meteorite fall in 1908. Where the Tunguska meteorite fell: features, history and interesting facts

The explosion of a huge fireball in the air, later estimated at 40-50 megatons (which corresponds to the energy of the most powerful hydrogen bomb), became widely known as Tunguska phenomenon.

Only a low population density helped to avoid large human losses, but a real ecological disaster occurred, albeit in miniature. Within a radius of several kilometers from the epicenter of the explosion, animals died, the forest was knocked down and swept away by a powerful blast wave recorded by observatories around the world, including in Western hemisphere. For several days, intense sky glow and luminous clouds were observed in the territory from the Atlantic to central Siberia.

After almost a century, science could not give an unambiguous explanation for this strange phenomenon. "Evening" brings to your attention some interesting facts about the incident on Podkamennaya Tunguska.

1. In 1908, a French astronomer Felix de Roy suggested that on June 30, the Earth collided with a cloud space 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 biophysicist from Tomsk and an 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 was later called "Tunguska meteorite" . The same Plekhanov put forward a humorous version, according to which a cloud of mosquitoes with a volume of at least 5 cubic kilometers, resulting in a thermal explosion.

2. In 1930, astrophysicist Harlow Shapley discovered main problem, which tormented researchers until recently - no crater at the crash site space object . Then he put forward the idea that the Tunguska meteorite was in fact not a meteorite at all, but a comet - that is, a celestial body, mainly consisting of ice.

3. Early forties Vladimir Royansky from the American Union College in Schenectady suggested that the Tunguska meteorite consisted of antimatter. Subsequently, this idea was developed by several American scientists, including Nobel Prize winners. Willard Libby and Clyde Cowan. Libby, creator of the famous radiocarbon method, which allows high precision to determine the age of the remains of dinosaurs, came to the conclusion that the cosmic body of antimatter did not reach the Earth, but annihilated from contact with the dense layers of the atmosphere. There were also arguments against this idea - the gamma-ray detectors located on the first satellites in no way indicated any cases of antimatter annihilation in near space.

4. In 1973, two physicists from the University of Texas suggested that the Tunguska meteorite was a miniature black hole that had passed through the Earth. famous physicist Stephen Hawking considered such holes as one of the possible consequences big bang. A similar hypothesis was put forward in 1989 - it was about a small comet consisting of deuterium ( radioactive isotope hydrogen), which upon contact with the Earth turned into a hydrogen bomb.

5. Is very popular with researchers simple theory about what's really there was no meteorite, but there was a small earthquake, contributing to the release and explosion huge amount natural gas, which formed a giant luminous pillar, causing a sensation of heat at a distance of many kilometers.

6. Some scientists believe that if the Tunguska meteorite fell four hours later, then Vyborg and St. Petersburg could become its victims.

7. In 2013, the journal Planetary and Space Science published the results of a study conducted by a group of Ukrainian, German and American scientists, which reported that microscopic samples discovered by Nikolai Kovalykh in 1978 in the Podkamennaya Tunguska area revealed the presence of lonsdaleite, troilite , taenite and scheibersite - minerals characteristic of diamond-bearing meteorites. At the same time, the employee Australian University Curtin Phil Blend 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 that the stones found could have hit the Earth earlier or later famous explosion.

8. In a novel Stanislav Lem"Astronauts" The Tunguska phenomenon was presented as a reconnaissance ship sent by the militant inhabitants of Venus to Earth with the aim of capturing, but not carrying it out because of global war and total death. The Strugatsky brothers in their famous story "Monday Starts Saturday" they laughed a little at this, offering their own version, which was that the ship was not just an alien, but from another space, in which time relative to ours goes backwards. Those. the ship flew in, started a fire and safely retired into the past. The Tunguska phenomenon was repeatedly mentioned by Kir Bulychev, including as a result of unsuccessful tests of the time machine. The popularity of the topic among science fiction writers led to the fact that in the 1980s, the magazine "Ural Pathfinder" among the requirements for science fiction works proposed for publication mentioned: "Works that reveal the mystery of the Tunguska meteorite".

9. In the band's video Metallica"All Nightmare Long" tells the story of finding alien spores at the site of a meteorite explosion, with the help of which the USSR seizes power over the world.

10. There are reports of an event similar to the Tunguska disaster that occurred in Brazil on August 13, 1930 and was called "Brazilian Tunguska". The event is practically unexplored, since it happened in an area that is difficult for expeditions to reach.

Tunguska meteorite - a hypothetical body, probably of cometary origin, which, presumably, caused an air explosion that occurred in the area of the Podkamennaya Tunguska River on June 17, 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.
Story
On June 30, 1908, a giant bolide flew over the vast territory of Central Siberia between the Nizhnyaya Tunguska and Lena rivers. The flight ended with an explosion at an altitude of 7-10 km above an uninhabited region of the taiga. 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 2000 km², window panes in houses were knocked out several hundred kilometers from the epicenter of the explosion. For several days, intense sky glow and luminous clouds were observed in the territory from the Atlantic to central Siberia. A blast wave within a radius of 40 kilometers knocked down a forest, animals were destroyed, people were injured. Due to a powerful flash of light and a stream of hot gases, a forest fire broke out, which completed the devastation of the area. Over a vast area, starting from the Yenisei River and ending with the Atlantic coast of Europe, for several nights in a row, unprecedented in scale and completely unusual light phenomena, which went down in history under the name "bright nights of the summer of 1908".
Several research expeditions were sent to the disaster area, starting with the 1927 expedition led by L. A. Kulik. The substance of the hypothetical Tunguska meteorite was not found in significant quantities, but microscopic silicate and magnetite balls were found, as well as an increased content of some elements, indicating a possible cosmic origin substances. Scientists have put forward many hypotheses of the explosion. Now there are about 100 of them. Adherents of the first believe that a giant meteorite fell to Earth. Beginning in 1927, the first Soviet scientific expeditions searched for its traces in the area of the explosion. However, the usual meteor crater was not at the scene. Subsequent expeditions noticed that the felled forest area had characteristic shape"butterflies", directed from the east - southeast to the west - northwest. The study of this area showed that the explosion did not occur when the body collided with the earth's surface, but even before that in the air at an altitude of 5-10 kilometers.
Astronomer V. Fesenkov put forward a version of the collision of the Earth with a comet. According to another version, it was a body with high kinetic energy, low density, low strength and high volatility, which led to its rapid destruction and evaporation as a result of sharp deceleration in the lower dense layers of the atmosphere.
Tunguska meteorite: facts and hypotheses
In the earth's atmosphere, about once a year, a miniature Tunguska catastrophe occurs - an explosion of an asteroid or comet, with a power approximately equal to the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
June 30, 1908 at about 7 am local time over the territory Eastern Siberia in the interfluve of the Lena and the Podkamennaya Tunguska, a fiery object flared up like the sun and flew several hundred kilometers. Due to the powerful light flash of the Tunguska explosion and the flow of hot gases, a forest fire broke out, which completed the devastation of the area. On the vast expanse, bounded from the east by the Yenisei, from the south by the line "Tashkent-Stavropol-Sevastopol-north of Italy-Bordeaux", from the west by the Atlantic coast of Europe, unprecedented in scale and completely unusual light phenomena unfolded, which went down in history under the name "bright nights of the summer of 1908. Clouds formed at an altitude of about 80 km intensely reflected the sun's rays, thereby creating the effect of bright nights even where they not observed before. Throughout this gigantic territory, on the evening of June 30, night practically did not fall: the entire sky shone. This phenomenon continued for several nights. A space hurricane for many years turned the taiga rich in vegetation into graveyard of the dead forests. The study of the consequences of the disaster showed that the energy of the explosion was 10-40 megatons of TNT equivalent, which is comparable to the energy of two thousand simultaneously exploded nuclear bombs like the one dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Later, increased tree growth was found in the center of the explosion, indicating a radiation release. In the history of mankind, in terms of the scale of observed phenomena, it is difficult to find a more grandiose and mysterious event than the fall of the Tunguska meteorite. The first studies of this phenomenon began only in the 1920s. Four expeditions organized by the USSR Academy of Sciences, headed by the mineralogist Leonid Kulik, were sent to the site of the fall of the object.
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; gigantic fireball; 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. However, most scientists are inclined to believe that it was still a meteorite that exploded above the Earth's surface.

The fall of a giant meteorite. 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. The 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 part of the trees remained standing on the vine, but without branches. Subsequent expeditions noticed that the felled forest area had a characteristic "butterfly" shape, pointing east-southeast to west northwest. The total area of fallen forest is about 2200 square kilometers. Modeling the shape of this area and computer calculations of 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.
Earth collision with comet. Such a hypothesis was put forward by academician Vasily Fesenkov, an astronomer by profession. Even material evidence was found in peat bogs - silicate and magnetite balls, but too little. This circumstance made it difficult to accept Fesenkov's assumption as a hypothesis, since, according to reasonable calculations by the employees of the Institute of Physics, the observed the blast wave could produce a charge equivalent to 20-40 tons of TNT, in which there should have been a lot of fragments. According to another version, a body with high kinetic energy, but with low density, low strength and high volatility, collided with the Earth, which led to its rapid destruction and evaporation as a result of sharp deceleration in the lower dense layers of the atmosphere. Such a body could be a comet, consisting of frozen water and gases in the form of "snow", interspersed with refractory particles.
alien ship. In 1988, members of the research expedition of the Siberian Public Foundation "Tunguska Space Phenomenon" led by Corresponding Member of the Petrovsky Academy of Sciences and Arts 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 to save the Earth from global catastrophe, sent out their sentinel spacecraft. He had to split the comet. But 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 ended up on Earth, and most of passed by our planet. Earthlings were saved, but one of the fragments damaged the attacker 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. Over the long years of searching for the wreckage of a space alien, members of various expeditions in total discovered 12 wide conical holes in the disaster area. To what depth they go, no one knows, since no one even tried to study them. Recently, however, researchers for the first time thought about the origin of the holes and the picture of the felling of trees in the area of the cataclysm. For all famous theories and by practice, the fallen trunks should lie in parallel rows. And here they lie clearly anti-scientific. This means that the explosion was not classical, but somehow completely unknown to science. 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. 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 "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. extraterrestrial civilization and exploded as a result of an unsuccessful landing.

ice comet. 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 impact site, Leonid Kulik. At the scene of the incident, Kulik found a substance in the form of ice covered with peat, but did not give it special significance because I 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.
Thousands of researchers are striving to understand what happened on June 30, 1908 in Siberian taiga. In the area of the Tunguska disaster, in addition to Russian expeditions, international expeditions are sent regularly. On October 9, 1995, by decree of the Government of the Russian Federation, a state nature reserve"Tunguska" with a total area of 296,562 hectares. Its territory is unique. It stands out among other reserves and sanctuaries in the world in that it is the only area on the globe that provides an opportunity for direct study environmental impact space disasters. In the Tunguska Reserve, due to the uniqueness of the event of 1908, as an exception, limited tourist activities are allowed for the purpose of environmental education of the population, acquaintance with beautiful natural objects reserve, the site of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite. There are three environmental education routes. Two of them are water, along the picturesque rivers Kimchu and Khushma, the third is on foot along the "Kulik trail" - the famous route of the discoverer of the site of the Tunguska meteorite disaster.

In search of the Tunguska meteorite
Many have tried to find the Tunguska meteorite. The first such attempt was made by engineer Vyacheslav Shishkov, who later became famous writer, the author of the famous "Gloomy River". In 1911, a geodetic expedition led by him discovered colossal forest fallouts near the Tetere River. A purposeful search for the meteorite was taken up by Leonid Kulik, who went with expeditions to the area of fallouts three times. In 1927, he conducted a general reconnaissance, discovered many craters, and returned a year later with a large expedition. During the summer, topographic surveys of the surroundings were carried out, filming of fallen trees, and an attempt was made to pump water out of the funnels with a makeshift pump. However, no traces of the meteorite were found at the same time.
Kulik's third expedition, which took place in 1929 and 1930, was the most numerous and equipped with drilling equipment. They opened one of the largest funnels, at the bottom of which a stump was found. But he turned out to be "older" than the Tunguska catastrophe. Consequently, the funnels were not of meteorite, but of thermokarst origin. The Tunguska space body and its fragments disappeared without a trace. Kulik believed that the Tunguska meteorite was iron. He did not even deign to examine a large meteorite-like stone, which was discovered by expedition member Konstantin Yankovsky. Attempts to find the "Jankowski stone", undertaken thirty years later, were unsuccessful.
In 1939, Kulik's last expedition took place, and again it did not bring significant results. Kulik was going to organize another trip to the area where the Tunguska meteorite fell in 1941, but the Great Patriotic War prevented him.
In 1958, a group led by geochemist Kirill Florensky set out for the Podkamennaya Tunguska area. The expedition explored a vast logging area and mapped it out. However, no one was found meteorite crater. One of the main tasks assigned to Florensky's group was the discovery of finely dispersed meteorite material, but the searches carried out did not give any results. But a completely new phenomenon was recorded - an abnormally rapid growth of trees. All these circumstances led some members of the expedition to conclude that the meteorite exploded not upon contact with the Earth, but at a certain height above the surface. Such a conclusion was in clear contradiction with the data of "classical" meteoritics: all previously observed meteorites either burned up in the atmosphere, or split into pieces, falling out in separate pieces, or penetrated into the thickness earth's crust, forming craters.
In the late 1950s, in the student city of Tomsk, CSE was formed - the Complex Amateur Expedition to study the Tunguska meteorite. The first trip of the CSE to the fallout zone took place in 1959. The main goal that the members of the expedition set themselves was to "awaken the interest of the general public in one of the world's mysteries, the solution of which can give humanity a lot." A year later, CSE-2 began work. It was unprecedented in number and consisted of more than seventy people. It is interesting that in parallel with CSE-2, a group of engineers from the design bureau of Sergei Korolev worked in the area of the Tunguska disaster. In its composition, the future pilot-cosmonaut Georgy Grechko was also looking for a meteorite. The enthusiasm of the CSE members was constantly supported by the belief that the undertaken "general offensive" in the very near future would reveal the nature of the mysterious meteorite, however, even after thirty years of research, having collected colossal factual material, the members of the Complex Expedition could not unambiguously answer the essentially simple question: what exactly exploded over Podkamennaya Tunguska?
Unanimous opinion on the question "What was it?" no so far. The absence of traces of the meteorite gave rise to many exotic hypotheses. Initially, the Tunguska cosmic body was considered an ordinary, albeit very large, iron meteorite that fell to the Earth's surface in the form of one or more fragments. AT post-war years the "comet" hypothesis gained great popularity. This version still has many supporters. In the 1950s, the American astronomer Fred Whipple showed that many of the contradictions associated with the explanation of the nature of the Tunguska meteorite are eliminated if the comet's nucleus is considered as a monolithic body consisting of ices of methane, ammonia and solid carbon dioxide mixed with snow. In 1961, geochemist Alexei Zolotov, who visited the fallout zone 12 times, put forward a hypothesis about the atomic nature of the Tunguska explosion. Despite the "crazy" component of this hypothesis, Zolotov even managed to defend his Ph.D. thesis based on it. The geochemist wrote: “The flight and explosion of the Tunguska cosmic body is unusual, and possibly new, yet unknown to man natural phenomenon". The study of the fallout zone from the air made it possible in the late 1960s to say that the Tunguska meteorite, during its fall, made an inexplicable maneuver in the atmosphere - this allegedly confirms it artificial origin. Skeptics, however, point out that history has recorded numerous cases of the fall of rotating meteorites, arbitrarily changing their trajectory.
After the flight of a very large cosmic body through air shell Earth, a hypothesis arose that the Tunguska meteorite was the same fleeting guest. In 1977 it was published mathematical model, describing the fall of the Tunguska meteorite and proving that it could well evaporate under the influence of heating in the atmosphere, but only on condition that it consisted entirely of snow. It has been shown that the main chemical elements Tunguska cosmic body were: sodium (up to 50%), zinc (20%), calcium (more than 10%), iron (7.5%) and potassium (5%). It is these elements, with the exception of zinc, that are most often observed in the spectra of comets. The results of the studies and the data obtained, according to the authors of the study, allow "no longer to assume, but to assert: yes, the Tunguska cosmic body was indeed the nucleus of a comet."

Podkamennaya Tunguska is a river in Russia, which is a right tributary of the Yenisei. flows into Irkutsk region and the Krasnoyarsk Territory, where the Tunguska meteorite fell. This event did not receive due attention at that time. However, later it was studied closely. And they didn't find anything.

On the right bank of the river is the village of Podkamennaya Tunguska. After an unusual incident, this area became known to the whole world. The event is still of concern to researchers. And not only in Russia. The phenomenon of the Tunguska meteorite excites the minds of foreign scientists as well.

The most famous phenomenon of the 20th century

In what year and where did the Tunguska meteorite fall? The fall took place on June 30, 1908. But the old style is June 17th. In the morning at 7:17 a.m., the sky over Siberia lit up with a flash. An object with a fiery tail was seen flying towards Earth.

The explosion that resounded in the Podkamennaya Tunguska basin was deafening. It exceeded the power of the atomic explosion in Hiroshima by 2,000 times.

For reference, in 1945, 2 atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They did not reach the ground, exploding in the atmosphere, but the force of the explosion destroyed many people. In the place of flourishing cities, a desert was formed. Today 2 cities are completely rebuilt.

Consequences of the disaster

An explosion of unknown origin destroyed 2000 km 2 of the taiga, killed all living things that lived in this part of the forest. The shock wave made the whole of Eurasia shudder and doubled around Earth.

Barometers at Cambridge and Petersfield stations recorded a jump in atmospheric pressure. The whole territory from Siberia to the borders Western Europe love the white nights. The phenomenon lasted from June 30 to July 2.

Scientists from Berlin and Hamburg were attracted in those distant days noctilucent clouds in the sky. They were an accumulation of small particles of ice that were thrown there by a volcanic eruption. However, no eruption was recorded.

But the incident did not attract due attention. Somehow they quickly forgot about him, and then a revolution, a war followed. They returned to the study of the Tunguska meteorite only decades later.

And they did not find anything, except for the consequences of the explosion in the area where the Tunguska meteorite fell. No splinters celestial body, nor any other traces of the space guest.

eyewitness accounts

Fortunately, they still managed to interview the inhabitants of Podkamennaya Tunguska. A few days before the explosion, people observed unusual flashes in the sky.

The explosion itself shook the whole of Siberia. Locals have seen animals thrown into the air by his power. The houses shook. And there was a bright flash in the sky. The rumble was heard for another 20 minutes after the fall of an unknown body. By the way, many argue that in fact there was more than one blow. The old Tungus Chuchancha told about this. First, 4 powerful blows followed with the same frequency, and 5 were heard somewhere in the distance. The inhabitants of the village, where the Tunguska meteorite fell, fully felt the forces of the explosion.

At this time, all seismographic stations in Russia, Europe and America recorded a strange shaking of the earth's crust.

People claim that after the explosion there was a strange, frightening silence. Birds and other habitual forest sounds were not heard. The sky dimmed, and the leaves on the trees first turned yellow, then red. By night they were completely blackened. In the direction of Podkamennaya Tunguska, a solid silver wall stood for 8 hours.

What exactly people saw in the sky is hard to say - everyone has their own version. Someone talks about a celestial body (each of the narrators tells about different form), someone about the fire that engulfed the whole sky. “The shirt on me seemed to catch fire,” said an eyewitness to the events.

thunder god

Today, trees grow again at the place where the meteorite fell. Their increased growth immediately after the disaster speaks of genetic mutations. They are never found in meteorite impact sites, which refutes the logical version. Perhaps, where the Tunguska meteorite fell, a strong electromagnetic field formed.

The giants hit by the blast still lie in neat rows, indicating the direction of the explosion. Burnt trees with uprooted roots remind of a strange catastrophe.

The expedition, which arrived at the site of the explosion in the summer of 2017, examined the fallen trees with a specialist. Local residents, representatives of the peoples of the lower Amur (Evenks, Oroks) believed that they had met with the thunder god Agdy, the devourer of people. It is noteworthy that the place where the Tunguska meteorite fell really resembles a giant bird or butterfly in shape.

Where did the Tunguska meteorite actually fall?

The heart of the disaster in the taiga resembles a crater. However, it is not. The space body (most researchers believe that this was it) probably broke into small pieces when it hit the atmosphere. They could be scattered in different parts of the taiga. Therefore, no traces of a cosmic body were found at the epicenter of the explosion.

Lake Cheko is located just 8 km from the meteorite impact area. Its depth reaches 50 meters and has a conical shape. Italian geologists have suggested that the lake was formed as a result of a meteorite impact.

However, in 2016 they Russian colleagues samples of lake sediments were taken and submitted for examination. It turned out that the lake is at least 280 years old. Perhaps even more.

One of the correspondents wrote that one of his neighbors observed a flying star that fell into the water. Will meteorite particles never be found?

The comet burned up before the fall

One of the most popular and plausible versions is a comet that burned up in the atmosphere. The body, which consisted of mud, ice and snow, could simply not reach the Earth. During the fall, it warmed up to several thousand degrees and shattered into small pieces at a height of 5-7 km above the ground. Therefore, the remains of it were not found.

However, in the soil, at the place where the Tunguska meteorite fell, traces of cometary mud and water were preserved. They are preserved in sphagnum mosses, which form peat. The layer formed in 1908 contains an increased content of cosmic dust.

Black and white?

The theory put forward by Andrey Tyunyaev has already been published in the journal. It is based on the fact of the existence of black and white holes.

A black hole absorbs microparticles. No one will ever know what happens to them after falling into her mouth. A black hole transforms matter into space. white hole able to form this substance from space. Both of them perform the function of the circulation of substances. That is, they perform opposite tasks. Tyunyaev is sure that all celestial bodies are formed precisely thanks to a white hole.

Perhaps the Tunguska meteorite really was the result of the work of a white hole. But where did she come from in Siberia? There are 2 theories: either it was formed in outer space, near the Earth, or emerged from the bowels of our planet. And the explosion could provoke the contact of hydrogen, which is released during the operation of the white hole, with oxygen. During the explosion, only water is formed, which is very abundant in the area of the incident.

A white hole is a phenomenon so far little studied and even devoid of a sufficient number of theories. How her black sister is formed, scientists know. Perhaps they work together and complement each other. Perhaps these are two sides of the same object, which is connected by a wormhole.

Damn Cemetery

Strange phenomena in the form of silence and blackened leaves may indicate a distortion of time, physicists say. The fact is that not far from the place where the Tunguska meteorite fell (the facts confirm this information) there is an anomalous zone. They call it the Devil's Cemetery. This place gained terrible fame back in the mid-thirties.

The shepherds lost several cows while moving their herd to the Kova River. Puzzled, they, along with the dogs, began to look for them. And soon they came to a desert area, completely devoid of vegetation. There were torn cows and dead birds. The dogs ran away with their tails between their legs, while the men managed to pull the cows out with hooks. But their meat was inedible. The dogs that ran out into the clearing also soon died of unknown diseases.

This area has been explored by many expeditions. Four went missing in the taiga, the rest died shortly after visiting the Devil's cemetery.

Local residents claim that at night they see strange lights in those places and hear heartbreaking screams. Foresters are sure that they see ghosts in the forest.

sensational speculation

The science fiction writer Kazantsev in 1908 voiced the version that an alien ship had fallen to Earth, which had lost control. Therefore, the explosion occurred in the middle of the taiga, and not in a city or village - the ship was deliberately sent to a deserted area in order to save people's lives.

Kazantsev based his version on the assumption that the explosion was not nuclear, but airborne. Surprisingly, this theory was confirmed by scientists in 1958 - the explosion was indeed air. Were held medical examinations. And at local residents did not find any signs of radiation sickness. Perhaps, experts believe, together with a meteorite, a substance unknown to science hit the Earth. It kills all life and distorts the passage of time.

Secrets of the Tunguska meteorite and interesting facts about it

To date, none of the hypotheses (and there are more than a hundred of them) is not able to explain all the features that accompanied the explosion.

Some interesting facts about the Tunguska meteorite:

If the catastrophe had occurred 4 hours later, but in the same place where the Tunguska meteorite fell, the city of Vyborg would have been destroyed. And St. Petersburg is significantly damaged.
708 eyewitnesses of the event indicated different directions of motion of the cosmic body. Most likely, two or maybe three objects collided at once.
Glass trembled, objects fell, dishes broke. Women ran out into the street in horror, crying. They thought it was the end of the world.
There is a version that the catastrophe was a consequence of the Russian revolution of 1905-1907. God was angry with St. Petersburg, so the direction of the shock wave pointed to this city.
Thunderous sounds were heard both during the flight of the car, and before and after its landing. And his light was so bright that it surpassed the sun.
The power of the explosion is estimated by experts at 40-50 megatons. This is a thousand times the power atomic bomb that America dropped on Hiroshima.

Finally

The place where the Tunguska meteorite fell (which region of the epicenter of events is indicated above is the Krasnoyarsk Territory) is still of interest to researchers. Perhaps this phenomenon is one of the most mysterious events last century. Whether it will ever be solved is unknown.

June 30, 1908 at about 7 am local time over the territory of Eastern Siberia in the basin of the Podkamennaya Tunguska River (Evenki district Krasnoyarsk Territory) a unique natural event occurred.
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, there was a super powerful explosion 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 disaster, in almost the entire northern hemisphere - from Bordeaux to Tashkent, from the Atlantic coast to Krasnoyarsk - twilight, unusual in brightness and color, night sky glow, bright silvery clouds, daytime optical effects halo and rims 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 hesitation 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, the first researcher of the Tunguska catastrophe, Leonid Kulik, suggested that a major fall occurred in Central Siberia. iron meteorite. 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 disaster is one of the most mysterious phenomena XX 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 an alien catastrophe. 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 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 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, 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

Photos from open sources

In 1908, an explosion 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima rumbled in a remote Siberian desert. The explosion destroyed the tranquility of the icy landscape and laid 80 million trees on the ground.

What exactly caused this devastating explosion is still in question to this day.

On June 30, 1908, at about 7:17 am local time, several residents of the Krasnoyarsk Territory woke up to see a column of blue light moving across the sky, almost as bright as the sun.

Then they heard a devastating roar, and shockwaves ran through the village, smashing windows and knocking people off their feet.

As the peasant S.B., who lives in that area, described it. Semenov: “Over the Tunguska road of Onkul, the sky split into two parts, and a fire arose over the forest. The split in the sky became larger, and the fire covered the entire northern side.

“At that moment, I became unbearably hot, as if my shirt was on fire; the heat was on north side where the fire was. I wanted to take off my shirt and throw it away, but the sky turned dark and there was a strong blow that threw me a few meters.

From the very beginning of the incident, researchers quickly concluded that the explosion was caused by the fall of a massive meteor to the ground.

In 1921, more than a decade after this event, Soviet scientists for the first time went on reconnaissance to the site of a meteorite fall. They wanted to study it for the presence of iron and other minerals in it.

However, they could not find a single crater at the epicenter of the explosion. Instead, they found a ring of scorched trees, still standing but with their branches torn off.

Although the scientists concluded that it was a meteor that exploded while entering our atmosphere, they did not find any impact craters or possible fragments.

Without proof of the cause of the explosion, other theories of the Tunguska incident began to appear.

The British astronomer F. J. W. Whipple suggested that the fallen object was a small comet. Unlike meteoroids, which are celestial objects made of minerals and rocks, comets are structures made of ice and dust.

Whipple thought that this could explain the fact that scientists were unable to detect any part of the meteor, since the comet could have caused an explosion on re-entry but burned up completely due to high temperature entrance.

This theory could also explain the glowing skies seen in Europe in the days following the explosion, as they would be caused by the resulting ice and dust from the comet entering the atmosphere.

However, others have disputed that the comet could have reached Earth's atmosphere to cause the explosion. The controversy led to the conclusion that Tunguska was a comet with a rocky mantle that allowed it to enter the atmosphere.

There are other theories about the Tunguska event, including one proposed by astrophysicist Wolfgang Kundt, who put forward the theory that 10 million tons of natural gas ejected from the earth's crust were the cause of the explosion.

To this day, the crater from the fall of Tunguska has never been found, and this huge explosion still remains. scientific mystery awaiting its response.