Winston Churchill
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
Albert Einstein
He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.
The Tunguska Mystery May be Solved
The Tunguska Event Blast Site. Image via the Daily Mail
The 1908 Tunguska event was a massive blast 1,000 times the strength of a nuclear bomb.
It leveled 1,000 square miles of forest in remote Siberia, flattening trees to the ground and possibly carving out what is now Lake Cheko. It has been a mystery to science since then, but researchers now believe they have found a fragment of a meteorite at the bottom of the lake. If they’re right, the evidence could finally lay the mystery to rest.
Read the full story here: Have scientists finally found fragments of the meteorite which set off the mysterious 1908 Tunguska catastrophe?
Thanks to our friends at the Daily Mail
Gabor
May 24, 2012 at 2:58 PM
The idea that Lake Cheko is an impact crater was put forward as long ago as 2007 (see: Gasperini, L., et al. “A possible impact crater for the 1908 Tunguska Event.” Terra Nova, 2007, Vol. 19, 245-251). But there is an article, in which this question is discussed in detail and the authors’ answer is definite “no”: G. S. Collins et al. “Evidence that Lake Cheko is not an impact crater”, Terra Nova, 2008, Vol. 20, 165-168. Also, I must add that the problem of the Tunguska explosion is rather complicated. For more information about it I would recommend the following books: “The Tungus Event or The Great Siberian Meteorite,” by John Engledew (Algora Publishing, ISSN 9780875867809), “The Tunguska Mystery,” by Vladimir Rubtsov (Springer, ISSN 9780387765730) and, with some reservations, “The Mystery of the Tunguska Fireball,” by Surendra Verma (Totem Books, ISSN 9781840467284). The question of the impactor’s nature seems to be far from its final solution.