It happened on June 30, 1908. A fireball ripped through the daytime sky above a remote forest in Siberia, close to the Podkamennaya Tunguska river. Moments later, a roaring shockwave rattled homes and knocked people off their feet. Today, it is known as Event in Tunguska.
The explosion depleted some 2,000 sq km of forest in the region, flattening the sparsely populated Eastern Siberian Taiga with approximately 80 million trees. Despite being over 35 miles away, residents felt heat from the blast in the nearest town, windows were broken in, and the resulting shock wave was equivalent to an earthquake of 5.0 magnitude.
Event in Tunguska is the largest impact event on Earth in recorded history, and yet, over 100 years later, scientists still aren’t quite sure just what happened on that day. Most credible scholars think it was an asteroid or comet, but no one is exactly sure which. The surrounding circumstances of the investigation have only further muddled things, leading to other strange theories as well.
Only what happened that day, then? Here's what we already know.
No comments:
New comments are not allowed.