One hundred years later, no one is sure exactly what happened. Eyewitnesses described a column of blue light as bright as the sun that tore the sky in two and set it on fire, followed by an explosion the likes of which humans had never seen or heard.
It all happened in Tunguska, Russia, on July 1, 1908, when something came from the sky and devastated more than 800 square miles, flattening an estimated 80 million trees.
The explosion was estimated at 1000 times the power of the atomic bomb
that destroyed Hiroshima. It was seen from 100 miles
away, and the shock wave broke windows 250 miles from the
point of impact. An Englishman reported that the
sky on the north coast
of Britain that night was so bright that he "could read a book by
it."
The most surprising thing about the event was that virtually no lives were
lost. Thanks to the remoteness of the impact site (the center
of Siberia), the only casualty was a reindeer herder
who was thrown into the air and against a tree -- twenty miles from ground
zero.
Astonishingly, for all the commotion, there was no immediate
investigation. The first exploration party didn't arrive until 1927, and no one thought to take
aerial photographs
until 1938. Numerous theories of what the event was have been floated: an asteroid,
a comet,
a black hole,
antimatter,
UFOs
-- even Nikola Tesla
testing a death ray. No one theory provides all the answers, though.
If it was an asteroid, we can be thankful that it struck where it did.
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has warned that if the Apophis asteroid hitd in
the right part of the Pacific Ocean when it returns in 2036, it would wipe out most of the Pacific
Rim. Sounds like Russia got off cheap.
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