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Tunguska Mystery Blast Solved?

Posted by michael on from the fire-in-the-sky dept.

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..."

3 of 247 comments (clear)

  1. And for many years ... by Troed · · Score: 5, Interesting
    ... that blast was considered by some a reason why nuclear bomb testing should be researched more in the US since there was a possibility that the Russians had the technology already back then.


    However, the credibility of that claim was a bit low since it was von Däniken who said it ;)

    --
    it's in my head
  2. Re:Old old old news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Erm, though the air one is kinda on the right track, its not what is seen to be what causes the explosion. Most of the hypothesis I've seen describe a meteorite that is say, a hard, rocky outer shell surrounding a frozen core of water, or ammonia or some other easily frozen gas/fluid. Drop it into the atmosphere, and as it falls it heats up, slowly building up the interior pressure. Sooner or later that pressure gets high enough so that it 'explodes' when the outer shell finally fails. Do some Google searches on 'airburst' meteorites and you should find some more information. (If you want a demo, you could try nuking a cough drop with a liquid center for like 5-10 minutes, or a hot dog).

  3. There are problems with the asteroid hypothesis by D.+J.+Keenan · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The stony-asteroid hypothesis has been around for a long time. It has been questioned for several reasons. In particular, (i) there were bright/white nights before the event, and (ii) debris has been found in crash sites from meteorites 10000 times lighter, whereas absolutely none has been found at Tunguska.

    For more details and an alternative explanation, see the following.

    W. Kundt, "The 1908 Tunguska catastrophe", Current Science 81: 399-407 (2001)
    Dr. Kundt is at the University of Bonn. I don't know enough to comment on his paper in detail. It seems, though, that the Italian researchers, whose work is reported by the BBC, have not considered things as well as they should have.