The Tunguska event was an enormously powerful explosion that occurred near (and later struck) the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, at about 7:14 a.m. KRAT (00:14 UT) on June 30 [O.S. June 17], 1908. The explosion, having the epicenter (60.886°N, 101.894°E), is believed to have been caused by the air burst of a large meteoroid or comet fragment at an altitude of 5–10 kilometres (3–6 mi) above the Earth’s surface. Different studies have yielded widely varying estimates of the object’s size, on the order of 100 metres (330 ft). It is the largest impact event on or near Earth in recorded history. The number of scholarly publications on the problem of the Tunguska explosion since 1908 may be estimated at about 1,000 (mainly in Russian). Many scientists have participated in Tunguska studies, the best-known of them being Leonid Kulik, Yevgeny Krinov, Kirill Florensky, Nikolai Vladimirovich Vasiliev, and Wilhelm Fast.
Tunguska phenomenon occurred in Krasnoyarsk in 1908.
Meteorite falling or flying car in 1908 over Tunguska taiga watched about a thousand people (number of respondents). Thunder, the trail of smoke, glow, heavy explosions, earthquakes, hurricanes, hot wind, darkening the horizon, shaking the atmosphere, the panic of the animals and birds – that is not the complete set of information to witnesses, the observed Shih grandiose phenomenon. But it turned out not so easy to find a “needle” in the depths of the taiga sibirs Coy, though “needle” June 30, 1908 has angered the atmosphere.
Thanks to local history, IM Suslov, who heads the department of Krasnoyarsk North on foreigners, nomads, a meteorite impact site was approximately established. “Catastrophe” has occurred somewhere between the rivers and the Stony Tunguska Chunya seventy kilometers from trading Anavar. At the time, factors other than the Tungus were several four-Russian angartsev Rights (who came to p. Angara. Ed.). They already awake when, at about seven in the morning, with the sound of thunder from the blue. In the northern side of the taiga something flashed, and then swept the hot wind. Shook the earth under their feet – people were falling. Women who had gone to fetch water to springs has brook, in throws buckets, fled in terror to the house. (Much to my chagrin, this small house in the two porches in the early fifties was dismantled).
Although the meteoroid or comet appears to have burst in the air rather than hitting the surface, this event still is referred to as an impact. Estimates of the energy of the blast range from 5 to as high as 30 megatons of TNT (21–130 PJ), with 10–15 megatons of TNT (42–63 PJ) the most likely—roughly equal to the United States’ Castle Bravo thermonuclear bomb tested on March 1, 1954; about 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan; and about two-fifths the power of the later Soviet Union’s own Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated.
The Tunguska explosion knocked an estimated 80 million trees down over an area covering 2,150 square kilometres (830 sq mi). It is estimated that the shock wave from the blast would have measured 5.0 on the Richter scale. An explosion of this magnitude is capable of destroying a large metropolitan area. This possibility has helped to spark discussion of asteroid deflection strategies.
The first explorer of the Tunguska Meteorite LA Kulik, arrived at the Stony Tunguska only nineteen years. His campaign caravan scientist made a deer with a guide named EVENKIA Ohchen. Tungus, wandering on the tributaries of the river Chambe, and do not have any idea about the “Ground Zero.” “However, somewhere Taiga” – said to be the Tungus, does not speak in Russian. Most Ohchena I did not find him alive, I just saw his mo-mound at the mouth of the Gila. Chambe. In a campaign with Kulik conductor went in full of its multi-family gochislennogo than angered many scientists. Who has not wandered through the taiga, he does not know how difficult nyulga – transitions in the deep snows of April, crusty crust – Durkin. Deer running out of strength, punching hooves icy shell snow, the blood wound up. The expedition made it to Lakurskogo long range, though the distance was covered in only seventy kilometers. From the top of the low hills of the river valley was visible Hushmo, and on the opposite bank of its whitened steep treeless slopes. Deep snow, glistening in the spring Sunny-CEM, created the appearance of snow treeless country. Further, the river Hushmo, conductor refused to go. Over time, “the researchers’ failure Tungus considered as fear of some” God of Fire “, but in fact Ohchen thought of something else – he was thinking primarily about reindeer: weight-tion, when present – Durkin, and deer can not get moss – lichen, they starting-ferred to feed moss – bearded, dangling from the branches of trees cantle. Domesticated reindeer in search of food for tens of kilometers away from the parking lot, and then it is difficult to find them and return to the plague. On bad roads at the trading back and reaching the “epicenter”. “These people have a wonderful natural laziness” – Kulik wrote in his diary about his conductors. He has no idea how hard the life of a man in the forest.
At around 7:17 a.m. local time, Evenks natives and Russian settlers in the hills northwest of Lake Baikal observed a column of bluish light, nearly as bright as the Sun, moving across the sky. About 10 minutes later, there was a flash and a sound similar to artillery fire. Eyewitnesses closer to the explosion reported the sound source moving east to north. The sounds were accompanied by a shock wave that knocked people off their feet and broke windows hundreds of kilometres away. The majority of witnesses reported only the sounds and the tremors; not the sighting of the explosion. Eyewitness accounts differ as to the sequence of events and their overall duration.
The explosion registered on seismic stations across Eurasia. In some places the shock wave would have been equivalent to an earthquake of 5.0 on the Richter scale. It also produced fluctuations in atmospheric pressure strong enough to be detected in Great Britain. Over the next few days, night skies in Asia and Europe were aglow; it has been theorized that this was due to light passing through high-altitude ice particles formed at extremely low temperatures, a phenomenon that occurred again when the Space Shuttle re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere. In the United States, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Mount Wilson Observatory observed a decrease in atmospheric transparency that lasted for several months, from suspended dust.
On an expedition in 1939 involved a beginner, but a talented artist Nikolai Fedorov. Later, he created dozens of colorful paintings-tion-pictures by displaying them “catastrophe.” In the summer of 1988, during a conference devoted to the Tunguska meteorite, his work has been exhibited in Krasnoyarsk, which enjoyed great success.
Small world, in Moscow with NI Fedorov, we happen to live there, so we met often. We are united by one interest: Tunguska meteorite.
… “The transition was difficult, – says Nikolay – especially suffered from the taiga midges. Horses tar, smeared themselves – no other salvation. At stops burning smudge. At the River Makikte even had to go back a few miles back from the head of a forest fire . stopped in the valley of the river, the open space, a transition to all the beasts: the first running herds and deer alone, then went elk, moose, and when passed – there were bears. Beasts do not prey on each other – were retreating from the fire.’s really, really, fire truce! trouble general, and the law of the taiga, as the law of the jungle – do not you dare disturb! ”
We searched for pictures made by Fedorov in Kezhma in Anavar, I learned some people hunter-Tungus in the camp where I had to live. Not without a funny surprise: one of the drawings of the village Kezhma I found our house, where I was born three years after the sketches NI Fedorov.
I always listened to with great attention memories of the artist – it was interesting, but one detail alarmed me.
“Vitali – Nikolay always talked enthusiastically, when we came to Hushmo, I was struck by the disaster I have seen the picture: trees lay in rows, but the main thing was that they kept in their branches above the ground, and walk on the fall out was very difficult “.
“Stop – I said then himself – thirty years on the branches will not hold no tree, there’s something wrong, something is not docked.” From my own experience I know – any tree in ten or even fewer years, turns into a heavy wet deck, lying close to the ground …
Someone came up with the idea of ​​a nuclear origin of the “Tunguska event.” Checked – pa-diacyl not. But firmly entrenched belief in the incredible power of the explosion. Original “manerkoy” (measurement of powder. Ed.) To measure the force of explosion over the taiga were “babes” (the first atomic bomb. Ed.) Dropped on the Japanese cities. It was about a hundred or more such nuclear bombochek! And whether it is really so? It is strange that even with fear during the “explosion” passed away … no Tungus
As I said, in the taiga employed several expeditions. One of the organizers of such studies was geologist Cyril P. Florensky, while involved in the study of the planet Mars. This expedition executed a task of the Committee on Meteorites of the USSR. Another complex amateur expedition was called short CSE. Every summer, tens, if not dozens, mostly students – participants of CSE, walked on the “trail Kulik.” Much work was done: washed rock sieves and pans, hoping to find fragments of the meteorite, believed in samples balls – products of combustion into the atmosphere, some burned to ash trees, painstakingly searching for something in the sphagnum moss layer in 1908, burning the trees, measured the force of hurricane winds, and, in the end – all, exactly delineated inrush taiga conditionally calling it a “butterfly.” This “butterfly” born again from the explosion …
There was little scientific curiosity about the impact at the time, possibly due to the isolation of the Tunguska region. If there were any early expeditions to the site, the records were likely to have been lost during the subsequent chaotic years—World War I, the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Russian Civil War.
The first recorded expedition arrived at the scene more than a decade after the event. In 1921, the Russian mineralogist Leonid Kulik, visiting the Podkamennaya Tunguska River basin as part of a survey for the Soviet Academy of Sciences, deduced from local accounts that the explosion had been caused by a giant meteorite impact. He persuaded the Soviet government to fund an expedition to the Tunguska region, based on the prospect of meteoric iron that could be salvaged to aid Soviet industry. Kulik’s party eventually undertook an expedition in 1927.
Photograph from Kulik’s 1927 expedition
Upon arrival, Kulik made arrangements with the local Evenki hunters to guide his party to the impact site. Reaching the explosion site was an extremely arduous task. Upon reaching an area just south of the site, the superstitious Evenki hunters would go no further, fearing what they called the Valleymen. Kulik had to return to the nearby village, and his party was delayed for several days while they sought new guides.
The spectacle that confronted Kulik as he stood on a ridge overlooking the devastated area was overwhelming. To the explorers’ surprise, no crater was to be found. There was instead around ground zero a vast zone (8 kilometres [5.0 mi] across) of trees scorched and devoid of branches, but standing upright. Those farther away had been partly scorched and knocked down in a direction away from the centre. Much later, in the 1960s, it was established that the zone of leveled forest occupied an area of some 2,150 square kilometres (830 sq mi), its shape resembling a gigantic spread-eagled butterfly with a “wingspan” of 70 kilometres (43 mi) and a “body length” of 55 kilometres (34 mi). Upon closer examination, Kulik located holes which he erroneously concluded were meteorite holes; however, he did not have the means at this time to excavate the holes.
During the next ten years there were three more expeditions to the area. Kulik found several dozens of little “pothole” bogs, each some 10 to 50 metres (33 to 160 ft) in diameter, that he thought might be meteoric craters. After a laborious exercise in draining one of these bogs (the so-called “Suslov’s crater”, 32 metres [105 ft] in diameter), he found there was an old stump on the bottom, ruling out the possibility that it was a meteoric crater. In 1938, Kulik arranged for an aerial photographic survey of the area covering the central part of the leveled forest (some 250 square kilometres [97 sq mi]). The negatives of these aerial photographs (1,500 negatives, each 18 by 18 centimetres [7.1 by 7.1 in]) were burned in 1975 by order of Yevgeny Krinov, then Chairman of the Committee on Meteorites of the USSR Academy of Sciences. It was done under the pretext that they were a fire hazard, but the truth may have been the active dislike by official meteorite specialists of anything associated with an unyielding enigma. However, positive imprints would be preserved for further studies in the Russian city of Tomsk.
Expeditions sent to the area in the 1950s and 1960s found microscopic silicate and magnetite spheres in siftings of the soil. Similar spheres were predicted to exist in the felled trees, although they could not be detected by contemporary means. Later expeditions did identify such spheres in the resin of the trees. Chemical analysis showed that the spheres contained high proportions of nickel relative to iron, which is also found in meteorites, leading to the conclusion they were of extraterrestrial origin. The concentration of the spheres in different regions of the soil was also found to be consistent with the expected distribution of debris from a meteorite airburst. Later studies of the spheres found unusual ratios of numerous other metals relative to the surrounding environment, which was taken as further evidence of their extraterrestrial origin.
Chemical analysis of peat bogs from the area also revealed numerous anomalies considered consistent with an impact event. The isotopic signatures of stable carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen isotopes at the layer of the bogs corresponding to 1908 were found to be inconsistent with the isotopic ratios measured in the adjacent layers, and this abnormality was not found in bogs located outside the area. The region of the bogs showing these anomalous signatures also contains an unusually high proportion of iridium, similar to the iridium layer found in the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary. These unusual proportions are believed to result from debris from the falling body that deposited in the bogs. The nitrogen is believed to have been deposited as acid rain, a suspected fallout from the explosion.
