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Details Emerging On Tunguska Impact Crater

Posted by kdawson on from the closing-in-on-a-big-boom dept.

#space_on_irc.freenode.net (Dusty) writes "Lake Cheko in Siberia has been noted as the probable crater of the 1908 Siberian Tunguska event. This news was discussed here in December, but details on the crater were scant. Now a new paper written by Luca Gasperini, Enrico Bonatti, and Giuseppe Longo (the same team in Bologna, Italy that made news in December) has a horde of new details on the supposed crater. The team visited Lake Cheko complete with their own catamaran and completed ground-penetrating radar maps, side-scanning sonar images, aerial images, and some sample collection of Lake Cheko. Intriguingly, they also imaged an object under the sediment that may be a fragment of the impacting body. Their paper (PDF) includes a lot more details including images, side-scanning sonar image, a 3-D view of the lake, a morphobathymetric map. It's an interesting read, these dudes are good. They plan to return this summer and drill the core if weather permits, hopefully answering the question once and for all." The same team also has a more discursive article in the current Scientific American that includes some detail on the working conditions in the Siberian summer. Think: mosquitos.

6 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. First Impact.. by Phrogman · · Score: 5, Funny

    err, post I mean

    --
    "The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
  2. C'mon editors! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    The team visited Lake Cheko complete with their own catamaran

    Is it really that hard to spell 'cameraman' correctly? C'mon editors! Get on it!

    1. Re:C'mon editors! by Jawnn · · Score: 5, Funny

      Nah, funny is spelling it "catamoron"

    2. Re:C'mon editors! by mazarin5 · · Score: 5, Funny

      In Czarist Russia, meme is too early for you!

      --
      Fnord.
  3. Re:We can check it for serial numbers :) by Dancindan84 · · Score: 5, Funny

    What self respecting scientist wouldn't go and examine the evidence? Because if it wasn't an asteroid strike... ... they may accidentally defrost Megatron!
    --
    "Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
  4. Semen Semenov? Ouch. by GreyDuck · · Score: 5, Funny

    From the SciAm article's photo caption: "In this artist's conception, Semen Semenov, who witnessed the blast at a distant trading post, starts to feel the heat."

    That's... a really, really unfortunate name, dude.

    (I love that they managed to work "heat" and "conception" into a sentence about a guy named Semen.)

    --
    I'm only wearing black until they come out with something darker.