The Tunguska Event (The "big bang" in Siberia 1908)
Vasiliy got up from his bed and pulled the sheet from the calendar. It is June 30, 1908. "I am thirty seven years old today", he mumbles to himself. I feel ninety. He stumbles to the steps of the cabin and sits down to drink his thick coffee. Examining a map of his traps in his mind, he contemplates the day's work. Suddenly, a blinding flash surrounds him. Looking up, Vasiliy sees a tree burst into flames, and he covers his eyes. He feels scorched. The shirt on his back seems on fire. Then he hears the rumble of a thousand cannons. It overtakes him from behind and blows his house down and over him. He is thrown to the ground and looses consciousness for several minutes.
Recovering his senses, Vasiliy stands up and looks around. Behind him, forty miles away, a huge cloud like a mushroom penetrates the heavens. It glows iridescent like a jewel. Looking downward, he sees the wealth of his life: 200 reindeer, tents, furs, stores and supplies, charred and burned. The smell is overwhelming. Unknown to Vasiliy, he will die in two weeks. He will vomit up his stomach and writhe in pain for the last three days of his life. The chief of the Evenk people will declare the area forbidden and enchanted forever. Many of his people have died similarly, just by walking near the explosion area. Houses were destroyed 200 miles away from the blast.
The gods have been displeased, and they have smitten the land.
Four hundred miles away the conductor of the Trans-Siberian Railway train sees the tracks ripple and slows the train to a halt. Passengers stream out of the coaches and talk of a cylinder of white light with a fiery tail that fell with a tremendous flame and explosion. It rains down little smoldering rocks. Some of the passengers try to move the rocks with sticks, but the white heat engulfs the sticks with flames. In the skies a huge black cloud has risen, and a black, tar-like rain starts to fall. The people run for the train and wonder if the world is coming to an end. The conductor pushes the throttle forward. The tracks are serviceable, and he wants to leave this cursed place behind.
On the other side of the planet a sea going freighter equipped with the new amplified radio from Marconi is transmitting position information. The radio operator suffers minor burns as the antenna wires nearly explode in flames. The radio indicator lights go dim, and then out. The expensive triode tube looks as if the glass has melted around the insides.
All over the world instruments have told their watchers that something big took place in Russia. In 1992 we will calculate that a blast approaching 40 megatons had occurred. Nothing of this magnitude has ever happened before in recorded history, until the mind of man found the destructive power of the fusion bomb 50 years later. The great crater in Arizona created by an asteroid 50,000 years ago was only 3.5 megatons.
This is not fiction. These events actually happened at 7:17 in the morning on June 30, 1908. People died and a vast wilderness was destroyed. Had this occurred in a populated area of Europe instead of the Taiga of Siberia, 500,000 people would be dead. Whole cities would be flattened and burning. The blast was more than 1000 times the atomic explosion produced in Hiroshima in 1945.
So what was this that the gods threw at our earth? Some say a meteor, others a comet, others yet proclaim aliens, UFOs, or anti-matter.
Mother Russia was not able to investigate until 1921. A world war had to be fought, and a political purging and engorgement of death had to be inflicted on her people before someone could be sent.
Leonid Kulik was selected by the Soviet Academy of Sciences to investigate what happened. He began by gathering eyewitness accounts of the event. Many newspapers recorded the explosion, like the Irkutsk newspaper Sibir:
'in the village of Nizhne-Karelinsk in the northwest high above the horizon, the peasants saw a body shining very brightly -(too bright for the naked eye) with a bluish white light. It moved vertically down-wards for about ten minutes. The body was in the form of a 'pipe' (i.e. cylindrical). The sky was cloudless, except that low down on the horizon in the direction in which this glowing body was observed, a small dark cloud was noticed. It was hot and dry and when the shining body approached the ground it seemed to be pulverized and in its place a huge cloud of black smoke was formed and a loud crash, not like thunder, but as if from the fall of large stones, or from gunfire, was heard. All the buildings shook and at the same time, a forked tongue of flame broke through the cloud. The old women wept, everyone thought that the end of the world was approaching.'
Nizhne-Karelinsk is 200 miles from the event ground zero. People heard the explosion from 500 miles away.
In March, 1927, Kulik stepped of the Trans-Siberian Railway at Tayshet and headed to the village of Vanavara. The village is an old one, unlike Bratsk which seemed to be composed of 30 year olds transplanted from the Moscow area. He recruited a guide named Il'ya Potapovich, whose brother had felt the effects of the explosion 19 years before by having his tent blown away at 75 miles from the epicenter.
By mid April Kulik and his guide had reached the Merkirta River and he saw the first signs of devastation. From the river small hillocks could be seen, completely stripped of trees.
Kulik climbed up one of the higher hills and saw for at least 12 miles in front of him trees knocked down, all facing one direction. The harsh winter prevented him from pressing on. The devastation had taken some time to dawn on him.
He wrote down in his diary:
"ruin as far as the eye could see, what if this had been St. Petersburg?..."
In June, Kulik returned and followed the line of devastated trees to finally reach what he was to call the "cauldron".
Here the trees fell radially outward. He was standing in a low depression with an irregular diameter of about a mile. From here the burned and flattened forest stretched 20 miles behind him, and 37 miles in a fan in front of him. Familiar with the great crater in Arizona, he looked in vain for the meteorite core. He saw many little flat holes, but unknown to him at the time they are a natural feature of the land.
Kulik would make three more trips before he died in world war II, defending his country from the Germans. He never found any sign of impact or fragments. Whatever it was seemed to explode in the air and disappear into nothingness.
After reading hundreds of eyewitness accounts and scientific reports, here are some of the observations that I have.
- The object looked like a shaft or cylinder of light, white, and brighter than the sun.
- It had a 500 mile long trail that was not smoky but looked like bright, iridescent, multicolored bands.
- A magnetic storm began a few minutes after the explosion. A compass was useless in Irkutsk, 600 miles away.
- Electromagnetic pulse like anomalies (EMP) were reported on the opposite side of the planet.
- In Antarctica unusual aurora displays were observed before and after the Tunguska event.
- Part of the object appeared to veer upwards, like it bounced up.
- A week before, and for a month afterward, very bright nights were experienced world wide. In some places you could read a newspaper at night.
- No meteorite pieces have been found, nor has a crater.
- Both plant and animal life have been affected genetically, trees and plants have an accelerated growth rate. This effect was at the epicenter and along the trajectory.
- People were burned and died unusual deaths that are similar to radiation exposure. The chief of the Tungus (Evenk) people declared the area enchanted and sealed off. A few people had touched rocks laying on the ground and became sick.
- The RH blood factors of several groups of Evenk people are abnormal, as well as several abnormal insect species and plant species.
- The large epicenter, where the trees fall radially outward, has within it four smaller swirls having their own radial pattern - observed in 1960. The object exploded at 5 mi up by calculation.
- Abnormal levels of radioactive carbon 14 were reported and then later declared to be incorrect. Other radio-isotopes were searched for but not found.
- A pillar of smoke and bright fire was seen from 250 miles away. Horses were thrown down 400 miles away. A sound like thunder claps came four in succession and was heard 500 miles away.
- One side of trees were burned as far as 40 miles away.
- Tiny green globules of melted dust called trinitites were discovered in the area, similar to those produced at the Trinity site of the first atomic bomb test in Arizona.Menotti Galli, Giuseppe Longo, and Romano Serra of the University of Bologna have been looking for carbon 14 and other materials. One thought in the U.S.A. is that some hydrogen would compress and heat up to create a fusion reaction. This would produce neutrons that would be absorbed by the nitrogen in the air and form carbon 14. No carbon 14 was found, but captured in the resin of surviving trees was unusual concentrations of "high Z" metals. These metals have a large number of protons (copper, gold, and nickel), and were present in quantities ten times more near the time of the explosion than before or after.
The present accepted candidate for the object that exploded over Russia is an asteroid; perhaps stony in nature, with ice, and weighing about 100,000 tons. Personally I can't accept this. The magnetic, EMP, and radiation effects disturb me. Most of the data supports something more like a nuclear explosion. The effects on the local biology, and the human deaths also support radiation exposure. Since residual radiation and isotope data seems to be lacking the nuclear approach is discounted. I do not think that the heated plasma from a comet / asteroid could account for radiation exposure at 40 miles. Heat yes, radiation, no.
I prefer to re-examine the antimatter hypothesis of Cowan and Libby, but I absolutely refuse to entertain the UFO drive reactor bunk. A chunk of antimatter seems quite plausible to me. It can account for the tremendous explosion, biological effects, visual description of the asteroid, EMP, magnetic effects, and most of the items described above.
The table below lists which theory seems to fit the observations discussed above.
| Comet / Asteroid | Antimatter Asteroid | UFO | |
| 1 cylinder of light, white, and brighter than the sun. | Probable | Very bright plasma driven by Gamma radiation. | Possible |
| 2 bright, iridescent, multicolored trail | Reaction of coma? | Multilevel ionization, a range of colors would be a requirement | If it was already this hot, it is doubtful if it could have changed direction. |
| 3 magnetic storm | Possible plasma reaction | Axiomatic, the "rock" would have a magnetic bottle containing the plasma reaction, and would break when the atmosphere is dense enough to rupture the bottle. | Possible nuclear effect |
| 4 Electromagnetic pulse | Unlikely plasma effect. Possible if some Hydrogen fused into Helium. but unlikely. | Expected | Possible nuclear effect |
| 5 aurora displays before and after | Coma responsible before, soil removal after. | Magnetic filed disruption before, soil removal after. | Before improbable. |
| 6 veer upwards | Possible bounce | Possible bounce. | Not controlled, occupants are dead, computer is a plasma by now. |
| 7 bright nights before and after | same as 5 | ||
| 8 no crater or pieces | That is the hope by the proponents | Expected | More material expected |
| 9 genetic mutation epicenter and trajectory | Possible by thermal neutrons and x-rays from plasma. NOT along trajectory | Expected gamma exposure full trajectory course, 20 mi range easy. | Epicenter expected, trajectory 5 mi possible. |
| 10 near term radiation | Improbable | Possible, short lived isotopes expected | Expected, but short range < 5 mi. |
| 11 genetic mutation | Doubtful unless fusion | Gamma ionization, long range | Expected |
| 12 epicenter pattern 4 swirls, 4 booms | Breakup expected | Breakup expected | One drive? Doubtful. |
| 13 no radioisotopes | Expected. | So what have searched for? Expected left over by our ability to measure now due to gamma absorption are: C14, Si32, Fe60, Ni59, Ni63, Sn126 most have a 100 to 300 year half life | A veritable zoo expected many very long lived. |
| 14 destructive range | At 100,000 tons, possible | Not surprizing | Big drive, wish I had it in my car. |
| 15 40 mile heat flare and radiation | Not possible from plasma alone improbable even if fusion | Again not surprizing, deep penetrating gamma radiation. | Not expected, but possible |
| 16 trinitites | Only if fusion | Very small particles expected. | Large pieces expected since the trees on the ground survived, the atomic glass should. |
| 17 high Z metals | Absolutely only if fusion. | Few thermal neutrons, unusual mix of short life isotopes expected. | Many types, most showing radioactivity. |
The last road block to antimatter is that it doesn't exist in our galaxy, and if it did it would be used up by the time it got here to us.
The "great annihilator" in the center of the galaxy seems to indicate a large fountain of antimatter production. Further, a mass of antimatter traveling through space could form a plasma shield derived from the annihilation radiation, which would burst when in contact with a planet's denser air layer.
While we only observe 1 anti-particle for every 104 particles entering our instruments here on earth, improved instruments may change this. Present cosmology also predicts that matter and anti-matter is always observed in mirrored pairs. Originally in the favored cosmological models most of the matter in the universe experienced annihilation and only a slight asymmetry allowed matter to dominate. I have some problems with this assertion also.
The number of photons in the universe, biased on black body radiation, it proportional to k T4, and the average energy per photon is approximately kT. This gives the number of photons per cm3 as:
Where the 10.3k here is temperature in kelven.
The number of particles per cm3 in the universe is approximately:
This gives us the present ratio of photons to particles as:
What the theory says is that perhaps 109 + 1 electrons existed, and 109 positrons existed at the beginning. Annihilation gives us 2x109 photons and 1 electron.
Most of the original matter/anti-matter in the universe was then converted to the photons that we see today, and a little normal matter was left due to this initial asymmetry.
In random statistical processes if we had N out of balance events, N2 trials had to have been made. If we calculate the number of protons in the universe:
we get that 3x1080 protons survived the initial cosmic fire. If we view these as out of balance events, then about 9x10160 protons exited initially. This would imply that something greater than 10160 photons should exist now in our universe instead of 109. Something is wrong somewhere. Antimatter may be more common than our theories tell us.
What do you think?
