1908 Tunguska Catastrophe - New Evidence Supports Meteorite Theory
The Tunguska event is regarded as one of the biggest natural disasters of modern times. On 30 June 1908 one or more explosions took place in the area close to the Tunguska River north of Lake Baikal. The explosion(s) flattened around 80 million trees over an area of more than 2000 square kilometres. The strength of the explosion is estimated to have been equivalent to between five and 30 megatons of TNT. That is more than a thousand times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb. This almost unpopulated region of Siberia was first studied in 1927 by Professor Leonid A. Kulik. There are a number of different theories about what caused the catastrophe. However, the majority of scientists assume that it was caused by a cosmic event, such as the impact of a meteorite, asteroid or comet. If it had exploded in the atmosphere just under five hours later, St. Petersburg, which was the capital of Russia at that time, would have been completely destroyed because of the Earth's rotation. Read More...
Read the whole article on Scientific Blogging
More from Scientific Blogging
Related
- Space shuttle science shows how 1908 Tunguska explosion was caused by a cometWed, 24 Jun 2009, 14:44:59 EDT
- Tunguska catastrophe: Evidence of acid rain supports meteorite theoryTue, 15 Jul 2008, 10:35:37 EDT
- Comet impact theory disprovedMon, 26 Jan 2009, 17:43:11 EST
- Asteroid impact helps trace meteorite originsWed, 25 Mar 2009, 14:22:30 EDT
- Discovery of the source of the most common meteoritesThu, 10 Jul 2008, 11:23:29 EDT