Daily Curiosities: The Tunguska Event
POSTED by: on 10/08/2009
Early on the morning of June 30th, 1908, a huge explosion rocked the Siberian forest. The explosion was so strong that it felled trees in a 850 square mile area around the blast site.
100 years later the cause of the explosion is still a mystery. The prevailing theory states that a meteorite or comet about 120 feet across entered the atmosphere above the Siberian forest and exploded at an altitude of 6-10 km above the ground. It released about 185 times the energy released by the detonation of the bomb over Hiroshima. The resulting shock wave stripped the branches and bark off the trees immediately below the air burst, felled the trees for tens of kilometers around and blasted a large amount of debris into the atmosphere.
There wasn’t a scientific expedition to the site of the explosion until 19 years after it happened.
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