By RC Porter ·
Mystery Deepens Over World’s Biggest Explosion — 185 Times As Powerful As The Atomic Bomb Dropped On Hiroshima — Some 110 Years Ago, And Some Six Miles Above Lake Cheko, In Russia’s Siberian Forest
Will Stewart had an interesting article on the Daily Mail Online’s website, January 23, 2017, about a new push to find out what caused largest explosion ever recorded on/six miles above the Earth’s surface, in the Lake Checko region of Russia’s Siberian forest, on June 20, 1908. The blast, which is estimated to be 185 times as powerful as the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima — flattened 80 million trees and left dead/charred carcasses of reindeer and other animals scattered across a vast expanse of Siberian territory. There were no known human fatalities, due to the remote area in Siberia where the event occurred. Thank goodness, otherwise we would have had a tremendous loss of life.
Shock waves from the blast were felt as far away as the U.K. and the United States. “There was a bang in the sky, and a mighty crash. The crash was followed by a noise, like stones falling from the sky, or of guns firing. The Earth trembled,” according to interviews conducted in the days,weeks, and months after the event. “It appeared to be Armageddon. I became so hot, I couldn’t bear it, as if my shirt was on fire,” said another witness living at the time, some 40 miles from the epicenter of the event. “I wanted to tear my shirt off, and throw it down; and then, the sky slammed shut. A strong thump sounded and I was thrown a few yards,” read another account. But, what really caused the explosion has been the subject of intense speculation and debate for the past 110 years.
The most generally accepted explanation for the explosion was attributed to a large meteorite which exploded six miles above the Earth’s surface. As Mr. Stewart notes, “Italian scientists spent 21 years researching the so-called Tunguska event [the Stony Tunguska River was/is the epicenter of the blast]
claiming the blue-water Lake Cheko filled a ‘missing impact crater,” — giving rise to the theory that a large meteorite was responsible for the blast. But, a new study by Russian geologists,” Mr, Stewart writes, “suggests that idea is flawed — meaning the huge blast — which lit up the night sky in Britain and the U.S., is still a mystery,” according to recent Russian media reports. Others have speculated that the explosion was the result of “a massive volcanic eruption, a comet mainly composed of ice, and not solid space rock, a black hole colliding with the Earth; and, even aliens shooting down a meteor from a UFO in order to save the Earth. The local Evanki people believed it was a visitation by an angry god called Ogdy,” Mr. Stewart wrote.
From the first Soviet expeditions that visited the site, the puzzling aspect was a lack of debris, for example, investigators were unable to find any
craters caused by fragments of a meteorite, on the surface — something which would have been in abundance, and clearly evident for this type of event.
“Italian scientist, Luca Gasperini, from the University of Bologna, has long believed the crater-shaped Lake Cheko, some five miles from the epicenter, to be the missing link in the Tunguska mystery,” Mr. Stewart notes. “It was not marked on Tsarist-era maps of Siberia; and, his teams seismic measurements of its bottom, indicated sediment had been building for around a century. Gasperini and his team concluded that dense stony matter lies beneath the lake’s floor; and, is the ‘remnant’ of the exploding meteorite. The Italian theory — based on the pattern of tree destruction — is that two bodies entered the atmosphere,” that day. “One exploded about five miles above the ground; and, the other hit the Earth, forming Lake Cheko.”
“Now, Russian researchers have examined the sediment from the deepest part of the lake, some 50 meters below the surface, and undertaken geo-chemical and biochemical analysis,” Mr. Stewart notes. “The study indicates that the deepest sample they obtained is about 280 years old, which means that the lake is probably even older, because the researchers did not manage to obtain samples from the very bottom of the sediment layer. ‘Besides, there are other deep, practically round lakes in the Tunguska reserve, which look like Lake Cheko, and probably have the same geological origin,” said a statement from the Expedition Center of the Russian Geographical Society in the Siberian Federal District.
“Geologically the lake appears young; but, not young enough to be a crater lake caused by Tunguska,” The Siberian Times, recently postulated, and concluded the reason for Lake Cheko’s formation remains a mystery.
“So, the puzzle over Tunguska remains, but the answer could be that it was a meteorite, and it exploded in the air,” Mr. Stewart concludes. “In 2013, rock samples of meteorite origin — with traces of a carbon mineral called lonsdaleite were found in this part of Siberia. Lonsdaleite is known to form when meteorites crash to Earth. These samples however, are not conclusive proof of a meteorite explosion that day in 1908; as, these samples could have come from other, unrelated meteorite showers,” or impacts.
As the problem-solving principal, Occam’s Razor so eloquently points out — when faced with an event that could have multiple origins, the simplest answer is more often than not — the right answer. The burden of proof that the Tunguska event was caused by something other than a meteorite explosion, lies with those who advocate an alternative explanation.
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