Pearls of nature

Tungus marvel

Evenkia is rich not only with natural resources, but also with mysteries. We still can not reveal one of the wonders of our century, the mystery of Tungus meteorite. Nowadays, more than 90 years later a great number of theories has been offered. What happened indeed? The facts are:

30 (17) of June, 1908 at 7.17 a.m. local time at a place in latitude 60¦5'055''North, longitude 101¦5'057'' East in Podkamennaiy Tunguska-river basin 64 km. North from Vanvara village(Evenkia autonomous district) there was an explosion (according to some facts - series of explosions) at a height of 6 km appproximately, with power 12,5-40 mgt, which shaked taiga and brought down trees at space of 1885 square km. The blust was felt by people at thousands of kilometres from epicentre, special machines fixed that the waves rounded the Earth at least twice. The great power shaked Euro-asian continent that time. Air waves of Tungus meteorite rounded the Earth and were fixed by many observatories of the world, and earthquake caused by it was fixed not only in Irkutsk, Tashkent, Tiflis, but also in Berlin area. Besides after approximately 5 min magnetic storm started and was going on more than 3 hours, it was fixed in Irkutsk. The signs of this magnetic storm were similar to high-altitude nuclear explosions.

Echo of Tungus catastrophe was heard around the world. The night disappeared on a vast space from the Enissey-river in the East, Tashkent - Stavropol - Sevastopol - the North of Italy - Bordo in the South, west cost of Atlantic ocean in the West. During 3 days and nights, from 30.06.1908 to 02.06.1908 there were light nights, like "white" nights in the North parts of Europe. One could read newspaper, see the time on the clocks during all night long. And major part of the light was shining from extremely bright clouds, that were at a height 80 km from the Earth. The sky under the immence space of Western Siberia and Europe was clouded, many paranormal optic activities took place there: bright, "motley" dawns, halos around the Sun, in some places - reduction of atmosphere transparence, which reached California in August, the reduction was caused by dusty products of Tungus explosion. Some facts prove that Tungus explosion influenced even southern hemisphere: anyway, in this very day British expedition of Shelkton saw a very strange, very high-powered northern lights in the Antarctic Continent.

A great number of expeditions were sent to the place where hypotheticaly the meteorite had fallen. Every expedition found some new facts about the mystery.

A short view to the hypothesises.

Nowadays there are nearly 120 scientific, semi-scientific, pseudo-scientific theories that give some explanation to this phenomenon which took place 90 years ago in the area of Podkamennay Tunguska-river. This topic at one moment got extremely popular, another it was forgotten by everybody. Gradually it ranked with Bermud triangle mystery, and the monster of Loch-Ness lake.

There were no end to various hypothesises. Right after the explosion a list of suppositions were offered: coming of the god Agdi, the flight of fiery dragon, the repetition of Sodom and Homorra tragedy, the beginning of a new Russian-Japan war. But when it became known that the war had not begun, people were talking about "simple"astronomical activities. A bit later - about explosion of several fire-balls, explosion of airolite, exstraordinary earthquake, eruption of poleovulcano...From 1927 explorers looked for meteorite fragments at this place, from 1927 began to speak about theory of transformation of meteorite into streams of fragments and gas, from 1929 - about meteorite which had flown tangent, from 1930 - about explosion of comet nucleus, from 1932 - about collision with compact cloud of space dust, from 1934 - about collision with comet tail, from 1945 - about atomic explosion of spaceship, from 1945 - about the catastrophy of spaceship from Mars, from 1947 - about аннигиляции of meteorite from anty-substunce, from 1958 - about icy meteorite, from 1959 - about the falling of nuclear fragmant of Faeton planet, from 1960 - about explosion of a cloud of insects at a size of more than 5 cubic km, from 1961 - about desintegration of FUO, from 1962 - about electric clamp of ionosphere to the Earth caused by meteorite, from 1963 - about electrostatic discharge of meteorite which damaged taiga, from 1964 - about lazer ray from space, from 1965 - about invasion of a spaceship with a Snowman inside to the Earth, from 1966 - about falling of over-thick piece of White dwarf, from 1967 - about explosion of marsh gas caused by lightening, from 1968 - about dissociation of water and explosion of fire damp, from 1969 - about falling of comet from anti-substance...

This topic was extremely popular in science fiction. Brothers Strugatskie, for example, offered an original theory in their book "Monday begins at Saturday".

It`s difficult to say whether we find out the truth about this event.