Tunguska meteorite size location. Tunguska meteorite - theories, expeditions

Tunguska meteorite- a large celestial body that met the Earth. This happened on June 30, 1908 in the remote Siberian taiga near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River (Krasnoyarsk Territory). Early in the morning, at 7:15 a.m. local time, a fireball flew across the sky - a fireball. It was observed by many residents of Eastern Siberia. The flight of this unusual celestial body accompanied by a sound reminiscent of thunder. The subsequent explosion caused ground shaking, which was felt at numerous points over an area of ​​over a million square kilometers between the Yenisei, Lena and Baikal.

The first studies of the Tunguska phenomenon began only in the 20s. our century, when four expeditions, organized by the USSR Academy of Sciences and headed by L. A. Kulik, were sent to the crash site.

It was discovered that around the site of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite, the forest was felled in a fan from the center, and in the center some of the trees remained standing, but without branches. Much of the forest was burned.

Subsequent expeditions noticed that the area of ​​the fallen forest had a characteristic “butterfly” shape, the axis of symmetry of which coincided well with the projection of the meteorite’s flight path (as determined by eyewitness testimony): from east-southeast to west-northwest. Total area felled forest is about 2200 km 2. Modeling the shape of this area and computer calculations of all the circumstances of the fall showed that the angle of inclination of the trajectory was about 20-40°, and the explosion did not occur when the body collided with earth's surface, and even before that in the air at an altitude of 5-10 km.

At many geophysical stations in Europe, Asia and America, the passage of a powerful shock air wave coming from the explosion site was recorded, and at some seismic stations an earthquake was recorded. It is also interesting that in the territory from the Yenisei to the Atlantic, the night sky after the meteorite fall was exceptionally light (it was possible to read a newspaper at midnight without artificial lighting). In California, a sharp decrease in atmospheric transparency was also noticed in July - August 1908.

The estimate of the explosion energy leads to a value exceeding the energy of the fall of the Arizona meteorite, which formed a huge meteorite crater with a diameter of 1200 m. However, no meteorite crater was found at the site of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite. This is explained by the fact that the explosion occurred before the celestial body touched the earth's surface.

Although research into the explosion mechanism of the Tunguska meteorite has not yet been completed, most scientists believe that it was a body that had a large kinetic energy, had a low density (lower than the density of water), low strength and high volatility, which led to its rapid destruction and evaporation as a result of sharp braking in the lower dense layers of the atmosphere. Apparently, it was a comet consisting of frozen water and gases in the form of "snow", interspersed with refractory particles. The comet hypothesis of the meteorite was proposed by L.A. Kulik and then developed by Academician V.G. Fesenkov on the basis of modern data on the nature of comets. According to his estimate, the mass of the Tunguska meteorite is at least 1 million tons, and the speed is 30-40 km/s.

In the area of ​​the Tunguska disaster, microscopic silicate and magnetite balls were discovered in the soil, externally similar to meteor dust and representing the substance of the comet nucleus dispersed during the explosion.

The Tunguska meteorite, or, as it is often called in scientific literature, The Tunguska fall has not yet been fully studied. Some research results still require explanation, although they do not contradict the comet hypothesis.

However, over the past decades, other hypotheses have been proposed, which, however, have not been confirmed by detailed studies.

According to one of them, the Tunguska meteorite consisted of “antimatter.” The explosion observed during the fall of the Tunguska meteorite is the result of the interaction of the “matter” of the Earth with the “antimatter” of the meteorite, which is accompanied by the release of a huge amount of energy. However, the assumption of such nuclear explosion contradicts the facts that increased radioactivity is not observed in the area of ​​the Tunguska fall, which in rocks there are no radioactive elements that would have to be there if a nuclear explosion had actually occurred there.

A hypothesis was also proposed that the Tunguska meteorite was a microscopic black hole, which, having entered the Earth in the Tunguska taiga, pierced it through and exited the Earth in the Atlantic Ocean.

However, the phenomena that should have occurred during such an event (not to mention the possibility of the existence of low-mass black holes) - a blue glow, an elongated forest fall, the absence of mass loss, and others - contradict the facts observed during the Tunguska fall. Thus, this hypothesis also turned out to be untenable.

The Tunguska fall has not yet been fully studied; work to solve it continues to this day.

Tunguska meteorite (Fall site of the Tunguska meteorite)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eyewitness observations:

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

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

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

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

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

First message about the event, which occurred near Tunguska, was published in the newspaper “ Siberian life"from June 30 (July 12), 1908: "About 8 o'clock in the morning, several fathoms from the canvas railway, near the Filimonovo crossing, not reaching 11 versts to Kansk, according to stories, a huge meteorite fell... Passengers of the train approaching the crossing at the time of the meteorite fall were struck by an extraordinary roar; the train was stopped by the driver, and the public poured to the place where the distant wanderer fell. But she was not able to examine the meteorite closer, since it was red-hot... almost the entire meteorite crashed into the ground - only its top sticks out..."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The fall of the Tunguska meteorite

Year of the Fall

June 30, 1908 at earth's atmosphere A mysterious object exploded and fell, later called the Tunguska meteorite.

Crash site

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

In 2006, according to the president of the Tunguska Space Phenomenon Foundation, 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 researchers, strange signs are applied to the surface of quartz in a man-made manner, presumably through the influence of plasma. 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. Research has confirmed that the cobblestones are artifacts: many of them are fused layers of plates, each of which contains signs of an unknown alphabet. According to Lavbin'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 have been expressed about what happened in the Tunguska taiga: from an explosion of swamp gas to the crash of an alien ship. It was also assumed that an iron or stone meteorite containing nickel iron could have fallen to Earth; icy comet core; unidentified flying object, starship; giant ball lightning; a meteorite from Mars, difficult to distinguish from terrestrial rocks. American physicists Albert Jackson and Michael Ryan stated that the Earth encountered a “black hole”; some researchers suggested that it was a fantastic laser beam or a piece of plasma torn off from the Sun; French astronomer and researcher of optical anomalies Felix de Roy suggested that on June 30 the Earth probably collided with a cloud of cosmic dust.

1. Ice comet
The latest 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 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 give it special significance, because I was looking for something completely different. However, this compressed ice with flammable gases frozen into it, found 20 years after the explosion, is not a sign of permafrost, as was commonly believed, but proof that the ice comet theory is correct, the researcher believes. For a comet that was scattered into many pieces after 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 become 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 that, starting in 1927, were searched for in the area of ​​the explosion by the first Soviet scientific expeditions led by Leonid Kulik. But the usual meteor crater was not at the scene of the incident. Expeditions discovered 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, but without branches.

The 360 ​​TV channel was looking into why not a single fragment of the Tunguska meteorite, which provoked a powerful explosion, has yet been found.

Next news

Exactly 109 years ago, a powerful explosion occurred in Siberia caused by the fall of the Tunguska meteorite. Despite the fact that more than a century has passed since that moment, there are still many blank spots in this story. “360” tells what is known about the fallen cosmic body.

In the early morning of June 30, 1908, when the inhabitants of the northern part of Eurasia were still dreaming, a terrible natural disaster. Many generations of people did not remember anything like this. Something similar could be seen almost 40 years later at the end of the terrible war in history.

That morning, a monstrous explosion thundered over the remote Siberian taiga in the area of ​​the Podkamennaya Tunguska River. Scientists subsequently estimated its power at 40-50 megatons. Only Khrushchev’s famous “Tsar Bomba” or “Kuzka’s Mother” could release such energy. The bombs that the Americans dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much weaker. People who lived in those days major cities northern Europe, it was lucky that this event did not happen over them. The consequences of the explosion in this case would be much worse.

Explosion over the taiga

The site of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite, which occurred on June 30, 1908 in the Podkamennaya Tunguska river basin (now the Evenki National District Krasnoyarsk Territory RSFSR). Photo: RIA Novosti.

The fall of an unknown space alien to Earth did not go unnoticed. A few eyewitnesses, taiga hunters and cattle breeders, as well as residents of small settlements scattered in Siberia, saw the flight of a huge fireball over the taiga. Later, an explosion was heard, the echo of which was caught far from the scene of events. Hundreds of kilometers away, windows were broken in houses, and blast wave recorded by observatories various countries peace in both hemispheres. For several more days, flickering clouds and an unusual glow in the sky were observed in the sky from the Atlantic to Siberia. After the incident, people began to remember that two or three days before they noticed strange atmospheric phenomena - glows, halos, bright twilight. But whether it was fantasy or truth cannot be established for sure.

First expedition

Soviet scientist A. Zolotov (left) takes soil samples at the site of the Tunguska meteorite fall. Photo: RIA Novosti.

Humanity learned about what happened at the site of the disaster much later - only 19 years later the first expedition was sent to the area where the mysterious celestial body fell. The initiator of the study of the site of the fall of the meteorite, which was not yet called Tunguska, was the scientist Leonid Alekseevich Kulik. He was an expert in mineralogy and celestial bodies and led a newly created expedition to search for them. For description mysterious phenomenon he came across in a pre-revolutionary issue of the newspaper “Sibirskaya Zhizn”. The text clearly indicated the location of the event, and even cited eyewitness accounts. People even mentioned the “top of the meteorite sticking out of the ground.”

The hut of the first expedition of researchers led by Leonid Kulik in the area of ​​the fall of the Tunguska meteorite. Photo: Vitaly Bezrukikh / RIA Novosti.

In the early 1920s, Kulik's expedition managed to collect only scattered memories of those who remembered a flaming ball in the night sky. This made it possible to approximately establish the area where the space guest fell, where the researchers went in 1927.

Consequences of the explosion

The site of the Tunguska meteorite explosion. Photo: RIA Novosti.

The first expedition found that the consequences of the cataclysm were enormous. Even according to preliminary estimates, forest was felled over an area of ​​more than two thousand square kilometers in the area of ​​the fall. The trees lay with their roots towards the center of the giant circle, pointing the way to the epicenter. When we managed to get to him, the first riddles appeared. In the supposed area of ​​the fall, the forest remained standing. The trees stood dead and almost completely devoid of bark. There were no traces of a crater anywhere.

Attempts to solve the mystery. Funny hypotheses

A place in the taiga near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River, where 80 years ago (June 30, 1908) a fiery body called the Tunguska meteorite fell. Here, on the taiga lake, is the laboratory of the expedition to study this disaster. Photo: RIA Novosti.

Kulik devoted his entire life to the search for the Tunguska meteorite. From 1927 to 1938, several expeditions were carried out to the epicenter area. But the celestial body was never found, not a single fragment of it was found. There weren't even any dents from the impact. Several large depressions gave hope, but a detailed study revealed that these were thermokarst pits. Even aerial photography did not help in the search.

The next expedition was planned for 1941, but it was not destined to take place - the war began, which pushed all other issues in the life of the country into the background. At the very beginning, Leonid Alekseevich Kulik went to the front as a volunteer as part of a people's militia division. The scientist died of typhus in the occupied territory in the city of Spas-Demensk.

Forest fall in the area where the Tunguska meteorite fell. Photo: RIA Novosti.

They returned to studying the problem and searching for the crater or the meteorite itself only in 1958. A scientific expedition organized by the Committee on Meteorites of the USSR Academy of Sciences went to the taiga to Podkamennaya Tunguska. She also did not find a single fragment of a celestial body. For many years The Tunguska meteorite attracted many different scientists, researchers and even writers. Thus, science fiction writer Alexander Kazantsev suggested that an interplanetary spaceship exploded over the Siberian taiga that night, unable to make a soft landing. Other hypotheses have been put forward, some serious and some not so serious. The funniest of them was the assumption that existed among the researchers of the crash site, tormented by midges and mosquitoes: they believed that a huge ball of winged bloodsuckers exploded over the forest, which was hit by a lightning bolt.

So what was it

Diamond-graphite intergrowths from the site of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite on the Podkamennaya Tunguska River near the village of Vanavara in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. Photo: RIA Novosti.

To date, the main version is the cometary origin of the Tunguska meteorite. This also explains the lack of finds of fragments of a celestial body, because comets consist of gas and dust. Research, searches and construction of new hypotheses continue. A mysterious meteorite, mentioned many times in books, comics, films, TV shows and even in music, may still be waiting for someone to find its fragments. The mystery of the origin and “death” of the celestial body also awaits a final solution. Humanity thanks chance for the fact that the Tunguska meteorite (or comet?) fell in the remote taiga. If this had happened in the center of Europe, most likely the whole modern history Earth. And in honor of Leonid Alekseevich Kulik - a romantic and discoverer - a small planet and a crater on the Moon were named.

Alexander Zhirnov

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The history of the Tunguska meteorite dates back to June 30, 1908. In the earth's atmosphere above Eastern Siberia, in the area between the Lena and Podkamennaya Tunguska rivers, a certain object, as bright as the sun, exploded and flew a couple of hundred kilometers. Later, this object was named the Tunguska meteorite. The rumble of thunder could be heard over a radius of thousands of kilometers. The mysterious object ended its flight at an altitude of 5-10 kilometers above the taiga with an explosion.

As a result of the blast wave, a forest located within a radius of 40 kilometers was toppled. Animals died and people suffered. During the explosion, the power of the light flash reached such a force that it caused a forest fire. It was he who caused the devastation of the entire area. As a result, inexplicable light phenomena began to occur across a vast area, later called the “bright nights of the summer of 1908.” This effect arose as a result of clouds formed at an altitude of approximately 80 kilometers. They reflected sun rays, creating “bright nights”. On June 30, night had not fallen over the territory; the sky glowed with such light that it was possible to read. This phenomenon was observed over several nights.

The fall and explosion of a meteorite turned the taiga, rich in vegetation, into a dead cemetery of a lost forest for many years. When it came time to investigate this disaster, the results were stunning. The explosion energy of the Tunguska meteorite was 10-40 megatons of TNT equivalent. This can be compared to the energy of 2,000 nuclear bombs, dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Many people later noticed significant growth in the trees. Such changes indicate a radiation release.

Tunguska meteorite - theories of origin.

Until now, the mystery of the Tunguska meteorite cannot be solved. Only in the 20s of the last century did research into this phenomenon begin. By decree of the USSR Academy of Sciences, four expeditions were sent, headed by mineralogist Leonid Kulik. Even after a century, all the secrets of the mysterious phenomenon have not been revealed.

There were very different hypotheses regarding the incidents in the Tunguska taiga. Some speculated that there was an explosion of swamp gas. Others talked about the crash of an alien ship. Theories have been put forward about a meteorite from Mars; that the icy core of a comet fell to Earth. Hundreds of theories have been put forward. Michael Ryan and Albert Jackson, American physicists, stated that our planet has collided with a “black hole.” Felix de Roy, a researcher of optical anomalies and an astronomer from France, put forward a theory that on this day the Earth could most likely collide with a cloud of cosmic dust. And some researchers came up with the idea that it could be a piece of plasma that broke away from the Sun.

Yuri Lavbin's theory.

The research expedition of the Siberian Public Foundation “Tunguska Space Phenomenon”, which was organized in 1988, led by Yuri Lavbin, a corresponding member of the Petrovsky Academy of Sciences and Arts, discovered metal rods near Vanavara. And here Lavbin put forward his own theory: a huge comet is approaching planet Earth. Some developed civilization learned from outer space about a future tragedy, and to prevent a catastrophe, the aliens sent their patrol ship. His goal was to split a giant comet. The comet's nucleus split and some of the fragments fell on our planet, while the rest flew past. The inhabitants of the planet were saved from imminent death, but as a result, one fragment damaged the alien ship and it was forced to make an emergency landing on Earth. The crew of the alien ship repaired the ship and left our planet. They left us blocks that were out of order and later discovered by the expedition.

Tunguska meteorite - research of the fall site.

Over all the years spent solving the mystery of the Tunguska meteorite, a total of 12 conical holes were found. Since no one thought to measure the depth of these holes, no one knows how deep they go. Only recently have researchers begun to think about the origin of the conical holes. Questions also began to emerge about why the trees were felled in such a strange way, because in all likelihood they should lie in parallel rows. The conclusion is the following: the explosion itself was unknown to science. Geophysicists have come to the conclusion that a detailed study of conical holes in the ground will provide answers to some questions.

Unusual artifacts.

In 2009, Krasnoyarsk researchers discovered quartz cobblestones with mysterious inscriptions at the site of a meteorite fall. Scientists suggest that these writings were applied to the surface of quartz in a technogenic manner, possibly through the action of plasma. After researching quartz, it became known that it contains impurities of cosmic substances that cannot be obtained on earth. These cobblestones are essentially artifacts: on each layer of plates there are signs of an alphabet unknown to anyone.

The theory of Gennady Bybin.

Physicist Gennady Bybin put forward the last hypothesis. He believes the body that landed on Earth is not a meteorite, but an icy comet. The scientist came to this conclusion after a detailed study of Leonid Kulik’s diary. He wrote that a certain substance in the form of ice, covered with peat, was found at the site. However, no significance was attached to this find. Since this compressed ice was found 20 years after the disaster, this fact cannot be considered a sign of permafrost. This is irrefutable proof that the ice comet theory is unmistakably correct.

Results of a study of the landing site of the Tunguska meteorite.

Soon the opinion of scientists agreed that this was nothing more than a meteorite that exploded above the surface of our planet. And all thanks to the expedition led by Leonid Kulik. It was she who discovered traces of the meteorite. However, at the site of the explosion, researchers did not find the usual meteorite crater. An unusual picture appeared to the eye: around the place of the fall, the forest was felled from the center like a fan, and some of the trees that were in the center remained standing, but without branches.

The following expeditions noticed characteristic shape forest felled as a result of an explosion. The forest area was 2200 square kilometers. After calculations and modeling of the shape of this area, as well as studying all the circumstances of the meteorite fall, they showed that the cosmic body exploded not from a collision with the Earth’s surface, but in the air, approximately at an altitude of 5 - 10 kilometers above the Earth.

All these assumptions are just theories. The mystery of the Tunguska meteorite remains unsolved. Scientists and researchers are striving to understand the mystery of what exactly happened in the Siberian taiga on June 30, 1908.