For more than a hundred years, researchers have been fighting the mystery of the Tunguska explosion. Meanwhile, there is very strong evidence that more than a thousand years ago, an equally powerful explosion of a celestial body shook the territory of present-day Moscow and its immediate environs!
Apocalypse in Moscow
Historians have long been interested in a strange circumstance: from the 8th to the 10th century, the population of the present Moscow and Ryazan lands began to leave their homes for an unknown reason. Until recently, scientists assumed that the reasons for this were epidemics. invasions of steppe tribes or severe crop failures that caused famine. As you know, these territories began to be intensively developed only in the XI century. And no chronicle sources from which one could glean information about the events of that distant past do not exist.
But in 1998, American astrophysicist James Douguet published sensational data that a huge meteorite exploded on the site of the Russian capital. Douge came to this conclusion after analyzing images from space. A line of meteorite craters was clearly visible on them, stretching for more than 100 kilometers from Moscow to Ryazan region. The line ended in a large ring-shaped funnel located near the Ryazan village of Dronino. The researcher believes that the celestial body disintegrated in the air, and its debris scattered eastward by inertia.
To make sure that he was right on the spot, Douge came to Russia and actually found craters where they were supposed to be. In addition, the astrophysicist managed to extract meteorite matter from there. The scientist calculated that the mass of the exploded object was about 600 tons, and the catastrophe occurred at an altitude of 10 kilometers. This meant that the explosion was even more powerful than the Tunguska.
Mysterious wreckage
Promotional video:
What were the consequences of such an event? Undoubtedly, it led to large-scale natural disasters and an environmental disaster: fires, hurricanes, floods. Probably, the Moskva River and Oka overflowed the banks, and forest fires seized the territory from Moscow to modern Mordovia, Ryazan and Murom, the flames burned out the fields and ruined the crops, many wooden buildings burned down. So people were forced to leave the future Muscovy …
The most curious thing is that traces of a meteorite fall were actually found in Dronino. And not by an American, but by domestic researchers.
Near the village was a perfectly round swamp that had recently been drained. During reclamation work, several black iron fragments were pulled out of the bog. They were transferred to the public organization Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Substance. Enthusiasts arrived at the place of discovery and confirmed that an unknown metal body lies at a depth of three meters underground near Dronino … However, all the debris literally scattered before our eyes. This was explained by the fact that the metal, which had been in water for a long time, oxidized very quickly in air.
The car that did not reach the capital
If a meteorite explosion really happened here once, then perhaps Moscow owes it so uneven. hilly terrain and many underground reservoirs?
There is another "meteorite" legend associated with Moscow, it concerns a relatively recent time. One curious document is kept in the archives of the State Historical Museum. According to him, on September 13, 1808, at 20.07, an associate of chemistry and technology at Moscow State University, Andrei Chebotarev, observed a luminous rectangular object flying in the air over the Kremlin itself. In front of an eyewitness, the object hovered over the center of the Kremlin, and a bright fireball flared up next to it for several seconds. After that, the UFO began to smoothly rise up the vertical. His movement was accompanied by a strange sound like a rustle.
Chebotarev wrote down everything he saw in detail and even made a sketch of an unidentified object. However, there is no evidence that the UFO was drawn by the hand of an adjunct - perhaps, according to an eyewitness, the "rectangle" was reproduced on paper by some professional artist.
Scientists from the State Astronomical Institute named after V. I. PC. Sternberg and the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics SB RAS. Their conclusion was as follows: a bolide (a bright meteor with noticeable angular dimensions) exploded over Moscow.
This, according to Sergei Yazev, senior researcher at the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics of the SB RAS, is evidenced by the shape of the body and the nature of the glow.
This time Moscow survived
The scientist believes that the "rectangular object" was actually just a luminous strip, a trace from the flight of the fireball, which was a tube of incandescent ionized air. This effect was observed in 2002 during the explosion of the Vitim bolide (Yazev led three scientific expeditions to search for a celestial body that fell in the taiga).
“The description of Chebotarev,” Yazev believes, “is quite consistent with the hypothesis about the car. "Track" still continued to glow, and the car itself exploded approximately above the observer's head. Naturally, a bright flash was seen, described as "the glow of ignited phosphorus in oxygen," which faded after about five seconds."
According to researchers, Moscow was saved from the catastrophe only by the fact that the explosion occurred at a high altitude. Therefore, its sound was very weak, and no one noticed the falling fragments. According to Yazev's hypothesis, the fireball split at an altitude of several tens of kilometers, and its small fragments simply flew in all directions over considerable distances. Thus, no one would identify stones that have fallen somewhere with an "invasion" from outer space.
One way or another, this time Moscow survived. However, the fall of both the first and the second meteorite exists only in the calculations of scientists and cannot yet be considered a historically proven fact.
Magazine "Secrets of the XX century" No. 01-02. Ida Shakhovskaya