The Tunguska meteorite is rightfully considered the greatest scientific mystery of the 20th century. The number of options about its nature exceeded a hundred, but none was recognized as the only correct and final one. Despite a significant number of eyewitnesses and numerous expeditions, the crash site was not discovered, as well as material evidence of the phenomenon; all put forward versions are based on indirect facts and consequences.
How the Tunguska meteorite fell
At the end of June 1908, residents of Europe and Russia witnessed unique atmospheric phenomena: from solar halos to abnormally white nights. On the morning of the 30th over the central strip of Siberia with high speed a luminous body, presumably spherical or cylindrical. According to observers, it had a white, yellow or red color, was accompanied by rumbles and sounds of explosions when moving, and left no traces in the atmosphere. 
At 7:14 local time, the hypothetical body of the Tunguska meteorite exploded. A powerful blast wave felled trees in the taiga on an area of up to 2.2 thousand hectares. The sounds of the explosion were recorded 800 km from the approximate epicenter, seismological consequences (an earthquake with a magnitude of up to 5 units) were recorded throughout the Eurasian continent.
On the same day, scientists noted the beginning of a 5-hour magnetic storm. Atmospheric phenomena similar to the previous ones were clearly observed for 2 days and occurred periodically for 1 month. 
Gathering information about the phenomenon, assessing the facts
Publications about the event appeared on the same day, but serious research began in the 1920s. By the time of the first expedition, 12 years had passed since the year of the fall, which had a negative impact on the collection and analysis of information. This and subsequent pre-war Soviet expeditions were unable to discover where the object fell, despite aerial surveys carried out in 1938. The information obtained allowed us to conclude:
- There were no photographs of the fall or movement of the body.
- The detonation occurred in the air at an altitude of 5 to 15 km, the initial estimate of the power was 40-50 megatons (some scientists estimate 10-15).
- The explosion was not a point explosion; the crankcase was not found at the supposed epicenter.
- The intended landing site is a swampy area of taiga on the Podkamennaya Tunguska River.
Top hypotheses and versions
- Meteorite origin. The hypothesis supported by most scientists is about the fall of a massive celestial body or a swarm of small objects or their passing tangentially. Real confirmation of the hypothesis: no crater or particles were found.
- The fall of a comet with a core of ice or cosmic dust with a loose structure. The version explains the absence of traces of the Tunguska meteorite, but contradicts the low height of the explosion.
- Cosmic or artificial origin of the object. Weak point This theory is the absence of traces of radiation, with the exception of rapidly growing trees.
- Antimatter detonation. The Tunguska body is a piece of antimatter that turned into radiation in the Earth's atmosphere. As in the case of the comet, the version does not explain the low altitude of the observed object, and there are also no traces of annihilation.
- Nikola Tesla's failed experiment on transmitting energy over a distance. The new hypothesis, based on the scientist’s notes and statements, has not been confirmed.
The main controversy arises from the analysis of the area of the fallen forest; it had the butterfly shape characteristic of the meteorite fall, but the direction of the lying trees is not explained by any scientific hypothesis. In the early years, the taiga was dead, but subsequently the plants showed abnormally high growth, characteristic of areas exposed to radiation: Hiroshima and Chernobyl. But analysis of the collected minerals did not reveal evidence of ignition of nuclear matter. 
In 2006, artifacts were discovered in the Podkamennaya Tunguska area different sizes– quartz cobblestones made of fused plates with an unknown alphabet, presumably deposited by plasma and containing particles inside that can only be of cosmic origin.
The Tunguska meteorite was not always talked about seriously. So, in 1960, a comic biological hypothesis was put forward - a detonation thermal explosion of a cloud of Siberian midges with a volume of 5 km 3. Five years later there was original idea Strugatsky brothers - “You need to look not where, but when” about an alien ship with a reverse flow of time. Like many other fantastic versions, it was logically substantiated better than those put forward by scientific researchers, the only objection being anti-science. 
The main paradox is that despite the abundance of options (scientific over 100) and international research conducted, the secret was not revealed. All reliable facts about the Tunguska meteorite include only the date of the event and its consequences.
One of the most mysterious natural phenomena of the last century was and remains the story of the meteorite fall of 1908 in the river basin Podkamennaya Tunguska. At the moment, there is no consensus regarding this phenomenon; since 1946, there have been debates regarding the nature of the object that exploded above the earth's surface, and it is even noted that, according to the collected data, it was not a meteorite at all, but this particular one still appears in various literature term.
Some hypotheses connect the fall of an unknown object with global changes in world history and attribute symbolic meaning to the phenomenon and magical properties or call it a product of alien intelligence. However, no theory regarding Tunguska phenomenon
was not unanimously confirmed or rejected; to this day, various studies of the largest cosmic catastrophe are being conducted 20th century.
Historical data and facts
Unusual a natural phenomenon happened on the territory Eastern Siberia in a swimming pool Podkamennaya Tunguska river early in the morning at the end of June 1908. For several moments, a burning unidentified object in the shape of a ball could be observed flying and then exploding at an altitude of just under ten kilometers from the surface of the earth. Even installed exact time – 7:14 am. The explosion occurred in dense taiga forests. As a result of the research, the supposed epicenter of the explosion was established.
Outwardly, it resembled an explosion comparable to the explosion of the most powerful atomic bomb, up to fifty megatons of TNT equivalent. The explosion caused a huge shock wave, which, according to British seismologists, circled the replacement ball twice. The shock wave toppled trees within a radius of several hundred kilometers, and windows in houses were broken. Seismologists different parts shaking of the earth's crust was recorded on the continent. A few days before and after the events of that day in the atmosphere above Europe very unusual phenomena were observed: a glow reminiscent of the northern lights during twilight, a change in the color of the clouds to silver, and in the daytime it was possible to see crowns and halos around the sun.
Research of the Tunguska meteorite fall site
At the beginning of the last century, means of communication and communication between cities, especially those located so far from the capital, were not as developed as they are now. They did not immediately learn about the disaster and did not pay attention to it. special significance due to lack of information about the scale of the event. The main witnesses to the incident were the Evenks who inhabited the village closest to the epicenter of the explosion. locality, Vanavara village. And the first expedition led by a scientist L. Kulik and to the place where the Tunguska cosmic body fell ( TKT) was sent only 13 years after the disaster.
Kulik's expedition was not properly equipped with special equipment, equipment and instruments; the scientists were armed only with instruments such as a magnetometer and a number of other measuring devices. However, despite this, Kulik During several subsequent expeditions, he managed to obtain many facts regarding the epicenter of the explosion; it was he who first put forward the claim that an iron meteorite fell in the taiga.
Scientists from all over the world to this day come to Siberia in the hope of obtaining facts that are related to the disaster and unraveling the mystery of the Tunguska meteorite.
Basic theories and hypotheses of the nature of the phenomenon
Over the years of research into the crash site TKT Many theories about the origin of this body have been put forward and rejected. The version of the meteorite fall has not received proper confirmation and has raised doubts among many scientists. Most theories can be divided into several main groups:
- meteorite;
— cometary;
- natural;
— energy;
— alien;
- religious.
Meteorite theory was questioned due to the fact that the stone samples found at the bottom of the drained Yuzhnoye swamp were not of alien origin and appeared at the site of the supposed epicenter of the explosion before or after the 1908 event. No other traces of the fall of the TKT were also found: meteorite dust or other microparticles.
A theory was put forward about the crash of an alien spaceship, accompanied by an explosion of a nuclear engine, which was first voiced in A. Kazantsev’s article “Explosion” in 1946. According to Kazantseva, based on the power of the explosion, the strength of the shock wave and the nature of the destruction, which was comparable to the scale of application nuclear weapons in Hiroshima in 1945, the only explanation for the phenomenon could be a nuclear explosion.
In the early morning of June 30, 1908, an explosion was heard over the taiga near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River. According to experts, its power was approximately 2000 times greater than the explosion. atomic bomb.
Data
In addition to the Tunguska, the amazing phenomenon was also called the Khatanga, Turukhansky and Filimonovsky meteorite. After the explosion, a magnetic disturbance was noted that lasted about 5 hours, and during the flight of the Tunguska fireball, a bright glow was reflected in the northern rooms of nearby villages.
According to various estimates, the TNT equivalent of the Tunguska explosion is almost equal to one or two bombs exploded over Hiroshima.
Despite the phenomenal nature of what happened, a scientific expedition led by L.A. Kulik to the site of the “meteorite fall” took place only twenty years later.
Meteorite theory
The first and most mysterious version existed until 1958, when a refutation was made public. According to this theory, the Tunguska body is a huge iron or stone meteorite.
But even now its echoes haunt contemporaries. Even in 1993, a group of American scientists conducted research, concluding that the object could have been a meteorite that exploded at an altitude of about 8 km. It was the traces of the meteorite fall that Leonid Alekseevich and the team of scientists were looking for at the epicenter, although they were confused by the initial absence of a crater and the forest that had been felled like a fan from the center.
Fantastic theory 
Not only the inquisitive minds of scientists are occupied by the Tunguska mystery. No less interesting is the theory of science fiction writer A.P. Kazantsev, who pointed out the similarities between the events of 1908 and the explosion in Hiroshima.
In his original theory, Alexander Petrovich suggested that the culprit was an accident and explosion of the nuclear reactor of an interplanetary spacecraft.
If we take into account the calculations of A. A. Sternfeld, one of the pioneers of astronautics, then it was on June 30, 1908 that a unique opportunity was created for a drone-probe to fly around Mars, Venus and Earth.
Nuclear theory
In 1965, Nobel Prize laureates, American scientists K. Cowanney and V. Libby developed the idea of their colleague L. Lapaz about the antimatter nature of the Tunguska incident.
They suggested that as a result of the collision of the Earth and a certain mass of antimatter, annihilation and the release of nuclear energy occurred.
Ural geophysicist A.V. Zolotov analyzed the movements of the fireball, the magnetogram and the nature of the explosion, and stated that only an “internal explosion” of its own energy could lead to such consequences. Despite the arguments of opponents of the idea, nuclear theory is still the leader in the number of adherents among specialists in the field of the Tunguska problem.
Ice Comet 
One of the latest is the hypothesis of an ice comet, which was put forward by the physicist G. Bybin. The hypothesis arose on the basis of the diaries of the researcher of the Tunguska problem, Leonid Kulik.
At the site of the “fall” the latter found a substance in the form of ice, covered with peat, but did not pay attention to it special attention. Bybin states that this compressed ice, found 20 years later at the scene of the incident, is not a sign of permafrost, but a direct indication of an ice comet.
According to the scientist, the ice comet, consisting of water and carbon, simply scattered about the Earth, touching it at a speed like a hot frying pan.
Is Tesla to blame?
At the beginning of the 21st century, an interesting theory appeared indicating a connection between Nikola Tesla and the Tunguska events. A few months before the incident, Tesla claimed that he could light the way for explorer Robert Peary to the North Pole. At the same time, he requested maps of “the least populated parts of Siberia.”
Allegedly, it was on this day, June 30, 1908, that Nikola Tesla conducted an experiment with energy transfer “through the air.” According to the theory, the scientist managed to “shake up” a wave filled with pulsed energy of the ether, which resulted in a discharge of incredible power, comparable to an explosion.
Other theories
At the moment, there are several dozen different theories that meet various criteria for what happened. Many of them are fantastic and even absurd.
For example, the disintegration of a flying saucer or the departure of a graviballoid from underground are mentioned. A. Olkhovatov, a physicist from Moscow, is absolutely convinced that the 1908 event is a type of earth earthquake, and Krasnoyarsk researcher D. Timofeev explained that the cause was an explosion natural gas, which was set on fire by a meteorite that flew into the atmosphere.
American scientists M. Ryan and M. Jackson stated that the destruction was caused by a collision with a “black hole,” and physicists V. Zhuravlev and M. Dmitriev believe that the culprit was a breakthrough of a clot of solar plasma and the subsequent explosion of several thousand ball lightning.
For more than 100 years since the incident, it has not been possible to come to a single hypothesis. None of the proposed versions could fully meet all proven and irrefutable criteria, such as the passage of a high-altitude body, a powerful explosion, an air wave, the burning of trees at the epicenter, atmospheric optical anomalies, magnetic disturbances and the accumulation of isotopes in the soil.
Interesting finds
Often versions were based on unusual finds made near the study area. In 1993, corresponding member of the Petrovsky Academy of Sciences and Arts Yu. Lavbin, as part of a research expedition of the public foundation “Tunguska Space Phenomenon” (now he is its president), discovered unusual stones near Krasnoyarsk, and in 1976 in the Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic discovered “your iron”, recognized as a fragment of a cylinder or sphere with a diameter of 1.2 m.
The anomalous zone of the “devil’s cemetery” with an area of about 250 sq.m, located in the Angara taiga of the Kezhemsky district of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, is also often mentioned.
In an area formed by something “fallen from the sky,” plants and animals die; people prefer to avoid it. The consequences of the June morning of 1908 also include the unique geological object Patomsky crater, located in Irkutsk region and discovered in 1949 by geologist V.V. Kolpakov. The height of the cone is about 40 meters, the diameter along the ridge is about 76 meters.
On June 30, 1908, at about 7 a.m. local time, a unique natural event occurred over the territory of Eastern Siberia in the basin of the Podkamennaya Tunguska River (Evenki district of the Krasnoyarsk Territory).
For several seconds, a dazzling bright fireball was observed in the sky, moving from southeast to northwest. The flight of this unusual celestial body was accompanied by a sound reminiscent of thunder. Along the path of the fireball, which was visible in Eastern Siberia within a radius of up to 800 kilometers, there was a powerful dust trail that persisted for several hours.
After the light phenomena, a super-powerful explosion was heard over the deserted taiga at an altitude of 7-10 kilometers. The energy of the explosion ranged from 10 to 40 megatons in TNT equivalent, which is comparable to the energy of two thousand simultaneously exploded nuclear bombs, similar to the one dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
The disaster was witnessed by residents of the small trading post of Vanavara (now the village of Vanavara) and those few Evenki nomads who were hunting near the epicenter of the explosion.
In a matter of seconds, a forest within a radius of about 40 kilometers was torn down by a blast wave, animals were destroyed, and people were injured. At the same time, under the influence of light radiation, the taiga flared up tens of kilometers around. A complete fall of trees occurred over an area of more than 2,000 square kilometers.
In many villages, shaking of the soil and buildings was felt, window glass was breaking, and household utensils were falling from shelves. Many people, as well as pets, were knocked down by the air wave.
The explosive air wave that circled the globe was recorded by many meteorological observatories around the world.
In the first 24 hours after the disaster, in almost the entire northern hemisphere - from Bordeaux to Tashkent, from the shores of the Atlantic to Krasnoyarsk - there was twilight of unusual brightness and color, night glow of the sky, bright silvery clouds, daytime optical effects - halos and crowns around the sun. The glow from the sky was so strong that many residents could not sleep. The clouds formed at an altitude of about 80 kilometers intensely reflected Sun rays, thereby creating the effect of bright nights even where they had not been observed before. In a number of towns one could freely read a small print newspaper at night, and in Greenwich a photograph was received at midnight seaport. This phenomenon continued for several more nights.
The disaster caused fluctuations magnetic field, recorded in Irkutsk and the German city of Kiel. The magnetic storm resembled in its parameters the disturbances in the Earth's magnetic field observed after high-altitude nuclear explosions.
In 1927, the pioneer Tunguska disaster Leonid Kulik suggested that a large iron meteorite fell in Central Siberia. That same year, he examined the scene of the event. A radial forest fall was discovered around the epicenter within a radius of 15-30 kilometers. The forest turned out to be felled like a fan from the center, and in the center some of the trees remained standing, but without branches. The meteorite was never found.
The comet hypothesis was first put forward by the English meteorologist Francis Whipple in 1934; it was subsequently thoroughly developed by the Soviet astrophysicist, academician Vasily Fesenkov.
In 1928-1930, the USSR Academy of Sciences conducted two more expeditions under the leadership of Kulik, and in 1938-1939, aerial photography of the central part of the area of the fallen forest was carried out.
Since 1958, the study of the epicenter area was resumed, and the Committee on Meteorites of the USSR Academy of Sciences conducted three expeditions under the leadership of the Soviet scientist Kirill Florensky. At the same time, research was begun by amateur enthusiasts united in the so-called complex amateur expedition (CEA).
Scientists are faced with the main mystery of the Tunguska meteorite - there was clearly a powerful explosion above the taiga, which felled a forest over a huge area, but what caused it left no traces.
The Tunguska disaster is one of the most mysterious phenomena XX century.
There are more than a hundred versions. At the same time, perhaps no meteorite fell. In addition to the version of a meteorite fall, there were hypotheses that the Tunguska explosion was associated with a giant ball lightning, a black hole entering the Earth, an explosion of natural gas from a tectonic crack, a collision of the Earth with a mass of antimatter, a laser signal from an alien civilization, or a failed experiment by physicist Nikola Tesla. One of the most exotic hypotheses is the crash of an alien spaceship.
According to many scientists, the Tunguska body was still a comet that completely evaporated at high altitude.
In 2013, Ukrainian and American geologists of grains found by Soviet scientists near the crash site of the Tunguska meteorite came to the conclusion that they belonged to a meteorite from the class of carbonaceous chondrites, and not a comet.
Meanwhile, Phil Bland, an employee of the Australian Curtin University, presented two arguments questioning the connection of the samples with the Tunguska explosion. According to the scientist, they have a suspiciously low concentration of iridium, which is not typical for meteorites, and the peat where the samples were found is not dated to 1908, meaning the stones found could have fallen to Earth earlier or later than the famous explosion.
On October 9, 1995, in the southeast of Evenkia near the village of Vanavara, by decree of the Russian government, the Tungussky State Nature Reserve was established.
The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources
Tunguska meteorite (Fall site of the Tunguska meteorite)
The Tunguska meteorite (Tunguska phenomenon) is a hypothetical body, probably of cometary origin or part of a cosmic body that has undergone destruction, which presumably caused an air explosion that occurred in the area of the Podkamennaya Tunguska River, (approximately 60 km north and 20 km west of Vanavara village). Coordinates of the epicenter of the explosion: 60°54"07"N, 101°55"40"E.
June 30, 1908 at 7:14.5 ± 0.8 minutes local time. The power of the explosion is estimated at 40-50 megatons, which corresponds to the energy of the most powerful hydrogen bomb exploded. According to other estimates, the power of the explosion corresponds to 10-15 megatons.
At about seven o'clock in the morning, a large fireball flew over the territory of the Yenisei basin from southeast to northwest. The flight ended with an explosion at an altitude of 7-10 km above an uninhabited taiga region. The blast wave was recorded by observatories around the world, including in the Western Hemisphere. As a result of the explosion, trees were knocked down over an area of more than 2,000 km², window glass houses were knocked out several hundred kilometers from the epicenter of the explosion. For several days, intense sky glow and luminous clouds were observed from the Atlantic to central Siberia.
Several research expeditions were sent to the disaster area, starting with the 1927 expedition led by L. A. Kulik. The material of the hypothetical Tunguska meteorite was not found in any significant quantity; however microscopic silicate and magnetite balls were discovered, as well as an increased content of some elements, indicating a possible cosmic origin of the substance.
In 2013 in the magazine Planetary and Space Science The results of a study conducted by a group of Ukrainian, German and American scientists were published, which reported that microscopic samples discovered by Nikolai Kovalykh in 1978 in the Podkamennaya Tunguska region revealed the presence of lonsdaleite, troilite, taenite and sheibersite - minerals characteristic of diamond-containing meteorites . At the same time, an employee of the Australian Curtin University, Phil Bland, noticed that the studied samples showed a suspiciously low concentration of iridium (which is not typical for meteorites), and also that the peat where the samples were found was not dated 1908, which means the stones found could have reached Earth earlier or later than the famous explosion.
It was established that the explosion occurred in the air at a certain height (according to various estimates, 5-15 km) and was unlikely to be a point explosion, so we can only talk about the projection of the coordinates of a special point, called the epicenter. Different methods for determining the geographic coordinates of this special point (“epicenter”) of the explosion give slightly different results.
It is noted that three days before the event, starting on June 27, 1908, unusual atmospheric phenomena began to be observed in Europe, the European part of Russia and Western Siberia: noctilucent clouds, bright twilight, solar halos. British astronomer William Denning wrote that on the night of June 30 the sky over Bristol was abnormally light in the north.
On the morning of June 30, 1908, a fiery body flew over central Siberia, moving in a northerly direction; his flight was observed in many settlements in that area, and thunderous sounds were heard. The body shape is described as round, spherical or cylindrical; color - like red, yellow or white; there was no smoke trail, but some eyewitness descriptions include bright rainbow stripes extending behind the body.
At 7:14 a.m. local time, a body exploded over the Southern Swamp near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River; The force of the explosion, according to some estimates, reached 40-50 megatons of TNT equivalent.
Eyewitness observations:
One of the most famous eyewitness accounts is the message of Semyon Semenov, a resident of the Vanavara trading post, located 70 km southeast of the epicenter of the explosion: “... suddenly in the north the sky split in two, and a fire appeared in it, wide and high above the forest, which engulfed the entire northern part of the sky. At that moment I felt so hot, as if my shirt was on fire. I wanted to rip and throw off my shirt, but the sky slammed shut and there was a swipe. I was thrown three fathoms off the porch. After the blow there was such a knock, as if stones were falling from the sky or guns were firing, the ground shook, and when I was lying on the ground, I pressed my head, fearing that the stones would break my head. At that moment, when the sky opened, a hot wind rushed from the north, like from a cannon, which left traces in the form of paths on the ground. Then it turned out that many of the windows were broken, and the iron bar for the door lock was broken" - magazine "Knowledge-Power" - 2003. - No. 6.
Even closer to the epicenter, 30 km from it to the southeast, on the bank of the Avarkitta River, was the tent of the Evenk brothers Chuchanchi and Chekaren Shanyagir: “Our tent then stood on the bank of Avarkitta. Before sunrise, Chekaren and I came from the Dilyushma river, there we were visiting Ivan and Akulina. We fell fast asleep. Suddenly we both woke up at once - someone was pushing us. We heard a whistle and smelled strong wind. Chekaren also shouted to me: “Do you hear how many goldeneyes or mergansers are flying?” We were still in the plague and we couldn’t see what was happening in the forest. Suddenly someone pushed me again, so hard that I hit my head on a crazy pole and then fell onto the hot coals in the fireplace. I was afraid. Chekaren also got scared and grabbed the pole. We started shouting for father, mother, brother, but no one answered. There was some noise behind the tent; you could hear the trees falling. Chekaren and I got out of the bags and were about to jump out of the chum, but suddenly thunder struck very hard. This was the first blow. The earth began to twitch and sway, a strong wind hit our tent and knocked it over. I was firmly pressed down by the poles, but my head was not covered, because the ellune had lifted up. Then I saw a terrible miracle: the forests were falling, the pine needles on them were burning, the dead wood on the ground was burning, the reindeer moss was burning. There is smoke all around, it hurts your eyes, it’s hot, very hot, you could burn. Suddenly, over the mountain where the forest had already fallen, it became very light, and, how can I tell you, as if a second sun had appeared, the Russians would say: “suddenly it suddenly flashed,” my eyes began to hurt, and I even closed them. It looked like what the Russians call “lightning.” And immediately there was agdylyan, strong thunder. This was the second blow. The morning was sunny, there were no clouds, our sun was shining brightly, as always, and then a second sun appeared!”
The explosion on Tunguska was heard 800 km from the epicenter, the blast wave felled a forest over an area of 2000 km², within a radius of 200 km, the windows of some houses were broken; The seismic wave was recorded by seismic stations in Irkutsk, Tashkent, Tbilisi and Jena.
Soon after the explosion, a magnetic storm began that lasted 5 hours.
Unusual atmospheric lighting effects, preceding the explosion, reached a maximum on July 1, after which they began to decline (individual traces of them persisted until the end of July).
First message about the event, which occurred near Tunguska, was published in the newspaper “Sibirskaya Zhizn” dated June 30 (July 12), 1908: “About 8 o’clock in the morning, several fathoms from the canvas railway, near the Filimonovo crossing, not reaching 11 versts to Kansk, according to stories, a huge meteorite fell... Passengers of the train approaching the crossing at the time of the meteorite fall were struck by an extraordinary roar; the train was stopped by the driver, and the public poured to the place where the distant wanderer fell. But she was not able to examine the meteorite closer, since it was red-hot... almost the entire meteorite crashed into the ground - only its top sticks out..."
It is clearly evident that the content of this note is extremely far from what actually happened, however, this message went down in history, since it was it that prompted L.A. Kulik to go in search of the meteorite, which he then still considered “Filimonovsky”.
In the newspaper “Siberia” dated July 2 (15), 1908, a more factual description was given (author S. Kulesh): “On the morning of June 17, at the beginning of 9 o’clock, we observed some kind of unusual phenomenon nature. In the village of N.-Karelinsky (200 versts from Kirensk to the north), peasants saw in the northwest, quite high above the horizon, some extremely strongly (it was impossible to look at) body glowing with a white, bluish light, moving for 10 minutes from top to bottom . The body was presented in the form of a “pipe,” that is, cylindrical. The sky was cloudless, only not high above the horizon; in the same direction in which the luminous body was observed, a small dark cloud was noticeable. It was hot and dry. Approaching the ground (forest), the shiny body seemed to blur, and in its place a huge cloud of black smoke formed and an extremely strong knock (not thunder) was heard, as if from large falling stones or cannon fire. All the buildings shook. At the same time, a flame of an indeterminate shape began to burst out of the cloud. All the residents of the village ran into the streets in panic, the women were crying, everyone thought that the end of the world was coming."
However, no one showed widespread interest in the fall of an extraterrestrial body at that time. Scientific research The Tunguska phenomenon began only in the 1920s.
Expeditions of L.A. Kulik. In 1921, with the support of academicians V.I. Vernadsky and A.E. Fersman, mineralogists L.A. Kulik and P.L. Dravert organized the first Soviet expedition to verify incoming reports of meteorite falls in the country. Leonid Alekseevich Kulik showed special interest in studying the location and circumstances of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite. In 1927-1939, he organized and led six expeditions (according to other sources - four expeditions) to the site of the fall of this meteorite.
The results of the expedition to central Siberia in 1921, related to the Tunguska meteorite, were only new eyewitness accounts collected by it, which made it possible to more accurately determine the location of the event where the 1927 expedition went. She made more significant discoveries: for example, it was discovered that in the place where the meteorite supposedly fell, a forest had been felled over a large area, and in the place that was supposed to be the epicenter of the explosion, the forest remained standing, and there were no traces of a meteorite crater.
Despite the absence of a crater, Kulik remained a supporter of the hypothesis about the meteorite nature of the phenomenon (although he was forced to abandon the idea of the fall of a single meteorite significant mass in favor of the idea of its possible destruction during a fall). He discovered thermokarst pits, which he mistakenly mistook for small meteorite craters.
During his expeditions, Kulik tried to find the remains of the meteorite, organized aerial photography of the crash site (in 1938, over an area of 250 km²), and collected information about the meteorite fall from witnesses to the incident.
A new expedition being prepared by L. A. Kulik to the site of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite in 1941 did not take place due to the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. After the death of L.A. Kulik in the war, the results of the work on the study of the Tunguska meteorite were summed up by his student and participant in expeditions to Tunguska E.L. Krinov in the book "Tunguska meteorite" (1949).
To date, none of the hypotheses that explain all the essential features of the phenomenon have become generally accepted. However, the proposed explanations are very numerous and varied. Thus, an employee of the Committee on Meteorites of the USSR Academy of Sciences I. Zotkin published in 1970 in the journal Nature an article “Guide to help compilers of hypotheses related to the fall of the Tunguska meteorite,” where he described seventy-seven theories about his fall, known on January 1, 1969. At the same time, he classified hypotheses into the following types: technogenic, associated with antimatter, geophysical, meteorite, synthetic, religious.
The initial explanation of the phenomenon - the fall of a meteorite of significant mass (presumably iron), or a swarm of meteorites - quickly began to raise doubts among experts due to the fact that the remains of the meteorite could not be found, despite significant efforts made to search for them.
In the early 1930s, British astronomer and meteorologist Francis Whipple suggested that the Tunguska events were associated with the fall of a comet nucleus (or a fragment thereof) to Earth. A similar hypothesis was proposed by geochemist Vladimir Vernadsky, who suggested that the Tunguska body was a relatively loose clot of cosmic dust. This explanation was later accepted by quite a large number of astronomers. Calculations have shown that to explain the observed destruction heavenly body should have a mass of about 5 million tons. The cometary material is a very loose structure, consisting mainly of ice; and almost completely disintegrated and burned upon entry into the atmosphere. It has been suggested that the Tunguska meteorite belongs to the β-Taurid meteor shower associated with Comet Encke.
Attempts were also made to refine the meteorite hypothesis. A number of astronomers indicate that the comet would have collapsed high in the atmosphere, so only a rocky asteroid could act as the Tunguska meteoroid. In their opinion, its substance was sprayed into the air and was carried away by the wind. In particular, G.I. Petrov, having considered the problem of deceleration of bodies in an atmosphere with low mass density, identified a new, explosive form of entry into the atmosphere of a space object, which, unlike the case of ordinary meteorites, does not give visible traces of a disintegrated body. Astronomer Igor Astapovich suggested that the Tunguska phenomenon can be explained by the ricochet of a large meteorite from dense layers of the atmosphere.
In 1945, the Soviet science fiction writer Alexander Kazantsev, based on the similarity of eyewitness accounts of the Tunguska events and the explosion of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, suggested that the available data indicate not the natural, but the artificial nature of the event: he suggested that the “Tunguska meteorite” was spaceship extraterrestrial civilization who suffered a catastrophe in the Siberian taiga.
The natural reaction of the scientific community was the complete rejection of such a hypothesis. In 1951, the magazine “Science and Life” published an article devoted to the analysis and destruction of Kazantsev’s assumption, the authors of which were the most prominent astronomers and meteorology specialists. The article stated that it is the meteorite hypothesis and only it that is correct, and that the crater from the fall of the meteorite will soon be discovered: “Currently, the most plausible place for the fall (explosion) of the meteorite is considered to be the one mentioned above southern part depressions, the so-called “Southern Swamp”. The roots of fallen trees are also directed towards this swamp, which show that the blast wave spread from here. There is no doubt that at the first moment after the meteorite fell, a crater-shaped depression formed in the place of the “Southern Swamp”. It is quite possible that the crater formed after the explosion was relatively small and was soon, probably even in the first summer, flooded with water. In subsequent years, it was covered with silt, covered with a layer of moss, filled with peat hummocks and partly overgrown with bushes." - About the Tunguska meteorite // Science and Life. - 1951. - No. 9. - P. 20.
However, the first post-war scientific expedition to the site of the events, organized in 1958 by the Committee on Meteorites of the USSR Academy of Sciences, refuted the assumption that there was a meteorite crater anywhere near the site of the event. Scientists came to the conclusion that the Tunguska body must have exploded in the atmosphere one way or another, which ruled out the possibility that it was an ordinary meteorite.
In 1958, Gennady Plekhanov and Nikolai Vasiliev created the “Complex Amateur Expedition to Study the Tunguska Meteorite,” which later became the core of the Commission on Meteorites and Cosmic Dust of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The main goal of this organization was to resolve the issue of the natural or artificial nature of the Tunguska body. This organization managed to attract a significant number of specialists from all over the Soviet Union to the study of the Tunguska phenomenon.
In 1959, Alexey Zolotov established that the fall of the forest on Tunguska was caused not by a ballistic shock wave associated with the movement of a certain body in the atmosphere, but by an explosion. Traces of radioactive substances were also found at the scene, but their amount turned out to be insignificant.
In general, despite the rather fantastic nature of the hypothesis about the artificial origin of the Tunguska body, since the 1950s, it has enjoyed quite serious support in the scientific community; Relatively large funds were allocated to attempts to confirm or refute it. The fact that this hypothesis was considered quite seriously can be judged by the fact that its supporters were able to raise sufficient doubts in the scientific community when, in the early 1960s, the issue of awarding the Lenin Prize to K. P. Florensky for the hypothesis about the cometary nature of the Tunguska meteorite - the prize was ultimately never awarded.
According to NASA experts, expressed in June 2009, the Tunguska meteorite consisted of ice, and its passage through dense layers of the atmosphere led to the release of water molecules and microparticles of ice, which formed in upper layers atmospheric noctilucent clouds are a rare atmospheric phenomenon observed a day after the Tunguska meteorite fell to Earth over Britain by English meteorologists. Russian air space researchers from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences share the same opinion. The hypothesis about the icy nature of the meteorite was expressed a long time ago and was quite reliably confirmed by numerical calculations by D.V. Rudenko and S.V. Utyuzhnikov in 1999. It was also shown there that the substance of the meteorite (it could not consist of pure ice) did not reach the Earth's surface and was distributed in the atmosphere. The same authors explained the presence of two successive shock waves that observers heard.
According to the academician Russian Academy cosmonautics named after. K. E. Tsiolkovsky Ivan Nikitievich Murzinov, expressed in an interview with a Novaya Gazeta correspondent on June 8, 2016, the Tunguska meteorite was an extremely massive stone meteoroid of asteroid origin, which entered the Earth’s atmosphere along a very flat trajectory, which at an altitude of 100 km made an angle about 7 - 9 degrees with the surface, and had a speed of about 20 kilometers per second. After flying about 1000 km in the Earth's atmosphere, the cosmic body collapsed due to high pressure and temperature and exploded at an altitude of 30 - 40 kilometers. The thermal radiation of the explosion set the forest on fire, and the shock wave of the explosion caused a continuous felling of trees in a spot with a diameter of about 60 kilometers, and also caused an earthquake with a magnitude of up to 5 points. At the same time, small fragments of the Tunguska meteorite with sizes up to 0.2 meters burned or evaporated during the explosion, and larger fragments could continue flying along a gentle trajectory and fall hundreds and thousands of kilometers from the epicenter of the explosion, among other things, the largest fragments of the meteoroid could reach Atlantic Ocean and even, reflected from the Earth’s atmosphere, go into space.
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