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tunguska

At about 7:00 AM on June 30th, 1908, a tremendous explosion rocked a remote area of Siberia, now thought to have been equivalent to 40 tons of TNT—2000 times the force of the atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima in 1945. (By comparison, the explosive force of the Arizona asteroid that struck some 50000 years ago has been estimated at 3.5 megatons.) This area of Tunguska was virtually uninhabited, a desolate area of mosquito-infested bogs and swamps amid the hilly taiga. To this day the only way to reach the epicenter of the blast is by helicopter, or by hiking in.

The power of the blast felled trees outward in a radial pattern over an area of 2,150 square kilometers. In the hot central region of the epicenter the forest flashed into an ascending column of flame visible several hundred kilometers away, and those fired burned for weeks, ultimately destroying and area of 1000 square kilometers.

According to an eyewitness at a trading post called Vanavara 92 kilometers to the south of the epicenter, “the sky split apart and a great fire appeared. It became so hot that one couldn’t stand it. There was a deafening explosion [and my friend] S. Semenov was blown over the ground across a distance of three sazhens [six meters]. As the hot wind passed by, the ground and the huts trembled. Sod was shaken loose from our ceilings and glass was splintered out of the window frames.”

In the area of the explosion, people were burned and died unusual deaths that are similar to radiation exposure. The chief of the Tungus (Evenk) people declared the area enchanted and sealed off.

Over 600 kilometers away the conductor of the Trans-Siberian Railway train saw the tracks ripple and stopped the train. Passengers streamed out of the coaches and talked of a cylinder of white light with a fiery tail that fell with a tremendous flame and explosion. It rained down little smoldering rocks. Some of the passengers tried to move the rocks with sticks, but the white heat engulfed the sticks with flames. In the skies a huge black cloud was visible, and a black, tar-like rain started to fall.

Disturbances in earth’s magnetic field were reported 900 kilometers southeast of the epicenter by the Irkutsk Observatory, and a local magnetic storm began which persisted for more than four hours and was similar to geomagnetic disturbances following nuclear explosions in the atmosphere. Electromagnetic pulse-like anomalies were reported on the opposite side of the planet. The seismograph station 4,000 kilometers west in St. Petersburg recorded tremors produced by the blast, as did more distant stations around the world. Atmospheric effects were seen worldwide due to the ash and powdered fragments of the tundra.

Because this event occurred in such a remote area, it was widely assumed to have been an earthquake—somewhere—and little more was thought of it. It was 19 years before an expedition reached the epicenter.

There is no evidence of a meteorite, no fragments and no crater. It’s now accepted that the explosion actually occurred at an altitude of 7.6 kilometers, but if it had been a meteorite one would still expect to find fragments.

There have been a series of interesting biological consequences of the explosion. Following the blast there was accelerated growth of biomass in the region of the epicenter, and the accelerated growth has continued. There also was an increase in the rate of biological mutations, not only within the epicenter but along the trajectory of the object over Tunguska. For example, abnormalities in the Rh blood factor of local Evenk tribes have been found. Genetic variation in certain local ant species is now being studied. And genetic abnormalities in the seeds and needle clusters of at least one species of pine have been discovered.

Particles of calcium, iron-nickel, silicates, cobalt-wolfram, and lead have been found embedded in the bark of the surrounding trees by the force of the explosion.

Investigators of the 1960s identified four smaller epicenters within the larger one of a 60-kilometer diameter. Each of the smaller epicenters has its own radial tree-fall pattern, and each presumably was caused by individual explosions during the chain of bursts.

So what happened at Tunguska?

No one really knows. There are a number of theories (stony meteorite, comet, particle of antimatter, nuclear-powered UFO, even an argument for it being a geophysical tectonic-related event), but there is really no hard evidence pointing to anything. There are too many oddities about the event, and more study is needed.

Tunguska is one of my favorite mysteries. To read more, check out the following links (from which I’ve paraphrased and quoted liberally above).

Tunguska – the Cosmic Mystery of the Century
The Tunguska Event
Tunguska Home Page (Bologna, Italy)
1908 Siberia Explosion: Reconstructing an Asteroid Impact from Eywitness Accounts
The Tunguska Meteorite: A Dead-Lock or the Start of a New Stage of Inquiry?

- posted 14 December 2003 in blog Favorites

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