98 years ago this week, an Unidentified Flying Object allegedly crashed near the Tunguska River in Siberia. Mid-morning on June 30th, 1908, an explosion so humongous that it caused damage 400 miles away occurred. Heat from the explosion was felt hundreds of miles away. You may be thinking "it's just Jack. . .off on one of his alien tangents again," but scientists agree that something terrible and unexplained happened in 1908. And, yes, I am aware I juxtaposed the words Jack and Off. If I was on the radio, I would be fined $50,000 and probably fired for that. . .
The blast was estimated to be as powerful as 15 megatons of TNT. An estimated 60 million trees over 830 square miles were knocked down.
For several nights all over northern Europe, the sky was so bright it lit up the streets of London. Conventional wisdom assumed a massive meteorite had crashed into Earth.In the nearly hundred years since the blast, it has engendered speculation and controversy about its genesis in the scientific community.
Theories offered by scholars range from it being a meteorite, comet, or nuclear explosion to more paranormal and speculative explanations such as a black hole, an anti-matter rock, or an alien spacecraft (my personal favorite). Since no nation was known to have developed nuclear technology--we were practically still using flintlocks in war--that theory ties in with the extraterrestrial explanations. A nuclear explosion could only have come from Out There.
In 1927 an expedition was [finally] mounted to investigate the crash site. The expedition failed to locate any trace of a meteor, which puzzled them, because a meteor would have to have been very, very large to create such a blast.
A puzzle of the expedition was the pattern in which the trees were felled--in an outward motion. But at the center of the blast, an area of trees were still standing, with their bark and branches destroyed.
Later, photographs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were shockingly similar to the pattern of fallen trees. Some scientists speculated a nuclear explosion had taken place--which would explain the tree formation.
Witnesses to the original crash spoke of seeing an oval-shaped mass move across the sky, as well as seeing the object change course. In fact, some people spoke of the object falling to earth, and then, taking off again. However, we know of no meteors that have re-animated after falling to earth.
The first report of the explosion appeared in the Irkutsk newspaper dated July 2, 1908, published two days after the explosion:
"... the peasants saw a body shining very brightly (too bright for the naked eye) with a bluish-white light.... The body was in the form of 'a pipe', i.e. cylindrical. The sky was cloudless, except that low down on the horizon, in the direction in which this glowing body was observed, a small dark cloud was noticed. It was hot and dry and when the shining body approached the ground (which was covered with forest at this point) it seemed to be pulverized, and in its place a loud crash, not like thunder, but as if from the fall of large stones or from gunfire was heard. All the buildings shook and at the same time a forked tongue of flames broke through the cloud. All the inhabitants of the village ran out into the street in panic. The old women wept, everyone thought that the end of the world was approaching."
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