1908 Siberia

A man based at the trading post at Vanavara was sitting on his porch when everything changed in 1908, Siberia. At around 7:17 on the morning of June 30, 1908, he would be a mere 100 km from the center of an event that is controversial to this day. After the blast the heat will be so intense he will feel as though his shirt is on fire. The man at the trading post, and others in a largely uninhabited region of Siberia, near the Tunguska River, are to be accidental eyewitnesses to cosmological history. Some believe that an asteroid impacted the Earth, while others think that the asteroid exploded as much as 10 km above the surface of the planet.

The 1908 Siberia incident leveled over 80 million trees and is estimated to have exploded with nearly 10 megatons of force, nearly 1,000 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima during WWII. Eight hundred square miles of remote forest had been ripped asunder. Eighty million trees were on their sides, lying in a radial pattern. The explosion occurred in 1908, but, because of the harsh condition and remoteness of the site, the first scientific expedition did not arrive on the scene until 1927.

When the scientists, led by Leonid Kulik, arrived the trees were all laying on their sides pointing away from the epicenter of the blast. At the center the trees were still standing, but had all of their limbs and bark stripped away. It looked like a stand of telephone poles in the middle of the devastation. As a result of the 1908 Siberia explosion seismic shockwaves registered with sensitive barometers as far away as England. Dense clouds formed over the region at high altitudes which reflected sunlight from beyond the horizon. Night skies glowed, and reports came in that people who lived as far away as Asia could read newspapers outdoors as late as midnight. Locally, hundreds of reindeer, the livelihood of local herders, were killed. There was no direct evidence that any person perished in the blast.

The 1908 Siberia asteroid is thought to have been traveling at more than 20,000 kph and weighed over 100 million kg. It caused the air around it to super heat. The end result was that the asteroid exploded above the ground. Some people think that there is no impact crater, but others believe that a local lake is the filled in remains of the crater that was created. The delay in scientific investigation has made the issue a little hazy.

The 1908 Siberia event is the most recent event in which there was damage to the Earth. That is not to say it is the most recent impact. The Earth is impacted almost yearly, but those asteroids burn up in the atmosphere. Can you imagine the results if the 1908 Siberia asteroid had blown up over New York City?

Nasa has a great article about the 1908 Siberia event. Wikipedia also offers a very indepth piece on the topic. There is another article on the topic here on Universe today.

Reference:
NASA: The Tunguska Impact

Tagged as: 1908 Siberia, asteroid impact, tunguska asteroid, tunguska event