The Tunguska event

Tunguska event | Summary, Cause, & Facts | Britannica

The Tunguska event was an enormous explosion that occurred at about 7:14 AM on June 30, 1908, at an altitude of 5–10 km (15,000–30,000 feet), flattening some 2,000 square km (500,000 acres) and charring more than 100 square km of pine forest near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in central Siberia, Russia.

Encyclopedia BritannicaEdward F. Tedesco Research Associate Professor, Space Science Center, University of New Hampshire, Durham.

This explosion, of presumably natural origin, was definitely of the same type as that of a nuclear bomb such as Tsar Bomba which it undoubtedly inspired.

Despite the lesser estimated TNT equivalents on various sites, it appears that this natural explosion was in fact much more powerful than Tsar Bomba or any man-made bomb and that much more radiation and radioactive fallout resulted from this natual event than from the test of Tsar Bomba.

All elements and isotopes heavier than iron become fissile at sufficiently high temperatures, and the heat of the meteoroid’s friction with earth's atmosphere together the electrostatic charge it accumulated must have been sufficient to disintegrate the nuclei of heavy atoms and cause them to release enough neutrons for the entire mass of the meteroid to go “prompt critical.” It was a very large meteoroid and very little or none of it survived the atmospheric explosion to hit the ground.

A positively charged nuclear plasma forms in such a situation surrounded by a negatively charged cloud of electrons which compresses the plasma and overcomes the repulsion between positively charged nuclei, so that nuclear fusion of lighter elements can occur.

It may be more “natural” in a nuclear explosion for fusion to occur first, and produce enough heat to initiate fisssion, rather than the other way around as in the case of most man-made nuclear weapons.

115 Years Ago: The Tunguska Asteroid Impact Event - NASA

On June 30, 1908, an asteroid plunged into Earth’s atmosphere and exploded in the skies over Siberia. Local eyewitnesses in the sparsely populated region

NASAAndrea Dunn

The Tunguska explosion rocked Siberia 116 years ago

Updates on your cosmos and world

EarthSky | Updates on your cosmos and worldPaul Scott Anderson

What Is Known (and Not Known) About the Tunguska Event | Britannica

Here is what scientists have determined and supposed about the 1908 explosion in Siberia.

Encyclopedia Britannica

The Tunguska Event

Learn more about the Tunguska event in 1908, a highly destructive asteroid explosion that occurred in a remote area of Siberia

Royal Observatory GreenwichPublished 06 Apr 2023

Tunguska Event - Armagh Observatory and Planetarium

On the morning of 30 June 1908, a massive explosion shook the sparsely-populated Eastern Siberian taiga. It was a visitor from outer space: a comet or asteroid explosively disintegrated in the atmosphere and caused a great amount of damage locally. The Tunguska event caused dust to be thrown high into the atmosphere where it remained […]

Armagh Observatory and PlanetariumWebsiteNI