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Tunguska Mystery Blast Solved?
mfarah writes: "This BBC article informs that an Italian scientist team has determined that the 1908 blast in Tunguska was in fact caused by a low density asteroid - that's why no crater was ever found. The article mentions that had the asteroid fallen into a populated area, instead of remote Siberia, hundreds of thousands of casualties would have been the result. Fortunately this news comes well after the "meteorite blast" fad has faded from Hollywood..."
http://www.nearearthobjects.co.uk/
White Paper on Comet/Asteroid Impact Hazard
NEAT - NASA Near Earth Asteroid Tracking
Now if someone would only resurrect old USENET news, so I could dig out the posting I wrote about Tunguska circa 1990.
There's a great article on the myths surrounding Tunguska at http://www.jamesoberg.com/ufo/tungus.html. A Russian scientist in the sixties used a model with matchsticks for trees to compute the height and angle of the explosion from the pattern of damage of the trees. From the website:
''Aerodynamics experts in Moscow conducted an experiment about twenty years ago in an effort to simulate Tunguska's blast patterns. The scientists used a charge of explosives suspended over a board covered with miniature "trees" represented by matchsticks. In addition to the single blast point a string of smaller charges were added to reproduce the hypersonic shock wave of the object's ballistic passage through the upper atmosphere.
When the explosives were triggered, a blast pattern strikingly similar to the "butterfly" pattern of the actual Tunguska site was created in the matchstick forest. Although this experiment conclusively demonstrated that the strange pattern was due entirely to a large object that exploded naturally, the experiment's results were still being misinterpreted or misquoted years afterward.''
Certainly a far fetched idea, given that Hahn and Strassman discovered uranium fission in 1938, which was a prerequirement for a fission-type nuclear bomb. Fusion bombs weren't tested until 1952 either.
Speculation of Russia having fission technology three decades prior to that is quite a quantum leap indeed.
It didn't disintegrate.. it exploded just above the ground with enough force to flatten the trees for miles around. Even a smaller-sized asteroid can cause a lot of damage when it explodes, as shown in the matchstick forest experiments.
But it was another Roswell!
As in, its an event with a perfectly rational but rather interesting explanation that has been distorted by the saucerheads to support their belief structure. There was a cover up at Roswell, but the documents show thats because they were upper-atmosphere experiments to detect USSR nuclear testing; not something they fancied talking about at the time. One dumb army person thought that a UFO crash would make a good cover story, without realising just how good it would be. When they retracted that, people just believed it more.
Anyway, enough ranting from me...
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
This isn't news, this theory has been around for some time. There have been many papers published on this, recent journal papers include...
I could go on, but a quick search on ADS gives 219 relevant papers.
Al.The Daily ACK - Eclectic posts by yet another hacker
Actually you just spoke of the gamblers falicy. Since the impact of an asteriod is an entirely binomial event, it either happens or it does not happen. Since the random variable (impact of asteriod) is independent (the fact that an asteriod hit yesterday has no bering on the fact that it will hit today) and mutually exclusive (an asteriod cannot hit and not hit), the fact that a asteriod hit years ago has no bearing on the probability that one will hit tommorow, the probability is always the same. If you are confused about this pick up a first year undergrad stats book.
Actually when the last one happened has no bearing on when then next will happen because the events are not interdependent. Take for example rolling two dice. What are the chances of both dice rolling 1? 1 in 36. So I roll the first die, and it comes up as a 1. What is the chance that the other die is going to come up as a 1? The knee jerk reaction is that it is 1 in 36, but that is not the case. Die #2 is not dependent on die #1 so the chance that it will be a 1 is a remarkable 1 in 6.
"You can't fight in here! This is the war room" --Dr. Stra
While the flying rock isn't going to be able to do turns like a plane, what witnessses would likely see, and this is a guess, may be a snaking smoke trail. As a skydiver, I have been hit with varying air speeds someimes going different directions. The smoke given off from the object buring off through friction could then catch seperate drafts. With the area being Siberia and all, I would suspect the air to be quite clear, especially during winter, and the trail to be able to be seen for quite a distance. Watch the shuttle launch sometime and notice how after about 5 minutes the smoke trail is still visable except that it has drifted for a fair way.
Cave, wreck, and deep diver.
If it was a comet that exploded over Tunguska, I think way, way more people would have seen the comet trail heading towards Earth before it exploded.
The light meteor theory makes way more sense, since there was no visible signs from astronomers of such a small meteor heading our way back in 1908. Besides, the speed of the that meteor relative to Earth when it finally hit the Earth's atmosphere was probably around 40,000 mph, and the friction of the atmosphere at that speed is way higher than the temperatures encountered on the heat shield of the Apollo Command Module when it re-entered the atmosphere at 25,000 mph after a Moon mission.
It's no small wonder why the meteor exploded, given the high atmospheric friction of its entry.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Here's a link to a great account of what may have happened
Writers imply. Readers infer.