assess the parameters of the explosion and compare them with the results of atomic tests. A characteristic point - Beria was not interested in the testimony of eyewitnesses. Moreover, the members of the expedition were strictly forbidden to ask the local population about the events of 1908.
Even before the start of the expedition, Beria demanded to collect information about the geophysical effects that accompanied the explosion over the Siberian taiga. A reconnaissance plane with photographic equipment flew twice over the supposed place of the meteorite fall at different heights, filming the configuration of the forest felling.
The expedition found that the forest felling was caused not by the ballistic wave of the Tunguska object, which was moving at an altitude of 10-20 kilometers at a speed of about 1-2 kilometers per second, but by the shock wave that arose during its explosion. The trees bore traces of a weak radiation burn. However, the radioactivity only in places slightly exceeded the natural background.
But after an atomic explosion, radioactive contamination of the area must be observed. Military experts have suggested that they are dealing with a "pure" thermonuclear explosion of high power, during which practically no radioactive substances are formed.
The Tunguska explosion aroused keen interest not only among Soviet nuclear scientists. In 1942, residents of the Tunguska taiga detained a suspicious man. Calling himself a geologist, he asked for directions to the meteorite impact site and offered money for information. The Russians at that time paid the local population not with paper money that was useless in the forest, but with cartridges, vodka and cereals. Quickly realizing that the man was not who he claims to be, the vigilant natives handed him over to the authorities.
It turned out that the fake geologist was a research associate of a certain "Berlin Institute dealing with the problems of mysticism." It was not possible to learn more about him - the detainee hanged himself in the cell. The mention of the "Berlin Institute" evokes a direct association with the well-known German occult institute Ahnenerbe.
In addition to mysticism, Ahnenerbe specialists supervised projects in the Third Reich to create "weapons of retaliation", one of which was the program to create an atomic bomb …
The devil is in the details
Analysis of forest destruction caused by the Tunguska explosion suggests that at the end of the flight, that is, immediately before the explosion, the object moved almost strictly from east to west. At the same time, eyewitnesses show that the object flew in a general direction from south to north. The divergence of the directions of these two trajectory segments suggests that the direction of movement of the Tunguska body changed during the flight.
Taiga in the area of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite
The famous Soviet mathematician and astronomer F. Yu. Siegel in 1969 came to the conclusion: the Tunguska body maneuvered not only in azimuth, but also in altitude, moving not with a monotonically decreasing, but with a complex changing speed. It is clear that a natural object could not perform such maneuvers. Following some researchers, it can be assumed that there were several "Tunguska bodies" converging at the point of the explosion. But this version, again, makes us talk about their artificial nature.
As you know, the devil is in the details. Let's pay attention to several unusual events that happened shortly before the Tunguska explosion.
Who warned the Evenks?
It is known that only deer and wild animals suffered from the Tunguska explosion. The lack of human casualties was due to the low population density in the area. This is true, but only partially. Some time before the explosion, local elders warned residents about the need to avoid visiting the area "where the god of Aghdy should descend." The area north of Shakhroma was declared forbidden; It was recommended to move the numerous trails that are strategically important for nomadic reindeer herders to the side.
Specially delegated shamans went to the Evenks, who had settled in seclusion near the future epicenter of the “descent of Agda”, and persuaded them to leave their habitable places. It can be assumed that the shamans were guided by the observation of atmospheric anomalies, which were recorded not only over the taiga, but also in different parts of the world since May 1908.
However, how did the shamans find out about the area of the future explosion? It is quite obvious that someone not only warned them, but also, more importantly, told them the exact coordinates of the affected area!
The next curious fact of A. V. I discovered gold in the autobiographical notes of the writer Vyacheslav Shishkov. In 1911, being an employee of the Omsk Department of Land and Water Roads, Shishkov headed an expedition that worked near the territory of the Tunguska explosion.
The local postmaster informed him that a month before the disaster, unknown people with strange metal boxes appeared in the Tunguska area. The strangers obviously avoided contact with the local population and went into the taiga without even taking a guide with them. The postmaster saw them for the second time - six months later, a mysterious expedition headed to the railway station.
Could this expedition be involved in the Tunguska event? It is believed that by 1908, mankind already had everything necessary to carry out an experimental atomic explosion.
A thermonuclear bomb in 1908?
Penetrating ionizing radiation emitted by uranium compounds and later called Marie Curie radiation was discovered by the French physicist Antoine Henri Becquerel in 1896, and radium and polonium were discovered in 1902. The very next year, 1903, Becquerel and the Curies were awarded the Nobel Prize. And in the same year, Ernest Rutherford and Frederick Soddy created the theory of the decay of atomic nuclei. This indirectly testifies to the fact that in some scientific centers, in parallel, secret work was carried out to master atomic energy.
It can be argued that in the discoveries of Curie and Becquerel, it was only about natural radioactivity, and chain reactions with the release of free neutrons were unknown to them. But the fission of uranium atoms by bombarding them with free neutrons was carried out in 1938 by the German physicist Otto Hahn by practically exact repetition of the experiments of Irene Joliot-Curie, daughter of Mary and Pierre Curie, whose methodology could well have passed to her from her parents. Do not forget that Becquerel worked with samples of pure uranium already in May 1886, that is, there were already ways to obtain it.
History shows that there could have been other alternative ways of solving this problem. In 1937, one of the most famous alchemists of the 20th century, Fulcanelli, visited the laboratory of the Paris Gas Society, where nuclear research was carried out under the leadership of Professor André Heilbronner. During the conversation, he spoke the following words:
- Achieving the release of nuclear energy is easier than you think. The artificial radioactivity caused by this can poison the atmosphere of the entire planet in a few years. In addition, atomic explosives, which can be extracted from just a few grams of metal, can destroy entire cities. I tell you straight: alchemists have known this for a long time.
I know what you will tell me, the alchemists, they say, did not know the structure of the nucleus, did not know electricity, did not know any way to detect it, so they could not perform any transformation, they could never release atomic energy. Let me just tell you without proof: the geometrical arrangement of super-pure substances is enough to unleash atomic forces without the use of electricity and vacuum technology.
If alchemists really had a recipe for a more economical unleashing of "atomic forces", did they not have an equally economical way to initiate "pure" thermonuclear reactions? And if they owned this secret, could someone else take advantage of it? For, as the German proverb says, was wissen zwei, wisst Schwein, that is, what two know, the pig also knows …
Alexey KOMOGORTSEV, Interdisciplinary Research Group "Origins of Civilizations"