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More than a century ago, something exploded in the sky over Siberia, smashing windows and creating a brilliant ball of light, but was it a meteorite impact?
A new Russian study suggests a very strange alternative.
The Tunguska event, in 1908, is described as the largest impact event in recorded history, destroying 80 million trees in an area of 800 square miles in the Siberian forest.
But mysteriously, an impact crater was never found, despite the fact that there are rock fragments that could be of meteoric origin, reports Science Alert.
But a new study has suggested that nothing actually hit the ground, and instead, a large iron asteroid flew through Earth’s atmosphere before flying into space.
The researchers, led by Daniil Khrenikov, wrote: “We have studied the passing conditions of asteroids with diameters of 200, 100 and 50m, which consist of three types of materials: iron, stone and water ice, through the atmosphere from the earth. “
The researchers argue that an iron asteroid may have passed through Earth’s atmosphere and continued into space.
The researchers write: “The conditions of this passage have been found with a subsequent exit to outer space with the preservation of a substantial fraction of the initial mass.
“The results obtained support our idea of explaining one of astronomy’s long-standing problems: the Tunguska phenomenon, which to date has not received reasonable and complete interpretations.
“We argued that the Tunguska event was caused by an iron asteroid body, which pierced Earth’s atmosphere and continued into near-solar orbit.”
Tunguska Meteorite, Churgima Stream Valley (Photo: Sovfoto / Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
“We have studied the conditions of passage of asteroids with diameters of 200, 100 and 50 meters, which consist of three types of materials: iron, stone and water ice, through the Earth’s atmosphere with a minimum altitude of trajectory in the range of 10 to 15 kilometers. “
In an interview with The Siberian Times, Dr. Sergei Karpov of the Kirensky Institute of Physics in Krasnoyarsk says that the theory of a “passing” iron asteroid answers several unanswered questions.
Dr. Karpov said: “Currently, there are more than 100 hypotheses about the nature of the Tunguska phenomenon. They include the fall of a small asteroid that measures several dozen meters consisting of typical asteroid materials, be it metal or stone, as well as ice. “
“We calculated the trajectory characteristics of space from 50 to 200 meters in diameter, and our modeling shows that it could not consist of rock or ice because, in contrast to iron, such bodies rapidly crumble due to colossal aerodynamic pressure in the atmosphere. . “
