UFO. Russia

110 years ago, 30 (17 old style), June 1908, 7 hours and 14 minutes in the area of the river Podkamennaya Tunguska, a powerful explosion occurred, which is estimated at 40-50 megatons of TNT equivalent, which corresponds to the energy of the most powerful of the hydrogen bomb exploded (by other estimates of power ranged from 10 to 15 megatons). To this day scientist have not come to a consensus what it was. Swamp Tunguska river, in the district which fell phenomenon.

Three days before the event, from June 27, 1908, in Europe, the European part of Russia and Western Siberia began to experience unusual atmospheric phenomena: noctilucent clouds, bright twilight, a sun halo.

British astronomer William Denning wrote that the night of 30 June, the sky over Bristol was abnormally bright in the North.

On the morning of 30 June 1908 over Central Siberia flying fiery body moving in the Northern direction. About seven o'clock in the morning over the territory of the Yenisei basin from the South-East to North-West flying large fireball. His flight was observed in many settlements in the area were heard thundering sounds. Body shape is described as round, spherical or cylindrical; color — like red, yellow or white; a smoke trail was missing, but the descriptions of some of the witnesses include stretching, body bright rainbow stripes.

7 hours 14 minutes local time over the Southern swamp near the river Podkamennaya Tunguska body exploded at an altitude of 7-10 km, and the Blast wave was recorded observatories around the world, including in the Western hemisphere. The explosion had been felled trees on the territory of more than 2000 km2, the window glass in the houses were knocked a few hundred kilometers from the epicenter.

For several days in the territory from the Atlantic to the Central Siberia observed intense glow of the sky and glowing clouds. Around the crash site, the forest was pushed by a fan from the centre, and in the heart of the fall of the trees remained standing at the root, stripped of branches and bark.

The force of the explosion, according to some estimates, 40-50 megatons of TNT. The blast wave three times around the globe. After the explosion a magnetic storm began, which lasted for 5 hours.

Eyewitness accounts

Semen Semenov, a resident of the trading post of Vanavara, located in 70 km South-East from the epicenter:

"... suddenly in the North sky split in two and high and wide above the forest came a fire that swept the entire Northern part of the sky. At this point I was so hot, like I burned the shirt. I would like to break and throw off the shirt, but the sky slammed shut, and there was a strong blow. I dropped from the porch into three fathoms.

After impact, went to a knock, as if it was raining stones or shot from guns, the earth trembled, and when I was lying on the ground, pressed his head, fearing that the stones smashed his head. In that moment, when the heavens opened, from the North swept the hot wind, as from a gun that was left on the ground traces in the form of tracks. It turned out that many of glass in the Windows shattered, and the barn broke the iron tab to lock the door..." (from the magazine "Knowledge is power", No. 6, 2003).

Brothers-Evenki Chouchani and Chekaren Sonagiri, whose tent was on the banks of the river Anarkitty, 30 km on Southeast from the epicenter:

"Our tent was standing on the shore Anarkitty. Before sunrise we Chekurina came from the river Telusma, where we gostevali Ivan and Akulina. We went back to sleep. Suddenly awakened both — someone pushed us. We have heard a whoosh and smelled the strong wind. Chekaren even shouted to me: "Hear how much Gogol flies or Kahala?".

We were still in the tent and we could not see what was being done in the forest. Suddenly I was again, someone was pushed, so much so that I hit my head on chumby the pole and then fell on hot coals in the hearth. I was scared. Chekaren scared too, clinging to the pole. We began to shout father, mother, brother, but no one answered. Behind the tent was a noise, the sound of falling commercial shooting. We got out with Chekurina of the bags and already wanted to jump out of the tent, but suddenly a very strong punch and thunder. It was the first blow. The earth began to twitch and shake, a strong wind hit our chum and threw it. I firmly pressed down with poles, but my head was not covered, because Ellyn ridden.

Then I saw a terrible wonder: commercial shooting are falling, the needles burning on them, the dry trees on the ground is burning, the reindeer moss burning. Smoke around, eyes hurt, hot, very hot, can burn. Suddenly, over the hill, where fell the forest was very light, and, how would you say, as if a second sun had appeared, the Russians would say, "suddenly flashed" eyes it became painful, and I even closed them. It was similar to what Russians call "lightning". And was immediately idyllen, strong thunder. It was the second shot.

The morning was Sunny, without clouds, our sun was shining brightly as always, and here there appeared a second sun!"

Hypotheses about the nature

Tunguska meteorite To date, none of the hypotheses that explains all the essential features of the phenomenon has not become generally accepted. The proposed explanations are numerous and varied.

So, the employee of Committee on meteorites, USSR Academy of Sciences I. Zotkin published in 1970 in the journal "Nature" article "Guide to help the drafters of the hypotheses related to the fall of the Tunguska meteorite" in which he described seventy-seven hypotheses about its fall, known on January 1, 1969. However, he classified the hypotheses in the following types: man-made, associated with antimatter, geophysical, meteoritic, synthetic, religious.

The initial explanation of the phenomenon — the fall of the meteorite of large masses (presumably iron), or a swarm of meteorites quickly began to cause doubts among experts, given that the remnants of a meteorite has not been found, despite considerable effort in their search.

In the early 1930s, British astronomer and meteorologist Francis Whipple suggested that the Tunguska event was associated with the fall to Earth of the comet's nucleus (or fragment thereof). A similar hypothesis was proposed by the geochemist Vladimir Vernadsky, who suggested that the Tunguska body was relatively loose clot of cosmic dust.

This explanation was then accepted quite a large number of astronomers. The calculations showed that the observed destruction of the heavenly body must have a mass of about 5 million tons. Comet substance is a very loose structure, consisting mainly of ice; and almost completely crumbled and burned when entering the atmosphere.

It was suggested that the Tunguska meteorite belongs to the meteor stream of the β-Taurid associated with comet Encke.

In 1945, the Soviet science fiction writer Alexander Kazantsev, based on the similarity of the witnesses of the Tunguska event and the explosion of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, speculated that the data show is not about the natural, and the artificial nature of the event: he suggested that "Tunguska meteorite" was a spacecraft of extraterrestrial civilizations, a crashed in the Siberian taiga. The natural reaction of the scientific community was the complete rejection of this hypothesis.

In 1951 in the journal "Science and life" published an article on parsing and rout assumptions Kazantsev, the authors of which were the most prominent astronomers and specialists in meteoritics. The article claimed that the meteorite hypothesis and it alone is true, and that the crater from the meteorite fall will soon be discovered.

Overall, despite the rather fantastic nature of the hypothesis about the artificial origin of the Tunguska body, starting in the 1950s, she enjoyed fairly strong support in the scientific community; attempts to confirm or deny allocated relatively large sums of money.

According to the academician of the Russian Academy of cosmonautics. K. E. Tsiolkovsky, Ivan Nikitivich Murzinova expressed in interview to the correspondent of "Novaya Gazeta" on 8 June 2016, the Tunguska meteorite was an extremely massive stone meteoroid asteroid origin which entered the Earth's atmosphere at a very flat trajectory which is at an altitude of 100 km made an angle of about 7 — 9 degrees with the surface, and had a speed of about 20 kilometers per second. After the flight in the Earth's atmosphere, about 1000 km space body collapsed due to high pressure and temperature and exploded at a height of 30 — 40 kilometers. The heat radiation of the explosion was ignited, the forest, and the shock wave of the explosion led to the continuous logging in a spot with a diameter of about 60 kilometers, and caused an earthquake of magnitude 5 points. While small fragments of the Tunguska meteorite, with sizes up to 0.2 meters burned or evaporated during the explosion, and the larger pieces could continue the flight on a flat trajectory and drop hundreds or thousands of kilometers from the epicenter, among other things, the largest of the meteoroid fragments could reach the Atlantic ocean and even after reflection from the Earth's atmosphere, out into space.

Other hypotheses Vladimir Epifanov and Wolfgang Kundt has suggested that the Tunguska event could be caused by the explosion of methane clouds released by volcanic activity (something similar, but on a much smaller scale occurred in 1994 near the village of Kando in Spain). The hypothesis of the emission of gas does not explain the observation car and difficult to reconcile with the absence in the midst of the channels of the emission of gas. It should be noted that there were other "gas" hypotheses "flying car" movement of the flame front at the plume of natural gas attributable to a weak wind from the place of expiry.

In 1965 American scientists Cowan and Libby made a hypothesis that the Tunguska meteorite was made of antimatter and in contact with matter of the earth's atmosphere occurred annihilation, that is, matter and antimatter, when combined together, turned into energy, leaving no fragments. Exotic version: the impact of a miniature black hole with traces in Patomsky crater, crash of an alien spacecraft (extended well-known Soviet science fiction writer A. Kazantsev and parody developed by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky in the novel "Monday begins on Saturday"), the experiments of Nikola Tesla with wireless transmission of electricity, the hypothesis N. A. Savelyeva-Novoselova, A.V. Saveliev anthropogenic air nuclear explosion.

Translated by «Yandex.Translator»