Tunguska Aerial Blast 1908 Siberia

Something Big Happened Here in 1908, but No One Know For Certain What

The Tunguska event was some sort of enormously powerful aerial explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, at about 7:14 a.m. (local Siberian time) on June 30, 1908. Although there is no shortage of sci fi and nuclear conspiracy theories, the fireball was most likely to have been caused by the air burst of a large meteoroid or comet fragment. Determined from ground photos of trees flattened by the explosion, the altitude is estimated to be 5–10 kilometres (3–6 mi) above the Earth's surface. The object that exploded is generally understood to be from about 20 to 50 meters in diameter.

Although meteorites strike the earth all the time (comet parts less often), this event is notable for its sheer force. Estimates of the energy of the blast range from 5 to as high as 30 megatons of TNT. The higher range would be twice the power of the Bravo nuke detonated in the Marshall Islands in 1954) with 10–15 megatons of TNT or 1,000 times as powerful as the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.

The explosion knocked over an estimated 80 million trees covering 2,150 square kilometres (830 sq mi). It is estimated that the shock wave from the blast would have measured 5.0 on the Richter scale. An explosion of this magnitude is capable of destroying a large metropolitan area, but there aren't any in Siberia.

The Tunguska event is believed to be the largest impact event over land in Earth's recent history. Impacts of similar size over remote ocean areas would most likely have gone unnoticed before the advent of global satellite monitoring in the 1960s and 1970s. Before the modern area, they would have been understood to be supernatural, perhaps heralding the birth or displeasure of a deity.

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