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The Tunguska disaster occurred on June 30, 1908 in the taiga, Siberia, north of Lake Baikal, on the Podkamienna Tunguzka River. To date, the cause is not fully understood. Trees within a radius of 40 kilometers were cut down and magnetometers then showed that the North Pole was located… in central Russia. How is that possible?
Explosion and fallen trees
On June 30, 1908, there was a huge explosion that could be heard within a radius of 1,000 kilometers. Trees were burned at the scene of the accident and trees that were still growing were felled within a radius of up to 40 kilometers. The Central Siberia earthquake was recorded by seismographs around the world. Magnetometers in Russia even indicated that the North Pole is located near Lake Baikal in uninhabited Siberian areas.
The only indirect witnesses to the event were the Evenki, a people living in south-central Siberia. They lived about 100 kilometers from the site of the disaster at the time, but the effects still bothered them. At the time of the explosion, people suffered burns and some lost their sight for several days. A moment after the huge bang was heard, a shock wave reached the Evenki village, knocking people down and destroying houses.
Over the past 100 years, many hypotheses about the Tunguska disaster have emerged. However, to this day it is not known with certainty what actually happened. The most frequently repeated theory is that a celestial body (asteroid?) or several celestial bodies collided or exploded with the Earth several kilometers above the Earth’s surface. The existence of three huge holes in the ground in the disaster area prove that it could have been more than one object.
The first scientific expedition worked at the site of the Tunguska disaster only in 1927, 19 years after the explosion. The research was conducted by Leonid Kulik of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who wanted to prove that the cause of the event was a meteorite impact. On site, his research group found strange, deformed trees that had grown after the 1908 disaster. Many tiny glass balls resembling tektites have also been found. Kulik did not prove his thesis about the meteorite, but thanks to the materials obtained by his team, other researchers also became interested in the mysterious event.
theory
The Czechoslovak astronomer Ľubor Kresák then expressed the opinion that a meteoroid, a separated fragment of Comet Encke, was responsible for the disaster. Other researchers believed that an asteroid or meteoroid hit near Podkamienna Tunguska, but did not reach Earth and exploded some distance above it. The last theory was supported by the absence of a crater.
Extensive research was only carried out between 1973 and 1979. After conducting laboratory tests on peat from the disaster site, scientists hypothesized that a meteoroid, small asteroid or comet was responsible for the Tunguska disaster. More than seven cosmic substances have been found in peat.
Other theories included: about the Earth colliding with a meteorite the size of a skyscraper. This collision created a mushroom of glowing water vapor that “cooked” the area surrounding the crash site. The melted ash and sand were supposed to turn into tektites – glass balls.
Two theses seem most likely. The Tunguska disaster may have been caused by the explosion of a rocky asteroid (diamond-bearing meteorite) that exploded about 5-10 kilometers above Earth. The energy generated by the explosion ignited trees for many kilometers around, but the blast wave that followed a moment later extinguished the fire. The explosion over the Podkamienna Tunguzka River could have been a thousand times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
The second theory says that a comet exploded over central Siberia, which heated up quickly as it entered the atmosphere and vaporized during the explosion, as a result of which it did not hit the Earth’s surface. However, the force of the explosion may have been so great that it knocked down millions of trees. Will scientists provide more theories about the Tunguska disaster? Possibly because it continues to fascinate new generations of researchers.
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