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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..."
However, the credibility of that claim was a bit low since it was von Däniken who said it
it's in my head
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.''
"There was a mysterious explosion of 10-15 megatons (high explosive equivalent at ..." [specific location/time follows] "...The explosion devasted an area of 1,500 miles^2 and the shock was felt as far away as 625 miles. The cause was variously attributed to a meteorite (1927), a comet (1930), a nuclear explosion (1961), antimatter (1965), a small black hole (1973) and an exploding flying saucer (1976). Although the meteorite theory was initiall rejected, a new assessment in 1992 suggest that the explosion can be accounted for by the energy released following a total disintegration at an altitude of 33,000 ft of a 98-ft-diameter common type stony asteroid traveling at hypersonic velocity at an incoming angle of 45 degrees."
Besides the obvious point that there have previously been many theories, but still no prrof (not even with the new theory), I think the more interesting fact is the sociological significance of the various theories. In each case, a theory presented taps into the buzzwords of the day.
While the idea that scientific theories are more media buzzwords than provable facts will hardly come as news to any frequent reader of slashdot, it raises the idea that modern scientists might be well served to learn a bit of history.
"Omnia quia sunt, umbra sunt."
The worst part is, did I read this in a Larry Niven novel or watch it on Discovery channel?
Both have roughly the same amount of truth to them. Larry, however, knows he's writing fiction.
"Fortunately this news comes well after the "meteorite blast" fad has faded from Hollywood..."
I'm not sure why that would be fortunate. If nothing else, the Tunguska incident shows that asteroids are a real threat. If Hollywood can help convince Joe/Jane Taxpayer that funneling money into government programs designed to increase the number of dishes we have monitoring the skies, that's a good thing.
Knunov
Why do users with IDs under 100,000 or over 700,000 usually have the most worthwhile comments?
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
For more details and an alternative explanation, see the following.
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.Keep in mind that these witnesses were a bunch of Russians out in the middle of nowhere. For them, the room was probably moving around in an S-shaped path, if you know what I mean.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Im sorry to bring this up, im almost embarrassed to ask.
;) and as party conversation happens, we talked about allot of interesting things.
I was at a party this past weekend, we ate and drank very well.. sushi and absinthe
Somehow, in all of this up comes the Tunguska blast. Now, one of the other guests was from Croatia and was a fan of Tesla. The conversation began discussing the most important invention in modern history (he argued AC(betraying his Tesla bias...)) but I argued the industrial revolution began without it, and that AC wasnt the end-all-be-all he suggested... ANYWAY: In this conversation up comes Tunguska. He asserts, with the corroboration of other guests, that the blast was a display of a some top-secret AC weapon that was Tesla's brainchild.
Now, they didnt guarantee that it was absolute truth, but they all had received this meme and could neither confirm nor deny its truth - just that it had been suggested.
Can ANYONE provide some information on this theory? I recognize fanatical theories are often just those - this might be as big a flight of fancy as the Freemasons or alien-butt probes, the latter being more fancy to some i 'spose, but does anyone have information on this gem of a meme?
I'm doing a project on Tesla in my Creative Imaging II class, so if you'll permit a highschool student to do a little educating, I'll try to remember what I read about this incident.
The story, as I remember it, goes like this:
Nikola Tesla, being the eccentric, quixotic type of genius that he was, had created at his Wardenclyffe Laboratory a large tower which he called a Death Ray. His plan was to use these rays (sort of similar in concept to particle beam weapons, I believe) to create an impenetrable defensive perimiter around the country -- around all countries actually -- thus eliminating all war. Tesla was always coming up with things like this...he also came up with a (possible viable) plan for the free transmission of energy throughout the world, but that's a different story.
So anyway, he had this death ray. It had never been tested, but of course it would have to be. He gets word of an upcoming expedition to the North Pole headed by Robert Peary, and he notified the leader that he was going to signal him on a specific night (June 30, 1908) but refrained from mentioning exactly what sort of a signal it would be. His idea was to fire a death-ray-blast "over the heads" so to speak of the exploration party, hitting the ground somewhere relatively nearby, and creating a blast that they could see.
So, the exploration goes out, and he does his thing. On the night of the test, he fires off the death ray. It hums...it crackles...after about twenty minutes or so, an owl flies across the almost-invisible path of the beam, and instantly disintegrates. A few minutes later, Tesla shuts it off.
Tesla eventually recieved word that Peary's party had seen nothing. He was disappointed.
A few weeks later, news comes to the U.S. of a massive explosion in central Siberia (The Tunguska blast) and is instantly convinced that this was caused by his death ray, just slightly off target. He was mortified by the destruction it wrought, and promptly scrapped his plans for the implementation of his design.
That's what I remember...I think it's fairly close to the original story, which I'm sure can be found on the web somewhere...actually, I can take care of that... this should do it. Of course, this story is not to be taken as gospel, as it's well known that a: Nikola Tesla was slightly crazy (though incredibly brilliant) and b: unconfirmed web sources from web pages that specialize in the paranormal, conspiracies, and similar things are suspect at best. However, I think it makes for at least an interesting story.
Oh, and by the way, if you haven't looked up Tesla himself, I highly reccomend that you do so. Incredibly interesting stuff.
Well, that's all,
~Syriloth