The Enigma That Is Tunguska (1908)

Assuming one or more extraterrestrial civilizations with advanced, interstellar spaceflight capability exists; then they know about Planet Earth. Say ‘hi’ to those pesky UFOs. If UFOs aren’t mystery enough, there’s that enigmatic 30 June 1908 explosion of ‘something’ over the Tunguska region of Siberia. Might the two anomalies be connected? Something that came from outer space crashed into, or exploded above, the Tunguska, Siberia forest in late June of 1908, of that there is no question. Whodunit or whatdunit is the $64,000 question.

Something that came from outer space crashed into, or exploded above, the Tunguska, Siberia forest in late June of 1908, of that there is no question. It was heard up to 1,200 kilometres away; witnessed up to 700 kilometres away. The after-effects, from air pressure waves, ground shockwaves to unusual bright skies at night (quasi-auroras in the sky) viewed throughout Europe in the days (or nights) that followed are well documented. From that, and the evidence as observed from on-site scientific expeditions at ground zero (the epicentre) and the 1908 eyewitness reports, strongly suggest that something several tens of meters across exploded, and totally vaporized some 8 to 8.5 kilometres above ground level with a minimum force of 5 megatons, an accepted average force of between 12.5 to 15 megatons, at the other extreme perhaps up to 30 megatons (1000 times the force unleashed on Hiroshima). 

Because of the political turmoil’s Russia and the world were experiencing (WW I; the Russian Revolution), but mainly because the affected region was just about inaccessible due to the harsh climate, distance from civilization and wilderness terrain, it was many years before an actual scientific investigation was launched and travelled into the region to investigate into what actually happened – what impacted this vast forested region of Siberia where (fortunately) there were few inhabitants and witnesses. The main and initial scientific investigator was a Russian scientist, Leonid Kulik. His first expedition in 1921 didn’t actually reach ground zero; but later expeditions of his in 1927 (the first to reach the epicentre), with follow-ups in 1928 and 1929 and finally in 1939 got the scientific ball rolling. Of course everyone expected that eye-witnesses would be irrelevant because the object was obviously a natural celestial object, a meteor or a small comet, and there would be a crater. Samples of the extraterrestrial object would be collected, analysed back in civilization, fragments put on display in museums – mystery solved. That’s what everyone expected, but at times Mother Nature can be a real bitch!

Well, to make a long story shorter, initial and subsequent on-site teams of researchers (there were further Russian expeditions in 1958 and 1961 with the first post Cold War international teams hitting the ground in 1989 and 1991) found no crater; no chunks of extraterrestrial debris. Whatever ‘hit’ the Tunguska region of Siberia in June 1908 didn’t really apparently impact, but exploded high up in the atmosphere, a resulting blast wave flattening the trees in a radial pattern out from ground zero, ultimately covering an area associated with a large city. Even that wouldn’t have been all that anomalous were it not for some witnesses who claimed that the object as it descended, changed direction. You wouldn’t have expected that from a natural object. And thus was born the idea that the object wasn’t natural, but artificial, probably, well certainly, since terrestrial technology had no equivalents, extraterrestrial – an alien spaceship.

Seeing as how there’s evidence that UFOs, or ‘flying discs’ as they were called in the late 1940’, could run into difficulty and crash, as in Roswell (July 1947) for example, well that lent additional credibility that in 1908, a ‘flying disc’ also ran into technical difficulty, but exploded, probably a nuclear-type explosion,  relative to actually crash-landing.

Well, whatever it was, it was vaporized to the extent that there wasn’t enough solid residue left behind to establish once and for all that the object actually was. And so other exotic, though natural, theories were spawned to account for the overall Tunguska event anomalies.

So, some scientists have suggested that what hit Tunguska was a mini Black Hole that just kept right on keeping on and passed through the entire Earth, exiting out the opposite side (commonly postulated to be the North Atlantic). There are good theoretical reasons to suspect that mini Black Holes exist in space – ‘theoretical’ needs to be stressed however.

Even more far out, it was a tiny piece of antimatter. Antimatter, when impacting Earth’s atmosphere composed of normal matter, well its ka-boom time as there will be an annihilation of equal parts of our atmospheric matter and whatever the amount of antimatter was – gram for gram; ounce for ounce. When matter meets antimatter, stuff is turned into pure energy, and thus no solid residue left behind at the ‘crime’ scene.   

Even more far out there’s been speculations that the Tunguska Event was caused by a concentration of methane (natural) gas released naturally into the atmosphere which exploded; an extraterrestrial laser beam attack or scientific test on a relatively uninhabited region; giant ball lightning; even a terrestrial death ray or early nuclear experiment that went very wrong. Those make the alien spaceship / UFO blowing up theories seem mundane and commonplace. 

The disturbing bit about the Tunguska Event was that if the explosion / impact had happened slightly earlier or later, it could just as easily have exploded / impacted over a far more densely inhabited region. Hitting the ocean might have generated a tsunami, and we know the sort of havoc they can cause. More frightening, if it had happened, right out of the proverbial blue, no warning at all, in say 1958 instead of 1908, what would Russia’s immediate reaction have been? Maybe an assumption that there had been a nuclear strike, the first of many pre-emptive or unprovoked nuclear strikes on Russian soil. Their reaction, and response, could easily have been, in that Cold War, high tension era, shoot back now and ask questions later – assuming a later after all out nuclear war.

Back to 1908, maybe the Tunguska Event was a comet, or meteor, or a mini black hole, or a bit of anti-matter. Experts remain uncertain and undecided to this very day. Or, maybe it was a spaceship – obviously not of terrestrial origin. Lots of authors have written tomes advocating that explanation (and others even more exotic as we’ve seen). And in fact, although scoffed at by the experts, I’m not quite ready to write off the spaceship theory quite yet. If Roswell, why not Tunguska? However, I’d be being unrealistic if I didn’t admit that theory is a long shot. At the least, it’s still a marvelous scientific mystery. 

Further readings on the Tunguska Incident:

Atkins, Thomas & Baxter, John; The Fire Came By: The Riddle of the Great Siberian Explosion; Doubleday & Company, Inc., New York; 1976: 

Furneaux, Rupert; The Tungus Event: The Great Siberian Catastrophe of 1908; Panther Books, Frogmore, St Albans, Herts; 1977:

Rubtsov, Vladimir; The Tunguska Mystery; Springer, New York; 2009:

Stoneley, Jack; Tunguska: Cauldron of Hell; Star Book, London; 1977:

Verma, Surendra; The Tunguska Fireball: Solving One of the Great Mysteries of the 20^th Century; Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd., Crows Nest, NSW; 2005:

Personalities: Your’s; An Electron’s; A Black Hole’s

As well known and loved baseball personality Yogi Berra has often stated, “You can observe a lot just by watching”. So let’s observe humans, electrons, and Black Holes. Who wins out in the personality stakes?

Say you observe a fellow human, someone you don’t know, from a distance. You can observe an awful lot just by watching! You obviously get an immediate handle on their physical size and shape, a rough estimate of their age, their race, and of course their sex. You might figure out something about the person’s occupation if they are wearing a uniform, or at least guess whether they might be a white collar or blue collar worker. You will note distinguishing features such as baldness, or eyeglasses, or maybe even suss out their religious affiliation by the way they dress. You might note if they are under the influence. You might figure out something about their history from scars, whether they limp, are in a wheelchair, wear a cast, or have deformities. If you observe them at say a supermarket, you might be able to figure out if they have kids or pets or even determine something about their lifestyle and relative wealth. In short, not knowing someone doesn’t mean you can’t uncover a lot of information about them – just by watching. However, you can’t extrapolate that information and claim you know anything about yet another person.

Apply that thought experiment on an electron – I’ll assume for the sake of this mental exercise that you can observe an electron. You can’t tell where it’s been; anything about its history, what its age is. You can determine its charge, mass, shape and size, but that’s just about the sum total of what you are going to learn. The electron has no scars or distinguishing features, and has just one lifestyle and occupation. They are in perfect health – unless they meet of course their antimatter equivalent, a positron. But, electrons can be reborn out of energy – sort of like a resurrection. But when resurrected, they resume the exact same properties that all electrons have. So, you’ll find out that by observing one electron, you’ve in theory observed all electrons. All electrons have the same charge, shape, size, mass, and occupation. Their histories and ages might be different, but you can’t tell by looking. It’s like everyone was an identical twin or clone of everyone else. 

In between humans and electrons are Black Holes, and again, I will assume for the sake of discussion that you can observe Black Holes. Like electrons, if you see one Black Hole, you’ve pretty much seen them all. Any school kid can look at our nine planets (I’m restoring Pluto’s former status here) and tell that they all differ and have unique personalities (just like looking at any nine humans – you can tell them apart because they’re all different – even identical twins will have some distinguishing features). However, even though Black Holes have way less individual features relative to humans or planets, they do have more than electrons. Line up nine electrons – you got nine identical clones. Line up nine Black Holes. They won’t all have identical masses; their overall electric charge may be differing; their rotation rates won’t all be the same; they can grow or shrink, be born and die (no resurrection). Still, they don’t have much of a personality. A Black Hole made up from the remains of a massive star that went supernovae could have the exact same size, mass, rotation, etc. as a Black Hole made up from just scrap metal or crooked politicians or cotton candy. You can’t tell, by observation, what sort of stuff went into making up a Black Hole, or any of the properties of the stuff that made up a Black Hole. You get one color like the original Model-T Ford (as the joke went, “You can have any color you want with your Model-T as long as it’s black”), and what’s inside is a surprise – like the surprise toy in a box of Cracker Jacks only this box  can’t be opened. In short, it is said that Black Holes have no hair, because Black Holes have no real individual personality. You can distinguish a person by their hair style – not so a Black Hole.

So any essay written about the unique features of nine electrons is going to be a heck of a lot shorter than an essay about the personalities of nine Black Holes, which in turn will be way shorter than an essay describing nine different humans!