Tunguska Explosion in Siberia: Was a spaceship responsible for it, or an asteroid?
Have you ever seen a meteor shower or a comet soar overhead? If not anything else, you have definitely seen an eclipse. But you have never really felt threatened by any of these, have you?
However, there are times, when strange things happen in the sky and even scientists have a hard time understanding them. One such event happened in Siberia on 30th June 1908, at exactly 7am. If you were alive then, you would have surely heard about the historic Tunguska Event that had taken the world by storm. Want to know more about it? Read on.
Okay, so what happened on 30th June 1908 in Siberia?
On this fateful day, people living near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in remote Siberia experienced a sudden and intense heat accompanied by loud bangs. There were also reports of the sky splitting into half and smoke spreading across the air. The consequence was massive. People got knocked over even at a distance of 40 miles, while 80 million trees had collapsed. The magnitude of the incident was so much that it had impacted as far as the eastern Asia, that experienced dense cloud cover. While numerous animals were said to have perished, up to three people were declared dead. History remembers this mysterious happening as the Tunguska Event, Tunguska Explosion or Tunguska Impact.
The real question: What caused the Tunguska Event?
Right after the incident, locals tried to explain it with the help of two theories. The first one was that it was caused by a spaceship that had arrived from an unknown planet. Do you find this hard to believe? Well, then the next one will sound even weirder. It said that the Tunguska Event was the result of a curse by an angry god named Ogdy. No wonder, these theories were discredited almost as soon as they had emerged.
Now, it wasn’t until 1921 that a team of scientists could actually arrive at the site for inspection. This expedition was led by Leonid Kulik, who was the lead curator for the meteorite collection at Russia’s St. Petersburg Museum. But harsh weather conditions prevented him and his team from reaching the Tunguska site and they had to go back. Six years later, Kulik re-arrived with a new team. This time, they were able to reach the epicentre where they were surprised to find trees standing upright, but stripped off the limbs and the barks. Kulik, after initial analysis had concluded that it was the impact of rapid shock waves. But what could have caused those still remained unexplained.
Fast forward to August 1945, Japan’s twin cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki experienced atomic explosions and believe it or not, the impacts were very similar to that of the Tunguska Event. This is when Kulik came up with the most logical theory that a large-sized space rock, about 120 feet wide, had struck Siberia that had an atomic bomb-like destruction capacity. Now, whether it was the doing of an icy comet or a meteorite was still a mystery, but one thing that he knew for sure was that the pressure and heat of the space rock was so intense that it was able to release energy equivalent to 185 atomic bombs. Yes, you read that right!
Okay, but why was there no crater? Well, because the space rock had detonated itself while still in the atmosphere. It was also found out that such space rocks only hit earth once every 300 years.
The 2020 explanation
Turns out, the entire scientist community was not satisfied with Kulik’s investigative analysis and some of them continued their own research over the years. The result? Well, a definitive cause of the Tunguska Event came to the forefront in October 2020. Experts at Siberian Federal University concluded that the Tunguska Event was a result of a 650 feet wide iron asteroid that had just passed through the Earth’s atmosphere at a shallow angle, before disappearing into the space. So, Kulik’s theory was slightly inaccurate, in the sense that it predicted that the asteroid had exploded in the earth’s atmosphere. Can you even guess what this means? Siberia had a near escape that day. Let’s not even imagine what would have happened if it had indeed reached the ground.
Bonus fact: Every year 30th June is celebrated as World Asteroid Day, as a tribute to the Tunguska Event and to raise public awareness about the hazardous impact of asteroids.