Podstone Tunguska meteorite. Tunguska meteorite: interesting facts and theories of origin

Indicating the possible cosmic origin of the substance.

Epicenter coordinates

It was established that the explosion occurred in the air at a certain altitude (according to various estimates, 5 - 15 km) and was unlikely to be a point explosion, so we can only talk about the projection of the coordinates of a special point, called the epicenter. Different methods for determining the geographic coordinates of this special point (“epicenter”) of the explosion give slightly different results:

Course of events

It is noted that three days before the event, starting on June 27, 1908, unusual atmospheric phenomena began to be observed in Europe, the European part of Russia and Western Siberia: noctilucent clouds, bright twilight, solar halos. British astronomer William Denning wrote that on the night of June 30 the sky over Bristol was so bright that the stars were practically invisible; the entire northern part of the sky had a red tint, and the eastern part had a green tint.

At 7:14 a.m. local time, the body exploded over the Southern Swamp near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River; the force of the explosion, according to some estimates, reached 40-50 megatons of TNT equivalent.

Eyewitness observations

One of the most famous eyewitness accounts is the message of Semyon Semenov, a resident of the Vanavara trading post, located 70 km southeast of the epicenter of the explosion:

As soon as I swung my ax to hit the hoop on the tub, suddenly in the north the sky split in two, and a fire appeared in it, wide and high above the forest, which engulfed the entire northern part of the sky. At that moment I felt so hot, as if my shirt was on fire. I wanted to tear and throw off my shirt, but the sky slammed shut and there was a strong blow. I was thrown three fathoms off the porch. After the blow there was such a knock, as if stones were falling from the sky or guns were firing, the ground shook, and when I was lying on the ground, I pressed my head, fearing that the stones would break my head. At that moment, when the sky opened, a hot wind rushed from the north, like from a cannon, which left traces in the form of paths on the ground. Then it turned out that many of the windows were broken, and the iron bar for the door lock was broken

Even closer to the epicenter, 30 km from it to the southeast, on the banks of the Avarkitta River, was the tent of the Evenk brothers Chuchanchi and Chekaren Shanyagir:

Our tent then stood on the bank of Avarkitta. Before sunrise, Chekaren and I came from the Dilyushma River, where we visited Ivan and Akulina. We fell fast asleep. Suddenly we both woke up at once - someone was pushing us. We heard a whistle and felt a strong wind. Chekaren also shouted to me: “Do you hear how many goldeneyes or mergansers are flying?” We were still in the plague and we couldn’t see what was happening in the forest. Suddenly someone pushed me again, so hard that I hit my head on a crazy pole and then fell onto the hot coals in the fireplace. I was afraid. Chekaren also got scared and grabbed the pole. We started shouting for father, mother, brother, but no one answered. There was some noise behind the tent; you could hear the trees falling. Chekaren and I got out of the bags and were about to jump out of the chum, but suddenly thunder struck very hard. This was the first blow. The earth began to twitch and sway, a strong wind hit our chum and knocked it down. I was firmly pressed down by the poles, but my head was not covered, because the ellune had lifted up. Then I saw a terrible miracle: the forests were falling, the pine needles on them were burning, the dead wood on the ground was burning, the reindeer moss was burning. There is smoke all around, it hurts your eyes, it’s hot, very hot, you could burn.

Suddenly, over the mountain where the forest had already fallen, it became very light, and, how can I tell you, as if a second sun had appeared, the Russians would say: “suddenly it suddenly flashed,” my eyes began to hurt, and I even closed them. It looked like what the Russians call “lightning.” And immediately there was agdylyan, strong thunder. This was the second blow. The morning was sunny, there were no clouds, our sun was shining brightly, as always, and then a second sun appeared!

Testimony of the brothers Chuchanchi and Chekaren

Consequences of the event

The explosion on Tunguska was heard 800 km from the epicenter, the blast wave felled a forest over an area of ​​2,100 km², and the windows of some houses were broken within a radius of 200 km; the seismic wave was recorded by seismographic stations in Irkutsk, Tashkent, Tbilisi and Jena.

Soon after the explosion, a magnetic storm began that lasted 5 hours.

The unusual atmospheric light effects that preceded the explosion reached a maximum on July 1, after which they began to decline (individual traces of them persisted until the end of July).

First publications about the event

The first report about the event that occurred near Tunguska was published in the newspaper “Sibirskaya Zhizn” dated June 30 (July 12), 1908:

At about 8 o'clock in the morning, a few fathoms from the railway bed, near the Filimonovo crossing, not reaching 11 versts to Kansk, according to stories, a huge meteorite fell... Passengers approaching the train crossing during the fall of the meteorite were struck by an extraordinary roar; the train was stopped by the driver, and the public poured to the place where the distant wanderer fell. But she was not able to examine the meteorite closer, since it was red-hot... almost the entire meteorite crashed into the ground - only its top sticks out...

It is clearly evident that the content of this note is extremely far from what actually happened, however, this message went down in history, since it was it that prompted L.A. Kulik to go in search of the meteorite, which he then still considered “Filimonovsky”.

The newspaper “Siberia” dated July 2 (15), 1908, provided a more factual description (author S. Kulesh):

On the morning of June 17, at the beginning of the 9th hour, we observed some unusual natural phenomenon. In the village of N.-Karelinsky (200 versts from Kirensk to the north), peasants saw in the northwest, quite high above the horizon, some extremely strongly (it was impossible to look at) body glowing with a white, bluish light, moving for 10 minutes from top to bottom . The body was presented in the form of a “pipe,” that is, cylindrical. The sky was cloudless, only not high above the horizon; in the same direction in which the luminous body was observed, a small dark cloud was noticeable. It was hot and dry. Approaching the ground (forest), the shiny body seemed to blur, and in its place a huge cloud of black smoke formed and an extremely strong knock (not thunder) was heard, as if from large falling stones or cannon fire. All the buildings shook. At the same time, flames of an indeterminate shape began to burst out of the cloud.

All the residents of the village ran into the streets in panic, the women were crying, everyone thought that the end of the world was coming.

However, no one showed widespread interest in the fall of an extraterrestrial body at that time. Scientific research into the Tunguska phenomenon began only in the 1920s.

Kulik's expeditions

Despite the absence of a crater, Kulik remained a supporter of the hypothesis about the meteorite nature of the phenomenon (although he was forced to abandon the idea of ​​​​the fall of a solid meteorite of significant mass in favor of the idea of ​​its possible destruction during the fall). He discovered thermokarst pits, which he mistakenly mistook for small meteorite craters.

During his expeditions, Kulik tried to find the remains of the meteorite, organized aerial photography of the crash site (in 1938, over an area of ​​250 km²), and collected information about the meteorite fall from witnesses to the incident.

A new expedition being prepared by L.A. Kulik to the site of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite in 1941 did not take place due to the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War. The results of L. A. Kulik’s many years of work on studying the problem of the Tunguska meteorite were summed up in 1949 by a student of L. A. Kulik, who died in the Great Patriotic War, and a participant in his expeditions, E. L. Krinov, in the book “Tunguska Meteorite” published by him.

Nature of the phenomenon

To date, a generally accepted hypothesis that explains all the essential features of the phenomenon has not been proposed. At the same time, the proposed explanations are very numerous and varied: for example, an employee of the Committee on Meteorites of the USSR Academy of Sciences I. Zotkin published in 1970 in the journal Nature an article “Guide to help compilers of hypotheses related to the fall of the Tunguska meteorite,” where he described seventy seven theories about his fall known as of January 1, 1969. At the same time, he classified hypotheses into the following types:

The initial explanation of the phenomenon - the fall of a meteorite of significant mass (presumably iron), or a swarm of meteorites - quickly began to raise doubts among experts due to the fact that the remains of the meteorite could not be found, despite significant efforts made to search for them.

In the early 1930s, British astronomer and meteorologist Francis Whipple suggested that the Tunguska events were associated with the fall of a comet nucleus (or a fragment thereof) to Earth. A similar hypothesis was proposed by geochemist Vladimir Vernadsky, who suggested that the Tunguska body was a relatively loose clump of cosmic dust. This explanation was later accepted by quite a large number of astronomers. Calculations showed that to explain the observed destruction, the celestial body had to have a mass of about 5 million tons. The cometary material is a very loose structure consisting primarily of ice; and almost completely disintegrated and burned upon entry into the atmosphere. It has been suggested that the Tunguska meteoroid belongs to the β-Taurid meteor shower, associated with Comet Encke.

Attempts were also made to refine the meteorite hypothesis. A number of astronomers indicate that the comet would have collapsed high in the atmosphere, so only a rocky asteroid could act as the Tunguska meteoroid. In their opinion, its substance was sprayed into the air and was carried away by the wind. In particular, G.I. Petrov, having considered the problem of deceleration of bodies in an atmosphere with low mass density, identified a new, explosive form of entry into the atmosphere of a space object, which, unlike the case of ordinary meteorites, does not give visible traces of a disintegrated body. Astronomer Igor Astapovich suggested that the Tunguska phenomenon can be explained by the ricochet of a large meteorite from dense layers of the atmosphere.

In 1945, Soviet science fiction writer Alexander Kazantsev, based on the similarity of eyewitness accounts of the Tunguska events and the explosion of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, suggested that the available data indicate not the natural, but the artificial nature of the event: he suggested that the “Tunguska meteorite” was a cosmic a ship of an extraterrestrial civilization that crashed in the Siberian taiga.

The natural reaction of the scientific community was the complete rejection of such a hypothesis. In 1951, the journal “Science and Life” published an article devoted to the analysis and destruction of Kazantsev’s assumption, the authors of which were the most prominent astronomers and meteoritics specialists. The article stated that it was the meteorite hypothesis and only it that was correct, and that the crater from the meteorite would soon be discovered:

Currently, the most plausible place for a meteorite to fall (explode) is considered to be the above-mentioned southern part of the depression, the so-called “Southern Swamp”. The roots of fallen trees are also directed towards this swamp, which show that the blast wave spread from here. There is no doubt that at the first moment after the meteorite fell, a crater-shaped depression formed in the place of the “Southern Swamp”. It is quite possible that the crater formed after the explosion was relatively small and was soon, probably even in the first summer, flooded with water. In subsequent years, it was covered with silt, covered with a layer of moss, filled with peat hummocks and partly overgrown with bushes.

About the Tunguska meteorite // Science and life. - 1951. - No. 9. - P. 20.

However, the first post-war scientific expedition to the site of the events, organized in 1958 by the Committee on Meteorites of the USSR Academy of Sciences, refuted the assumption that there was a meteorite crater anywhere near the site of the event. Scientists came to the conclusion that the Tunguska body must have exploded in the atmosphere one way or another, which ruled out the possibility that it was an ordinary meteorite.

In 1958, Gennady Plekhanov and Nikolai Vasiliev created the “Complex amateur expedition to study the Tunguska meteorite,” which later became the core of the Commission on Meteorites and Cosmic Dust of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The main goal of this organization was to resolve the issue of the natural or artificial nature of the Tunguska body. This organization managed to attract a significant number of specialists from all over the Soviet Union to the study of the Tunguska phenomenon.

In general, despite the rather fantastic nature of the hypothesis about the artificial origin of the Tunguska body, starting from the 1950s of the 20th century, it enjoyed quite serious support in the scientific community; Relatively large funds were allocated to attempts to confirm or refute it. The fact that this hypothesis was considered quite seriously can be judged by the fact that its supporters were able to raise sufficient doubts in the scientific community when, in the early 1960s, the issue of awarding the Lenin Prize to Kirill Florensky for the hypothesis about the cometary nature of Tunguska was discussed. meteorite - the prize was ultimately never awarded.

Other hypotheses

• Other versions, including exotic ones: antimatter, nuclear explosion, collision with the Earth of a miniature black hole with traces in the Patom crater, accident of an alien spacecraft (put forward by the famous Soviet science fiction writer A. Kazantsev and developed by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky in the story “Monday” starts on Saturday").

Display in culture

Literature

• Stanislaw Lem in the novel “Astronauts” also used this hypothesis - in the novel the ship was a reconnaissance ship sent by the warlike inhabitants of Venus, who were preparing to destroy life on Earth and take it over, but did not carry out their plan due to global war and general destruction.

A representative of the Institute of Time, ..., stood in front of the time machine and explained its structure to the scientific community. The scientific community listened to him attentively. “The first experience, as you all know, was unsuccessful,” he said. - The kitten we sent ended up in the early twentieth century and exploded in the area of ​​the Tunguska River, which marked the beginning of the legend of the Tunguska meteorite. Since then we have had no major failures. ...

In the second story (from the book A Million Adventures), two employees of the Time Institute return from 1908 and one of them claims that it was a simple comet nucleus. Also in Kir Bulychev’s book “The Secret of Urulgan” the Tunguska phenomenon appears before us in the form of a crashed alien spaceship.

• In Vadim Panov’s series “The Secret City” (mainly in the volume “Pulpit of Wanderers”) the Tunguska phenomenon is associated with the launch and subsequent attempts to conceal the main human artifact and Source of magical energy - the Throne (Small Throne of Poseidon).

• In Yuri Sbitnev’s story “Echo” (1986), the genre of which in Soviet times was defined as a “modern fairy tale,” one of the chapters is dedicated to the Tunguska diva. What is described in the story is based on the testimony of real people.

• It is the central theme of Vladimir Sorokin's "Ice Trilogy", consisting of the novels "Bro's Path", "Ice" and "23000".

• In the Ultimate Nightmare comic (Marvel Comics), the plot is directly related to the fall of the Tunguska meteorite.

• The explosion of the Tunguska meteorite is also described in one of the novels in the series “The Adventures of Tomek Vilmovsky” by the Polish writer Alfred Shklyarsky.

The popularity of the topic among science fiction writers, especially beginners, led to the fact that in the 1980s, the Ural Pathfinder magazine, among the requirements for science fiction works proposed for publication, mentioned: “Works that reveal the secret of the Tunguska meteorite are not considered.”

Movies

• In the series “The X-Files” there is an episode called “Tunguska” (season 4, episode 9, “Tunguska” 12/01/1996), which describes an alien invasion.

• In the movie "Hellboy" Rasputin buys an obelisk made from the Tunguska meteorite stone from the Russian military for a ritual

Music

• Metallica's video for the song All Nightmare Long tells the story of alien spores being found at the site of a meteorite explosion, with the help of which the Soviet Union seizes power over the world.

• Mango-Mango in her song and video “Berkut” presented one of the versions of the Tunguska meteorite.

Computer games

• In the game Crysis 2, it is mentioned that two scientists, Jacob Hargreave and Carl Ernest Rush, obtained samples of alien technology in Tunguska in 1919. The game takes place in 2023, and both of them are alive, and Hargreave made a fortune by studying and applying found nanotechnology, the limit of development of which is the main character’s costume.
• The game Secret Files: Tunguska is built around a certain artifact that appeared as a result of a meteorite fall and allows you to control the consciousness of humanity.
• Game Syberia II. At the very beginning of the introductory video, the train passes a place with coordinates 60.885833 , 101.894444 60°53′09″ n. w. 101°53′40″ E. d. /  60.885833° N. w. 101.894444° E. d.(G) (O), that is, through the epicenter of the explosion of the Tunguska meteorite according to Fast.

"Brazilian Tunguska" (1930)

There are reports of an event similar to the Tunguska disaster that occurred in Brazil on August 13, 1930.

Due to its similarity to the Tunguska meteorite, the Brazilian event was called the “Brazilian Tunguska”.

This event is practically unstudied, since it occurred in an area difficult to reach for expeditions, and also because of the prevalence of banditry in this area.

Records from recorders at seismic stations have been preserved, showing a seismic shock.

Vitim meteorite (Russia, 2002)

Main article: Vitim meteorite

If the Tunguska meteorite had fallen 4 hours later (see the map “Approximate location of the explosion” at the beginning of this article), then, due to the rotation of the planet around the earth’s axis, Vyborg would have been completely destroyed and St. Petersburg very significantly damaged.

Literature

• Rubtsov V. The Tunguska Mystery. - N.Y.: Springer, 2009. - 318 p. - ISBN 978-0-387-76573-0
• Rubtsov V. The Tunguska Mystery. - N.Y.: Springer, 2012. - 328 p. - ISBN 978-1-4614-2925-8
• Bronshten V. A. Tunguska meteorite: history of research. - M.: Selyanov A.D., 2000. - 312 p. - 1540 copies. - ISBN 5-901273-04-4
• Gladysheva O. G. Tunguska disaster: Pieces of the puzzle. - St. Petersburg. : Nauka, 2011. - 183 p. - 1000 copies. - ISBN 978-5-02-025530-2
• Zhuravlev V.K., Rodionov B.U. One hundred years of the Tunguska problem. New approaches: collection of articles. - M.: Binom, 2008. - 447 p.
• Olkhovatov A. Yu. Tunguska phenomenon of 1908. - M.: Binom, 2008. - 422 p.
• Olkhovatov A. Yu. Tunguska radiance. - M.: Binom, 2009. - 240 p.
• Rubtsov V.V. Methodology of research programs and the problem of the Tunguska meteorite // The Tunguska phenomenon: at the crossroads of ideas. Second century of studying the Tunguska Event of 1908. - Novosibirsk: City Press Business LLC, 2012. - pp. 74-86. - ISBN 5-8124-0059-8.
• Rubtsov V.V. Tunguska meteorite: on the way to oblivion // Earth and Universe. - 2012. - No. 4. - P. 80-89. - ISSN 0044-3948.

Notes

1. : It was visible over the vast territory of Eastern Siberia in the area between the Lena and Podkamennaya Tunguska rivers. The visibility zone of the car was about 600 kilometers.
2. : The explosion completely destroyed a forest over a vast area - an area of ​​2,150 square kilometers (this roughly corresponds to the area of ​​modern Moscow). The outbreak scorched forest over an area of ​​200 square kilometers and caused a huge forest fire.
3. Rubtsov, 1.
4. Denning W. F. Genial June // Nature. 1908. V. 78. N 2019. P. 221. Cited. by: Rubtsov, 1.
5. Rubtsov, 1-2.
6. Rubtsov, 2.
7. Rubtsov, 3.
8. Suslov I.M. Survey of eyewitnesses of the Tunguska disaster in 1926 // Problem of the Tunguska meteorite. Sat. articles. Tomsk: Tomsk University Publishing House, 1967. Vol. 2. pp. 21-30.
9. Rubtsov, 4.
10. Tunguska meteorite - 1908. Small bodies of the Solar System. Archived
11. Tunguska meteorite . My Krasnoyarsk. People's Encyclopedia. Archived from the original on August 23, 2011. Retrieved September 16, 2009.
12. Rubtsov, 5.
13. A. I. Voitsekhovsky “What was that? The Mystery of Podkamennaya Tunguska" in the "Question Mark" series on the website of the electronic library "Librarian Tochka Ru"
14. - 1939
15. This book was awarded the USSR State Prize in 1952.
16. Rubtsov, 5-6.
17. Rubtsov, 6.
18. Academician V. G. Fesenkov, Chairman of the Committee on Meteorites of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Chairman of the Committee on Meteorites of the USSR Academy of Sciences; Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences A. A. Mikhailov, Chairman of the Astronomical Council of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Director of the Pulkovo Observatory; E. L. Krinov, scientific secretary of the Committee on Meteorites of the USSR Academy of Sciences; K. P. Stanyukovich, Doctor of Technical Sciences; V. V. Fedynsky, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences.
19. Vasiliev, N. V. Tunguska meteorite: a mystery remains // Earth and Universe. - 1989. - № 3.
20. Rubtsov, 7.
21. Rubtsov, 8.
22. [email protected]: NASA deprived the Tunguska guest of his secret
23. : English meteorologists could observe a rare atmospheric phenomenon in the sky - noctilucent clouds.
24. :Head of the Laboratory of Upper Atmosphere Physics, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Anatoly Semenov, in a conversation with a Pravda correspondent. Ru" regarded the assumption of his colleagues from Cornell University as very reliable.
25. Cheko. Evenki Autonomous Okrug, Russia
26. L. Gasperini, F. Alvisi, G. Biasini, E. Bonatti, G. Longo, M. Pipan, M. Ravaioli, R. Serra, (2007) A possible impact crater for the 1908 Tunguska Event. Terra Nova, Vol 19 (4), pp. 245-251
27. L.Gasperini, E.Bonatti, G.Longo, (2008) Lake Cheko and the Tunguska Event: impact or non-impact? Terra Nova, Vol 20 (2), pp.169-172.
28. Italian scientists claim that they have found the Tunguska meteorite // "Ogonyok", No. 25 (5234), 06/25/2012
29. Article “The Tunguska meteorite and time: 101ST HYPOTHESIS OF THE SECRET OF THE AGE”
30. D/f “Lord of the World. Nikola Tesla”, see the text of the film
31. The 1908 Tunguska catastrophe: An alternative explanation
32. Tunguska Miracle
33. Application of the anthropic principle to a radical solution to the Tunguska problem
34. Belkin A, Kuznetsov S. The Tunguska meteorite is... of terrestrial origin // "Evening Novosibirsk": article. - 2001. - No. 02.03.2001.
35. Belkin A, Kuznetsov S., Rodin R. Will the mystery of the origin of the Tunguska meteorite finally be solved? // "Evening Novosibirsk": article. - 2002. - No. 09.14.2002.
36. Strugatsky A. and B."Monday starts on Saturday." Story three. All sorts of fuss. Chapter 5.

Tunguska meteorite (Fall site of the Tunguska meteorite)

The Tunguska meteorite (Tunguska phenomenon) is a hypothetical body, probably of cometary origin or part of a cosmic body that has undergone destruction, which presumably caused an air explosion that occurred in the area of ​​the Podkamennaya Tunguska River, (approximately 60 km north and 20 km west of Vanavara village). Coordinates of the epicenter of the explosion: 60°54"07"N, 101°55"40"E.

June 30, 1908 at 7:14.5 ± 0.8 minutes local time. The power of the explosion is estimated at 40-50 megatons, which corresponds to the energy of the most powerful hydrogen bomb exploded. According to other estimates, the power of the explosion corresponds to 10-15 megatons.

At about seven o'clock in the morning, a large fireball flew over the territory of the Yenisei basin from southeast to northwest. The flight ended with an explosion at an altitude of 7-10 km above an uninhabited taiga region. The blast wave was recorded by observatories around the world, including in the Western Hemisphere. As a result of the explosion, trees were knocked down over an area of ​​more than 2,000 km², and window glass in houses was broken several hundred kilometers from the epicenter of the explosion. For several days, intense sky glow and luminous clouds were observed from the Atlantic to central Siberia.

Several research expeditions were sent to the disaster area, starting with the 1927 expedition led by L. A. Kulik. The material of the hypothetical Tunguska meteorite was not found in any significant quantity; however microscopic silicate and magnetite balls were discovered, as well as an increased content of some elements, indicating a possible cosmic origin of the substance.

In 2013 in the magazine Planetary and Space Science The results of a study conducted by a group of Ukrainian, German and American scientists were published, which reported that microscopic samples discovered by Nikolai Kovalykh in 1978 in the Podkamennaya Tunguska region revealed the presence of lonsdaleite, troilite, taenite and sheibersite - minerals characteristic of diamond-containing meteorites . At the same time, an employee of the Australian Curtin University, Phil Bland, noticed that the studied samples showed a suspiciously low concentration of iridium (which is not typical for meteorites), and also that the peat where the samples were found was not dated 1908, which means the stones found could have reached Earth earlier or later than the famous explosion.

It was established that the explosion occurred in the air at a certain height (according to various estimates, 5-15 km) and was unlikely to be a point explosion, so we can only talk about the projection of the coordinates of a special point, called the epicenter. Different methods for determining the geographic coordinates of this special point (“epicenter”) of the explosion give slightly different results.

It is noted that three days before the event, starting on June 27, 1908, unusual atmospheric phenomena began to be observed in Europe, the European part of Russia and Western Siberia: noctilucent clouds, bright twilight, solar halos. British astronomer William Denning wrote that on the night of June 30 the sky over Bristol was abnormally light in the north.

On the morning of June 30, 1908, a fiery body flew over central Siberia, moving in a northerly direction; his flight was observed in many settlements in that area, and thunderous sounds were heard. The body shape is described as round, spherical or cylindrical; color - like red, yellow or white; there was no smoke trail, but some eyewitness descriptions include bright rainbow stripes extending behind the body.

At 7:14 a.m. local time, a body exploded over the Southern Swamp near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River; The force of the explosion, according to some estimates, reached 40-50 megatons of TNT equivalent.

Eyewitness observations:

One of the most famous eyewitness accounts is the message of Semyon Semenov, a resident of the Vanavara trading post, located 70 km southeast of the epicenter of the explosion: “... suddenly in the north the sky split in two, and a fire appeared in it, wide and high above the forest, which engulfed the entire northern part of the sky. At that moment, I felt so hot, as if my shirt was on fire. I wanted to tear it off and throw it off, but the sky slammed shut, and a strong blow was heard, and I was thrown from the porch about three yards away. After the blow, there was a loud knock. Stones fell from the sky or were fired from cannons, the earth shook, and when I lay on the ground, I pressed my head, fearing that the stones would break my head. At that moment, when the sky opened, a hot wind rushed from the north, as if from a cannon. left traces on the ground in the form of paths. Then it turned out that many of the windows were broken, and the iron bar for the door lock was broken" - magazine "Knowledge-Power" - 2003. - No. 6.

Even closer to the epicenter, 30 km from it to the southeast, on the bank of the Avarkitta River, was the tent of the Evenk brothers Chuchanchi and Chekaren Shanyagir: “Our tent then stood on the bank of Avarkitta. Before sunrise, Chekaren and I came from the Dilyushma river, there we were staying with Ivan and Akulina. We fell fast asleep. Suddenly we both woke up - we heard a whistle and felt a strong wind. Chekaren also shouted to me: “Do you hear how many goldeneyes or mergansers are flying?” After all, we were still in the plague and we couldn’t see what was happening in the forest. Suddenly someone pushed me again, so hard that I hit my head on the plague pole and then fell on the hot coals in the fireplace. I was scared too. grabbed the pole. We began to scream for father, mother, brother, but no one answered. There was some noise behind the chum, we could hear the trees falling. Chekaren and I got out of the bags and were about to jump out of the chum, but suddenly we were very strong. thunder struck. This was the first blow. The earth began to twitch and sway, a strong wind hit our tent and knocked it down. I was firmly pressed down by the poles, but my head was not covered, because the ellune had lifted up. Then I saw a terrible miracle: the forests were falling, the pine needles on them were burning, the dead wood on the ground was burning, the reindeer moss was burning. There is smoke all around, it hurts your eyes, it’s hot, very hot, you could burn. Suddenly, over the mountain where the forest had already fallen, it became very light, and, how can I tell you, as if a second sun had appeared, the Russians would say: “suddenly it suddenly flashed,” my eyes began to hurt, and I even closed them. It looked like what the Russians call “lightning.” And immediately there was agdylyan, strong thunder. This was the second blow. The morning was sunny, there were no clouds, our sun was shining brightly, as always, and then a second sun appeared!”

The explosion on Tunguska was heard 800 km from the epicenter, the blast wave felled a forest over an area of ​​2000 km², within a radius of 200 km, the windows of some houses were broken; The seismic wave was recorded by seismic stations in Irkutsk, Tashkent, Tbilisi and Jena.

Soon after the explosion, a magnetic storm began that lasted 5 hours.

The unusual atmospheric light effects that preceded the explosion reached a maximum on July 1, after which they began to decline (individual traces of them persisted until the end of July).

First message about the event, which occurred near Tunguska, was published in the newspaper “Sibirskaya Zhizn” dated June 30 (July 12), 1908: “About 8 o’clock in the morning, several fathoms from the railroad bed, near the Filimonovo crossing, not reaching 11 versts to Kansk, according to stories, a huge meteorite fell... The passengers of the train approaching the siding during the fall of the meteorite were struck by an extraordinary roar; the train was stopped by the driver, and the public rushed to the place of the fall of the distant wanderer, but they were not able to inspect the meteorite closer, since it was red-hot... almost the entire meteorite crashed. into the ground - only its top sticks out..."

It is clearly evident that the content of this note is extremely far from what actually happened, however, this message went down in history, since it was it that prompted L.A. Kulik to go in search of the meteorite, which he then still considered “Filimonovsky”.

In the newspaper “Siberia” dated July 2 (15), 1908, a more factual description was given (by S. Kulesh): “On the morning of June 17, at the beginning of 9 o’clock, we observed some unusual natural phenomenon. in the village of N.-Karelinsky (200 versts from Kirensk to the north), the peasants saw in the northwest, quite high above the horizon, some extremely strongly (it was impossible to see) body glowing with a white, bluish light, moving for 10 minutes from top to bottom. The body appeared to be in the form of a “pipe,” that is, cylindrical. The sky was cloudless, only low above the horizon, in the same direction in which the luminous body was observed, a small dark cloud was noticeable. It was hot and dry. the shiny body seemed to blur, and in its place a huge cloud of black smoke formed and an extremely strong knock (not thunder) was heard, as if from large falling stones or cannon fire. At the same time, a flame of an indefinite shape began to burst out of the cloud. . All the residents of the village ran into the streets in panic, the women were crying, everyone thought that the end of the world was coming."

However, no one showed widespread interest in the fall of an extraterrestrial body at that time. Scientific research into the Tunguska phenomenon began only in the 1920s.

Expeditions of L.A. Kulik. In 1921, with the support of academicians V.I. Vernadsky and A.E. Fersman, mineralogists L.A. Kulik and P.L. Dravert organized the first Soviet expedition to verify incoming reports of meteorite falls in the country. Leonid Alekseevich Kulik showed special interest in studying the location and circumstances of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite. In 1927-1939, he organized and led six expeditions (according to other sources - four expeditions) to the site of the fall of this meteorite.

The results of the expedition to central Siberia in 1921, related to the Tunguska meteorite, were only new eyewitness accounts collected by it, which made it possible to more accurately determine the location of the event where the 1927 expedition went. She made more significant discoveries: for example, it was discovered that in the place where the meteorite supposedly fell, a forest had been felled over a large area, and in the place that was supposed to be the epicenter of the explosion, the forest remained standing, and there were no traces of a meteorite crater.

Despite the absence of a crater, Kulik remained a supporter of the hypothesis about the meteorite nature of the phenomenon (although he was forced to abandon the idea of ​​​​the fall of a solid meteorite of significant mass in favor of the idea of ​​its possible destruction during the fall). He discovered thermokarst pits, which he mistakenly mistook for small meteorite craters.

During his expeditions, Kulik tried to find the remains of the meteorite, organized aerial photography of the crash site (in 1938, over an area of ​​250 km²), and collected information about the meteorite fall from witnesses to the incident.

A new expedition being prepared by L.A. Kulik to the site of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite in 1941 did not take place due to the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War. After the death of L.A. Kulik in the war, the results of the work on the study of the Tunguska meteorite were summed up by his student and participant in expeditions to Tunguska E.L. Krinov in the book "Tunguska meteorite" (1949).

To date, none of the hypotheses that explain all the essential features of the phenomenon have become generally accepted. However, the proposed explanations are very numerous and varied. Thus, an employee of the Committee on Meteorites of the USSR Academy of Sciences I. Zotkin published in 1970 in the journal Nature an article “Guide to help compilers of hypotheses related to the fall of the Tunguska meteorite,” where he described seventy-seven theories about his fall, known on January 1, 1969. At the same time, he classified hypotheses into the following types: technogenic, associated with antimatter, geophysical, meteorite, synthetic, religious.

The initial explanation of the phenomenon - the fall of a meteorite of significant mass (presumably iron), or a swarm of meteorites - quickly began to raise doubts among experts due to the fact that the remains of the meteorite could not be found, despite significant efforts made to search for them.

In the early 1930s, British astronomer and meteorologist Francis Whipple suggested that the Tunguska events were associated with the fall of a comet nucleus (or a fragment thereof) to Earth. A similar hypothesis was proposed by geochemist Vladimir Vernadsky, who suggested that the Tunguska body was a relatively loose clot of cosmic dust. This explanation was later accepted by quite a large number of astronomers. Calculations showed that to explain the observed destruction, the celestial body had to have a mass of about 5 million tons. The cometary material is a very loose structure, consisting mainly of ice; and almost completely disintegrated and burned upon entry into the atmosphere. It has been suggested that the Tunguska meteorite belongs to the β-Taurid meteor shower associated with Comet Encke.

Attempts were also made to refine the meteorite hypothesis. A number of astronomers indicate that the comet would have collapsed high in the atmosphere, so only a rocky asteroid could act as the Tunguska meteoroid. In their opinion, its substance was sprayed into the air and was carried away by the wind. In particular, G.I. Petrov, having considered the problem of deceleration of bodies in an atmosphere with low mass density, identified a new, explosive form of entry into the atmosphere of a space object, which, unlike the case of ordinary meteorites, does not give visible traces of a disintegrated body. Astronomer Igor Astapovich suggested that the Tunguska phenomenon can be explained by the ricochet of a large meteorite from dense layers of the atmosphere.

In 1945, the Soviet science fiction writer Alexander Kazantsev, based on the similarity of eyewitness accounts of the Tunguska events and the explosion of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, suggested that the available data indicate not the natural, but the artificial nature of the event: he suggested that the “Tunguska meteorite” was a cosmic a ship of an extraterrestrial civilization that crashed in the Siberian taiga.

The natural reaction of the scientific community was the complete rejection of such a hypothesis. In 1951, the magazine “Science and Life” published an article devoted to the analysis and destruction of Kazantsev’s assumption, the authors of which were the most prominent astronomers and meteorology specialists. The article stated that it was the meteorite hypothesis and only it that was correct, and that the crater from the fall of the meteorite would soon be discovered: “Currently, the most plausible place for the fall (explosion) of the meteorite is considered to be the above-mentioned southern part of the depression, the so-called “Southern Swamp.” The roots of fallen trees are also directed towards this swamp, which show that the blast wave spread from here. There is no doubt that at the first moment after the fall of the meteorite, a crater-shaped depression formed at the site of the “Southern Swamp”. It is quite possible that the crater formed after the explosion was relatively small and soon. , probably even in the first summer, was flooded with water. In subsequent years, it was covered with silt, covered with a layer of moss, filled with peat hummocks and partly overgrown with bushes." - About the Tunguska meteorite // Science and life. - 1951. - No. 9. - P. 20.

However, the first post-war scientific expedition to the site of the events, organized in 1958 by the Committee on Meteorites of the USSR Academy of Sciences, refuted the assumption that there was a meteorite crater anywhere near the site of the event. Scientists came to the conclusion that the Tunguska body must have exploded in the atmosphere one way or another, which ruled out the possibility that it was an ordinary meteorite.

In 1958, Gennady Plekhanov and Nikolai Vasiliev created the “Complex Amateur Expedition to Study the Tunguska Meteorite,” which later became the core of the Commission on Meteorites and Cosmic Dust of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The main goal of this organization was to resolve the issue of the natural or artificial nature of the Tunguska body. This organization managed to attract a significant number of specialists from all over the Soviet Union to the study of the Tunguska phenomenon.

In 1959, Alexey Zolotov established that the fall of the forest on Tunguska was caused not by a ballistic shock wave associated with the movement of a certain body in the atmosphere, but by an explosion. Traces of radioactive substances were also found at the scene, but their amount turned out to be insignificant.

In general, despite the rather fantastic nature of the hypothesis about the artificial origin of the Tunguska body, since the 1950s, it has enjoyed quite serious support in the scientific community; Relatively large funds were allocated to attempts to confirm or refute it. The fact that this hypothesis was considered quite seriously can be judged by the fact that its supporters were able to raise sufficient doubts in the scientific community when, in the early 1960s, the issue of awarding the Lenin Prize to K. P. Florensky for the hypothesis about the cometary nature of the Tunguska meteorite - the prize was ultimately never awarded.

According to NASA experts, expressed in June 2009, the Tunguska meteorite consisted of ice, and its passage through the dense layers of the atmosphere led to the release of water molecules and microparticles of ice, which formed noctilucent clouds in the upper layers of the atmosphere - a rare atmospheric phenomenon observed a day after the fall of the Tunguska meteorite to Earth over Britain by English meteorologists. Russian air space researchers from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences share the same opinion. The hypothesis about the icy nature of the meteorite was expressed a long time ago and was quite reliably confirmed by numerical calculations by D.V. Rudenko and S.V. Utyuzhnikov in 1999. It was also shown there that the substance of the meteorite (it could not consist of pure ice) did not reach the surface of the Earth and was distributed in the atmosphere. The same authors explained the presence of two successive shock waves that observers heard.

According to Academician of the Russian Academy of Cosmonautics. K. E. Tsiolkovsky Ivan Nikitievich Murzinov, expressed in an interview with a Novaya Gazeta correspondent on June 8, 2016, the Tunguska meteorite was an extremely massive stone meteoroid of asteroid origin, which entered the Earth’s atmosphere along a very flat trajectory, which at an altitude of 100 km made an angle about 7 - 9 degrees with the surface, and had a speed of about 20 kilometers per second. After flying about 1000 km in the Earth's atmosphere, the cosmic body collapsed due to high pressure and temperature and exploded at an altitude of 30 - 40 kilometers. The thermal radiation of the explosion set the forest on fire, and the shock wave of the explosion caused a continuous felling of trees in a spot with a diameter of about 60 kilometers, and also caused an earthquake with a magnitude of up to 5 points. At the same time, small fragments of the Tunguska meteorite with sizes up to 0.2 meters burned or evaporated during the explosion, and larger fragments could continue flying along a gentle trajectory and fall hundreds and thousands of kilometers from the epicenter of the explosion, among other things, the largest fragments of the meteoroid could reach Atlantic Ocean and even, reflected from the Earth’s atmosphere, go into space.

On June 30, 1908, at about 7 a.m. local time, a unique natural event occurred over the territory of Eastern Siberia in the basin of the Podkamennaya Tunguska River (Evenkiy District of the Krasnoyarsk Territory).
For several seconds, a dazzling bright fireball was observed in the sky, moving from southeast to northwest. The flight of this unusual celestial body was accompanied by a sound reminiscent of thunder. Along the path of the fireball, which was visible in Eastern Siberia within a radius of up to 800 kilometers, there was a powerful dust trail that persisted for several hours.

After the light phenomena, a super-powerful explosion was heard over the deserted taiga at an altitude of 7-10 kilometers. The energy of the explosion ranged from 10 to 40 megatons of TNT, which is comparable to the energy of two thousand simultaneously detonated nuclear bombs, like the one dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
The disaster was witnessed by residents of the small trading post of Vanavara (now the village of Vanavara) and those few Evenki nomads who were hunting near the epicenter of the explosion.

In a matter of seconds, a forest within a radius of about 40 kilometers was torn down by a blast wave, animals were destroyed, and people were injured. At the same time, under the influence of light radiation, the taiga flared up tens of kilometers around. A complete fall of trees occurred over an area of ​​more than 2,000 square kilometers.
In many villages, shaking of the soil and buildings was felt, window glass was breaking, and household utensils were falling from shelves. Many people, as well as pets, were knocked down by the air wave.
The explosive air wave that circled the globe was recorded by many meteorological observatories around the world.

In the first 24 hours after the disaster, in almost the entire northern hemisphere - from Bordeaux to Tashkent, from the shores of the Atlantic to Krasnoyarsk - there was twilight of unusual brightness and color, night glow of the sky, bright silvery clouds, daytime optical effects - halos and crowns around the sun. The glow from the sky was so strong that many residents could not sleep. The clouds, which formed at an altitude of about 80 kilometers, intensely reflected the sun's rays, thereby creating the effect of bright nights even where they had not been observed before. In a number of towns one could freely read the small print newspaper at night, and in Greenwich a photograph of the seaport was received at midnight. This phenomenon continued for several more nights.
The disaster caused fluctuations in the magnetic field recorded in Irkutsk and the German city of Kiel. The magnetic storm resembled in its parameters the disturbances in the Earth's magnetic field observed after high-altitude nuclear explosions.

In 1927, the pioneer researcher of the Tunguska disaster, Leonid Kulik, suggested that a large iron meteorite fell in Central Siberia. That same year, he examined the scene of the event. A radial forest fall was discovered around the epicenter within a radius of 15-30 kilometers. The forest turned out to be felled like a fan from the center, and in the center some of the trees remained standing, but without branches. The meteorite was never found.
The comet hypothesis was first put forward by the English meteorologist Francis Whipple in 1934; it was subsequently thoroughly developed by the Soviet astrophysicist, academician Vasily Fesenkov.
In 1928-1930, the USSR Academy of Sciences conducted two more expeditions under the leadership of Kulik, and in 1938-1939, aerial photography of the central part of the area of ​​​​the fallen forest was carried out.
Since 1958, the study of the epicenter area was resumed, and the Committee on Meteorites of the USSR Academy of Sciences conducted three expeditions under the leadership of the Soviet scientist Kirill Florensky. At the same time, research was begun by amateur enthusiasts united in the so-called complex amateur expedition (CEA).
Scientists are faced with the main mystery of the Tunguska meteorite - there was clearly a powerful explosion above the taiga, which felled a forest over a huge area, but what caused it left no traces.

The Tunguska disaster is one of the most mysterious phenomena of the twentieth century.

There are more than a hundred versions. At the same time, perhaps no meteorite fell. In addition to the version of a meteorite fall, there were hypotheses that the Tunguska explosion was associated with a giant ball lightning, a black hole entering the Earth, an explosion of natural gas from a tectonic crack, a collision of the Earth with a mass of antimatter, a laser signal from an alien civilization, or a failed experiment by physicist Nikola Tesla. One of the most exotic hypotheses is the crash of an alien spaceship.
According to many scientists, the Tunguska body was still a comet that completely evaporated at high altitude.

In 2013, Ukrainian and American geologists of grains found by Soviet scientists near the crash site of the Tunguska meteorite came to the conclusion that they belonged to a meteorite from the class of carbonaceous chondrites, and not a comet.

Meanwhile, Phil Bland, an employee of the Australian Curtin University, presented two arguments questioning the connection of the samples with the Tunguska explosion. According to the scientist, they have a suspiciously low concentration of iridium, which is not typical for meteorites, and the peat where the samples were found is not dated to 1908, meaning the stones found could have fallen to Earth earlier or later than the famous explosion.

On October 9, 1995, in the southeast of Evenkia near the village of Vanavara, by decree of the Russian government, the Tungussky State Nature Reserve was established.

The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources

“I saw a flying hot ball with a fiery tail. After its flight, a blue stripe remained in the sky. When this fireball fell to the west of Mog, then soon, about 10 minutes later, I heard three shots, as if from a cannon. The shots came one after another, within one or two seconds. From where the meteorite fell, smoke came out, which did not last long” - from the collection “Eyewitness Reports of the Tunguska Meteorite of 1908”, V.G. Konenkin.

As a result of the explosion, trees were knocked down over an area of ​​2,000 square kilometers. For comparison, the area of ​​modern St. Petersburg is approximately 1,500 square kilometers.

Was it a meteorite?

In 2007, Italian scientists suggested that the place where the supposed object fell was Lake Cheko, at the bottom of which lies the debris. However, this version also found its opponents.

Research continues to this day, and even today scientists cannot accurately determine whether a meteorite, comet, or asteroid fragment fell to earth or whether it was a non-cosmic phenomenon. The lack of explanation on this issue continues to trouble people's minds. Professionals and amateurs who are not indifferent to the problem presented more than a hundred versions of what happened. Among them there are both scientifically based hypotheses and fantastic theories, up to the crash of an alien ship or the results of Nikola Tesla’s experiments. If this one is ever solved, then it is possible that the very name “Tunguska meteorite” will become irrelevant.

Data

In addition to the Tunguska, the amazing phenomenon was also called the Khatanga, Turukhansky and Filimonovsky meteorite. After the explosion, a magnetic disturbance was noted that lasted about 5 hours, and during the flight of the Tunguska fireball, a bright glow was reflected in the northern rooms of nearby villages.

According to various estimates, the TNT equivalent of the Tunguska explosion is almost equal to one or two bombs exploded over Hiroshima.

Despite the phenomenal nature of what happened, a scientific expedition led by L.A. Kulik to the site of the “meteorite fall” took place only twenty years later.

Meteorite theory
The first and most mysterious version existed until 1958, when a refutation was made public. According to this theory, the Tunguska body is a huge iron or stone meteorite.

But even now its echoes haunt contemporaries. Even in 1993, a group of American scientists conducted research, concluding that the object could have been a meteorite that exploded at an altitude of about 8 km. It was the traces of the meteorite fall that Leonid Alekseevich and the team of scientists were looking for at the epicenter, although they were confused by the initial absence of a crater and the forest that had been felled like a fan from the center.

Fantastic theory


Not only the inquisitive minds of scientists are occupied by the Tunguska mystery. No less interesting is the theory of science fiction writer A.P. Kazantsev, who pointed out the similarities between the events of 1908 and the explosion in Hiroshima.

In his original theory, Alexander Petrovich suggested that the culprit was an accident and explosion of the nuclear reactor of an interplanetary spacecraft.

If we take into account the calculations of A. A. Sternfeld, one of the pioneers of astronautics, then it was on June 30, 1908 that a unique opportunity was created for a drone-probe to fly around Mars, Venus and Earth.

Nuclear theory
In 1965, Nobel Prize laureates, American scientists K. Cowanney and V. Libby developed the idea of ​​their colleague L. Lapaz about the antimatter nature of the Tunguska incident.

They suggested that as a result of a collision between the Earth and a certain mass of antimatter, annihilation and the release of nuclear energy occurred.

Ural geophysicist A.V. Zolotov analyzed the movements of the fireball, the magnetogram and the nature of the explosion, and stated that only an “internal explosion” of its own energy could lead to such consequences. Despite the arguments of opponents of the idea, nuclear theory is still the leader in the number of adherents among specialists in the field of the Tunguska problem.

Ice Comet


One of the latest is the hypothesis of an ice comet, which was put forward by the physicist G. Bybin. The hypothesis arose on the basis of the diaries of the researcher of the Tunguska problem, Leonid Kulik.

At the site of the “fall,” the latter found a substance in the form of ice, covered with peat, but did not pay much attention to it. Bybin states that this compressed ice, found 20 years later at the scene of the incident, is not a sign of permafrost, but a direct indication of an ice comet.

According to the scientist, the ice comet, consisting of water and carbon, simply scattered about the Earth, touching it at a speed like a hot frying pan.

Is Tesla to blame?

At the beginning of the 21st century, an interesting theory appeared indicating a connection between Nikola Tesla and the Tunguska events. A few months before the incident, Tesla claimed that he could light the way for explorer Robert Peary to the North Pole. At the same time, he requested maps of “the least populated parts of Siberia.”

Allegedly, it was on this day, June 30, 1908, that Nikola Tesla conducted an experiment with energy transfer “through the air.” According to the theory, the scientist managed to “shake up” a wave filled with pulsed energy of the ether, which resulted in a discharge of incredible power, comparable to an explosion.

Other theories
At the moment, there are several dozen different theories that meet various criteria for what happened. Many of them are fantastic and even absurd.

For example, the disintegration of a flying saucer or the departure of a graviballoid from underground are mentioned. A. Olkhovatov, a physicist from Moscow, is absolutely convinced that the 1908 event is a type of earth earthquake, and Krasnoyarsk researcher D. Timofeev explained that the cause was an explosion of natural gas, which was ignited by a meteorite flying into the atmosphere.

American scientists M. Ryan and M. Jackson stated that the destruction was caused by a collision with a “black hole,” and physicists V. Zhuravlev and M. Dmitriev believe that the culprit was a breakthrough of a clot of solar plasma and the subsequent explosion of several thousand ball lightning.

For more than 100 years since the incident, it has not been possible to come to a single hypothesis. None of the proposed versions could fully meet all proven and irrefutable criteria, such as the passage of a high-altitude body, a powerful explosion, an air wave, the burning of trees at the epicenter, atmospheric optical anomalies, magnetic disturbances and the accumulation of isotopes in the soil.

Interesting finds

Often versions were based on unusual finds made near the study area. In 1993, corresponding member of the Petrovsky Academy of Sciences and Arts Yu. Lavbin, as part of a research expedition of the public foundation “Tunguska Space Phenomenon” (now he is its president), discovered unusual stones near Krasnoyarsk, and in 1976 in the Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic discovered “your iron”, recognized as a fragment of a cylinder or sphere with a diameter of 1.2 m.

The anomalous zone of the “devil’s cemetery” with an area of ​​about 250 sq.m, located in the Angara taiga of the Kezhemsky district of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, is also often mentioned.

In an area formed by something “fallen from the sky,” plants and animals die; people prefer to avoid it. The consequences of the June morning of 1908 also include the unique geological object Patomsky crater, located in the Irkutsk region and discovered in 1949 by geologist V.V. Kolpakov. The height of the cone is about 40 meters, the diameter along the ridge is about 76 meters.