Posted on 06/09/2008 12:44:01 PM PDT by blam
Tunguska, a century later
By Sid PerkinsJune 5th, 2008
Asteroid or comet blamed for Siberian blast of 1908
BLAST FROM THE PAST
The Tunguska blast shook Siberia in 1908, but on-site investigations were delayed for two decades. One of the first photos showed a large area of flattened trees.
Early on the morning of June 30, 1908, a massive explosion shook central Siberia. Witnesses told of a fireball that streaked in from the southeast and then detonated in the sky above the desolate, forested region. At the nearest trading post, about 70 kilometers away from the blast, people were reportedly knocked from their feet. Seismic instruments in the area registered ground motions equivalent to those of a magnitude-5 earthquake.
Effects of the event—often called the Tunguska blast, after a major river running through the area—weren’t restricted to Siberia. Sensitive barometers in England detected an atmospheric shock wave as it raced westward and then detected it again after it traveled around the world. High-altitude clouds that formed over the region after the event were so lofty that they caught light from beyond the horizon, illuminating the sky so much that people at locales in Europe and Asia could read newspapers outdoors at midnight.
A number of factors—including the site’s remote location, World War I and the Russian Revolution—prevented scientists from mounting an expedition to the blast zone for almost two decades, says physicist Giuseppe Longo of the University of Bologna in Italy. When researchers eventually reached the region, they found that a 2,150-square-kilometer patch of forest had been flattened, with most of the 80 million trees lying in a radial pattern. What the researchers didn’t find, however, was an obvious crater.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenews.org ...
Catastrophy Ping.
NICE .... think we could schedule one again for this year?
August 25 over Denver please.
Tunguska, a ‘cosmic things that go Bump in the night’
BumP!
Cool.. 100 years and we still don’t know exactly what happ’n..
IMO, right behind Krakatoa as the most intriguing of the latter centuries’ “natural” disasters.
BUSH’S FAULT!!
Man, you guys are slippin’......
Vote Obama '08
Tesla did it!
but...but.. I thought meteorites slamming into the earth this way ALWAYS eliminated a particular species of life on earth!
Wasn’t it something like this that killed off ALL the dinosaurs? How did we ever survive Tunguska???
He was just broadcasting energy around the world, but Edison through in a monkey wrench!
Giuseppe Longo of Bologna
Sounds like a porn star! Is that you Italian name Ron?
“Such an eruption could have injected about 10 million tons of methane into the atmosphere, a plume that if detonated would have released a forest-flattening burst of energy.”
Gaia farts. The Planet has joined “The Blue Flame Club!”
re: my #11
through should be threw! I need a break!
From a related site on Tunguska, I found this:
Repeated testimony of strange sounds before the event.
In terms of the speed of sound in Earth’s atmosphere, the reports of weird sounds in advance appear absurd. But they are entirely plausible as “electrophonic sounds” heard either before, or simultaneous with, the sighting of brilliant meteor fireballs up to 100km distant. Electrophonic sounds signify the direct conversion, by transduction, of very low frequency electromagnetic energy into audible sounds (through a medium that can be as simple as a gold tooth filling or a pair of glasses). Abundant reports of peculiar sounds in connection with meteors, auroras, earthquakes and even nuclear bomb tests are sufficient to substantiate the effect. The cause is most easily understood as a natural resonance of an extensive plasma discharge in the Earth’s atmosphere (or underground in the case of earthquakes). In the case of an approaching comet, the incoming body is electrified with respect to the Earth.
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arch06/060203tunguska2.htm
Once, about 20 years ago, my dad, brother & I were out watching a meteor shower in the back yard. We saw a large streak go across the sky, and then explode in a shower of sparks that lit up the sky and ground. To say it was awesome is an understatement. Even though it was probably 10 miles high in the atmosphere, I could have sworn I heard a hissing sound as it went across the sky and then a “pop” as it exploded. But I knew that could not be so; the sound would need many seconds to travel that distance. This seems to provide an explanation.
Off topic: Last year, I was watching NASA TV covering the waking of the Shuttle astronauts (I believe the song was "Good Day Sunshine"). The camera from the shuttle showed the Earth coming out of darkenss, and the clouds had a strange concentric rings formation to them. I assumed that they were formed by a meteor hitting the atmoshphere, and the clouds were the ripple effect from that.
I never saw that picture again, the daily highlights for the day stopped just short of the moment when the concentric rings were visible.
-PJ
I’m using my one phone call.
So Blam - what do you believe was the cause?
I just don’t have another 100 years to wait for the final answer!
My guess was a cloud of chlorine.
I thought Tunguska was the crash site of an alien UFO.
Probably because the media printed more facts than fiction and opinion at the time.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.