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Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Mystery of Train #1702

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Mystery of Train #1702


A freight train pulled an UFO for an hour

The event happened about 20 years ago, however people in Karelia still remember it. Witnesses of the mysterious incident are still alive and now believe that UFO actually exists.
In February 1985, a freight train #1702 consisting of 70 empty cars and a locomotive followed to the city of Kostomuksha through Petrozavodsk and Suoyarvi. Engine driver Orlov and his mate Mironov were talking while watching the railway. The train passed the station of Essoila at 2:35 a.m. according to the schedule. 

Suddenly, Sergey Orlov noticed some strange object behind the trees; the round object was moving parallel to the train. It was not clear what the object might be. The engine driver saw the object let out a ray of light toward the ground and then drew it in. 

Mironov could not speak for a moment as he saw the ball cross the railway and start moving 30-50 meters ahead of the train. Sergey Orlov stopped the engine and slammed on the brakes to avoid collision with the bright ball. But the train would not stop; it seemed that some strange power still pulled it. 

The engine driver and the mate felt as if hypnotized and stared at the mysterious object. Later, they told the inquiry the object was a regular geometrical form of about four meters in diameter. It moved silently above the surface as if drifting. 

The train was approaching the Novye Peski station. Sergey Orlov switched on his portable radio and felt happy when the device was on. He made desperate attempts to explain what has happened to the train to a person on duty at the station. The woman could hardly understand what the engine driver was saying, but still went out to meet the train approaching the station. The woman was extremely surprised to see some vibrating object looking like an upturned basin, the shining ball followed the vibrating object and only after them the train appeared at a speed of 60 km per hour. It seemed that the ball might hit the building of the small station. 

But right before the switch the ball suddenly separated from the diesel locomotive and passed around the building of the station. But the train would not stop and passed the station at its gathered speed. 

Historian Alexey Popov investigating UFO in the republic of Karelia says that the engine driver and the mate mention only the ball because they could not see the object resembling an upturned basin from the cab. 

On that mysterious day, as soon as the ball passed the switch it immediately rushed to the train. When it moved off the train, its speed reduced at least by half. The diesel locomotive twitched heavily, and the men inside of the cab hit against the windshield. However, the locomotive gathered its speed as soon as the shining ball approached the train again.  

The train managed to stop only near the Zastava station. The ball disappeared behind the forest. The locomotive crew had to wait for a train coming from the opposite direction, to the city of Petrozavodsk. The engine driver got out of the cab to examine the wheels. As soon as he walked around the locomotive he felt some strange force press him against the machine. He could not move; when the man could move he hardly reached the cab. That was strange but as soon as he reached the cab, the train started off as if it was waiting for the man to take the seat. The train kept on moving for some time until the shining ball disappeared behind the forest. 

Alexey Popov says that the incident lasted for an hour and twenty minutes, the period within which the ball pulled the train for over 50 kilometers. That spared 300 kilograms of diesel oil for the locomotive. People involved in the incident experienced a strong nervous shock. Automatic recorders of the locomotive and other official documents prove the reliability of the strange incident. However, there is no believable explanation to the phenomenon. The shining ball was noticed earlier at the Kutizhma station even before it came across the train #1702. 

This is a hard task to pull a train weighing 1560 tons for 50 kilometers; it requires much energy, indeed. Sergey Orlov says the ball acted rather intelligently, as it passed around switches and buildings of railway stations, and even withdrew to the forest when a train appeared from the opposite direction.
The story seems to be incredible until one meets people who took part in it. The railway workers would hardly lie, as they do believe that the incident was an UFO visit. 

Doctor of physical and mathematical sciences from the Moscow State University Leonid Speransky commented upon the phenomenon. "The hypothesis of extraterrestrial life existing in other galaxies cannot be ruled out. It is frequently said that organic substances may be formed not only on the basis of carbon and water, the way substances are formed on this planet. Adherents of the theory say that life may be formed on the basis of silicone and other chemical compounds; substances formed out of these materials can survive under extremely high or low temperatures. If we allow these theories, then we can suppose that life may exist even in the form of clouds and shining balls of some organic substance. However, we can neither confirm nor deny existence of extraterrestrial life as based on present-day scientific researches." 

The number of reports about UFOs from witnesses is enormous in this country. The Vestnik UFO bulletin held a research in 1999 and revealed that about 9 per cent of Russia's population say they witnessed UFOs and 56 per cent believe that these objects exist. The UFO is a universal phenomenon, as polls held in other countries reveal approximately the same situation. In the epoch of space voyages people are used to seeing planes, helicopters and balloons high in the skies. However, they still expect miracle and strange phenomena. 

In 1963, the US carried out the Blue Book project and considered about 13,000 reports from UFO witnesses. Upon completion of the research, the commission decreed there was no evidence proving that the phenomena under report were of extraterrestrial origin. In some cases we do not have enough information to define what we actually see above the head. The nature of UFO phenomena is in fact fantastic stories invented by people. The phenomenon observed in Petrozavodsk highly likely belongs to the category of UFO legends; not only participants but also law enforcement structures believed in its reality. One of the most credible hypotheses explaining the phenomenon is that the shining object was in fact ball lightning that appears not only in thunderstorm. Unfortunately, ball lightning is the least studied phenomenon today. It is highly likely to be an enormous energy substance which power can be compared with a large electric power station; it spontaneously ejects quantum vacuum energy. It is well known that ball lightning can influence man's psyche and state of health; unfortunately people cannot predict how ball lighting will move or control it.
Natalia Leskova

Underwater civilizations

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Underwater civilizations


For more than 100 years sailors of merchant and military ships have been reporting strange occurrences: underwater bright lights and unidentified objects. Majority of such reports came from regions of Persian and Siamese Gulfs as well as Southern Chinese Sea and Malay strait.

In 1963, the United Stated were conducting Navy training not far from Puerto Rico. Suddenly, the training session had to be stopped. Sonar operators determined that one of the submarines was changing its coordinates and was following a strange object. The object was moving at an incredible speed: 150 knots. No modern submarine is capable of traveling at such rapid speed. (On average, subs cannot exceed 45 knots). Obviously, the object escaped after maneuvering at 20 000 feet. A report was immediately forwarded to the Commander of the Atlantic fleet in Norfolk, VA, informs “Express K”.

American scientist A. Sanderson, who devoted many years of his life to studying ocean depths, writes the following about a mysterious occurrence which he observed from the deck of an ice-breaker in the Atlantics: “Suddenly, something emerged from the waters, breaking thick ice; the huge silver object disappeared in the sky…”.

After thoroughly examining US Navy archives regarding such unidentified underwater objects, Sanderson came up with an interesting hypothesis. His hypothesis talks about the existence of highly developed civilization right here on earth.
“All I can assume is the following: the hypothetical circular “spaceships” could have used continuously working scanners of radar type, their “beams” in turn become visible for us only when they produce luminescent masses of small unicellular organisms…”.

Such hypothesis appears to be rather believable. It can also be added that in case the emissive power of the so-called radars gets too high, then water itself will be luminescent.

In 1928, peasants from the village Shuknovolk (Karelia) witnessed another remarkable event. The phenomenon remains a mystery even today. One of the locals, F. P. Fedotov, presents his account of those days.

“Something resembling a big cylinder with red flame streaming from its rear end collapsed into the lake. Some say, that it is still lying on the bottom of this lake and hampers fishermen to fish there. After the fall of the object, local residents started noticing a strange 1-1,2-meter long creature. The creature’s body appeared slim and its hands were touching the ground. Each hand contained four fingers. The creature was incredibly fearful; it would always hide in the water whenever approached by humans.”

Japanese have a legend of a cane man. According to the legend, not only did the man live under water but he also could fly at an incredible speed. The legend has much in common with the “alien” in Karelia. Both of them have membranes with claws. Japanese have an image of this creature which dates back to VII century.
Do underwater civilizations exist?

Михайлов Андрей

How Did Wolves Become Dogs?


How Did Wolves Become Dogs?

From the tiny Chihuahua to the massive mastiff, the over 200 breeds of domesticated dogs come in a wide variety of different body sizes and proportions, hair lengths and textures, and demeanors.1 Evolution asserts that animals change through a gradual accumulation of mutations. But evidence shows that the wolf-to-dog transition occurred rapidly, according to pre-designed genetic potential and not mutations.
Mark Derr, author of a new book titled How the Dog Became the Dog: From Wolves to Our Best Friends, discussed on National Public Radio's program Fresh Air how human interaction may have domesticated wolves beginning in the Ice Age. Since dogs are smaller than wolves and have more varying proportions, coat colors, and other features, interviewer Dave Davies asked Derr, "So how could this association of wolves with humans lead to these physical changes?"
Derr replied:

Well, what happened was that you had populations of dog-wolves that became isolated from the greater wolf population and in doing so, they began to breed more closely—to inbreed as it were. And when you inbreed, you get genetic peculiarities that arise, and those peculiarities then begin to become part of the population…. In other words, a mutation will appear in a small population. If I don't want it, what I do is kill the animals so that they don't reproduce. If I do want it, I try to get them to reproduce.2

So, according to Derr, a certain "peculiarity"—for example, a curly tail—first arises by mutation. This mutation and its resulting trait are supposedly then concentrated into a distinct dog lineage by breeding the dogs that have it.
At first, this might sound reasonable, but a landmark study published in the journal Bioessays in 2009 told an entirely different story. Researchers artificially selected foxes for "tameability." Foxes were certainly part of the originally created dog kind, having been known to interbreed with coyotes, for instance. The experiment, which utilized Russian fox fur farms, began "about 50 years ago" and has produced scores of fox generations thus far.3

The researchers chose foxes that were the least aggressive and bred them. They chose 100 females and 30 males "as the initial parental generation for selection for tolerance of human or docility, then for tameability."3 Then, they used approximately the top 10 percent of the tamest offspring as parents for each next generation for dozens of generations.
"As a result of such a rigorous selection, the offspring exhibiting the aggressive and fear avoidance responses were eliminated from the experimental population in just two-three generations of selection," the study authors wrote.3

They didn't need thousands of years, just three generations. And at just the sixth generation, fox pups eagerly sought human contact, complete with wagging tails, "whining, whimpering, and licking in a dog-like manner."3
And amazingly, the tame foxes quickly acquired an array of traits shared by many domesticated mammals, showing that mutations were not involved. To show this, the authors compared the wild and domesticated horse, cow, sheep, pig, dog, and rabbit. The wild animals have similar and stable traits, including erect ears, straight tails, restricted breeding seasons, and uniform coat colors and body sizes. But the domesticated ones had such features as floppy ears, curled tails, spotted coat colors, variations in coat textures and lengths, variations in breeding time, and marked differences in skeletal size and proportion.
Surely, chance-based genetic mutations could never produce identical variations in so many different kinds of mammals. For this reason, the authors wrote, "Finally, it is difficult to interpret the changes in the domesticated foxes as a result of randomly arisen new mutations."3
Instead, changes in gene regulation must have caused these trait variations. That's not evolution by mutation, but variation by design. Thus, according to this research, dogs could have become "man's best friend" in three dog generations from a wolf ancestor simply by selective breeding in the recent past.
References
  1. The American Kennel Club lists over 235 breeds, 173 of which are eligible to compete at AKC events. See the Complete Breed List posted on the American Kennel Club website at akc.org. Wikipedia includes over 500 breeds in its list of dog breeds posted on wikipedia.org. 
  2. How Dogs Evolved Into 'Our Best Friends.' Fresh Air. National Public Radio. Transcript posted on npr.org November 8, 2011, accessed November 15, 2011.
  3. Trut, L., I. Oskina and A. Kharlamova. 2009. Animal evolution during domestication: the domesticated fox as a model. Bioessays. 31 (3): 349-360. 
* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.

Perfect Molecule for Vision Shows Eyes Were Designed

Perfect Molecule for Vision Shows Eyes Were Designed

The eye is an ingeniously designed biological mechanism. In 1802, William Paley used eyes as a clear illustration of what he called "contrivances," i.e., "well-designed machines." Before Charles Darwin's publications, many naturalists used Paley's textbook, Natural Theology.
Paley wrote regarding the eye's adjustable lens: "Can anything be more decisive of contrivance than this? The most secret laws of optics must have been known to the author of a structure endowed with such a capacity of change."1
He attributed the design and construction of eyes to the Creator God, whereas Darwin credited their design to nature. The retina contains tiny molecular machines that capture light and convert it into electrochemical signals. New research on how they do this emphasizes exactly why Paley was right.
Two molecules in the retina—vitamin A and a protein named "opsin" that together make "rhodopsin"—capture single light photons. When light strikes the vitamin, it changes shape and becomes the molecule "11-cis-retinal." This in turn changes the rhodopsin's shape. When light activates enough of these molecular switches within the light-sensitive cell, they cause downstream biochemical systems to amplify and send the signal from the retina, through the optic nerve, and to the brain. This complex photochemical reaction is at the heart of what allows eyes to detect light and send signals that the brain can form into meaningful images.
When light strikes vitamin A, the molecule bends at the 11th carbon bond. In other versions, or "isomers," of this chemical, the bend could occur at the 9th, 10th, or 13th carbon atoms. Curious to find out why vertebrate and squid eyes use 11-cis-retinal instead of another isomer, researchers tested the various isomers for light receptivity. They constructed digital molecular models and "analyzed the structure, stability, energetics, and spectroscopy to try to find out what makes 11-cis-retinal nature's preferred isomer," according to a report by PhysOrg.2
But did nature really "prefer" this particular vitamin, and did it integrate the vitamin with opsin in order to generate an electrical impulse from light?
Publishing in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the team of chemists wrote, "One of the basic and unresolved puzzles in the chemistry of vision concerns the natural selection of 11-cis-retinal as the light-sensing chromophore [molecule] in visual pigments."3 The research question was essentially, why 11-cis-retinal and not some other, similar molecule?
Lead author and Emory University chemist Sivakumar Sekharan told PhysOrg, "Our results show that the strong electrostatic interaction between retinal and opsin favors the natural selection of 11-cis- over other cis-isomers."2 In other words, the researchers found that only when vitamin A bends at the 11th carbon atom—not the 9th, 10th, or any other—does it receive light and interact with opsin.
However, their experimental results did not "show" natural selection at all! They merely showed that opsin and 11-cis-retinal fit like a hand in a glove.
Sekharan also said, "This indeed is very surprising given the fact that, outside the protein environment, 11-cis-retinal is one of the least stable isomers. Apparently, our results on cow, monkey and squid [eyes] demonstrate that organisms everywhere may tend to gravitate towards common selection."2
But their research focus begs the question of who or what "selected" this isomer, and they gave no space to the possibility that an actual person or selector was responsible instead of nature. The surprise comes from the fact that on its own, vitamin A almost never exists in its 11-cis-retinal form. Therefore, natural selection would not have "seen" it. So, how could nature select what it cannot even see?4
The Bible offers a different source for the eye's development: "He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? he that formed the eye, shall he not see?"5 Not only was the Creator fully aware of the laws of optics that William Paley recognized so long ago, but when He formed the eye He also intimately knew the laws of electrostatic interactions, biomolecular stability, and chemical energetics explored in this recent retina research.
Having formed all molecules, in His omniscience God certainly selected the perfect vitamin to perform this key task in transforming light into vision.
References
  1. Paley, W. 1802. Natural Theology: Or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature. London: Wilks and Taylor, 29.
  2. Zyga, L. Scientists solve mystery of the eye. PhysOrg. Posted on physorg.com November 17, 2011, accessed November 17, 2011.
  3. Sekharan, S. and K. Morokuma. 2011. Why 11-cis-Retinal? Why Not 7-cis-, 9-cis-, or 13-cis-Retinal in the Eye? Journal of the American Chemical Society. 133 (47): 19052-19055.
  4. Guliuzza, R. 2010. Natural Selection Is Not "Nature's Intelligence." Acts & Facts. 39 (5): 10-11.
  5. Psalm 94:9.
* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.

Is the Cambrian Explosion Problem Solved?

Is the Cambrian Explosion Problem Solved?

Cambrian rock layers contain many strange animal fossils, and very few fossils appear in layers below them. Called the "Cambrian explosion of life," the creatures in these layers come from all the major groups of animals alive today (including fish, which represent the vertebrates), plus many more that later became extinct.
Evolutionists, starting with Charles Darwin, have had a difficult time explaining why such richly diverse aquatic life forms appeared so suddenly and with no trace of evolutionary ancestry in lower (pre-Cambrian) rocks. According to neo-Darwinism, new life forms develop through time, chance, and death. Without the time, the formula cannot work, and yet Cambrian fossils are a parade of well-designed creatures that lived at the same time, not in separate evolutionary ages.
This problem is what some scientists term the "Cambrian Conundrum,"1 and researchers recently made another attempt to solve it. But their scenario, published in the journal Science, is a series of unfounded ad hoc stories coated with a scientific-sounding façade.
The standard tale is that Cambrian creatures did not evolve until about 500 million years ago. In contrast, these authors suggested that animals were actually alive and evolving 800 million years ago. But without the fossils to support their story, why should other scientists believe it?
Their answer was to ignore the fossils and emphasize molecular clocks. When the idea of a molecular clock was first conceived, researchers believed that DNA bases change at a steady rate over time, and thus "tick" at a reliable rate.
However, a decade of abundant research has clearly shown that DNA base change rates are not steady at all, and they are restricted to mutational "hot spots" and non-lethal changes that are different for various genes. For these reasons, and because most molecular clock-based evolutionary histories are markedly different from fossil-based ones, researchers routinely "calibrate" molecular clocks to fossils of supposedly "known ages."2, 3 The molecular clock estimates in this Science study were adjusted to 24 fossil-based "ages."
Thus tuned, the researchers' clocks indicated that "the last common ancestor of all living animals arose nearly 800 Ma [million years ago]."1 This falls within the range reported by Stony Brook University's Barry Levinson, who wrote in BioScience in 2008 that the molecular-based histories constantly contradict the fossil-based histories of life on earth.4
But if this molecule-based age of 800 million years is true, then how did animals avoid fossilization for 300 million years?
The Science authors dismissed this problem and wrote that "teasing apart the mechanisms underlying the Cambrian explosion requires disentangling evolutionary origins from geological first appearances, and the only way to separate the two is to use a molecular clock."1 In other words, they asserted that molecular clock procedures, though known to be unreliable, provide the real evolutionary history, not fossils.
The fact that these authors calibrated their "clock" to fossil age assignments proves that their clock was just as unreliable as prior clocks. It relied on the very fossil ages that their attempted solution to the Cambrian Conundrum tried to avoid! They can't have it both ways, and they should not have cherry-picked parts of the fossil record to serve their story—or the seven genes that best served their molecular clock estimates.
The Cambrian Conundrum is still a fossil-based problem for evolution. But now that evolution-based molecular clocks fly in the face of the evolution-based history attached to fossils, the conundrum has only worsened.
But the creation model suffers no such difficulties. Since vast marine animal varieties were killed and deposited at the same time when swept up and buried by Noah's Flood, it would be expected to find a sudden "explosion" of them in the rock record.
References
  1. Erwin, D. H. et al. 2011. The Cambrian Conundrum: Early Divergence and Later Ecological Success in the Early History of Animals. Science. 334 (6059): 1091-1097.
  2. Thomas, B. Darwin's Evolutionary Tree 'Annihilated.' ICR News. Posted on icr.org February 3, 2009, accessed December 2, 2011.
  3. Thomas, B. New Study Contradicts Flower Fossil Dates. ICR News. Posted on icr.org April 9, 2010, accessed December 2, 2011.
  4. Levinton, J. S. 2008. The Cambrian Explosion: How Do We Use the Evidence. BioScience. 58 (9): 862.
* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.
http://www.icr.org/article/cambrian-explosion-problem-solved/

Marine Reptile Fossil Rewrites Evolution


Marine Reptile Fossil Rewrites Evolution

The evolutionary history of certain extinct marine reptiles just got rewritten.
After rapidly evolving an array of variations, one particular variety of the dolphin-shape marine reptiles known as ichthyosaurs supposedly died out completely in extinction events dispersed over millions of years. But the recent description of out-of-place ichthyosaur fossils shows that this conception is wrong, and additional related clues point to even deeper problems.
A team of paleontologists examined ichthyosaur bone fossils from England and Germany, identifying a particular species in Cretaceous rocks.1 They didn't expect this, since other researchers had described similar-looking fossils farther below, in middle Jurassic rocks. The newly described ichthyosaurs were supposedly deposited some 60 million years later, having presumably lived through earlier catastrophic extinctions.
Ulrich Joger, a German paleontologist and one of the co-authors of the study published online in PLoS ONE, told BBC News, "It's a spectacular find. It raises new questions about the [Jurassic] (sic) extinction theory."2
One such question is why so many other animals apparently became extinct while this variety of ichthyosaurs survived. But this is only a problem if one assumes that the rock layers in question are separated by millions of years and punctuated by separate extinction events.
Perhaps, instead, the local fossil-bearing rocks in England and Germany were deposited in rapid succession by tsunami-like waves associated with a global catastrophe, burying various groups of creatures in a sequence of quickly formed strata. This scenario needs no imaginative add-ons to explain why only certain species survived for "millions" of years longer than others, since the dogma of vast time doesn't encumber it.
And the global flood scenario has the added benefit of explaining why there are ichthyosaur fossils at all. Only a powerful catastrophe can cover swift and strong-swimming animals quickly enough to completely bury them and prevent them from natural rapid decay.
The researchers examined ichthyosaur fossils taken from the Cambridge Greensand Formation in England. This rock layer also has ankylosaur dinosaurs, duckbill dinosaur teeth, extinct diving birds,3 flying reptiles,4 tiny crustaceans, clams,5 and ammonites.6
In 2011, workers learned of ankylosaurs, ichthyosaurs, clams, and ammonites packed in a Canadian sandstone.7 Those creatures originally lived nowhere near one another. What could have buried such diverse fauna together in the sand? Certainly, sea and land creatures were mixed in some catastrophe.
The energy and extent of the worldwide Flood described in the Bible fits these eclectic fossil assemblages. The Bible says that during the global Flood, waters covered the entire planet, resulting in the death of all flesh "that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man,"8 with the exception of those preserved with Noah on the Ark.
In the muddy process of ocean water inundating the land, many sea creatures like ichthyosaurs and ammonites would have been buried together with those land creatures like ankylosaurs that were outside the Ark. And if the Flood event described in the Bible best explains rocks and fossils, then researchers should entirely reject evolution's ever-changing stories of deep time punctuated by multiple extinction events.
References
  1. Fischer, V. et al. 2012. New Ophthalmosaurid Ichthyosaurs from the European Lower Cretaceous Demonstrate Extensive Ichthyosaur Survival across the Jurassic–Cretaceous Boundary. PLoS ONE. 7 (1): e29234.
  2. German marine reptile find rewrites fossil record. BBC News. Posted on bbc.co.uk January 5, 2012, accessed January 10, 2012.
  3. Weishampel, D. B. et al. 2004. Dinosaur distribution (Early Cretaceous, Europe). In The Dinosauria, 2nd ed. Weishampel, D. B., P. Dodson and H. Osmólska, eds. Berkeley: University of California Press.
  4. Kellner, A. W. A., M. B. Aguirre-Urreta and V. A. Ramos. 2003. On the pterosaur remains from the Río Belgrano formation (Barremian), Patagonian Andes of Argentina. Anais de Academia Brasileira de Ciências. 75 (4).
  5. Wilkinson, I. P. 2006. The holostratigraphy of the Albian Stage (Lower Cretaceous) of the United Kingdom and its continental shelf. British Geological Survey Research Report RR/6/01.
  6. Monks, N. 2002. Cladistic Analysis of a Problematic Ammonite Group: the Hamitidae (Cretaceous, Albian-turonian) and Proposals for New Cladistic Terms. Paleontology. 45 (4): 689-707.
  7. See Thomas, B. Dinosaur Fossil 'Wasn't Supposed to Be There'. ICR News. Posted on icr.org April 14, 2011, accessed January 10, 2012.
  8. Genesis 7:21.
* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.
Article posted on January 18, 2012.

THE TUNGUSKA EXPLOSION OF 1908

THE TUNGUSKA EXPLOSION OF 1908
Mark W. Brazo and Steven A. Austin Research Associate in Geology
 
Origins 9(2):82-93 (1982).
All contents copyright © 1984 Geoscience Research Institute.
Major catastrophic occurrences on Earth are infrequent.
Explanation of events even in recent historical times can prove to be most difficult.
INTRODUCTION
A catastrophe may be defined as a natural event of large magnitude (energy), short duration, wide extent and low frequency. The Tunguska (pronounced: toon-goos'-ka) explosion of 1908 fulfills all five parts of the above definition and can be considered the epitome of a cosmic impact catastrophe. An understanding of this unique event and its origin could provide insight into large ancient asteroidal or cometary collisions with the Earth (e.g., Sudbury and Popigay impact structures) and possible global catastrophic effects (e.g., from flooding, tectonism, volcanism, glaciation and air blast waves). Catastrophism, a doctrine spurned by uniformitarian scientists in the twentieth century, is now being confirmed by events which have occurred in this century. The scientific interest stimulated by the Tunguska explosion of 1908 has produced enormous speculation and controversy as to its origin. The theories offered by those who have studied the event range from the realm of science (a meteorite, comet, or nuclear explosion) to the realm of science fiction (a black hole, anti-matter rock, or an alien spacecraft). Each theory has protagonists promoting and defending their point of view in light of the evidence, yet, because the scientific community did not view the actual event, but only observed the devastating results (it was 19 years after the impact before the first scientist arrived on the scene), each theory contains some speculation. Before delving into the specifics of each theory, it is important to review the actual facts of the event.
Description of the Event
The Tunguska explosion occurred on the morning of June 30, 1908 at 7:17 A.M. local time (0h 17m 11s U.T.) in the area of the Stony Tunguska River with the coordinates of the epicenter being 60º55' N, 101º57' E (Kridec 1966). This location is in the central Siberian area of Russia, approximately 1000 km north of the town of Irkutsk and Lake Baikal (Figure 1).

Figure 1.
FIGURE 1. Area map of the 1908 Tunguska explosion event. After Sullivan 1979.

The first report of the explosion was in the Irkutsk paper dated July 2, 1908, published two days after the explosion:
...the peasants saw a body shining very brightly (too bright for the naked eye) with a bluish-white light.... 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 (which was covered with forest at this point) it seemed to be pulverized, and in its place 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 flames broke through the cloud.
    All the inhabitants of the village ran out into the street in panic. The old women wept, everyone thought that the end of the world was approaching
(Kridec 1966).
S.B. Semedec, an eyewitness in the village of Vadecara about 60 km south of the explosion site, provided excellent information:
...I was sitting in the porch of the house at the trading station of Vadecara at breakfast time...when suddenly in the north...the sky was split in two and high above the forest the whole northern part of the sky appeared to be covered with fire. At that moment I felt great heat as if my shirt had caught fire; this heat came from the north side. I wanted to pull off my shirt and throw it away, but at that moment there was a bang in the sky, and a mighty crash was heard. I was thrown to the ground about three sajenes [about 7 meters] away from the porch and for a moment I lost consciousness.... The crash was followed by noise like stones falling from the sky, or guns firing. The earth trembled, and when I lay on the ground I covered my head because I was afraid that stones might hit it (Kridec 1966).
Through comparison of old seismograms of the Tunguska event and seismograms of the decaya Zemlya and Lop-Nor nuclear-weapon tests, Ben-Menahem (1975) determined that the Tunguska projectile had "the effects of an Extraterrestrial Nuclear Missile of yield 12.5±2.5 megatons." This is approximately 3 orders of magnitude greater than the Hiroshima A-bomb and about one-fifth the energy of the largest hydrogen bomb explosion (McWhirter and McWhirter 1974). The height at which the explosion occurred was estimated to be approximately 7.5 km, with a total energy release of approximately 3×1023 ergs, 5×1018 ergs of which was changed into seismic energy (Ben-Menahem 1975). More energy went into the air blast than the earthquake. F.J.W. Whipple (1930) estimated the energy of the air blast wave to be 3.2×1020 ergs. The seismic activity measured on the Richter scale was 5.0; and the air compression wave went twice around the world, according to recordings at meteorological stations.
The projectile traveled in a southeast to northwest direction with a 60º azimuth, according to Fesenkov (1966) who made use of eyewitness accounts and an inspection of the radial symmetry of the trees at the explosion site. This direction was probably immediately prior to the explosion; however, there are conflicting reports as to the actual line of flight (discussed later when dealing with the causal theories of the Tunguska explosion).
The temperature at the center of the fireball was estimated by one source to be up to 30 million degrees Fahrenheit (LeMaire 1980). Some storage huts in the nearby vicinity of the focus were found devastated by fire and the silverware and tin utensils within were deformed by intense heat. "Preceding the front of the shock wave there arises a heated zone whose radiating surface area is far larger than that of the shock wave itself" (Stanyukovich and Bronshten 1961). This is substantiated by Semedec who first felt the heat wave, then was thrown to the ground by the air shock wave.
The inhabitants of Central Siberia saw the fall and explosion of the meteorite over an area with a radius of 600-1000 km. Eighty million trees in the taiga (coniferous forest) were uprooted and blown down for a radius of 30-40 km (F.J.W. Whipple 1934). Some trees on the leeward side of hills were somewhat protected, yet still had their branches broken off and bark stripped to leave them standing naked, resembling telegraph poles.
After the impact, forest fires broke out and ravaged an area of 10-15 km in radius (Astapowitsch 1934). Kridec (1960) describes these forest fires as being unnatural. The trunks of trees and their branches were not burned through but were only scorched on the surface. Apparently a searing heat wave caused the scorching, yet a conventional forest fire was not present. Some trees were entirely scorched in standing position, but were bent away from the epicenter. In normal fires in the Vadecara area, trees remained vertical with fire damage occurring at the lower sections while the tree tops remained untouched. It is also interesting to note that some trees which had been stripped of bark showed no signs of scorching (Kridec 1963).
The nights following the Tunguska meteorite were anomalous. Abnormally bright nighttime illumination was reported throughout Europe and Western Russia to the extent that people could read news print at midnight without artificial lighting (Kridec 1966). The cause of the anomalous illumination of the night sky is discussed later.
The Russian government made no immediate attempt to investigate the event, due to its internal political upheavals at the time of the explosion, and because the incident occurred in such a desolate area without harming anyone. In 1921, the country's fledgling Academy of Sciences appointed L.A. Kulik, a science worker at their Mineral Museum, to head a team of investigators who would travel through Siberia with the purpose of gaining information concerning meteorites from the local populace.
Kulik collected newspaper articles and questioned eyewitnesses in his attempt to pinpoint the time and location of the Tunguska fall. However, due to the lateness of the year (late autumn), the expedition did not attempt to maneuver through the taiga to investigate the impact site. In his four succeeding expeditions covering 1927-1939, Kulik obtained many sensational eyewitness accounts concerning the Tunguska meteorite.
In a local newspaper, the reporter described the bolide (a bright, detonating fireball) itself as a "body of fiery appearance" and a tail (probably a dust trail) as a "radiance." Other articles described "a fiery body like a beam shot from south to north west" with "a tongue of fire" appearing in place of the fiery bolide (Kridec 1966).
One witness to the event, a train engineer, said he felt "a kind of strong vibration of the air," then heard a "roar" which he believed to be "an earthquake or some other natural phenomenon," and which frightened him to the extent that he stopped the train thinking that it had gone off the rails (Kridec 1966). In fact, when he arrived at the station, he asked for an inspection to locate the problem on the train.
Another eyewitness reported that a thousand reindeer owned by the Evenki people were killed and many carcasses burned by the ensuing forest fire. It was one of the Evenki people, Okhchen, who eventually led Kulik to the impact site (Kridec 1966).
Potapovich, who served as a guide for Kulik, told Kulik that "his brother's hut was flattened to the ground, its roof was carried away by wind [apparently some sort of tent structure], and most of his reindeer fled in fright. The noise deafened his brother and the shock caused him to suffer a long illness" (Kridec 1966). Potapovich's brother lived on the Chambe River located just outside the limit of the tree damage (Figure 2).

Figure 2
FIGURE 2. Map depicting fallen tree pattern (arrows represent direction) from explosion of 1908. This is a closeup of the impact site of Figure 1. After Sullivan 1979 and Kridec 1966.

In the trading station at Vadecara, Kosolapov reported to Semedec (previously mentioned) "a fierce heat scorched my ears. I held them, thinking the roof was on fire...." Windows broke and the oven door on Kosolapov's stove flew off and landed on the bed across the room (Kridec 1966).
A farmer in the Kezhma area (about 200 km south of the impact site) related the following:
At that time I was ploughing my land at Narodima (6 km to the west of Kezhma). When I sat down to have my breakfast beside my plough, I heard sudden bangs, as if from gun-fire. My horse fell on its knees. From the north side above the forest a flame shot up. I thought the enemy was firing, since at that time there was talk of war. Then I saw that the fir forest had been bent over by the wind and I thought of a hurricane. I seized hold of my plough with both hands, so that it would not be carried off. The wind was so strong that it carried off some of the soil from the surface of the ground, and then the hurricane drove a wall of water up the Angara [a seiche perhaps]. I saw it all quite clearly, because my land was on a hillside (Kridec 1966).
After having obtained interesting and tantalizing eyewitness and newspaper accounts during his 1921 expedition, Kulik was anxious to reach the Stony Tunguska River region to locate the impact site of what he ascertained to be a meteorite. In 1927 Kulik was able to return to search for the Tunguska meteorite. After spending some time in Vadecara, Kulik made arrangements for Evenki hunters to guide his party to the impact site. Reaching the explosion site was an extremely arduous task.
The spectacle that confronted Kulik as he stood on a ridge overlooking the devastated area was overwhelming. He saw an area where trees up to three feet in diameter had snapped like toothpicks, were uprooted and strewn across the landscape. Upon closer examination, he located holes which he erroneously concluded were meteorite holes; however, he did not have the means at this time to excavate them.
During Kulik's three succeeding expeditions to determine the cause of the Tunguska event, his meteorite theory received no substantiating evidence. Despite tremendous hardships caused by the searing heat of summer, the coldness of winter and insufficient funds for supplies and equipment, Kulik and his party persevered to obtain evidence relating to the Tunguska explosion. Throughout his investigations and those of others covering a total of fifty years, there was no evidence of impacting iron, no impact craters, no meteorite remnant and no strewn field of particles. The only evidence left by the Tunguska bolide was toppled and burned trees. The holes that Kulik thought to be from meteorites proved to be natural depressions.
The Comet Theory
Due to a lack of evidence for the meteorite theory proposed by Kulik, other theories were proposed to explain the Tunguska event. Various authors (Cowan, Alturi and Libby 1965; Kridec 1960, 1966; Hughes 1976) have designated F.J.W. Whipple (1930-1934) as the initiator of the cometary hypothesis. Whipple proposed "that the meteor was essentially a small comet and that the tail of the comet was caught by the atmosphere" (F.J.W. Whipple 1934). However, in the same article only two paragraphs later, he stated: "I do not feel much confidence in this hypothesis."
A model of a comet nucleus is offered by F.L. Whipple (1950). This model consists of a large dirty snowball composed of dust and rock interspersed with water, methane and ammonia ices. Kridec (1963) and Hughes (1976) utilize this model to support their belief that the Tunguska projectile was a small comet. Yet, interestingly enough, F.L. Whipple (1975) questions such a possibility:
It appears unlikely, therefore, that the Tunguska explosion was produced by a bona fide active comet a hundred or so meters in dimension.... more likely, however, the Tunguska object was an inactive, low-density, friable body.... There is no reason to suspect that it was interstellar.
It is an understatement to suggest that the origin of the Tunguska explosion is controversial.
There are various elements of the cometary hypothesis that explain the eyewitness accounts and the associated physical data. Probably the most important concept supporting the comet hypothesis is the nature of flight of the Tunguska fireball. Fesenkov (1962) claims, "According to all evidence, this meteorite moved around the Sun in a retrograde direction, which is impossible for typical meteorites...." Fesenkov notes that meteorites rarely hit the earth in the morning, because the morning side faces forward in the planet's orbit. Usually the meteorite overtakes the earth from behind, on the evening side. However, comets have a wide range of orbits and velocities and could collide with the earth on the morning side, hitting head on at a velocity of approximately 60 km/sec (130,000 mph or Mach Number 180). Fesenkov (1966) demonstrates that the direction and angle of the attack toward the earth was from behind the sun; thus, the glare of the sun prevented sighting.
In addition to the evidence of the bolide's retrograde orbit was the brilliant night sky observed in Europe and Western Russia. Fesenkov (1966) points out that there was no anomalous glow on June 30, 1908, but that there was such a glow on July 1, 1908. There was no unusual illumination reported in the U.S., the southern hemisphere or in countries east of the explosion site. "The most probable explanation for the anomalously bright nights associated with the Tunguska meteorite fall would be that the meteorite was actually a little comet with a dust tail pointing away from the sun" (Fesenkov 1966). "These properties of the [dust] distribution can be explained if the cloud of cosmic particles was associated directly with the nucleus of the Tunguska comet, and pointed in a direction away from the sun" (Fesenkov 1966). This is a plausible explanation in regard to the brilliant nights observed in Europe. No other theory offered adequately explains this anomaly.
More evidence supporting a comet came to light in 1962 when technicians discovered microscopic pellets of magnetite and silicate globules, thought to be extraterrestrial, in soil samples from the Tunguska explosion site. A double spherule consisting of a magnetite pellet inside a larger silicate shell is unique to this event and thought to be the result of "rapid condensation of incandescent gas upon cooling" (Fesenkov 1966).
The final piece of evidence for the Tunguska comet explains physical observations satisfactorily. According to Whipple's model described above, the comet probably exploded prior to impact with evaporation of the components thereby leaving no remnant. By comparing the records of air waves from various sources, Ben-Menahem (1975) deduced that the height above ground where the explosion occurred was 7.5 km. There appear to have been three radiant centers made by fallen trees, according to Fesenkov (1966), which would indicate multiple explosions. F.J.W. Whipple (1930) noted that the air wave recorded on the microbarographs appears to indicate two types of waves; one generated by penetration of the object into the atmosphere, and the other generated by the explosion or explosions.
The Nuclear Theory
The similarity between the Hiroshima A-bomb devastation and the mysterious Tunguska effects gave rise to the notion that the 1908 event was caused by a man-made nuclear bomb. The fictional writings of the Soviet author Alexander Kazantsev in 1946 were the first to pick up the idea which scientists later considered. A prominent Soviet scientist, Alexei Zolotov, after a 17-year investigation, expanded the nuclear explosion theory by supposing it was caused by the visit of an alien spacecraft (TASS news release, mid-October 1976). According to Zolotov, a spaceship controlled by "beings from other worlds" may have caused the 1908 explosion. He imagined a nuclear-propelled craft that exploded accidentally due to a malfunction. Zolotov also admits to problems with the theory, realizing that safety devices would probably prevent such a mishap, and observing that the actual area of destruction was "an amazing demonstration of pinpoint accuracy and humanitarianism."
T.R. LeMaire, a science writer, continues this thought, by suggesting "The Tunguska blast's timing seems too fortuitous for an accident" (LeMaire 1980). He claims that a five-hour delay would make the target of destruction St. Petersburg, adding that a tiny change of course in space would have devastated populated areas of China or India.
Can we assume that the 'pilot' chose a cloudless day with excellent visibility from aloft to assure a safe drop? American Military strategy called for identical weather conditions; for a perfect strike on Hiroshima's industrial heart, the Enola Gay's bombardier was forbidden to release through a cloud cover: he had to see the target below. To maximize blast destruction, minimize radiation perils: the bomb was set to explode at a high altitude rather than against the ground. Similarly, the Siberian missile detonated high in the air, reducing or even eliminating fallout hazard (LeMaire 1980).
LeMaire maintains the "accident-explanation is untenable" because "the flaming object was being expertly navigated" using Lake Baikal as a reference point. Indeed, Lake Baikal is an ideal aerial navigation reference point being 400 miles long and about 35 miles wide. LeMaire's description of the course of the Tunguska object lends credence to the thought of expert navigation:
The body approached from the south, but when about 140 miles from the explosion point, while over Kezhma, it abruptly changed course to the east. Two hundred and fifty miles later, while above Preobrazhenka, it reversed its heading toward the west. It exploded above the taiga at 60º55' N, 101º57' E (LeMaire 1980).
Scientists who have reviewed eyewitness reports are not convinced of any course changes as the brilliant object traversed the sky. Neither are scientists convinced of nuclear temperature. Brown and Hughes (1977) state that a temperature of two million degrees Celsius (the supposed temperature obtained if all the kinetic energy of the comet, 3×1023 ergs, was changed into heating the component parts) is "substantially subnuclear." Furthermore, it is entirely fallacious to suppose that the sub-nuclear temperatures cannot produce nuclear effects...." They suggest that a thermo-chemical explosion could produce the effects of a nuclear bomb.
The Anti-matter Hypothesis
The anti-matter hypothesis is offered by Cowan, Alturi and Libby (1965) and supported by Gentry (1966). This theory proposes that an anti-rock composed of anti-matter was annihilated in the atmosphere above the Tunguska explosion site and caused the observed damage. Cowan et al. postulated that such an explosion would cause an increase in atmospheric radiocarbon. Upon analysis of C-14 content in a 300-year-old Douglas fir from Arizona, they believe that they obtained increased radiocarbon for the time of the event. However, the data presented in their paper appear to lack statistical significance for support of their conclusions. Furthermore, careful C-14 measurements of a tree nearer the blast fail to show an increase in 1909 (Lerman et al. 1967).
The Black-Hole Hypothesis
The last theory as to the cause of the Tunguska event is proffered by Jackson and Ryan (1973). They suggest that a black hole with a mass of 1022 to 1023 g would have the necessary energy (1023 ergs) to have caused the Tunguska destruction. Jackson and Ryan maintain that the black hole would cause the destruction as it pierced through the earth with the ease of cutting soft butter, exiting the earth through the Atlantic Ocean.
Beasley and Tinsley (1974) refute the black-hole theory because the microbarographs that recorded the air waves of the explosion did not record air waves of an exit point in the Atlantic Ocean. This is vital to the black-hole theory because the exit of the black hole from the earth would be expected to exhibit devastating effects similar to those at its entrance.
The black-hole concept also does not explain the magnetite and silicate globules found in the explosion region, nor does it account for the anomalously bright night sky observed over Europe. Beasley and Tinsley (1974) conclude, "All the evidence favors the idea that the impact which caused the Tunguska catastrophe involved a body with characteristics like a cometary nucleus rather than a black hole."
CONCLUSION
The Tunguska explosion is indeed unique and mysterious. Of the possible causes it appears that the present consensus favors the comet hypothesis. However, suggesting a consensus is quite tenuous. Though the other theories have plausibility, they have difficulty explaining the observed event and the resulting physical evidence. Making use of the cometary hypothesis allows for the following probable scenario.
Above central Siberia on June 30, 1908, at approximately 7:17 AM local time, a small comet entered the atmosphere from behind the sun and moved in a southeast to northwest direction. The comet was composed of about 30,000 tons of water, methane, and ammonia ice with traces of silicates and iron oxides. Penetrating the atmosphere at approximately 60 km/sec (130,000 mph), the object created an intense shock wave which wrapped tightly around its nose. As it descended that sunny morning, its nucleus exploded (possibly 3 times) approximately 8 km above the Earth's surface. A huge black cloud immediately appeared following the explosion which released 1023 ergs of energy. A heat wave with a temperature of approximately 16.6 million degrees Celsius at the focus was generated that had a tree-scorching effect for a radius of 15 km. The heat wave was followed by air shock waves which disfigured or toppled 80 million trees occupying approximately 8000 km2 of Siberian taiga (a radius of 30 km), and initiated a seismic wave of Richter magnitude 5, but, to our astonishment, left no crater. The dust from the tail of the comet moved away from the sun and provided anomalously bright night sky in Europe and parts of Western Russia. No trace of the comet itself was found except for tiny magnetite and silicate globules. The principal consequences were fear and awe among the inhabitants of the region, and the physical damage from the explosion. Fortunately, no human life was lost, though more than a thousand reindeer were destroyed.
Speculation will continue as to the origin of this catastrophe, yet no certain conclusions can be attained unless man has the dubious opportunity to observe and monitor such an event in the future. The Tunguska explosion directs our attention to catastrophic forces which have helped form the earth, and causes us to ask questions about the nature of much larger cosmic events. What were the global effects of enormous impact events which formed the 1-km-diameter Meteor Crater in Arizona, the 100-km-diameter Popigay crater of Siberia, and the 140-km-diameter Sudbury impact structure of Ontario? What changes in the earth's crust, atmosphere, ocean and life were caused by the release of a million times more energy than the Tunguska explosion? The Tunguska event provides a faint glimpse.
REFERENCES
  • Astapowitsch, I.S. 1934. Air waves caused by the fall of the meteorite on 30th June, 1908, in Central Siberia. Royal Meteorological Society Quarterly Journal 60:493-504.
  • Beasley, W.H. and Tinsley, B.A. 1974. Tungus event was not caused by a black hole. Nature 250:555-556.
  • Ben-Menahem, Ari. 1975. Source parameters of the Siberia explosion of June 30, 1908, from analysis and synthesis of seismic signals at four stations. Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors 11:1-35.
  • Brown, J.C. and Hughes, D.W. 1977. Tunguska's Comet and non-thermal C14 production in the atmosphere. Nature 268:512-514.
  • Cowan, C., Alturi, C.R., and Libby, W.F. 1965. Possible anti-matter content of the Tunguska meteor of 1908. Nature 206:861-865.
  • Fesenkov, V.G. 1962. On the cometary nature of the Tunguska meteorite. Soviet Astronomy 5(4):441-451.
  • Fesenkov, V.G. 1966. A study of the Tunguska meteorite fall. Soviet Astronomy 10(2):195-213.
  • Gentry, R.V. 1966. Anti-matter content of the Tunguska meteor. Nature 211:1071-1072.
  • Hughes, D.W. 1976. Tunguska revisited. Nature 259:626-627.
  • Jackson, A.A. and Ryan, M.P. 1973. Was the Tungus event due to a black hole? Nature 245:88-89.
  • Kridec, E.L. 1960. Principles of meteorites. Pergamon Press, Oxford.
  • Kridec, E.L. 1963. The Tunguska and Sikhote-Alin meteorites. In B. Middlehurst and G.P. Kuiper, eds. The Solar System, Vol. IV: Moon, Meteorites and Comets, pp. 208-217. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
  • Kridec, E.L. 1966. Giant meteorites. Pergamon Press, Oxford.
  • LeMaire, T.R. 1980. Stones from the stars. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.
  • Lerman, J.C., Mook, W.G., and Vogel, J.C. 1967. Effect of the Tunguska Meteor and sunspots on radiocarbon in tree rings. Nature 216:990-991.
  • McWhirter, N. and McWhirter, R. 1974. Guinness book of world records, 1975. Sterling, New York.
  • Stanyukovich, K.P. and Bronshten, I.A. 1961. Velocity and energy of the Tunguska meteorite. Doklady Akademii Nauk SSSR, earth sciences sections 140:1053-1055.
  • Sullivan, W. 1979. Black holes, the edge of space, the end of time. Doubleday, Garden City, New York.
  • Thorndike, J.J., Jr., ed. 1977. Mysteries of the past. American Heritage Publishing Company, New York.
  • Whipple, F.J.W. 1930. The great Siberian meteor and the waves, seismic and aerial, which it produced. Royal Meteorological Society Quarterly Journal 56:287-304.
  • Whipple, F.J.W. 1934. On phenomena related to the great Siberian meteor. Royal Meteorological Society Quarterly Journal 60:505-513.
  • Whipple, F.W. 1950. A comet model I. The acceleration of the Comet Encke. Astrophysical Journal 111(1):375-379.
  • Whipple, F.W. 1975. Do comets play a role in galactic chemistry and gamma-ray bursts? The Astronomical Journal 80(7):525-531.
* Dr. Steven A. Austin has a B.S. from the University of Washington, an M.S. from San Jose State University, and a Ph.D. from the Pennsylvania State University, all in geology. He is well known as a Professor of Geology at the Institute for Creation Research, San Diego, California, and for his research at Mt. St. Helens and in Grand Canyon.
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Mystery of Tunguska meteorite solved

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Mystery of Tunguska meteorite solved

42100.jpeg102 years after the fall of the famous celestial body in Tunguska taiga, scientists finally managed to identify the crash site of one of its fragments and examine the unusual composition of the substance of this space creature. The study was conducted using a unique instrument - GPR. As a result, it was proved that it was not a meteorite, but a comet.
The mystery of the Tunguska meteorite has long attracted the attention of researchers from around the world. Perhaps no visitor from outer space in the history of the mankind created so much noise, both literally and figuratively. The most surprising is the fact that in some hundred-odd years that have passed since that event, scientists have failed to solve this puzzle.
What happened in the Podkamennaya Tunguska River back in 1908? The witnesses say that on June 30 at about 7am something resembling a giant ball flew over the territory of Central Siberia in the north-western direction.
Its flight was accompanied by sound and light effects, and ended with a powerful explosion followed by a felling of forest between the rivers Kimchu and Hushmo - tributaries of the Podkamennaya Tunguska.

The explosion occurred at 7:14am local time. It was accompanied by a powerful earthquake which was registered by most seismological stations of the world, and air waves. It was noted that the echo of the explosion at Tunguska was heard over 800 kilometers away from the epicenter, the blast felled 2100 km ² of forest, and within a radius of 200 km windows of some houses were broken. Soon after, a magnetic storm began which lasted 5 hours.
Here's how this event is described by a witness, local resident Semyon Semenov:
"I was swinging my ax when the sky in the north has divided into two parts and a fire appeared in it above the forest, which covered the entire northern part of the sky. At that moment I felt so hot, as if my shirt was on fire. I wanted to tear and throw off my shirt, but the sky slammed shut and there was a strong blow. I was dropped off the porch and blown away.
After the strike came a tapping, as if rocks were falling from the sky or guns fired, the ground trembled, and when I lay on the ground, I feared that the rocks would break my head. At a time when the sky opened up, a hot wind swept from the north, like from a cannon, which has left traces on the ground in the form of tracks. Then it turned out that many of the windows shattered, and the iron tab for door lock in the barn was broken."
Somewhat later in the night on June 30, an intense glow of the sky, night shining clouds, and unusually colorful dusk were observed in dozens of settlements in Western Europe and Russia. By spectral observations made in Germany and England, this glow was not a part of the aurora, and was of some different nature.
In studying this phenomenon, French astronomers first suggested that on June 30 Earth clashed with a cloud of cosmic dust. Later this hypothesis was supported by several other prominent scientists, in particular B. I. Vernadsky. However, he thought that perhaps it was not a simple cloud of dust but a frozen cloud, that is, a fragment of the comet's nucleus. However, most astronomers thought that the Tunguska event was the result of falling of a giant meteorite on Earth.

The first expedition to the site of the disaster was sent only in 1921, but its members failed to get there. Only in 1927 a research team led by Leonid A. Kulik was able to reach the epicenter of the explosion.
The most interesting thing is that they have not found a crater left by a meteorite impact on Earth. Another oddity of the Tunguska event was that the forest was knocked over a large area close to the presumed site of a meteorite, but at the very epicenter of the explosion it remained standing. It seemed that the "alien" exploded in the air and did not reach the planet's surface.
Over the subsequent years, researchers have not managed to find a meteorite crater or fragments of the celestial body itself. Many scholars have asked a logical question whether it was a meteorite.
There were hypotheses that the explosion was not made by a celestial body, but by Earth's marsh gas that escaped from within (though the traces of its presence in this place were also not found), or that the cause of the accident was secret experiments of Nikola Tesla with electricity. However, all these theories also have not been confirmed.

The first steps toward unraveling the mystery of Tunguska were made in 2007 by a group of Italian researchers. Their expedition conducted geological surveys of the bottom and banks of Lake Cheko, located a few miles from the center of the explosion, and determined that this pool was a conical hopper with a fairly great depth of 50 meters.
All this suggests that a piece of the Tunguska meteorite fell there. Other candidates for the role of "craters" were nearby swamps Bublik, Suslov and Cranberry funnels.
In 2010, an expedition of Vladimir Alexeev with Troitsk Innovation and Nuclear Research Institute (TRINITY) set off to the area of the fall of the meteorite. Scientists brought ground penetrating radar - a unique instrument capable of lighting the ground to the depth of 100 meters. As a result, the examination of Suslov crater found that the crater resulted from a severe impact of a celestial body on the surface of the Earth.

The bottom of this funnel was structured as follows: the top layers were modern permafrost, below were damaged layers, and finally, deeper, the fragments of the cosmic body were discovered. Preliminary analysis showed that it was a huge piece of ice that apparently broke away from the comet's nucleus.
The famous "tailed stars" consist of very unusual ice formed with water frozen by space, methane and other gases with a mixture of solid particles. The kernel that weighs hundreds of billions of tons is followed by multi-kilometers tail, consisting of rarefied gases formed by evaporation of the ice by the sun.
It turns out that when approaching Earth, icy nucleus of comet shattered into fragments, which were scattered by the explosion several kilometers away. Having fallen on the surface of our planet, they formed several craters, which include Suslov funnel examined by the group of Alekseev. The tail of a comet that broke off scattered through the atmosphere, causing a very strange glow of the sky, which was observed on the night after falling of the celestial body.

Also, scientists were able to study traces of the matter of non-terrestrial origin detained in the resin of trees in the epicenter of the explosion (they still grow there). The researchers concluded that the substance was very similar to cosmic dust which is a part of the comet nucleus. This once again convinced them that the Tunguska "stranger" should be called not a meteorite, but a comet.

Thus, the theory suggested many years ago by Academician V. I. Vernadsky about a comet nature of the Tunguska meteorite has now received actual confirmation. It is interesting that it took scientists nearly a hundred years to solve this mystery. But as they say, better late than never.
Anton Yevseev

Aliens live on Earth, under the ground

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Aliens live on Earth, under the ground

A lot of respectable scientists and writers believed that Earth is hollow inside

Rumors about underground towns appeared for the first time in 1946. The person to launch the rumors was Richard Shaver – writer, journalist and scientist. His incredible story about contacts with aliens living under the ground was published in Amazing Stories Magazine. Shaver said that he had spent several weeks living under the ground with demon-looking aliens, whose descriptions can be found in ancient legends and fairytales. Almost every nation has a tale of an ancient race, who settled in planet Earth long before humans appeared on it. Those underground creatures are described as inconceivably talented, brilliant and culturally educated – they do not want to have anything in common with humans.
One could refer to the story from the American writer as a fruit of his vivid imagination. However, hundreds of readers responded to the publication. They wrote that they had visited underground cities, talked to their residents and saw unimaginable technical inventions, which guaranteed a comfortable existence in the very depth of the planet. Furthermore, the technologies of underground aliens give them an opportunity to control the minds of humans.
The unbelievable story exerted an immense influence on scientists and gave an incentive to the study of paranormal activities.
English astronomer of the 17th century, Edmund Halley, writers Jules Verne, Edgar Allan Poe and some others wrote in their works that planet Earth is a hollow sphere. American authorities were preparing a special scientific mission in 18-19 centuries to explore the Earth's hollow depth.
The scientists of the Third Reich were very interested in the mysterious underground world too. A special top secret expedition was organized in 1942. German scientists also hoped to install new radar systems under the ground and draw closer to global reign. Unfortunately, the outcome of the intrigue  is not known, but the hypothesis of the underground civilization developed further on during the second half of the 20th century.
In 1963, two American coal miners, David Fellin and Henry Throne, found a large door in a tunnel, behind which they discovered a marble stairway. In England, miners can hear the sounds of mechanical devices under the ground, as they dig a tunnel. An English miner said that they had also found a stairway to an underground well. The sound of machines became more distinct, and the workers fled in fear. When they returned to the tunnel, there were no stairs and no entrance to the well.
An American satellite took very interesting photographs at the end of the 1970s. The photographs were published in many Western scientific magazines: the pictures depicted a dark, regularly shaped spot on the North Pole. The photographs were not defective: similar pictures depicting the same dark spot on the pole were taken several years later.
Anthropologist James McKenna explored an ill-famed cave in the State of Idaho. McKenna and other members of the expedition could hear screams and moans, as they were moving hundreds meters deep into the cave. The researchers found human skeletons soon, but they had to stop their quest: the smell of brimstone was unbearable.
Geologists do not share the theory of the Earth's huge cavity, although they do not exclude a possibility of numerous large hollow spaces in planet's depths. Human life is hardly possible in those cavities: the temperature is too high and there is very little oxygen there. Some researchers believe that the underground civilization might be of an extraterrestrial origin. Aliens were probably tired of people's eternal wars and atrocities, and moved under the ground, from where they comfortably observed the development of the mankind. What if UFOs appear in the sky from under the ground, not from other galaxies? However, if planet Earth is hollow inside, someone should have found the gateway to the underground world long ago. A group of American scientists believes that underground cities exist on Earth in the fourth dimension. When the Earth's electromagnetic field changes from time to time, entrances to the tunnels open, and accidental “visitors” may see the underground cities and their inhabitants.
One of the theories says that many mysterious constructions, like the English Stonehendge for example, were built to designate entrances to underground cities. If there is a reasonable race living under the ground, it would be an explanation to a lot of inexplicable phenomena. Ольга Савка