Tunguska meteorite crash site on the map. Tunguska meteorite

On June 30, 1908, at about 7 am local time over the territory of Eastern Siberia, a unique natural event occurred in the basin of the Podkamennaya Tunguska river (Evenki district of the Krasnoyarsk Territory).
  For several seconds, a dazzling bright ball-car was observed in the sky, moving from the southeast to northwest. The flight of this unusual celestial body was accompanied by a sound reminiscent of thunder. On the way of the car, which was visible on the territory of Eastern Siberia in a radius of 800 kilometers, there remained a powerful dust trail that persisted for several hours.

After light events over an uninhabited taiga, a super-powerful explosion was heard 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 simultaneous detonated nuclear bombs, similar to those dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
  Witnesses of the catastrophe were residents of a small trading post in Vanavara (now the village of Vanavara) and those few Evenki nomads who were hunting near the epicenter of the explosion.

In a matter of seconds, a forest was blown up in a blast wave in a radius of about 40 kilometers, animals were destroyed, people were injured. At the same time, under the influence of light radiation for tens of kilometers, a taiga flashed around. A complete fall of trees occurred on an area of \u200b\u200bmore than 2000 square kilometers.
  In many villages, shaking soil and buildings were felt, windowpanes were breaking, household utensils fell from shelves. Many people, as well as pets, were dumped in the air.
  An explosive air wave that circled the globe was recorded by many meteorological observatories in the world.

On the first day after the disaster, almost throughout the northern hemisphere - from Bordeaux to Tashkent, from the shores of the Atlantic to Krasnoyarsk - twilight unusual in brightness and color, nightly glow of the sky, bright silver clouds, daytime optical effects - halo and crowns around the sun. The radiance of the sky was so strong that many residents could not sleep. The 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 previously observed. In a number of cities at night it was possible to read a newspaper in small print, and in Greenwich at midnight a photograph of the seaport was obtained. This phenomenon continued for several more nights.
  The catastrophe caused fluctuations in the 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, Leonid Kulik, the first researcher of the Tunguska catastrophe, suggested that a large iron meteorite fell in Central Siberia. In the same year, he examined the scene of the event. A radial fall out of the forest around the epicenter was found in a radius of 15-30 kilometers. The forest turned out to be 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 U diploma in 1934, and subsequently it was thoroughly developed 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 aerial photographs of the central part of the fallen forest area were made.
  Since 1958, the study of the area of \u200b\u200bthe epicenter was resumed, and the Committee on meteorites of the USSR Academy of Sciences conducted three expeditions led by Soviet scientist Kirill Florensky. At the same time, research began by amateur enthusiasts, united in the so-called integrated amateur expedition (CSE).
  Scientists are faced with the main mystery of the Tunguska meteorite - a powerful explosion clearly occurred over the taiga, which tumbled the forest over a vast area, but what caused it left no trace.

The Tunguska catastrophe is one of the most mysterious phenomena of the twentieth century.

There are over a hundred versions. In this case, because, perhaps, no meteorite has fallen. In addition to the version of the meteorite falling, there were hypotheses that the Tunguska explosion was associated with a giant ball lightning, a black hole entering 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 the crash of an alien space ship.
  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, an employee of the Australian University, Curtin Phil Bland, cited two arguments that questioned the connection of the samples with the Tunguska explosion. According to the scientist, they have a suspiciously low concentration of iridium, which is uncharacteristic of meteorites, and the peat where the samples were found is not dated to 1908, that is, the stones found could have come to Earth earlier or later than the famous explosion.

On October 9, 1995, in the south-east of Evenkia near the village of Vanavara, by the decree of the Government of the Russian Federation, the Tungusky State Nature Reserve was established.

Material prepared on the basis of RIA Novosti information and open sources

In the early morning of June 30, 1908, an explosion occurred over the taiga in the area of \u200b\u200bthe Podkamennaya Tunguska River. According to experts, its power was approximately 2,000 times greater than the explosion of an atomic bomb.

Facts

In addition to the Tunguska, an amazing phenomenon was also called the Khatanga, Turukhansk and Filimonov meteorites. After the explosion, a magnetic disturbance was noted lasting about 5 hours, and during the flight of the Tunguska car a bright glow was reflected in the northern rooms of nearby villages.

According to various estimates, the TNT equivalent of the Tunguska explosion is almost equal to one or two bombs detonated over Hiroshima.

For all the phenomenality of what happened, a scientific expedition led by L. A. Kulik to the site of the “meteorite fall” took place only twenty years later.

Meteorite theory
The first and most mysterious version lasted until 1958, when a rebuttal was published. According to this theory, the Tunguska body is a huge iron or stone meteorite.

But even now, her echoes haunt contemporaries. Even in 1993, a group of American scientists conducted research, concluding that the object could be a meteorite that exploded at an altitude of about 8 km. It was precisely the traces of the meteorite’s fall that Leonid Alekseevich and the team of scientists were looking for at the epicenter, although they were confused by the initial absence of the crater and a forest felled from the center.

Fantastic theory


Not only the inquisitive minds of scientists are occupied by the Tunguska riddle. No less interesting is the theory of science fiction writer A.P. Kazantsev, who pointed to the similarity between the events of 1908 and the explosion in Hiroshima.

In his original theory, Alexander Petrovich suggested that the accident and the explosion of the nuclear reactor of an interplanetary spacecraft were to blame.

If we take into account the calculations of A. A. Sternfeld, one of the pioneers of astronautics, it was on June 30, 1908 that a unique opportunity was created for flying around the unmanned aerial probe of Mars, Venus and the Earth.

Nuclear theory
In 1965, Nobel laureates, American scientists C. Cowenny and V. Libby developed the idea of \u200b\u200ba colleague L. Lapaz about the anti-matter nature of the Tunguska incident.

They suggested that as a result of the collision of the Earth and a certain mass of antimatter, annihilation and release of nuclear energy occurred.

Ural geophysicist A. V. Zolotov analyzed the movement of the car, the magnetogram and the nature of the explosion, said that only an “internal explosion” of its own energy could lead to such consequences. Despite the arguments of the opponents of the idea, nuclear teria is still the leader in terms of the number of adherents among experts in the field of the Tunguska problem.

Ice comet


One of the latter is the hypothesis of an ice comet, which was put forward by the physicist G. Bybin. The hypothesis arose on the basis of the diaries of the researcher of the Tunguska problem, Leonid Kulik.

At the place of "fall" the latter found a substance in the form of ice covered with peat, but did not pay much attention to it. Bybin claims that this compressed ice, found 20 years later at the scene, is not a sign of permafrost, but a direct indication of the ice comet.

According to the scientist, an ice comet consisting of water and carbon just scattered on the Earth, touching it at speed, like with a hot frying pan.

Tesla is to blame?

At the beginning of the XXI century, a curious theory appeared, indicating the connection of Nikola Tesla with the Tunguska events. A few months before the incident, Tesla claimed that he could light the way for traveler Robert Peary to the North Pole. Then he requested maps of the "least populated parts of Siberia."

Allegedly, on this day, June 30, 1908, Nikola Tesla conducted an experiment with the transfer of energy "through the air." According to the theory, the scientist managed to “swing” a wave filled with impulse energy of ether, which entailed a discharge of incredible power, comparable to an explosion.

Other theories
At the moment, there are several dozen diverse theories that correspond to various criteria of what happened. Many of them are fantastic and even absurd.

For example, mention is made of the disintegration of a flying saucer or a gravelobolid flying out of the ground. A. Olkhovatov, a physicist from Moscow, is absolutely convinced that the event of 1908 is a type of earthquake, and Krasnoyarsk researcher D. Timofeev explained that the reason was an explosion of natural gas, which was set on fire by a meteor that entered the atmosphere.

American scientists M. Rian and M. Jackson said that the destruction was caused by a collision with a “black hole”, and physicists V. Zhuravlev and M. Dmitriev believe that the blame is the breakthrough of a clot of solar plasma and the ensuing explosion of several thousand ball lightning.

For more than 100 years since the incident, it was not possible to come to a single hypothesis. None of the proposed versions was able to fully meet all the proven and irrefutable criteria, such as the passage of a high-altitude body, a powerful explosion, an air wave, a tree burn at the epicenter, atmospheric optical anomalies, magnetic disturbances, and isotope accumulation in the soil.

Interesting finds

Often versions were based on unusual finds made near the study area. In 1993, corresponding member of the Petrovsky Academy of Sciences and Arts, Y. Lavbin, as part of the research expedition of the Tunguska Phenomenon Space Public Foundation (now its president), discovered unusual stones near Krasnoyarsk, and in 1976 discovered in the Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic “Your iron”, recognized as a fragment of a cylinder or sphere with a diameter of 1.2 m.

Often mention is also made of the anomalous "devil's cemetery" area of \u200b\u200babout 250 square meters, located in the Angara taiga of the Kezhemsky district of the Krasnoyarsk Territory.

Plants and animals perish on the site formed by something “fallen from the sky”; people prefer to bypass it. The consequences of the June morning of 1908 also include the unique geological object Patomsky crater located in the Irkutsk region and discovered in 1949 by geologist V.V. Kolpakov. The height of the cone is about 40 meters, the diameter along the ridge is about 76 meters.

On June 30, 1908, in the area of \u200b\u200bthe Podkamennaya Tunguska River (approximately 60 km north and 20 km west of the village of Vanavara), a motion of a luminous body in the atmosphere of the earth was recorded. After that, at an altitude of 10-20 km. from the surface of the Earth there was an explosion with a capacity of 4-50 megatons (this is several hundred nuclear bombs). Within a radius of 40 km. trees were felled (this is approximately 5000 sq. km.), and within a radius of 200 km. broken glass houses. After the incident, several more weeks could be observed in the sky above this place.

Eyewitness accounts

... suddenly in the north the sky bifurcated, and a fire appeared in it wide and high above the forest, which covered the entire northern part of the sky. At that moment I felt so hot, as if a shirt had caught fire on me. I wanted to tear and throw off my shirt, but the sky slammed shut, and there was a strong blow. I was thrown from the porch by three fathoms. After the blow, there was such a knock, as if stones had fallen from the sky or shot from guns, the earth was trembling, and when I lay on the ground I pressed my head, fearing that the stones would not break their heads. At that moment, when the sky opened, a hot wind swept from the north, like a cannon, which left tracks in the form of tracks on the ground. Then it turned out that many of the glasses in the windows were broken out, and an iron tab for the door lock broke at the barn.

Semen Semenov, resident of the Vanavar trading post, located 70 km southeast of the epicenter of the explosion

Our plague then stood on the bank of Avarkitta. Before sunrise, Chekaren and I came from the Dilyushma River, where we stayed with Ivan and Akulina. We slept soundly. Suddenly both woke up at once - someone was pushing us. We heard a whistle and sensed a strong wind. Chekaren shouted to me: “Do you hear how many gogol flies or mergansers?” We were still in the plague and we could not see what was happening in the forest. Suddenly someone pushed me again, so hard that I hit my head on a plague pole and then fell on the hot coals in the hearth. I was frightened. Chekaren also got scared, grabbed a pole. We began to scream father, mother, brother, but no one answered. There was some kind of noise behind the plague; one could hear the woods falling. Chekaren and I got out of the bags and already wanted to jump out of the plague, but suddenly the thunder hit very hard. This was the first blow. The earth began to twitch and swing, a strong wind hit our plague and tumbled it down. I was crushed firmly by the poles, but my head was not covered, because the hellos lifted up. Then I saw a terrible wonder: the woods are falling, the needles are burning on them, the dry land on the ground is burning, the deer moss is burning. Smoke, eyes hurt, hot, very hot, you can burn.

Suddenly, over the mountain, where the forest had already fallen, it became very light, and, as if to tell you that the second sun had appeared, the Russians would say: “suddenly flashed,” my eyes hurt, and I even closed them. It seemed that the Russians called "lightning." And immediately there was agdillan, a 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!

Evenki brothers, Chuchanchi and Chekaren Shanyagir, located 30 km from the center of the explosion to the southeast, on the banks of the Avarkit river

Expeditions

It is not surprising, but the first expedition that was sent to the meteorite impact site took place in 1921 with the support of academicians V.I. Vernadsky and A.E. Fersman: mineralogists L. A. Kulikov and P. L. Dravert incident and tried to find out as many facts as possible about this event. In part, they succeeded: pieces of a meteorite were found, the situation was documented, hypotheses of what was happening were formed.

But here's the bad luck: why didn’t the government pay attention to such a powerful explosion that in those years could erase virtually any country from the face of the Earth? Was it really necessary for anyone? Of course, it’s necessary, and one of the versions is as follows: the authorities eliminated the consequences of this incident for 13 years, and after that, national scientists have already admitted there. This is how the meteorite’s fall site looks today:

• In the atmosphere of the Earth, not one hundred people saw a brightly luminous cosmic body.
• Explosion coordinates: 60 ° 53 north latitude and 101 ° 53 east longitude.
• There is no crater at the place where the “meteorite” fell, and, therefore, it exploded in the air, which cannot be the case with an ordinary meteorite.
• The trees in the district burned out from the inside, the bark was not affected outside, the effect is like the action of a microwave oven, i.e. something like radio waves.
• There was an air wave that knocked out the glass of houses and destroyed some buildings.
• After the explosion, seismic phenomena are observed.
• The magnetic field near the scene is broken.

Let's look at the version of scientists about what it could be and why it was of no interest to anyone?

Nikola Tesla's experiments with wireless power transmission

Nikola Tesla made a breakthrough in the field of electro and radio theory. His main task in life was to transmit electrical pulses by air, from point A to point B. Entry from the Tesla diary: “The time will come when some scientific genius will come up with a machine capable of destroying one or several armies with one action.” Perhaps this was one of the experiments of the scientist-genius, most of whose works are classified to this day.

Saving the Earth by Outsiders of the Universe

Perhaps a huge meteorite was moving toward the Earth, which in a collision would simply split it. Upon seeing this, alien beings for some reason decided to help us, but they managed to knock down (blow up) a meteorite just before it touched the Earth. Hence, a powerful explosion and the absence of a crater. In support of this hypothesis, one can cite huge-sized metal rods that were found near the place of incidence. No one knows where they came from, but it is possible that the spacecraft was damaged and spent some time on the ground, putting itself in order.

Earth collision with antimatter

Antimatter is the substance that scientists say are made up of. In contact with ordinary matter, i.e. any object, from the Earth, which could be in the air, a tremendous amount of energy is released. 1 gram of antimatter during an explosion could provide all of humanity with energy for several days.

Spacecraft fall

According to Kazantsev, in 1908, an interrupted planetary ship with a nuclear engine invaded the Earth’s atmosphere, which deliberately headed towards the uninhabited space and ended the flight there.

There are also other theories, such as the explosion of a cloud of methane released as a result of volcanic activity, or a meteorite falling from ice. So, for example, near the crash site Lake Cheko unexpectedly formed.

More than 105 years have passed since 1908, and in the hope of getting to the bottom of the truth, not one hundred expeditions were sent to the site of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite. But be that as it may, only those who appeared on the spot immediately after the incident know the true cause of what happened.

About seven o'clock in the morning, local time, on June 30, 1908, a large ball of fire swept over the territory of the Yenisei River basin. The flight ended with a powerful explosion at an altitude of about 7 kilometers, which was recorded by observatories around the world. According to modern estimates, the explosion power reached 50 megatons, which is comparable to the explosion of the most powerful. Glasses in houses flew out several hundred kilometers from the epicenter of the explosion.

If the Tunguska meteorite exploded while passing over Europe, the explosion would be able to completely destroy a city like Petersburg. If this incident happened half a century later, a similar explosion could well be mistaken for a nuclear attack and cause the start of the Third World War. But, fortunately, the fall occurred in a sparsely populated region of Siberia.

In 2013, interest in the “Tunguska Phenomenon” grew again after a meteorite fall in the Chebarkul region.

Investigations into the incident in the area of \u200b\u200bPodkamennaya Tunguska have been going on for more than a century, but to this day there is no definite answer to the question: what exactly happened on June 30?

As of 1970, scientists have recorded 77 different theories about the nature of the "Tunguska phenomenon." Theories are divided into technogenic, geophysical, meteorite, related to antimatter, religious and synthetic.

Over the past 40 years, there have been fewer versions, and even a list of hypotheses that are considered basic has more than two dozen.

We selected eight of the most interesting versions of the incident on the Podkamennaya Tunguska.

1. Meteorite

According to the classical hypothesis, on June 30, 1908 a large mass of stone or iron meteorite fell on the Earth, or a whole swarm of meteorites.

The most obvious version has one weak point - numerous expeditions to the site of the alleged meteorite’s fall did not allow us to detect debris and remnants of the meteorite material. Moreover, the forest at the site of the space disaster was tumbled down over a large area, but just at the place where the meteorite crater was supposed to be, the trees remained standing.

Proponents of the meteorite version say - yes, there is no solid meteorite, it completely collapsed, and numerous small fragments fell to the Earth. The problem is that to find these debris in any serious amount fails to this day.

2. Comet

The "cometary" version arose after the meteorite. Its main difference lies in the nature of the substance that caused the explosion. Comets, unlike meteorites, have a loose structure, of which ice is a component. As a result, the comet's substance began to rapidly decay at the moment of its entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, and the explosion completely completed what was started. That is why, supporters of the version say, and it is not possible to detect traces of matter on Earth - they simply were not there.

Comet and meteorite theories exist in various forms, sometimes intertwined with each other. However, no one has yet been able to convincingly confirm their innocence.

3. The alien ship

It is logical that the authorship of the version about the artificial nature of the “Tunguska phenomenon” belongs to the science fiction writer. In 1946, in the magazine Around the World, Soviet writer Alexander Kazantsev  published the story "Explosion", in which he expressed the version that an alien spaceship crashed in the area of \u200b\u200bPodkamennaya Tunguska. According to Kazantsev, the ship was equipped with an atomic engine, which exploded. Comparing the explosion of the Tunguska Phenomenon with the atomic bomb explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the writer noted that the established forest at the epicenter is very similar to the houses that survived at the epicenter of the explosion in Hiroshima. Kazantsev also noted the similarity of seismograms of these events.

The version of Kazantsev received a lively response and found a lot of supporters who developed and transformed it.

Scientists have always been extremely skeptical of the "alien" explanation of the incident, but in fact, in this case, the main problem is the same - there is no material evidence.

Already in the 1980s, Alexander Kazantsev adjusted his version. In his opinion, the aliens in distress took the ship away from the Earth, and it exploded in space, and the Tunguska Meteorite was the landing of their orbital module.

Felled forest in the fall region of the Tunguska meteorite. Photo: RIA Novosti

4. The experiment of Nikola Tesla

Outstanding american physicist of Serbian descent Nikola Tesla  at the beginning of the 20th century was considered the "master of electricity." Among his many works were experiments related to the technology of wireless transmission of electricity over long distances.

According to this hypothesis, on June 30, 1908, Tesla from his laboratory fired an “energy over-shot” in the Alaska area in order to practically test the capabilities of his equipment. However, the imperfection of the technique led to the fact that the energy directed by Tesla went much further and caused huge damage in the area of \u200b\u200bthe Podkamennaya Tunguska.

Having learned about the consequences of the tests, Tesla chose not to voice his involvement in the incident. The scale of the destruction forced Tesla to stop such large-scale experiments.

The weak point of this theory is that there is no evidence that Nikola Tesla conducted the experiment on June 30, 1908. Moreover, the laboratory from which the "over-shot" was allegedly fired did not belong to Tesla by this time.

5. Collision with antimatter

In 1948, the American scientist Lincoln La Paz  put forward the idea that the "Tunguska phenomenon" is due to the collision of matter with antimatter from space. As you know, during annihilation, mutual destruction of matter and antimatter occurs with the release of a large amount of energy. Confirmation of the theory is the presence of radioactive isotopes in wood material from the place of the explosion.

Soviet   physicist Boris Konstantinovin the 1960s, he stated even more clearly - a comet consisting of antimatter invaded the Earth’s atmosphere. That is why its debris is simply impossible to find.

The poorly studied nature and properties of antimatter allows us to consider a similar version as acceptable, however, most scientists are skeptical of it.

6. Ball lightning

Back in 1908, the first researchers of the Tunguska Phenomenon suggested that a huge ball lightning became the cause of the explosion.

To this day, the nature of such a rare natural phenomenon as ball lightning has not been fully studied. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the "ball-lightning" version of events gained popularity among scientists in the 1980s.

According to this version, at the crash site a giant ball lightning exploded in the Earth’s atmosphere as a result of powerful energy pumping by ordinary lightning or sudden fluctuations in the atmospheric electric field.

7. Cosmic dust cloud

Back in 1908, French astronomer Felix de Roi  suggested that on June 30, the Earth collided with a cloud of cosmic dust. This version in 1932 was supported by the famous academician Vladimir Vernadsky, adding that the movement of cosmic dust through the atmosphere caused a powerful development of silvery clouds from June 30 to July 2, 1908. Later, in 1961, Tomsk biophysicist and enthusiast of the study of the “Tunguska phenomenon” Gennady Plekhanov  proposed a more detailed scheme, according to which the Earth crossed an interstellar cloud of cosmic dust, one of the largest conglomerates of which was what later became known as the Tunguska Meteorite.

The same Gennady Plekhanov put forward a humorous version, which, with some stretch, can be considered a “version 7 bis”. Being bitten by a vulture during one of the expeditions to the Podkamennaya Tunguska region, he proposed the idea that on June 30, 1908 a cloud of mosquitoes with a volume of at least 5 cubic kilometers gathered at this place, as a result of which there was a volumetric thermal explosion, which entailed a forest fall.

8. The launch of the spacecraft

Another original version of the "Tunguska phenomenon" is associated with science fiction writers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. She was expressed in a humorous form in their story "Monday begins on Saturday." According to her, on June 30, 1908 in the region of Podkamennaya Tunguska, the launch of a space ship took place. His landing happened a bit later, that is, in July, since it was not just a ship of aliens, but counter-aliens, that is, immigrants from the Universe, where time moves in the opposite direction to ours.

But while the Strugatsky brothers’s version of aliens-contraceptives was expressed in a humorous way, in the early 1990s, the famous   Ufologist, leader of the Kosmopoisk association Vadim Chernobrov, offered it as an absolutely serious explanation of the “Tunguska phenomenon”.

While researchers are not able to find convincing and final confirmation of any version of the Tunguska Phenomenon, each of them, despite understandable skepticism, has a right to exist.

Even the one expressed in relation to another Chebarkul meteorite is one of the Chelyabinsk pensioners:

Yes these are some addicts!

Tunguska meteorite - a hypothetical body, probably of cometary origin, which, presumably, caused an air explosion that occurred in the area of \u200b\u200bthe Podkamennaya Tunguska River on June 17, 1908 at 7 o'clock 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.
History
On June 30, 1908, a giant ball car flew over the vast territory of Central Siberia between the Lower Tunguska and Lena rivers. The flight ended in an explosion at an altitude of 7-10 km above the uninhabited area of \u200b\u200bthe taiga. The blast wave was recorded by observatories around the world, including in the Western Hemisphere. As a result of the explosion, trees were felled on an area of \u200b\u200bmore than 2000 km², window panes in houses were knocked out several hundred kilometers from the epicenter of the explosion. For several days in the territory from the Atlantic to central Siberia, intense glow of the sky and luminous clouds were observed. A blast wave in a radius of 40 kilometers was felled forest, animals were destroyed, people were injured. Due to the powerful flash of light and the flow of hot gases, a forest fire arose, which completed the devastation of the area. Over a vast expanse, starting from the Yenisei River and ending with the Atlantic coast of Europe, for several consecutive nights, unprecedented in scale and completely unusual light phenomena were observed, which went down in history under the name of “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. 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 of the substance. Scientists have put forward many explosion hypotheses. Now there are about 100 of them. Adherents of the first believe that a giant meteorite fell on Earth. Since 1927, the first Soviet scientific expeditions were looking for its traces in the area of \u200b\u200bthe explosion. However, the usual meteor crater was not at the scene. Subsequent expeditions noticed that the area of \u200b\u200bthe felled forest has a characteristic “butterfly” shape, directed from the east - southeast to west - northwest. The study of this area showed that the explosion did not occur when a 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 braking in the lower dense layers of the atmosphere.
Tunguska meteorite: facts and hypotheses
A miniature Tunguska catastrophe occurs in the Earth’s atmosphere about once a year - an explosion of an asteroid or comet, with a power approximately equal to the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
On June 30, 1908, at about 7 o'clock in the morning of local time over the territory of Eastern Siberia, between the rivers Lena and Podkamennaya Tunguska broke out like the sun, and a fiery object flew several hundred kilometers. Due to the powerful light flash of the Tunguska explosion and the flow of hot gases, a forest fire arose, which completed the devastation of the area. In an enormous space bounded from the east by the Yenisei, from the south by the Tashkent-Stavropol-Sevastopol-north of Italy-Bordeaux line, from the west by the Atlantic coast of Europe, unprecedented in scale and completely unusual light phenomena that went down in history as “bright” the nights of the summer of 1908. " The 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 have not been observed before. On the whole of this gigantic territory, on the evening of June 30, almost no night fell: the entire sky was lit. This phenomenon lasted several nights. For many years, a space hurricane turned a taiga rich in vegetation into a cemetery of a dead forest. A study of the consequences of the disaster showed that the energy of the explosion amounted to 10-40 megatons of TNT, which is comparable to the energy of two thousand simultaneously detonated nuclear bombs, similar to those dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Later, in the center of the explosion, enhanced growth of trees was discovered, indicating a radiation outburst. In the history of mankind it is difficult to find a more grandiose and mysterious event than the fall of the Tunguska meteorite in the scale of the observed phenomena. The first studies of this phenomenon began only in the 1920s. Four expeditions organized by the USSR Academy of Sciences, headed by the mineralologist Leonid Kulik, were sent to the site of the crash.
Hypotheses
More than a hundred different hypotheses have been expressed of 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 Earth; icy core of a comet; unidentified flying object, starship; giant ball lightning; a meteorite from Mars, difficult to distinguish from terrestrial rocks. American physicists Albert Jackson and Michael Ryan have 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; The French astronomer, an optical anomaly researcher Felix de Roi, 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 surface of the Earth.

Giant meteorite fall. Since 1927, it was his tracks that were searched for in the explosion area by the first Soviet scientific expeditions led by Leonid Kulik. But at the scene there was no familiar meteor crater. It was discovered by expeditions that around the place where the Tunguska meteorite fell, the forest fell in 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 area of \u200b\u200bthe felled forest has a characteristic "butterfly" shape, directed from east - southeast to west northwest. The total area of \u200b\u200bthe felled forest is about 2200 square kilometers. Simulation of the shape of this region 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 an altitude of 5-10 km.
Collisions of the Earth with a comet. Such a hypothesis was put forward by academician Vasily Fesenkov, an astronomer by profession. Even material evidence was discovered in peat bogs - silicate and magnetite balls, but too little. This circumstance prevented Fesenkov’s assumption from being accepted as a hypothesis, since, according to reasonable calculations of the Institute of Physics, the observed a blast wave could produce a charge equivalent to 20-40 tons of TNT, in which there were to be a lot of fragments. According to another version, a body with a high kinetic energy collided with the Earth, but had a low density, 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. Such a body could be a comet, consisting of frozen water and gases in the form of "snow", with interspersed refractory particles.
Alien ship . In 1988, participants in the research expedition of the Siberian Public Fund “Tunguska Phenomenon of Space Phenomenon” led by corresponding member of the Petrovsky Academy of Sciences and Arts Yuri Lavbin discovered metal rods near Vanavara. Lavbin put forward his version of what happened - a huge comet was approaching our planet from space. This became known to some highly developed civilization of outer space. Aliens, to save the Earth from a global catastrophe, sent their sentinel spaceship. He had to split a comet. But the attack of the most powerful cosmic body was not entirely successful for the ship. True, the comet's nucleus scattered into several fragments. Some of them came to Earth, and most of them passed by our planet. Earthlings were saved, but one of the fragments damaged an attacking 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 failed blocks on it, the remains of which were found by the expedition to the crash site. For many years of searching for debris from the space alien, members of various expeditions in total found 12 wide conical-shaped openings in the disaster area. Nobody knows what depth they go to, since nobody even tried to study them. However, recently researchers for the first time thought about the origin of the holes and the picture of the fallen trees in the area of \u200b\u200bthe cataclysm. According to all known theories and practice itself, felled trunks should lie in parallel rows. And here they are clearly unscientific. It means that the explosion was not a classic, but some kind of completely unknown science. All these facts allowed geophysicists to quite reasonably assume that a careful study of the conical holes in the ground will shed light on Siberian secrets. Some scientists have already begun to express the idea of \u200b\u200bthe terrestrial origin of the phenomenon. In 2006, according to the president of the Tunguska Phenomenon Foundation Yuri Lavbin, in the area of \u200b\u200bthe Podkamennaya Tunguska River at the site of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite, Krasnoyarsk researchers discovered quartz stones with mysterious inscriptions. According to researchers, strange signs are applied to the surface of the quartz in an anthropogenic manner, presumably with the help 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. Studies have confirmed that cobblestones are artifacts: many of them are “spliced” layers of plates, each of which has characters of an unknown alphabet. According to the Lovebin 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.

Ice comet.The most recent hypothesis is the physicist Gennady Bybin, who has been studying the Tungus anomaly for more than 30 years. Bybin believes that the mysterious body was not a stone meteorite, but an ice comet. He came to this conclusion, based on the diaries of the first researcher of the meteorite’s crash site, Leonid Kulik. At the scene, Kulik found the substance in the form of ice covered with peat, but did not attach much importance to it, since it was looking for something completely different. However, this compacted ice with combustible gases frozen into it, found 20 years after the explosion, is not a sign of permafrost, as was commonly believed, namely evidence that the theory of an ice comet is correct, the researcher believes. For a comet, scattered from a collision with our planet into many pieces, the Earth has become a kind of red-hot pan. The ice on it quickly melted and exploded. Gennady Bybin hopes that it is his version that will be the only true and last.
Thousands of researchers are eager to understand what happened on June 30, 1908 in the Siberian taiga. In addition to Russian expeditions, international expeditions regularly go to the Tunguska disaster area. On October 9, 1995, by decree of the Government of the Russian Federation, the Tungusky State Nature Reserve was established with a total area of \u200b\u200b296,562 ha. Its territory is unique. It stands out among other reserves and reserves of the world in that it is the only region on the globe that makes it possible to directly study the environmental consequences of space catastrophes. Due to the uniqueness of the 1908 event, in the Tunguska Reserve, limited tourist activities are allowed as an exception for the purpose of environmental education of the population, familiarization with the beautiful natural objects of the reserve, and the place where the Tunguska meteorite falls. There are three environmental education routes. Two of them are water, along the picturesque rivers Kimchu and Hushma, the third is walking along the “Kulik trail” - the famous route of the discoverer of the crash site of the Tunguska meteorite.

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 a famous writer, author of the famous "Ugryum River". In 1911, the geodesic expedition led by him discovered enormous forest falls near the Tetere River. Leonid Kulik, who went on expeditions three times with expeditions to the area of \u200b\u200bdumps, took up targeted searches for the meteorite. In 1927, he conducted a general reconnaissance, discovered many craters, and a year later returned with a large expedition. During the summer, topographic surveys of the surroundings, filming of fallen trees, and an attempt were made to pump water from the funnels with a homemade pump. However, no traces of a meteorite were found.
The third expedition of Kulik, which took place in 1929 and 1930, was the most numerous and equipped with drilling equipment. They opened one of the largest craters, at the bottom of which a stump was found. But he was "older" than the Tunguska catastrophe. Therefore, the funnels were not of a meteorite, but of thermokarst origin. The Tunguska cosmic body and its fragments disappeared without a trace. Kulik believed that the Tunguska meteorite was iron. He did not even deign to examine the large meteorite-like stone discovered by the expedition participant Konstantin Yankovsky. Attempts to find the "Jankowski stone", undertaken thirty years later, were unsuccessful.
In 1939, the last expedition of Kulik took place, and again it did not bring significant results. Kulik was planning to organize another trip to the area of \u200b\u200bthe fall of the Tunguska meteorite in 1941, but the Great Patriotic War prevented it.
In 1958, a group headed by geochemist Kirill Florensky set off for the Podkamennaya Tunguska area. The expedition examined a large area of \u200b\u200blogging and compiled a map of it. In this case, not a single meteorite crater was found. One of the main tasks assigned to the Florensky group was the detection of finely dispersed meteorite material, however, the search conducted did not yield results. But a completely new phenomenon was recorded - an abnormally fast growth of trees. All these circumstances led some members of the expedition to conclude that the meteorite exploded not at contact with the Earth, but at a certain height above the surface. A similar conclusion was in clear contradiction with the data of the “classical” meteoritics: all the meteorites observed before were either burnt in the atmosphere, or split into pieces, falling out in separate pieces, or penetrated into the thickness of the earth's crust, forming craters.
At the end of the 1950s, a CSE was formed in the student city of Tomsk, a comprehensive amateur expedition to study the Tunguska meteorite. The first trip of KSE to the dump zone took place in 1959. The main goal set by the members of the expedition was to "arouse the interest of the general public in one of the world's puzzles, the solution of which can give mankind 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 KSE-2, a group of engineers from the design bureau Sergey Korolev worked in the Tunguska disaster area. In its composition, the future pilot-cosmonaut Georgy Grechko was also looking for a meteorite. The enthusiasm of the members of the CSE was constantly supported by the belief that the "general offensive" undertaken in the very near future would reveal the nature of the mysterious meteorite, however, even after thirty years of research, collecting colossal factual material, the members of the Comprehensive Expedition could not unequivocally answer the simple question: what exactly exploded over the Podkamennaya Tunguska?
Unanimous opinion on the question "What was that?" no so far. The lack 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 surface of the Earth in the form of one or more fragments. In the post-war years, the cometary hypothesis gained great popularity. This version has many supporters now. 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 core is considered as a monolithic body consisting of ice of methane, ammonia and solid carbon dioxide mixed with snow. In 1961, the geochemist Alexei Zolotov, who visited the dump 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 a candidate’s dissertation based on it. The geochemist wrote: "The flight and explosion of the Tunguska cosmic body is an unusual, and possibly new, yet unknown to man nature phenomenon." A study of the area of \u200b\u200bair outfalls made it possible in the late 1960s to say that the Tunguska meteorite made an inexplicable maneuver in the atmosphere during the fall, which supposedly confirms its artificial origin. Skeptics, however, indicate that numerous cases of the fall of rotating meteorites, arbitrarily changing their trajectory, have been recorded in history.
After the passage of a very large cosmic body through the air envelope of the Earth was recorded in 1972, the hypothesis arose that the Tunguska meteorite was also a passing guest. In 1977, a mathematical model was published 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 was shown that the main chemical elements of the Tunguska space 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 suppose, but to state: yes, the Tunguska cosmic body was indeed the nucleus of a comet."