Meteors have always been a cause of fear for humans.
They have been responsible for many extinction events and other destruction on Earth before.
In April 2018, the B612 Foundation reported, “It’s 100 per cent certain we’ll be hit
[by a devastating asteroid], but we’re not 100 per cent certain when.” Throughout recorded history,
hundreds of Earth impacts (and exploding bolides) have been reported, with some occurrences causing
deaths, injuries, property damage, or other significant localised consequences. One of the
best-known recorded events in modern times was the Tunguska event, which occurred in Siberia,
Russia, in 1908. It is the largest impact on the Earth recorded in the recent history,
though many other impacts have occurred in the prehistoric times.
On 30th of June 1908, in a woodland area surrounding the Tunguska river, close to modern
day Krasnoyarsk known as Tunguska, One of the most desolate areas of the most desolate region of the
Russian Empire, an enormous explosion occurred. In a few minutes the sky opened in two, torn asunder
by fire and a sound of thunder. It was a very mysterious event that took about 105 years of
research to complete. We usually attribute the explosion to the air burst of a meteoroid. At
about 170 km [110 mi] from the impact, just before the explosion, an object was spotted in the clear,
daytime sky: as a brilliant, sun-like fireball travelling at enormous speed, leaving a trail
of thunderous noises. 60 km [40 mi] from ground zero, at the time of the explosion: people were
thrown to the ground by the shock waves, or even knocked unconscious. Trees were set ablaze and had
fallen to the ground, their tops pointing radially away from ground zero, like giant arrows. Windows
shattered in a hail of shards, while furniture, crockery and other objects fell to the ground.
The blast nearly flattened 80 million trees over an area of 830 square miles. So what
happened that day which would become one of the most mysterious and important event in history.
Over the course of years there had been many explanations for this event. Some were wild,
such as the encounter of Earth with a stricken alien spacecraft, or a mini-black-hole,
or a particle of antimatter. But the actual truth was rather more subtle. Today the scientist
attributes the cause of the explosion to be an air burst of an icy meteorite about 100
metres in size. Days later, strange phenomena were observed in the sky of Russia and Europe,
like glowing clouds, colourful sunsets, and a weak luminescence in the night.
Unfortunately, the inaccessibility of the region and Russia’s unstable political situation at
the time prevented any further scientific investigation. The Tunguska region of Siberia
may be a remote place, with a dramatic climate. it’s an extended hostile winter and a really
brief summer, when the bottom changes into a muddy uninhabitable swamp. This makes the world hard to
urge to. The region is additionally sparsely inhabited. Then when the explosion happened
nobody volunteered to the location to find out what happened there. It would take 19 years
before mineralogist Leonard Kulik organised an expedition to investigate what may have happened.
LATER IN 1921, Kulik, who was a former soldier and now a professor of mineralogy,
was charged with locating and examining meteorites that caused the explosion. He gathered all the
information and read the old newspapers which had articles on the explosion. In the initial stages,
he only figured out the location of the impact area rather than visiting the area. He read about
the story of a family who had knocked down y the force of the blast. The wife reported, “the forest
was blazing around them with many fallen trees”. Some children described,” A terrible storm,
so great it was difficult to stand”. On his second expedition in 1927,
Kulik reached the town of Vanavara located on the Tunguska river. The journey was full of hardships
as the maps and compasses were chaotic and the terrain inhospitable. He realised the locals
feared going to the place of impact because they thought Ogdy, the local god of thunder,
had cursed the area and burnt the trees. Kulik continued with his search team later in March, and
reached the Makirta river where he first saw the first evidence of the Tunguska blast, the charred
trees, burnt to ground. He suddenly realised it was an unusual event, not something that a
flash of thunder could cause. But the locals ran away because of fear, and his team grew weary of
infections and the hard terrain. So he returned later on the 20th of May. The direction of the
trees was pointing towards the area of impact, which he located finally, the Southern Swamp!
Being a meteorologist He intuitively thought the impact resulted from a meteorite impact,
but it surprised him when he did not find any crater. Not only this, the trees near
the epicentre were all standing and charred. Kulik wrote” “The solid ground heaved outward from the
spot in giant waves, like waves in water.” Later he decides to leave with a shortage of food.
He returned later in 1929 and 1938, but both were inconclusive because of a single problem:
How could there be no crater? Another scientist, E. L. Krinov, returned in 1940. His theory was
that the meteorite had exploded mid-air, hence the absence of a crater. Was this possible? But the
second world war put an end to his research. The fact that the event was investigated so late,
the scarcity of information outside scientific circles, the secretive nature of Soviet regimes:
all these factors have contribute to the proliferation of theories
as to the exact nature of what really happened in Tunguska. Though there have been many outrageous
theories like the crashing of a black hole to the alien intervention causing the blast, but they all
seem to be irrelevant. Studies have yielded original estimates of the meteoroid’s size,
on the order of fifty to 190 metres (160 to 620 feet), counting on whether the body entered with
a high speed, it’s estimated that the blast wave from the air burst would have measured 5.0 on
the Richter magnitude scale, and estimates of its energy have ranged from 3 to 30 megatons of TNT.
Expeditions sent to the world within the 1950s and 1960s found microscopic silicate and magnetite
spheres in siftings of the soil. The locals were so terrified by the blast that they didn’t talk
even about the event. Regional newspapers also reported the event shortly after it occurred.
A herder reported: “The ground shook and an incredibly prolonged roaring was heard. It
shrouded everything round about in smoke and fog from burning, falling trees. Eventually the noise
died away, and the wind dropped, but the forest went on burning. Many reindeer rushed away and
were lost.” Another witness in nearby towns shared a similar experience, a fireball flashing across
the sky: “A ball of fire...coming down obliquely. A few minutes later [we heard] separate deafening
crash like peals of thunder...followed by eight loud bangs like gunshots.” Another man reported,
“A ball of fire appeared in the sky... As it approached the ground,
it took on a flattened shape…” After the object crossed the sky and it approached the horizon,
they consistently described it as a pillar of fire.
The fire ball appeared two or three times larger than the sun, but not as bright; the
trail was like a fiery-white stripe, its colour sometimes changing to red and bluish-white.
The cause of the explosion at last points to the one obvious explanation. The obvious explanation
was that a meteorite, made of rocky material, had exploded before hitting the Earth’s surface,
like Krinov had theorised. This explained the lack of a crater, but what about the absence of
fragments? In 2013, a research team led by Victor Kvasnytsya, from the National Academy of Sciences
of Ukraine, analysed microscopic samples of rock collected from the site and found them
of the meteoric origin as we have also discussed it before in the video. nothing paranormal like an
alien bombing, crashing of a black hole or Nicola Tesla causing the blast. Though the theory stating
the cause of blast to be Nicola Tesla if far more ridiculous!! Today the conclusion is that a large
meteor collided with the Earth’s atmosphere and entered our atmosphere at about 16 km per second.
Our atmosphere caused it to break, which resulted in a shower of many smaller tiny rocks.
It is considered that the meteor might have been very fragile and obliterated its remnants at about
10-12 km above the Earth. The atmosphere vaporised the object into tiny pieces,
and the immense kinetic energy converted them into heat. This sudden heat caused the powerful blast,
an extensive shock wave and forest fires. 15 km/s is a quick speed. Just imagine it like this. It
could have flown the entire width of US, coast to coast, in less than 5 minutes. Humanity was very
lucky that the meteorite hit a desolate area that day. If it would have fallen in an urban area,
the blow on Russian empire would be devastating, and would leave an enduring scar on the country.
Past collisions with extraterrestrial bodies have had major effects on the evolution of the
world . Some 4.4 billion years ago, for instance , a Mars-size planetoid seems to possess struck
our young planet, throwing out enough debris to make our moon. And an outsized impact may
have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Even today cosmic impacts
are evident. So Tunguska makes us ask questions on our preparations? When can we expect the next
Tunguska? How would we tackle it? Well, recently one already happened on the 15th of February 2013
near Chelyabinsk, Russia again! Well, Russia is a bit unlucky. This event created opportunities for
scientists and other researchers to understand the event and prepare for such events.
Though Chelyabinsk was a less violent than Tunguska, it still caused damage to windows
and several injuries. By combining clues from the magnitude of that event with the most recent
asteroid population estimates, NASA researchers have concluded that the average interval between
such impacts to be on the order of millennia, rather than centuries. Still, we have to remain
aware of these catastrophic events. Asteroids will hit the Earth sooner or later, but we have to be
ready for them. NASA’s researcher Lorein wheeler said, “Because there are so few observed cases,
a lot of uncertainty remains about how large asteroids break up in the atmosphere
and how much damage they could cause on the ground. However, recent advancements
in computational models, along with analyses of the Chelyabinsk and other meteor events,
are helping to improve our understanding of these factors so that we can better test potential
asteroid threats in the future.” And yes, we don’t have to take the inspiration from Hollywood
to train a bunch of drillers and train them as astronauts to deal with Asteroids.
Tunguska is considered an astronomical cold case, because of lack of initial researches done on
it. So that’s it for this video. What do you think about any asteroid hitting us in the near future?
What do you think about the news that an asteroid passed very close to us?
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