"Kelley said he became intrigued by the historical eyewitness accounts of the aftermath, and concluded that the bright skies must have been the result of noctilucent clouds. "

It's incredibly vauge as to whether witnesses themselves actually described "noctilucent clouds", or whether the author of the paper just heard accounts of "bright skies" and ASSUMED they were such clouds.

Even though I do believe other life is visiting Earth, I was initially skeptical of the Russian scientist's paper about the "Tunguska UFO". However, this followup "research" came out so quickly afterwards and is based on such a weak assumption that it actually makes me wonder if the initial explanation didn't have more truth to it than we realized.

JIm

What a coincidence (rolls eyes).

I find the premise of the paper to be a ridiculous assumption. Hmm, what's all that white stuff in the ground in those Tunguska pictures? Do ya think if a few hundred tons of the stuff got blasted into the air that it wouldn't have a similar effect?

JIm

Now, a comet entering the upper atmosphere would reach temperatures that might preclude a fusion or fission reaction?

THAT makes sense too in that the fused glass deposits found in Africa and Australia seem to have been created by an air blast with substantial thermal/radiative energy… also cometary chunks? OR even the postulated cometary strike above North America 13,000 BCE explained?

@Greg – if I recall it is suspected of being from comet Encke and the Beta Taurids shower.

I know there is some data on the trajectory from the blast pattern but I have no idea if this has been extrapolated backwards to possible orbits. Still I'd expect a fair bit of wiggle room in any such prediction.

@Feenixx – the comment about an exit wound in the North Atlantic suggests that a trajectory has been predicted.

That's an idea. Has anyone attempted to do so? Assuming the devastator was indeed a comet fragment.

I have never seen Noctilucent clouds, do they really glow so much as to illuminate a night??

Would the glow only occur while the Sun is still hitting the high atmosphere, but not necessarily all night?

I've seen photos taken during the night after the event. Apparently it was possible to read the newspaper outside at midnight, in London.

I have never seen Noctilucent clouds, do they really glow so much as to illuminate a night??

Would the glow only occur while the Sun is still hitting the high atmosphere, but not necessarily all night?

Damian K

The most convincing idea I've seen is actually from a Sci-Fi-ish Suspense and Political Intrigue novel, "Singularity" by Bill deSmedt (spelling?), proposed by a fictional scientist: a primordial black hole. Viral marketing for the book, probably put together by (a) "real" scientist(s), explained it nicely, mathematics and all… but it didn't supply a mechanism by which such a "tiny" hot black hole could have survived 13.7 billion years of emitting Hawking Radiation….

ah, well….

I would argue the reverse. Whether these researchers theory is found to be correct or not, they have seen four correlations (in observing clouds, cloud height/type, time and distance). Either one of those tests the water content hypothesis – together they are pretty strong IMHO.

I for one hail our cometary (and putative eddy) over-the-head lords.

btw: Tuesday coming is the 101st anniversary of the event.

It also struck at 7:14am, which makes it somewhat more likely to have been coming from roughly the direction of the Sun- making it even harder to spot. And Siberia is a rather sparsely populated place. It would have been a miracle id it had been spotted before it hit, I think.