1908 fall of the Tunguska meteorite fireball. The fall of the Tunguska meteorite

The fall of the Tunguska meteorite

Fall year

On June 30, 1908, a mysterious object exploded and fell in the earth's atmosphere, later called the Tunguska meteorite.

Place of fall

The territory of Eastern Siberia in the interfluve of the Lena and Podkamennaya Tunguska forever remained as the place of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite, when, flaring up like the sun, and flying several hundred kilometers, a fiery object fell on it.

In 2006, according to the President of the Tunguska Space Phenomenon Foundation Yuri Lavbin, Krasnoyarsk researchers discovered quartz cobblestones with mysterious writings in the area of the Podkamennaya Tunguska River at the site of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite.

According to the researchers, strange signs are applied to the surface of quartz in a man-made way, presumably with the help of plasma exposure. Analyzes of quartz cobblestones, which were studied in Krasnoyarsk and Moscow, showed that quartz contains impurities of cosmic substances that cannot be obtained on Earth. Studies have confirmed that the cobblestones are artifacts: many of them are fused layers of plates, each of which is marked with characters of an unknown alphabet. According to Lovebin's hypothesis, quartz cobblestones are fragments of an information container sent to our planet by an extraterrestrial civilization and exploded as a result of an unsuccessful landing.

Hypotheses

More than a hundred different hypotheses were expressed about what happened in the Tunguska taiga: from the explosion of swamp gas to the crash of an alien ship. It was also assumed that an iron or stone meteorite with the inclusion of nickel iron could fall to the Earth; the icy nucleus of a comet; unidentified flying object, starship; giant ball lightning; meteorite from Mars, hard to distinguish from terrestrial rocks. American physicists Albert Jackson and Michael Ryan declared that the Earth met with a "black hole"; some researchers suggested that it was a fantastic laser beam or a piece of plasma detached from the Sun; French astronomer Felix de Roy, a researcher of optical anomalies, suggested that on June 30, the Earth probably collided with a cloud of cosmic dust.

1. Ice Comet
The most recent is the ice comet hypothesis put forward by physicist Gennady Bybin, who has been studying the Tunguska anomaly for more than 30 years. Bybin believes that the mysterious body was not a stone meteorite, but an icy comet. He came to this conclusion based on the diaries of Leonid Kulik, the first researcher of the meteorite fall site. At the scene of the incident, Kulik found a substance in the form of ice covered with peat, but did not attach much importance to it, since he was looking for something completely different. However, this compressed ice with combustible gases frozen into it, found 20 years after the explosion, is not a sign of permafrost, as was commonly believed, but evidence that the ice comet theory is correct, the researcher believes. For a comet that shattered into many pieces from a collision with our planet, the Earth became a kind of hot frying pan. The ice on it quickly melted and exploded. Gennady Bybin hopes that his version will be the only true and last one.

2.Meteorite
however, most scientists are inclined to believe that it was still a meteorite that exploded above the surface of the Earth. It was his traces, starting from 1927, that the first Soviet scientific expeditions led by Leonid Kulik were looking for in the explosion area. But the usual meteor crater was not at the scene. Expeditions found that around the site of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite, the forest was felled like a fan from the center, and in the center some of the trees remained standing on the vine, but without branches.

Even a few days before the meteorite fell, people around the world noted strange phenomena that foreshadowed that something unusual was coming. In Russia, the subjects of the emperor watched with surprise the silvery clouds, as if illuminated from within. In England, astronomers wrote with bewilderment about the onset of "white night" - a phenomenon unknown in these latitudes. The anomalies lasted about three days - and then the day of the fall came.

Computer simulation of the approach of the Tunguska meteorite to the Earth

June 30, 1908 at 7:15 local time, a meteorite entered the upper atmosphere of the Earth. Having become hot from friction against the air, it began to glow so brightly that this radiance was noticeable at a great distance. People who saw a fireball flying across the sky described it as a burning elongated object, rapidly and noisily crossing the sky. And then, in the area of the Podkamennaya Tunguska River, about 60 kilometers north of the Evenki camp of Vanavara, an explosion occurred.

It turned out to be so powerful that it could be heard at a distance of more than 1000 kilometers from Podkamennaya Tunguska. In a few villages and camps within a radius of almost 300 kilometers, glass was knocked out by a shock wave, and an earthquake provoked by a meteorite was recorded by seismographic stations in Central Asia, the Caucasus and even Germany. The explosion uprooted centuries-old trees on an area of 2.2 thousand square meters. km. The light and heat radiation that accompanied it led to a forest fire, which completed the picture of destruction. On that day, in the vast territory of our planet, night did not come.

The power of the meteorite explosion was like that of a hydrogen bomb

The clouds formed after the fall of a meteorite at an altitude of 80 km reflected light, filling the sky with an unusual glow, so bright that it was possible to read without any additional lighting. Never before had people seen anything like it.

Another anomaly worthy of attention was the recorded disturbance of the Earth's magnetic field: real magnetic storms raged on the planet for five days.

Until now, scientists cannot come to a consensus on what the Tunguska meteorite was. Many believe that it would be more correct to call it "Tunguska comet", "Tunguska test of weapons of mass destruction" and even "Tunguska UFO". About the nature of this phenomenon, there are a huge number of both scientific and esoteric theories. More than a hundred different hypotheses were expressed about what happened in the Tunguska taiga: from the explosion of swamp gas to the crash of an alien ship. It was also assumed that an iron or stone meteorite with the inclusion of nickel iron could fall to the Earth; the icy nucleus of a comet; unidentified flying object, starship; giant ball lightning; meteorite from Mars, hard to distinguish from terrestrial rocks. American physicists Albert Jackson and Michael Ryan said that the Earth met with a "black hole".

In Lem's novel, the meteorite is presented as an alien spy ship.

Some researchers suggested that it was a fantastic laser beam or a piece of plasma torn off from the Sun. French astronomer Felix de Roy, a researcher of optical anomalies, suggested that on June 30, the Earth probably collided with a cloud of cosmic dust. However, most scientists are inclined to believe that it was still a meteorite that exploded above the Earth's surface.

It was his traces, starting in 1927, that the first Soviet scientific expeditions led by Leonid Kulik were looking for in the explosion area. But the usual meteor crater was not at the scene. Expeditions found that around the site of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite, the forest was felled like a fan from the center, and in the center some of the trees remained standing on the vine, but without branches. Subsequent expeditions noticed that the felled forest area has a characteristic “butterfly” shape, directed from east-southeast to west-northwest. Modeling the shape of this area and calculating all the circumstances of the fall showed that the explosion did not occur when the body collided with the earth's surface, but even before that in the air at a height of 5-10 km.

The fall of the Tunguska meteorite

In 1988, members of the research expedition of the Siberian Public Foundation "Tunguska Space Phenomenon" led by Yuri Lavbin discovered metal rods near Vanavara.

Lovebin put forward his version of what happened - a huge comet was approaching our planet from space. Some highly developed space civilization became aware of this. Aliens, in order to save the Earth from a global catastrophe, sent their sentinel spacecraft. He had to split the comet. But, unfortunately, the attack of the most powerful cosmic body was not entirely successful for the ship. True, the nucleus of the comet crumbled into several fragments. Some of them hit the Earth, and most of them passed by our planet. The earthlings were saved, but one of the fragments damaged the attacking alien ship, and he made an emergency landing on Earth. Subsequently, the crew of the ship repaired their car and safely left our planet, leaving the failed blocks on it, the remains of which were found by the expedition to the crash site.

Vyborg and Petersburg could become victims of the Tunguska meteorite

Over the years of searching for the wreckage of a space alien, members of various expeditions have found a total of 12 wide conical holes in the disaster area. To what depth they go, no one knows, since no one even tried to study them. All these facts allowed geophysicists to reasonably assume that a careful study of conical holes in the earth would shed light on the Siberian mystery. Some scientists have already begun to express the idea of \u200b\u200bthe earthly origin of the phenomenon.

The site of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite

In 2006, according to Yuri Lavbin, in the area of the Podkamennaya Tunguska River, at the site of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite, Krasnoyarsk researchers discovered quartz cobblestones with mysterious inscriptions. According to the researchers, strange signs are applied to the surface of quartz in a man-made way, presumably with the help of plasma exposure. Analyzes of quartz cobblestones, which were studied in Krasnoyarsk and Moscow, showed that quartz contains impurities of cosmic substances that cannot be obtained on Earth. Studies have confirmed that the cobblestones are artifacts: many of them are "jointed" layers of plates, each of which is marked with characters of an unknown alphabet. According to Lovebin's hypothesis, quartz cobblestones are fragments of an information container sent to our planet by an extraterrestrial civilization and exploded as a result of an unsuccessful landing.

The most recent hypothesis is the physicist Gennady Bybin, who has been studying the Tunguska anomaly for more than 30 years. Bybin believes that the mysterious body was not a stone meteorite, but an icy comet. He came to this conclusion based on the diaries of the first researcher of the meteorite fall site, Leonid Kulik. At the scene of the incident, Kulik found a substance in the form of ice covered with peat, but did not attach much importance to it, since he was looking for something completely different. However, this compressed ice with combustible gases frozen into it, found 20 years after the explosion, is not a sign of permafrost, as was commonly believed, but evidence that the ice comet theory is correct, the researcher believes. For a comet that shattered into many pieces from a collision with our planet, the Earth became a kind of hot frying pan. The ice on it quickly melted and exploded. Gennady Bybin hopes that his version will be the only true and last one.

Alleged fragments of the Tunguska meteorite

There are those who believe that Nikola Tesla's intervention could not have happened here: the explosion of the Tunguska meteorite could be the result of an experiment by a brilliant scientist on wireless transmission of energy over a distance. Tesla allegedly specifically chose sparsely populated Siberia as a test site, where there was a minimal risk of causing human casualties. Redirecting huge energy with the help of his experimental setup, he released it over the taiga, which led to a powerful explosion. Despite the apparent success of this experiment, Tesla did not report his breakthrough in the study of energy, apparently afraid that his discovery could be used as a weapon. This scientist, known for his anti-militarism, could not allow it.

In the early morning of June 30, 1908, an explosion was heard over the taiga near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River. According to experts, its power was about 2000 times greater than the explosion of an atomic bomb.

Data

In addition to the Tunguska, an amazing phenomenon was also called the Khatanga, Turukhansk 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 practically equal to one or two bombs detonated 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 lasted 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 be a meteorite that exploded at an altitude of about 8 km. It was the traces of a meteorite fall that Leonid Alekseevich and a team of scientists were looking for in the epicenter, although they were embarrassed by the initial absence of a crater and the forest felled by a fan from the center.

fantasy theory

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

In his original theory, Alexander Petrovich suggested that the fault was the 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 cosmonautics, then it was on June 30, 1908 that a unique opportunity was created for a drone-probe to fly around Mars, Venus and the Earth.

nuclear theory
In 1965, Nobel Prize winners, American scientists K. Cowenney and V. Libby developed the idea of their colleague L. Lapaz about the antimatter nature of the Tunguska event.

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

The Ural geophysicist A.V. Zolotov analyzed the motion 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 the opponents of the idea, nuclear theory is still the leader in terms of 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, on the other hand, states that this compressed ice, found 20 years later at the scene, is not a sign of permafrost, but a direct indication of an icy comet.

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

Blame Tesla?

At the beginning of the 21st century, a curious theory appeared, pointing to the connection of Nikola Tesla with the Tunguska events. A few months before the incident, Tesla claimed that he could light the way for the traveler Robert Peary to the North Pole. Then he asked for maps of "the least populated parts of Siberia."

Allegedly on this day, June 30, 1908, Nikola Tesla conducted an experiment with the transfer of energy "through the air." According to the theory, the scientist managed to “rock” the wave filled with the impulse 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 correspond to various criteria of what happened. Many of them are fantastic and even absurd.

For example, the disintegration of a flying saucer or the departure from the ground of a graviobolide are mentioned. A. Olkhovatov, a physicist from Moscow, is absolutely convinced that the 1908 event is a kind of earth quake, and Krasnoyarsk researcher D. Timofeev explained that the cause was an explosion of natural gas, which was set on fire by a meteorite that flew into the atmosphere.

American scientists M. Rian 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 breakthrough of a solar plasma clot and the subsequent explosion of several thousand ball lightnings are to blame.

For more than 100 years since the incident, it was not possible to come to a single hypothesis. None of the proposed versions could fully meet all the proven and irrefutable criteria, such as the passage of a high-altitude body, a powerful explosion, an air wave, a burn 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, a corresponding member of the Petrovsky Academy of Sciences and Arts, Yu. Lavbin, as part of a research expedition of the Tunguska Space Phenomenon public foundation (now he is its president), discovered unusual stones near Krasnoyarsk, and in 1976 they discovered in the Komi ASSR "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 square meters, located in the Angara taiga of the Kezhemsky district of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, is also often mentioned.

In the area formed by something "falling from the sky", plants and animals die, people prefer to bypass 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.

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

After the light phenomena over the deserted taiga, a super-powerful explosion was heard 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 nuclear bombs detonated simultaneously, like the one dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
The catastrophe was witnessed by the inhabitants of the small trading post of Vanavara (now the village of Vanavara) and those few Evenk nomads who were hunting not far from the epicenter of the explosion.

In a matter of seconds, a forest was tumbled down by a blast wave within a radius of about 40 kilometers, animals were destroyed, and people were injured. At the same time, under the influence of light radiation, the taiga flared up for tens of kilometers around. A continuous fall of trees occurred on an area of more than 2,000 square kilometers.
In many villages, shaking of the soil and buildings was felt, window panes were shattered, household utensils were falling from the 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.

On the first day after the catastrophe, almost in the entire northern hemisphere - from Bordeaux to Tashkent, from the Atlantic coast to Krasnoyarsk - twilight, unusual in brightness and color, night sky glow, bright noctilucent clouds, daytime optical effects - halo and crowns around the sun. The radiance of the sky was so strong that many residents could not sleep. Clouds 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 cities one could freely read a newspaper printed in small print at night, and in Greenwich at midnight a photograph of the seaport was obtained. 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 perturbations of the Earth's magnetic field observed after high-altitude nuclear explosions.

In 1927, Leonid Kulik, the pioneer of the Tunguska catastrophe, suggested that a large iron meteorite had fallen in Central Siberia. In the same year, he surveyed the site of the event. A radial fall of the forest around the epicenter was discovered within a radius of up to 15-30 kilometers. The forest turned out to be tumbled down like a fan from the center, and in the center part of the trees remained standing on the vine, but without branches. The meteorite was never found.
The comet hypothesis was first put forward by the English meteorologist Francis Whipple in 1934, and was later developed in detail by the Soviet astrophysicist, academician Vasily Fesenkov.
In 1928-1930, the Academy of Sciences of the USSR conducted two more expeditions under the leadership of Kulik, and in 1938-1939 an aerial photograph was taken of the central part of the felled forest region.
Since 1958, the study of the epicenter region was resumed, and the Committee on Meteorites of the USSR Academy of Sciences conducted three expeditions led by the Soviet scientist Kirill Florensky. At the same time, studies were started by amateur enthusiasts, united in the so-called complex amateur expedition (CSE).
Scientists are faced with the main mystery of the Tunguska meteorite - a powerful explosion clearly occurred over the taiga, knocking down a forest over a huge area, but what caused it left no traces.

The Tunguska catastrophe is one of the most mysterious phenomena of the 20th century.

There are over a hundred versions. At the same time, after all, perhaps no meteorite fell. In addition to the version of the fall of the meteorite, there were hypotheses that the Tunguska explosion was associated with a giant ball lightning, a black hole that entered 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 an unsuccessful experiment by physicist Nikola Tesla. One of the most exotic hypotheses is the crash of an alien spacecraft.
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 site of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite came to the conclusion that they belonged to a meteorite from the class of carbonaceous chondrites, and not to a comet.

Meanwhile, Phil Blend, an associate at the Australian University of Curtin, made two arguments calling into question the links between the samples and the Tunguska explosion. According to the scientist, they contain 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, that is, the stones found could have hit Earth earlier or later than the famous explosion.

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

The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources

Now let's talk about the meteorite. In the early morning of June 30, 1908, an explosion was heard over the taiga near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River. According to various estimates, the TNT equivalent of the Tunguska explosion is practically equal to one or two bombs exploded over Hiroshima. In addition to the Tunguska, the amazing phenomenon was also called the Khatanga, Turukhansk 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.

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.

What explanations does the "academic world" offer for this...

meteorite theory

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

The most obvious version has one weak point - numerous expeditions to the place where the alleged meteorite fell failed to detect fragments and remnants of the meteorite substance. Moreover, the forest at the site of the cosmic catastrophe was tumbled down over a large area, but just at the place where the meteorite crater was supposed to be, the trees remained standing.

Supporters of the meteorite version say - yes, there is no solid meteorite, it completely collapsed, and numerous small fragments fell to Earth. The problem is that to this day it has not been possible to find these fragments in any serious amount.

Comet

The "comet" version arose after the meteorite. Its main difference lies in the nature of the substance that caused the explosion. Comets, unlike meteorites, have a loose structure, of which ice is an integral part. As a result, the substance of the comet began to rapidly collapse at the moment of its entry into the Earth's atmosphere, and the explosion completely completed what had been started. That is why, say the supporters of the version, it is not possible to detect traces of matter on Earth - they simply were not there.

Comet and meteorite theories exist in various forms, sometimes intertwined with each other. However, no one has yet been able to convincingly prove their case.

fantasy theory

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

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

Kazantsev's version received a lively response and found a lot of supporters who developed and transformed it.

Scientists have always been extremely skeptical about the "alien" explanation of the incident, but in fact, in this case, the main problem is still the same - there is no material evidence.

Already in the 1980s, Alexander Kazantsev corrected his version. In his opinion, the aliens in distress took the ship away from the Earth, and it exploded in space, and the Tunguska meteorite was the landing of their orbital module.

nuclear theory

In 1948, the American scientist Lincoln La Paz put forward the idea that the "Tunguska phenomenon" was due to the collision of matter with antimatter from space. As you know, during annihilation, the mutual annihilation of matter and antimatter occurs with the release of a large amount of energy. Confirmation of the theory is the presence of radioactive isotopes in wood material from the explosion site.

Soviet physicist Boris Konstantinov stated even more clearly in the 1960s that a comet made of antimatter had invaded the Earth's atmosphere. That is why the wreckage of it is simply impossible to find.

The lack of knowledge of the nature and properties of antimatter allows us to consider such a version as acceptable, but most scientists are skeptical about it.

In 1965, Nobel Prize winners, American scientists K. Cowenney and V. Libby developed the idea of their colleague L. Lapaz about the antimatter nature of the Tunguska event.

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

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.

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

Comet ricochet hypothesis

It was first formulated by I. S. Astapovich in the article “The failure of the hypothesis of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite on the Earth on June 30, 1908” (1963). The author believed that the Tunguska body was a comet with parameters similar to the comet of 1874 (Vinnike-Borelli-Tempel). Invading the atmosphere along a gentle trajectory, the comet lost all shells in 13 seconds, but the nucleus entered outer space along a hyperbolic trajectory.

In 1984, the hypothesis was corrected by E. Iordanishvili, in his view, the Tunguska body was a meteorite, not a comet.

Ball lightning

Back in 1908, the first researchers of the "Tunguska phenomenon" suggested that the cause of the explosion was a huge ball lightning.

To this day, the nature of such a rare natural phenomenon as ball lightning has not been fully studied. Perhaps this is the reason why the “ball and lightning” version of events gained popularity among scientists in the 1980s.

According to this version, a giant ball lightning exploded at the crash site, which arose in the Earth's atmosphere as a result of powerful energy pumping by ordinary lightning or sharp fluctuations in the atmospheric electric field.

Space dust cloud

Back in 1908, the French astronomer Felix de Roy suggested that on June 30, the Earth collided with a cloud of cosmic dust. This version was supported by the famous academician Vladimir Vernadsky in 1932, adding that the movement of cosmic dust through the atmosphere caused a powerful development of noctilucent clouds from June 30 to July 2, 1908. Later, in 1961, Gennady Plekhanov, a Tomsk biophysicist and enthusiast for studying the Tunguska phenomenon, proposed a more detailed scheme, according to which the Earth crossed an interstellar cloud of cosmic dust, one of the large conglomerates of which was what later became known as the Tunguska meteorite.

The same Gennady Plekhanov put forward a humorous version, which, with some stretch, can be considered the “7-bis version”. Being bitten by a midge during one of the expeditions to the Podkamennaya Tunguska area, he proposed the idea that on June 30, 1908, a cloud of mosquitoes with a volume of at least 5 cubic kilometers gathered at this place, as a result of which a volumetric thermal explosion occurred, which resulted in the fall of the forest.

Blame Tesla?

At the beginning of the 21st century, a curious theory appeared, pointing to the connection of Nikola Tesla with the Tunguska events. A few months before the incident, Tesla claimed that he could light the way for the traveler Robert Peary to the North Pole. Then he asked for maps of "the least populated parts of Siberia."

According to this hypothesis, on June 30, 1908, Tesla from his laboratory fired an “energy super shot” into the Alaska region in order to practically test the capabilities of his equipment. However, the imperfection of technology led to the fact that the energy directed by Tesla went much further and caused huge destruction in the Podkamennaya Tunguska area.

Upon learning of the consequences of the tests, Tesla chose not to voice his involvement in the incident. The scale of destruction forced Tesla to stop such large-scale experiments.

The weak point of this theory is that there is no evidence that Nikola Tesla conducted an experiment on June 30, 1908. Moreover, the laboratory, from which the “supershot” was allegedly fired, did not belong to Tesla at that moment.

Other theories

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

spaceship launch

Another original version of the "Tunguska Phenomenon" is associated with science fiction writers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. It was expressed in a humorous form in their story "Monday begins on Saturday." According to her, on June 30, 1908, a spacecraft was launched in the Podkamennaya Tunguska area. Its landing happened a little later, that is, in July, since it was a ship not just of aliens, but of countermoving aliens, that is, immigrants from the Universe, where time moves in the opposite direction to ours.

But if the Strugatsky brothers expressed the version of the counterfeit aliens in a humorous manner, then in the early 1990s, the well-known ufologist, the leader of the Kosmopoisk association, Vadim Chernobrov, offered it as an absolutely serious explanation of the “Tunguska phenomenon”.

Tectonic forces

In 1991, A. Yu. Olkhovatov published the first article in Izvestia of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, the provisions of which were developed in monographs in 1997 and 1999. According to A. Yu. Olkhovatov, the Tunguska explosion was a manifestation of the tectonic energy of the belt of ancient explosive formations - astroblems located near the East Siberian geomagnetic anomaly. Thus, the Tunguska explosion was only a local manifestation of processes on a global scale.

solar plasmoid

In 1984, A. N. Dmitriev (Novosibirsk), together with V. K. Zhuravlev, published a paper in which they proved the possibility of the formation of microtransients, that is, microscopic plasma bodies that can be captured by the Earth's magnetic field and drift along its gradients.

Dmitriev and Zhuravlev applied mathematical methods to the testimony of eyewitnesses (in 1981, a catalog of eyewitness testimony was published in Tomsk, including the testimony of 720 people), as a result of which they found out that on June 30, 1908, observers saw two different objects: one walked along an eastern trajectory , the second - along the south, and the time of observation also differed sharply. Thus, according to Novosibirsk researchers, there were two plasmoids.

The energy corresponding to an explosion of 30 Mt can be stored in an ionized plasma formation, with a diameter of about 500 meters, which corresponds to eyewitness accounts of the huge size of the fireball.

The trajectory of the plasmoid, like ball lightning, can change in the process of motion, which explains the inconsistency in the data on the direction of motion of the bolide. Sound and light effects during the movement of the plasmoid are caused by electromagnetic phenomena, which differs significantly from the effects associated with a ballistic wave and removes the existing contradictions.

The explosion of the plasmoid explains the origin of the fire in the taiga. The electromagnetic phenomena accompanying the movement and explosion of the plasmoid can obviously be the cause of geomagnetic effects that cannot be adequately explained within the framework of the meteorite version. The plasmoid version explains the futility of trying to find noticeable traces of meteorite material at the site of the explosion.

Gas-mud release

The hypothesis was put forward in 1981 by N. Kudryavtseva and developed in 1986 by N. S. Snigirevskaya. In the Vanavara area, there are manifestations of paleovolcanism, thus, first an explosion occurred, and then atmospheric phenomena, which were mistaken for a fireball.

Interesting finds

Often versions were based on unusual finds made near the study area. In 1993, a corresponding member of the Petrovsky Academy of Sciences and Arts, Yu. Lavbin, as part of a research expedition of the Tunguska Space Phenomenon public foundation (now he is its president), discovered unusual stones near Krasnoyarsk, and in 1976 they discovered in the Komi ASSR "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 square meters, located in the Angara taiga of the Kezhemsky district of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, is also often mentioned.

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