marhawkman
Justified & Ancient
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(NOTE: This line of discussion was spun off from the Tunguska thread.)
The wildest, but still plausible suggested cause, is that it's actually the same type of event that caused the Great Chicago Fire.
A bit of corroborating evidence is that allegedly a blast ring was found in one of the forest fire areas. This being an area where trees are knocked over and point outwards in a circle, with a few trees standing in the middle.
1871 would have been shortly after the comet was believed to have broken apart in 1852. But there's a major problem. For this to be pieces of Biela's comet it would have needed to shift orbit slightly, as the orbit was calculated at 6.6 years, and this was 5.6 years after it's calculated previous orbit would have been. However some think Biela's comet may have fractured as early as 1842. 1845 was the last proper appearance of the comet and it had a shape indicative of a cloud of debris. is 29 years enough for pieces to shift orbit that much? hard to say. this aspect of astronomy is not one people have had much opportunity to study.
One interesting point in this discussion.... This theory is believed to have gotten started by Ignatius L. Donnelly in 1883. Yeah a decade after Biela's comet was confirmed to have turned into a cloud of space shrapnel. And astronomers were puzzled because the estimated mass of the remaining space shrapnel was much less than the estimated mass of Biela's comet.
Tunguska was probably not Biela's comet though. 1908 is almost 40 years later. But a different comet? maybe.
The wildest, but still plausible suggested cause, is that it's actually the same type of event that caused the Great Chicago Fire.
One suggestion is that it was a shower of smaller bolides as the Earth absorbed the fragments of a comet.... people even identified it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biela's_CometOn that hot, dry, and windy autumn day, three other major fires occurred along the shores of Lake Michigan at the same time as the Great Chicago Fire. Some 250 miles (400 km) to the north, the Peshtigo Fire consumed the town of Peshtigo, Wisconsin, along with a dozen other villages. It killed 1,200 to 2,500 people and charred approximately 1.5 million acres (6,000 km²). The Peshtigo Fire remains the deadliest in American history[49] but the remoteness of the region meant it was little noticed at the time, due to the fact that one of the first things that burned were the telegraph lines to Green Bay.[50]
Across the lake to the east, the town of Holland, Michigan, and other nearby areas burned to the ground.[51] Some 100 miles (160 km) to the north of Holland, the lumbering community of Manistee also went up in flames[52] in what became known as the Great Michigan Fire.[51]
Farther east, along the shore of Lake Huron, the Port Huron Fire swept through Port Huron, Michigan and much of Michigan's "Thumb". On October 9, 1871, a fire swept through the city of Urbana, Illinois, 140 miles (230 km) south of Chicago, destroying portions of its downtown area.[53] Windsor, Ontario, likewise burned on October 12.[54]
A bit of corroborating evidence is that allegedly a blast ring was found in one of the forest fire areas. This being an area where trees are knocked over and point outwards in a circle, with a few trees standing in the middle.
1871 would have been shortly after the comet was believed to have broken apart in 1852. But there's a major problem. For this to be pieces of Biela's comet it would have needed to shift orbit slightly, as the orbit was calculated at 6.6 years, and this was 5.6 years after it's calculated previous orbit would have been. However some think Biela's comet may have fractured as early as 1842. 1845 was the last proper appearance of the comet and it had a shape indicative of a cloud of debris. is 29 years enough for pieces to shift orbit that much? hard to say. this aspect of astronomy is not one people have had much opportunity to study.
One interesting point in this discussion.... This theory is believed to have gotten started by Ignatius L. Donnelly in 1883. Yeah a decade after Biela's comet was confirmed to have turned into a cloud of space shrapnel. And astronomers were puzzled because the estimated mass of the remaining space shrapnel was much less than the estimated mass of Biela's comet.
Tunguska was probably not Biela's comet though. 1908 is almost 40 years later. But a different comet? maybe.
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