Tunguska, Siberia - Russian scientists claim discovery of alien spaceship

AFP via Babelfish translation ^ | August 11, 2004

[Blue Eyes]

Bump for later reading.

[Quix]

HO HO!

LOL.

I had forgoteen that you were the B.S. expert!

[SunkenCiv]

In the 1970s a book came out, "The Fire Came By", in which this idea is fleshed out. It originated (if memory serves) in the 1950s, and has only been given credence because there's no buried hunk of asteroid in the crater (a Soviet sponsored expedition looked for it, repeatedly, starting about 20 years after the impact) -- something explained by Eugene Shoemaker et al in various impact crater studies -- and because the pre-impact sightings which survive from 1908 newspapers (from India, again, if memory serves) have a trajectory which could suggest a change of direction of the incoming object, IOW, that it was a vessel being piloted, rather than the natural object (of one type or other) that most people believe it was (including me).

[fire_eye]

One of the claims made in that book was that only a nuclear event could produce the ratio of radiant to mechanical energy produced by the Tunguska explosion - that chemical or mechanical processes are incapable of producing that much radiated energy vs. mechanical energy.

[SunkenCiv]

It was a false claim.

[RadioAstronomer]

One of the reasons I love reading science fiction and fantasy is not that they are realistic, but that they are not real, and that they are a testament to the almost limitless boundaries of human imagination.

I am with you completely. SiFi is what "pushed" me into the space program to begin with. :-)

When we start taking our fantasies of aliens, monsters, ghosts and what not literaly, we are only cheapening our imaginations.

Very well said!

My major appeal for science fiction is that it is based in what Hal Clement called "the disciplined imagination", a mindset based firmly in reason and known fact, and tries to stay in those boundaries-yet still manages to provide the basis for acts of stunning mental creativity. This mindset, of course, is also what leads us to do science as well.

Some people think scientists have no imagination or wonder. However I agree with you on this. I think it is the imagination and wonder that gives them the drive to become scientists.

[RadioAstronomer]

...and in the end it is always "stranger than we can imagine".

Oh indeed it is! :-)

[Nataku X]

I agree with you completely. :o) I've been finding out that imagination and creativity, as long as it is "restrained" by a solid education in the sciences to keep ideas within the realms of possibility, is possibly quite the most valuable trait to have at work. :o)

[evets]

Tunguska bump

update

[oyez]

And he said, "Take me to be your leader."

[ApplegateRanch]

Spaceship Ruthie is on her way to Moscow to validate the find.