A meteorite that exploded in the sky over Chelyabinsk in 2013 caused considerable damage to the city. However, its scale cannot be compared with the catastrophe more than a century ago, when the famous Tunguska meteorite collided with the earth. According to a tentative estimate, the power of its explosion was 40-50 megatons, which is comparable to the power of a hydrogen bomb.
When and where did the Tunguska meteorite fall?
On June 30, 1908, an explosion of monstrous power thundered over the Podkamennaya Tunguska River, which is located on the territory of the modern Krasnoyarsk Territory. Its consequences were recorded by seismic stations around the world. One of the few witnesses to the explosion describes it this way:
“I saw a flying hot ball with a fiery tail. After its passage, a blue stripe remained in the sky. When this ball of fire fell over the horizon to the west of Mog, then soon, about 10 minutes later, he heard three shots, as from a cannon. The shots were fired one after another, after one or two seconds. From where the meteorite fell, smoke went, which did not last long "- from the collection" Eyewitness reports about the Tunguska meteorite in 1908 ", V. G. Konenkin.
The explosion knocked down trees in an area of 2,000 square kilometers. For comparison, the area of modern St. Petersburg is approximately 1,500 square kilometers.
Was it a meteorite?
The very name "Tunguska meteorite" should be considered rather arbitrary. The fact is that there is still no unequivocal opinion about what exactly happened in the area of the Podkamennaya Tunguska River. In many ways, this happened because the first research expedition led by L. A. Kulika was sent to the area of the explosion only 19 years later, in 1927. In the supposed place of the fall, among thousands of fallen trees, no debris of a cosmic body, no crater, or a significant amount of chemical traces of the fall of a large celestial body were found.
In 2007, Italian scientists suggested that the place of the fall of the alleged object is Lake Cheko, at the bottom of which the debris lies. However, this version also found its opponents.
Research continues to this day, and scientists cannot even today determine exactly whether a meteorite, comet, or asteroid fragment fell to the earth, or whether it was a phenomenon of a non-cosmic nature. The lack of explanation on this issue continues to bother the minds of people. Professionals and amateurs, not indifferent to the problem, presented more than a hundred versions of what happened. Among them there are both scientifically based hypotheses and fantastic theories, up to the accident of an alien ship or the results of Nikola Tesla's experiments. If this riddle is ever solved, it is possible that the very name "Tunguska meteorite" will become irrelevant.
