A day ago I stumbled upon a century old incident which is still a mystery. The incident commonly known as “Tungsuka event” occurred June 30, 1908 i.e. 117 years ago near Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Yeniseysk Governorate (presently called Krasnoyarsk Krai) in Russia. The incident location is a wild country, the terrain is mostly large mounds and hillocks covered in pine tree woods. On the said day, an area of more than 2000 sq km was charred. Trees were knocked off and lying flat on the ground. At some spots bare trunks stood. It looked like the area was torched. Being a remote area with hardly any inhabitation and resources, the incident was not investigated for almost twenty years.
Investigations resulted in theories. It could be a meteor hit, but neither there’s crater nor meteor fragments. Another theory suggested that an asteroid approximately 50 to 100 meters in diameter of carbonaceous composition exploded 5 to 10 km over the site. Eyewitness as far as 800 km have said to witnessed a massive fireball glowing over the horizon. At the epicenter of the site fallen trees were pointing radially outwards. The impact of the explosion was so great that hardly any vegetation grew over the epicenter for two decades. Based on one of the images the spot seems to be barren to this day.
There’s another theory which suggests that an asteroid bounced off site. This theory is less convincing compared to the explosion theory.
Coming to think of this incident, it happened on a sparsely populated area. Apparently three people and tens of thousands of trees were killed in the incident. Had it happened over a well populated area the effect would’ve been unimaginable. Now, imagine if the incident had occurred at the center of Sahara desert. Would it have resulted in a massive sand storm? Or if it had happened over a remote spot in Pacific Ocean or the South Pole?
Below are two YouTube Shorts about the incident in Carl Sagan’s words. Â
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