The Tunguska Event
 

I read about this today, doing a critically reading for SAT-prep in English Class.

I found it really intriguing, and decided to do more research when I got home. The only site I found that didn't seem to be written by a total nutcase, was of course, the ever-reliable wikipedia!

The Article Can Be Found Here

For those of you that don't want to read through all of that, basically what happened is on June 30, 1908, a large, bright object with a HUEG tail was seen in the sky over Tunguska, Siberia. The object crossed the sky for several seconds before exploding.

The explosion was massive (Sources disagree how powerful, I've seen a range from 50-300 megatons.) And a mushroom cloud was observed afterwards, as well as all symptoms of radiation poisoning in those that survived the initial explosion. The problem with this is that the first nuclear bomb would not be tested for another forty years.

Several theories have been put forth, from a comet impact to an alien attack. There is a little evidence for this, and a little for that, but there's almost no evidence to DISPROVE anything.

So I want to ask what you guys think, and also if you could post some better articles on the event, please do.

I've never heard of this before, although it wouldn't surprise me if it were some sort of primitive bomb. (You know how those Russians are about their big bombs)

I did find this article, which provides an interesting look into the 'strength' of the bomb. (I seriously doubt that it would have been too close to a 50 MT explosion, let alone 300. Then again, I'm no scientist.)

The Tunguska incident has had many specials run on TLC, The Discovery Channel, and The History Channel. I have watched most of them, and I do not even remotely remember any mention of radioactive fallout.

However, the matter of a "mushroom cloud" and the way in which the damage spread caused investigators to conclude that it was in fact a large meteor that exploded before it managed to hit the ground. The construction of the actual object which exploded will perhaps remain a mystery, however I think the chances are high that the explosion was caused by rapid expansion of the materials on the inside of the large meteor. There was perhaps a comparatively harder and more heat-resistive element that created a hard outer shell, and when the heat and internal pressure reached a critical point, the whole thing exploded, which was above the ground.

Perhaps, if ther really was radiation, it might have been from the meteor itself, which contained elements that were radioactive due to cosmic radiation.

This is my theory.

Yes, I'm beginning to doubt the truth of that myself, too. So far that one article from English class is the only one I've seen that mentioned fallout. In fact, one of the articles I've now read an article that specifically says "Claims that suriviors later died from radiation poisoning are blatantly false." They instead attribute the boils and other "symptoms" to a case of smallpox that was circulating BEFORE the explosiong happened.

Guess I shoulda done better checking of my sources.

hey I've heard several stories about that. I even heard that UFO was the one behind this.

Your source was an excerpt for a SAT critical reading exercise... they MUST be right. O_O

Actually, do you know who they specifically cited? From what I recall, they usually just take a clip from some book or essay, ignore the actual details, and just ask for reading comprehension.

Anywho, something really interesting about the incident was that the manner of explosion caused a cat head shaped area of tree destruction. Maybe it was a sign from feline aliens. X-D

I have this book called Great Disasters and it talks about it. I had it for over 10 years now or so. A meteor, asteroid or comet is the most likely explanation. I really don't think there is much conspiracy to this issue, unless you want your imagination to run wild for a work of fiction.

One of the most dangerous parts of standardized tests is if you actually know the subject matter. Sometimes you are tempted to answer the questions based on what you actually know and not what the article says. On the general GRE there was an article all about anthropology and carbon dating which I know quite well, but I wasn't sure that they would actually have the most up to date information in the test, so I read their article anyway!

I remember reading something about this and it mentioned the cause of this was something like an underground volcano. Not sure how reliable that source is, but I haven't really seen anything else about it.

I remember watching something related to this before on the Discovery Channel. I think in the end they concluded that the object was a meteor. They said that after the explosion from impact massive swathes of forest were flattened, curiously enough in a butterfly-like shape, or something like that. Some scientists did some lab experiments and found that at a certain angle of approach the resulting blast would've produced a similiar shape. Despite the lab's results an expedition to what should've been the impact site did not yield any physical evidence of such an meteorite, but the scientists there did find some strange mutations in the local wildlife. Although they found no sources of radiation.

Of course this is based off of what I can remember from the program I saw like 4 years ago and my memory is kind of fuzzy and blurred so don't quote me on any of this.

One of the more exotic theories that I've heard about the Tunguska event was that it was caused by a miniature black hole. Don't know if that has been mentioned here.