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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..."

9 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. Near-Earth Asteroid / impact info by rakerman · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  3. Old old old news by warmcat · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.''

    1. 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).

  4. Re:Reality check by Jerf · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  5. Not news... by aallan · · Score: 5, Informative

    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
  6. Re:Why is it fortunate? by ishark · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is the same mistake of thinking that since you ust rolled a 6 on a dice, then the probability of rolling another 6 "is less than 1/6". It doesn't work like this. If there's a 1/1000 chance of being hit by a meteorite per year, this does not mean that there'll be one hit every 1000 years..... only that *the average on a large number of hits* will be 1/1000 years. The next one could be tomorrow...

  7. 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.
  8. Re:its behaviour by Rude+Turnip · · Score: 5, Funny

    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!!!