The Tungus Event or The Great Siberian Meteorite

174 Pages·2010·3.37 MB·English

by  John Engledew

T T e
he ungus venT

T T e
he ungus venT
T g s M
or he reaT iberian eTeoriTe
John Engledew
Algora Publishing
New York
© 2010 by Algora Publishing.
All Rights Reserved
www.algora.com
No portion of this book (beyond what is permitted by
Sections 107 or 108 of the United States Copyright Act of 1976)
may be reproduced by any process, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form, or by any means, without the
express written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data —
Engledew, John, 1954-
The Tungus event, or, the great Siberian meteorite / John Engledew.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-87586-781-6 (case laminate: alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-87586-780-9
(trade paper: alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-87586-782-3 (ebook) 1. Tunguska meteorite. I.
Title. II. Title: Tungus event. III. Title: Great Siberian meteorite.
QB756.T8E54 2010
551.3’9709575—dc22
2010000102
Printed in the United States
Dedicated to Tamara, Devin and all my wonderful friends.

Table of ConTenTs
PrefaCe and a CosMiC view 1
Eye-Witness Accounts 7
ChaPTer 1. Tunguska, 100 Years of MYsTerY 13
ChaPTer 2. MeTeors, ChaPTer of asTronoMY 33
ChaPTer 3. Tunguska ground Zero 47
ChaPTer 4. The CoMeTarY hYPoThesis and The Taurid MeTeors 73
ChaPTer 5. CoMeT enCke 93
ChaPTer 6. The sun, The CosMos and Coronal Mass ejeCTions 103
ChaPTer 7. asTeroids and The asTeroid hYPoThesis 119
ChaPTer 8. oTher exPlanaTions and PersPeCTives on The Tungus evenT 139
bibliograPhY 163
index 165

PrefaCe and a CosMiC view
The profoundly mysterious object from space that exploded several miles
above a forested expanse of Siberia early one summer morning in 1908 defies full
explanation in the face of a century of investigation.
That it was a major meteor or piece of a comet entering the Earth’s atmosphere
and powerfully erupting above ground level is still the most common description,
but theories exist in profusion. They include rogue asteroids, mini black holes
and even alien intervention. As we will see, these explanations are not entirely
equal to the facts. In the unique case of the Tunguska event, there was wholesale
destruction to the mighty taiga woodlands but none of the debris that one would
expect should exist from the body itself. Evidence like a strewn field of meteorite
debris or meteoric dust on the trees and ground were never found, nor were any
craters, in the area beneath the site of the fireball nor anywhere along the path it
took. There are no craters because the Tunguska Cosmic Body (TCB) did not hit
the ground. Atmospheric anomalies prior to the dramatic appearance of the fiery
body puzzlingly occurred for several days, adding to the enigma.
After reading several English language books and numerous articles on the
subject, I decided to pull together an up to date and succinct study of the strange
and unexplained events with some background in meteor, comet and astronomi-
cal studies to try and put it all in perspective. This project, originally intended to
be a set of notes culled from various sources and composed for personal use, soon
became a labor of love. Separately, the protagonists of pseudoscience may be gen-
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The Tungus Event
uine in effort and everyone is entitled to an opinion, but for our purposes I aim to
present just what is accepted as rigorously scientific. I’ve waded through plenty
of material that is quite fabulistic, and that includes energetic blogs concerning
Tunguska. The curse of insufficient data has long haunted Tunguska studies.
I’ve been caught up in the wonder of the universe for years and hope to con-
vey something of the grandeur of cosmic nature to others. It has dynamism and
beauty that words cannot describe. The progress we have made in recent decades
in comprehending the universe is a phenomenon in itself. Amateur astronomy is
a rewarding pursuit with the simplest optical equipment or just eyesight reveal-
ing great wonders in the night sky. The Tungus event is one of the astronomical
mysteries that is tangible and immediate because it happened on the Earth. We
still lack a full understanding of what occurred that day, but we can examine it in
the context of astronomy and Earth science, local eye-witness accounts, and the
findings of the early and subsequent scientific expeditions.
Like any investigation true to the spirit of science, I thought that reviewing
the existing studies must reveal a solution to the puzzle. But the mysteries of
the Tungus event actually multiply, the more one looks into it. One learns about
ballistic waves, Soviet academic infighting, Near Earth Objects, native Evenki
beliefs, cometary orbits and much else on the trail of Tunguska.
In the history of astronomy and astrophysics we have made some sturdy
achievements, and some notable people have emerged who greatly added to the
repository of human knowledge. We have observed, calculated and wrested
powerful information on what were considered mystical questions in our cul-
tural past. Such basic questions as the age of the Earth, the distance of the Moon
and the composition of the Sun have been answered: 4.5 billion years, a quarter
of a million miles, and hydrogen and helium in nuclear flux.
In the case of the great Siberian meteorite (no one has proposed any better
name for it for decades) I fear that we are no closer to an unequivocal solution
even today. One can have moments of clarity when it appears the case might have
been cracked, at least to one’s own satisfaction. All too soon, objections arise,
facts contradict and one finds one’s intellect pondering other possibilities. There
are diverse and very different explanations. One is tempted to accept that it was
an unusual meteor or piece of a comet and forget about aspects that stubbornly
refuse to fit. One reads papers and articles with expressing various levels of con-
fidence or brazenly claiming to have revealed all. I prefer the purist scientific ones
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