Tunguska: a still unsolved enigma
What really happened in the Siberian taiga in 1908 to shake the earth across Siberia and brighten the night sky across half the world? An asteroid, a comet, or something else?
On June 30, 1908, at 7:14 AM, something mysterious exploded in the Siberian taiga near the Tunguska River. An event equivalent to 15 megatons (a power roughly equal to about a thousand atomic bombs like the one dropped on Hiroshima) disintegrated in the air, flattening thousands of trees up to a distance of 1,300 km. The shockwave from this event was felt in many parts of the world, the explosion was heard up to a thousand kilometers away, the Trans-Siberian Railway, which passed 900 km to the south, almost derailed, and the dust that rose into the stratosphere lit up many European cities, still shrouded in the pre-dawn darkness, like daylight. In fact, millions witnessed this strange purple glow in the skies at the time.
The first hypothesis, formulated in the hours following the phenomenon by astronomers, was that a small asteroid or a comet, approximately 30 meters in diameter, had fallen. This theory remains the most widely accepted among scientists today. However, given the complete absence of a crater, which was noted from the earliest reports by military officers present in Siberia, it was thought that the explosion occurred at an altitude of about eight kilometers upon impact with the Earth's atmosphere. It was the beginning of the century, and Positivism praised the virtues of technology. But soon, World War I would break out, and in 1917, the October Revolution would bring Lenin's Bolsheviks to power in Russia. As a result, Russia (which became the Soviet Union) had more pressing matters to do than searching for the presumed meteorite. From the four scientific expeditions led by Russian mineralogist Leonid Kulik starting in 1928 (over twenty years after the incident), no conclusive results were obtained.
No impact crater was found and more surprisingly, no debris from the potential asteroid were discovered either. The only evidence Kulik provided were photographs of burned and fallen trees, all pointing in a single direction, clearly due to an immense force. However, these were not considered sufficient proof of an impact with a cosmic object. An object orbiting the Sun, even if small, travels at a considerable speed, causing a small asteroid to burn like a shooting star if too small, or to hit the ground creating a crater if heavy enough. So, without a crater, what was it?
Among the numerous expeditions that followed, Professor A. V. Zolotov in 1960 found traces of iridium and nickel. However, these findings were not deemed valid because such elements can be found in regions of ancient volcanism like central Siberia. Nevertheless, some mysterious anomalies were observed in the area: strange glassy spherules about a millimeter in diameter were found among the ashes and sand of the burned trunks, oddly fused and vitrified together. Even stranger were some trees at the site that had grown back incredibly fast and with monstrous deformations, as if exposed to radioactivity. Incidentally, the same phenomenon was recorded in Chernobyl after the tragic accident in 1986.
These anomalies suggest more of a nuclear explosion than a meteorite impact because only an extremely intense heat source, around 15,000°C, could have melted and vitrified the ground. One strange event occurred before the impact: according to local people and stories passed down by shamans, all the reindeer and animals in the area "disappeared," possibly fleeing as if they "knew" what was about to happen. The people were also "warned" (but by whom?) through dreams and hallucinatory visions, prompting them to leave their huts, the yurts made of yak skin. The few who ignored the visions later found themselves miles and miles away from their homes, not knowing how they got there.
How should we judge these claims? It's worth noting that although a century has passed since the Tunguska incident, the memory of the event is still vivid for the inhabitants of all of Siberia. Not far from Tunguska is Lake Baikal, which is famously sacred and surrounded by shamanic communities with highly developed oral traditions. In the 1970s, during the height of UFO fever, some mystery researchers even speculated that the phenomenon was caused by a UFO crash. This theory arose because it was thought that no energy source on Earth in the 1910s, similar to nuclear energy, could have caused the explosion. Traditional science responded by "blaming" a lightning strike on an exposed methane deposit, triggering a chain reaction of explosions. We don't know which of these theories is more absurd...
Speaking of incredible theories, in 1973 two American physicists, A. A. Jackson and M. P. Ryan of the University of Texas, proposed that a mini black hole "fell" at Tunguska. How it could have fallen, we don't know! (But wouldn't it have sucked the Earth, the Sun, and the planets into it?) A more realistic theory was proposed by C. Cowan and H. Craneel, along with C. R. Atluri and W. F. Libby, also American physicists, who hypothesized the fall of an antimatter fragment: even a tiny particle could have caused this disaster.
In the 1980s, it was suggested that the explosion was caused by an early atomic device constructed by a small community of scientist-alchemists who had been exiled to Siberia by the Tsar in the 1800s. The attempt to control this energy led to the explosion, killing the inhabitants and destroying the community's dwellings. Attention to Tunguska waned rapidly by the end of the 20th century until, surprisingly, some years ago, the magazine Nexus interviewed a Russian, Valery Uvarov, who claimed that the explosion was not caused by an asteroid or a comet but by something artificial. Uvarov, head of the department at the National Security Academy in St. Petersburg, spoke of the existence of an ancient underground installation about a hundred kilometers from Tunguska. According to him, this installation was not of terrestrial origin but had protected the planet from a celestial threat.
Awakened a few months before June 30, 1908, it allegedly fired a kind of plasma missile (which Uvarov called "Terminators") that destroyed a massive meteorite in the atmosphere a few kilometers above the ground. This cosmic object would certainly have hit the Earth with globally catastrophic effects; thus, the plasma missiles saved the lives of all the planet's inhabitants. This installation is supposedly located in an area not far from Lake Baikal and extends over approximately one hundred thousand square kilometers. According to the researcher, this kind of "laser cannon" was created by the inhabitants of a hypothetical Planet X: perhaps the Twelfth Planet, Nibiru, populated by the Anunnaki gods described by the Sumerians?
The inhabitants of this planet are said to have built this base to protect our planet from potential impacts by celestial objects. Uvarov claims that 12,500 years ago, the Earth was struck by an asteroid, which disrupted its axis of rotation and distance from the Sun. He claimed to have found this information in some ancient manuscripts that are 4,000 years old. According to some proponents of this story, Uvarov's account needs clarification: if there were an ancient underground "Earth-saving" installation, it could be attributed to the kingdom of Agharti, which has its main seat, Shamballah, not far from Siberia, under the Gobi Desert.
There are many hypotheses formulated about the Tunguska mystery, but many more speculations have been made. The latest, proposed by researchers from the University of Bologna, suggests that there is indeed an impact crater located within Lake Cheko, about 8 km from one of the epicenters. It seems that the meteorite, comet, or fragment of antimatter may have broken into several pieces... We still do not know what really happened in that place, whether it was a natural cause or not that caused all that devastation. Who knows if there are other theories on the subject... We can only hope that research continues and that one day the truth comes to light.
Meanwhile, Tunguska remains an enigma still without answers.
