Crater From 1908 Tunguska Blast Found

MaineCoasts writes "A team of scientists from the Marine Science Institute in Bologna claims to have found the crater left by the aerial blast of a comet or asteroid in 1908 in the Tunguska region of Siberia. The blast flattened 770 square miles (2,000 square kilometers) of forest, but to date no remains or crater have been found. This has left open the question of what kind of object made the impact. The team believes that, contrary to previous studies, nearby Lake Cheko is only one century old and 'If the body was an asteroid, a surviving fragment may be buried beneath the lake. If it was a comet, its chemical signature should be found in the deepest layers of sediments.' The team's findings are based on a 1999 expedition to Tunguska and appeared in the August issue of the journal Terra Nova."

Comments

I've always wondered

[Dunbal]

I remember reading about this as a kid, probably introduced to it by Carl Sagan in his "Cosmos" series.

At the time I wondered, after seeing all those flattened trees, how they failed to find the crater. Wouldn't it just be a case of going to several spots, drawing a parallel line to the flattened trees, then looking on a map for the point where the lines intersect? Presumably all the trees fell "away" from the blast area.

Re:I've always wondered

[FredDC]

In theory yes, but you have to know that this is a very remote and large area. And they didn't have the technology we have available now.

Right now we'd simply take some pictures with a satelite, and fly some helicopters to the impact spot. Back then they would've had to mount an expedition on foot. And that was simply not feasible.

By the time it became possible to reach the impact site relatively easy, nature had already taken its course and finding the impact spot became impossible/very hard.