The Tunguska Explosion, presumably caused by a comet, is the greatest space catastrophe humankind has ever witnessed. Even a century later, the Siberian blast still attracts scientists who hope to unveil its mystery.
A powerful explosion in East Siberia shook the Earth in the early morning of June 30, 1908, or June 17 in the Julian calendar that was then in use in the Russian Empire. The energy of the explosion was most likely equivalent to around 10-15 megatons of TNT, or about 1,000 times the power of the Little Boy atomic bomb that was dropped on Japan’s Hiroshima by the United States at the end of the World War II.
The blast was registered on seismic stations across Eurasia. It produced fluctuations in atmospheric pressure strong enough to be detected in Great Britain. Over the next few days, night skies around the continent were aglow. In some places, for example in London, people could read in the light.
Scientists theorized that this was due to light passing through high-altitude ice particles, the cause of the space body having entered the atmosphere and then exploded. Back in the Tunguska River area, a staggering 2,200 square kilometers of the taiga forest with 80 million trees was destroyed. Had the event happened some four hours later, St. Petersburg would have been wiped out along with all the villages surrounding it.
The trees around the epicenter of the blast toppled over in a radial pattern. But those in it remained standing. Their branches were stripped so that they looked like telegraph poles.
This phenomenon was discovered by Soviet scientist Leonid Kulik, who in 1927 led an expedition to the area. He measured the 2,000 square kilometers of devastation and recorded images of fallen trees. Kulik concluded that the blast was caused by a meteorite crashing down to earth.
More than a century after the blast, the mystery of the event is still attracting scientific expeditions from all over the globe
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Source:
http://www.russiatoday.com/Top_News/2009-07-26/tunguska--101-years-long-deadly-comet-tail.html
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