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BBC - Earth - In Siberia in 1908, a huge explosion came out of nowhere
On 30 June 1908, an explosion ripped through the air above a remote forest in Siberia, near the Podkamennaya Tunguska river.
The fireball is believed to have been 50-100m wide. It depleted 2,000 sq km of the taiga forest in the area, flattening about 80 million trees.
The earth trembled. Windows smashed in the nearest town over 35 miles (60km) away. Residents there even felt heat from the blast, and some were blown off their feet.
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Due to the unstable political climate in Russia at the time, little was done to investigate this event. The area is very difficult to get to,.
Theories ranged from comets, to meteorites, to UFOs, to nuclear weapons & even black holes. But more modern scientific studies have detected traces of silicate & magnetite which were high in nickel content, characteristics of meteoric rock. More recent studies detected lonsdaleite, a diamond-like mineral formed in meteors when they are under great pressure. But the big puzzle is the lack of large fragments or an impact crater, which points to a comet or meteorite exploding high in the atmosphere with a force estimated to be in the 10-15 megatons of TNT range.
On 30 June 1908, an explosion ripped through the air above a remote forest in Siberia, near the Podkamennaya Tunguska river.
The fireball is believed to have been 50-100m wide. It depleted 2,000 sq km of the taiga forest in the area, flattening about 80 million trees.
The earth trembled. Windows smashed in the nearest town over 35 miles (60km) away. Residents there even felt heat from the blast, and some were blown off their feet.
==============================================
Due to the unstable political climate in Russia at the time, little was done to investigate this event. The area is very difficult to get to,.
Theories ranged from comets, to meteorites, to UFOs, to nuclear weapons & even black holes. But more modern scientific studies have detected traces of silicate & magnetite which were high in nickel content, characteristics of meteoric rock. More recent studies detected lonsdaleite, a diamond-like mineral formed in meteors when they are under great pressure. But the big puzzle is the lack of large fragments or an impact crater, which points to a comet or meteorite exploding high in the atmosphere with a force estimated to be in the 10-15 megatons of TNT range.
