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Tunguska

Another report from another Moscow news agncy:

Russian Researchers Say Debris of Alien Spaceship found in Siberia

Created: 10.08.2004 11:30 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 15:37 MSK, 13 hours 51 minutes ago

MosNews


Members of a special expedition researching the site of the famous Tunguska meteorite fall have claimed they had discovered parts of an extraterrestrial device.

The expedition, organized by the Siberian Public State Foundation “Tunguska Space Phenomenon” completed its work on the scene of Tunguska meteorite fall on August 9. It was the first expedition to the region since 2000. Guided by the space photos, the researchers scanned a wider territory in the vicinity of the Poligusa village for parts of the space object that crashed into Earth in 1908 and was later called the Tunguska meteorite.

The scientists claim that they found remains of an extraterrestrial technical device that allegedly had an accident in Siberia in 1908. They also say that they found the so called “deer stone” - an artifact repeatedly mentioned in the reports of the eyewitnesses of the Tunguska phenomenon. A part of the “deer stone” has been delivered to Krasnoyarsk for research.

The head of the expedition Yuri Lavbin told MosNews on Tuesday that the researchers had traced the possible trajectory of the space object, but this time they counted that it ran from West to East, unlike the members previous missions who thought that the object had flown East to West. The new approach allowed the expedition members to find a buried object covered with trees.

The object appeared to be a large block made with metal. The researchers chipped a piece of the object and will now test its composition.

In his further comment to MosNews, Lavbin noted that according to his calculations, the mass of the space object that collided with the Earth in 1908 amounted to almost 1 billion tons and the blast on impact must have destroyed the humanity. The fact that it did not happen testifies to the theory that the Tunguska event was an explosion of an artificial object at an altitude of about 10 kilometers.

“I am fully confident and I can make an official statement that we were saved by some forces of a superior civilization,” the scientist said. “They exploded this enormous meteorite that headed towards us with enormous speed,” he said. Now this great object that caused the meteorite to explode is found at last. We will continue our research, he said.

Lavbin says that the results of this year’s expedition give him hope that the Tunguska mystery will be solved before the phenomenon’s 100th anniversary. To do this, Russian researchers plan another large-scale expedition to the Eastern Siberia.

The Tunguska event was an aerial explosion that occurred near the Tunguska River in Siberia on June 30, 1908. The blast felled an estimated 60 million trees over 2,150 square kilometres. On this day, local residents observed a huge fireball, almost as bright as the Sun, moving across the sky. A few minutes later, there was a flash that lit up half of the sky, followed by a shock wave that knocked people off their feet and broke windows up to 400 miles away.

The explosion registered on seismic stations across Eurasia, and produced fluctuations in atmospheric pressure strong enough to be detected by the recently invented barographs in Britain. Over the next few weeks, night skies over Europe and western Russia glowed brightly enough for people to read by. In the United States, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Mount Wilson Observatory observed a decrease in atmospheric transparency that lasted for several months.

The size of the blast was later estimated to be between 10 and 15 megatons. Until this year members of numerous expeditions have failed to find any remains of the object that caused the event.
Click to expand...

http://www.mosnews.com/news/2004/08/10/tunguska.shtml
 
Homo Aves said:
<shrugs>

Stranger things happen in space....
Click to expand...

Apparently so:

George Person: Explorers find UFO fragments RESPONSE

08/11/2004 14:02

Science fiction or science vision, what does the investigation reveal about trace alien metals in the Russian Siberian landscape?!
Was the explosion really the destruction of an alien ship from a super advanced alien civilization traveling thousands of light years to our world on a one way mission to reach our humanity?!

Any alien group coming to our world from such great distances would most likely have an indestructible life pod, able to withstand impact upon ejection from their celestial cruiser, and have the necessary technology in allowing themselves to establish a concealed their base of operations and genetically alter themselves, or use cloaking technology in allowing themselves to move invisibly among us.....

Perhaps a great celestial battle took place! And the ship was shot down and crashed in Russia!... leaving the ship were malevolent aliens out to corrupt and conquere our world...

After all, not long after the crash, world war one took place along with the rise of Bolshevism and the emergence of Hitler and Stalin among the world scene. What an irony it would be if evil aliens were the cause of our worlds problems! And we were really puppets with our emotional strings being yanked around by invisible forces playing the human race for fools...

President Reagan hinted very strongly as he adressed the United Nations, that there were otherworldy threats...Just imagine what President Reagan must have thought as he got the tour of Area 51...He was the Starwars President...He was the great communicator....perhaps it's up to us to read between the lines and sift through the dirt in seeing what alien metals we may find...

George Person
Phoenix, Arizona
Click to expand...

http://english.pravda.ru/mailbox/22/98/395/13721_UFO.html
 
UFO 'wreckage' found in Siberia

UFO 'wreckage' found in Siberia
From correspondents in Moscow
August 12, 2004

http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,10419687%5E13762,00.html

RUSSIAN scientists claim to have discovered the wreck of an alien device at the site of an unexplained explosion in Siberia almost a hundred years ago, the Interfax news agency has reported.

The scientists, who belong to the Tunguska space phenomenon public state fund, said they found the remains of an extra-terrestrial device that allegedly crashed near the Tunguska river in Siberia in 1908.

They also claim to have discovered a 50kg rock which they have sent to the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk for analysis.

The Tunguska blast, in a desolate part of Siberia, remains one of the 20th century's biggest scientific mysteries.

On June 30, 1908, what is widely believed to be a meteorite exploded a few kilometres above the Tunguska river, in a blast that was felt hundreds of kilometres away and devastated over 2000 square kilometres of Siberian forest.

But the exact nature of the body that exploded and its origin remain a mystery which has spurred countless theories and controversies.

Agence France-Presse
 
Russian Researchers Say Debris of Alien Spaceship found in S

Just came across this:

Edit: Forgot the link: http://www.mosnews.com/news/2004/08/10/tunguska.shtml

Members of a special expedition researching the site of the famous Tunguska meteorite fall have claimed they had discovered parts of an extraterrestrial device.

The expedition, organized by the Siberian Public State Foundation “Tunguska Space Phenomenon” completed its work on the scene of Tunguska meteorite fall on August 9. It was the first expedition to the region since 2000. Guided by the space photos, the researchers scanned a wider territory in the vicinity of the Poligusa village for parts of the space object that crashed into Earth in 1908 and was later called the Tunguska meteorite.

The scientists claim that they found remains of an extraterrestrial technical device that allegedly had an accident in Siberia in 1908. They also say that they found the so called “deer stone” - an artifact repeatedly mentioned in the reports of the eyewitnesses of the Tunguska phenomenon. A part of the “deer stone” has been delivered to Krasnoyarsk for research.

The head of the expedition Yuri Lavbin told MosNews on Tuesday that the researchers had traced the possible trajectory of the space object, but this time they counted that it ran from West to East, unlike the members previous missions who thought that the object had flown East to West. The new approach allowed the expedition members to find a buried object covered with trees.

The object appeared to be a large block made with metal. The researchers chipped a piece of the object and will now test its composition.

In his further comment to MosNews, Lavbin noted that according to his calculations, the mass of the space object that collided with the Earth in 1908 amounted to almost 1 billion tons and the blast on impact must have destroyed the humanity. The fact that it did not happen testifies to the theory that the Tunguska event was an explosion of an artificial object at an altitude of about 10 kilometers.

“I am fully confident and I can make an official statement that we were saved by some forces of a superior civilization,” the scientist said. “They exploded this enormous meteorite that headed towards us with enormous speed,” he said. Now this great object that caused the meteorite to explode is found at last. We will continue our research, he said.

Lavbin says that the results of this year’s expedition give him hope that the Tunguska mystery will be solved before the phenomenon’s 100th anniversary. To do this, Russian researchers plan another large-scale expedition to the Eastern Siberia.

The Tunguska event was an aerial explosion that occurred near the Tunguska River in Siberia on June 30, 1908. The blast felled an estimated 60 million trees over 2,150 square kilometres. On this day, local residents observed a huge fireball, almost as bright as the Sun, moving across the sky. A few minutes later, there was a flash that lit up half of the sky, followed by a shock wave that knocked people off their feet and broke windows up to 400 miles away.

The explosion registered on seismic stations across Eurasia, and produced fluctuations in atmospheric pressure strong enough to be detected by the recently invented barographs in Britain. Over the next few weeks, night skies over Europe and western Russia glowed brightly enough for people to read by. In the United States, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Mount Wilson Observatory observed a decrease in atmospheric transparency that lasted for several months.

The size of the blast was later estimated to be between 10 and 15 megatons. Until this year members of numerous expeditions have failed to find any remains of the object that caused the event.
Click to expand...
 
I'm afraid it's mostly been posted on the 'Stories From Pravda Thread'.

http://www.mosnews.com/news/2004/08/10/tunguska.shtml

In his further comment to MosNews, Lavbin noted that according to his calculations, the mass of the space object that collided with the Earth in 1908 amounted to almost 1 billion tons and the blast on impact must have destroyed the humanity. The fact that it did not happen testifies to the theory that the Tunguska event was an explosion of an artificial object at an altitude of about 10 kilometers.

“I am fully confident and I can make an official statement that we were saved by some forces of a superior civilization,” the scientist said. “They exploded this enormous meteorite that headed towards us with enormous speed,” he said. Now this great object that caused the meteorite to explode is found at last. We will continue our research, he said.
Click to expand...
You have to ask yourself, how could this chowderhead, possibly know all this nonsense? :p
 
Finally a healthy dash of scepticism:

Russian Alien Spaceship Claims Raise Eyebrows, Skepticism

By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 12 August 2004
02:39 pm ET


An expedition of Russian researchers claims to have found evidence that an alien spaceship had something to do with a huge explosion over Siberia in 1908. Experts in asteroids and comets have long said the massive blast was caused by a space rock.

The new ET claim is "a rather stupid hoax," one scientist said today. And it's one with a rich history.

The latest claim was written up by news wires and was making the Internet rounds Thursday morning. According to Agence France Presse, the scientists say they've found "an extra-terrestrial device" that explains "one of the 20th Century's biggest scientific mysteries," a catastrophe that flattened some 800 square miles of Siberian forest in a region called Tunguska.

Various other news reports told of a "technical device" and "a large block made with metal." The researchers were said to chip a piece off for laboratory study.

Most scientists think the Siberian devastation was caused by a large meteorite which, instead of hitting the ground, exploded above the surface.

'Plan to uncover evidence'

The Russian research team is called the Tunguska Space Phenomenon foundation and is led by Yuri Labvin. He said in late July that an expedition to the scene would seek evidence that aliens were involved.

"We intend to uncover evidences that will prove the fact that it was not a meteorite that rammed the Earth, but a UFO," Labvin was quoted by the Russian newspaper Pravda on July 29.

"I'm afraid this is a rather stupid hoax," said Benny Peiser, a researcher at Liverpool John Moores University in the UK. "The Russian team stupidly stated long before they went to Siberia that the main intention of their expedition was to find the remnants of an 'alien spaceship!' And bingo! A week later, that's what they claim to have found."

Peiser studies catastrophic events and related scientific processes and media reports. He runs an electronic newsletter, CCNet, which is among the most comprehensive running catalogues on the subject.

"It's a rather sad comment on the current state of the anything-goes attitudes among some 'science' correspondents that such blatant rubbish is being reported -- without the slightest hint of skepticism," Peiser told SPACE.com.

Longstanding mystery

Asteroid experts don't have all the answers for what happened at Tunguska. There were few witnesses in the remote region and the explosion left no crater.

The Tunguska event in 1908 flattened 800 square miles of Siberian forest -- and the object didn't even reach the ground. Astronomers say similar events will occur in the future, and one over a populated area would be devastating.

But the available evidence, along with modern computer modeling and general knowledge of space rocks, leaves little doubt in most scientific minds as to what happened.

Author Roy Gallant spent 10 years investigating the scene of the event for his book, "Meteorite Hunter: The Search for Siberian Meteorite Craters" (McGraw-Hill, 2002).

In an interview with SPACE.com when the book was published, Gallant said scientists are gathering "accumulating evidence tending to support the notion that the exploding object was a comet nucleus. This is the collective opinion of most Russian investigators; although some say they cannot confidently rule out a stony asteroid."

Peiser said there is a "general consensus" among experts worldwide that the culprit was an exploding comet or asteroid.

"Not surprisingly, the blast did not leave any remains of the object intact," Peiser said. "However, researchers claim to have found evidence of increased levels of cosmic dust particles in Greenland ice cores which are dated to 1908 and which they link to the Tunguska event of the same year."

Longstanding speculation

Speculation about aliens and Tunguska go way back. And there is a reason: No other visitor from space -- natural or otherwise -- has had such a well-documented impact on daily life in modern history.

The explosion on June 30, 1908 was equivalent to 20 million tons of TNT.

"Witnesses twenty to forty miles from the impact point experienced a sudden thermal blast that could be felt through several layers of clothing," writes Jim Oberg in "UFOs & Outer Space Mysteries" (Donning Press, 1984). The blast was recorded as an earthquake at several weather stations in Siberia."

In Europe, it didn't get dark that night. People said they could read the newspaper by the light of the mysterious blast, Oberg reports. Telescope operators in America noticed degraded sky conditions for months.

No crater was found, and wild speculation ensued.

Enter sci-fi

Struck by the similarity of Tunguska and Hiroshima decades later, a science fiction writer named Kazantsev wrote a story in which the Tunguska blast was the exploding nuclear power plant of a spaceship from Mars, according to Oberg.

A few Russian scientists took up the cause and claimed to find various bits of evidence -- never substantiated -- for a civilized alien explanation. Oberg wrote in 1984 that even then, as evidence built for a natural cause, a handful of "spaceship buffs seem to have grown more desperate, but no less effective, in corralling the public's attention." He said annually some unsuspecting journalist would stumble on the claims and write about them, setting off a fresh round of public speculation.

On that front, little has changed since 1984.

Astronomer Philip Plait, author of the myth-debunking book Bad Astronomy (Wiley & Sons, 2002), agrees with Peiser that the Russian researchers intention for finding ET-evidence hurts their case.

"They are not undertaking a scientific expedition, that is, an unbiased investigation to see what happened," Plait said Thursday via e-mail. "They are going to try to prove their preconceived ideas. That's not science, that's religion. And it almost certainly means that they are more willing to ignore or play down any evidence that it was a comet or rock impact, while playing up anything they find consistent with their hypothesis."

Prove it

Whatever anyone believes, Plait points out that proof is what's important.

"I am not saying they didn't find an alien ship. I am saying that it's a) unlikely in the extreme, and b) they are predisposed to make such claims, which means we need to be very skeptical, even more so than usual in such cases. If they provide sufficient evidence, then scientists are obligated to investigate, of course. But given everything I've read, their evidence to even consider a non-natural cause is pretty weak."

Plait has even thought about what evidence might be necessary. A chunk of debris would help, but not just any sort of material.

"It would need a weird ratio of isotopes, for examples, or clear evidence of long duration space travel," he said. "Even then they must be careful; manmade space debris rains down on Earth all the time."

Plait, a naturally skeptical person, is willing to wait and see.

"Let's see what these guys bring back," he said. "In the end, it's not what they can claim but what they can support with factual evidence that counts. The burden of proof is clearly -- and heavily-- on them."
Click to expand...

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/tunguska_event_040812.html
 
Alien wreckage found in Siberia

From this morning's Metro....

"The wreckage of an alien space craft has been discovered at the site of an unexplained explosion in Siberia nearly a century ago, Russian scientists claim. The team also says it has found a rock weighing 50kg which has been sent for analysis according to the respected Interfax news agency. Researchers, working for the publicly-funded Tunguska Space Phenomenon group, believe the alien craft crashed on June 30, 1908. Until now, the blast, which devastated 2,000sq km of remote forest, was blamed on a meteorite impact near the Tunguska river. The scientists hope the evidence will solve the mystery of what happened that day by the time of the centenary of the blast in four years' time. The site was first researched in 1927, but no sings of an alien craft were reported then."

THere's also this..

http://www.mosnews.com/news/2004/08/10/tunguska.shtml

"Russian Researchers Say Debris of Alien Spaceship found in Siberia
Created: 10.08.2004 11:30 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 15:37 MSK

MosNews

Members of a special expedition researching the site of the famous Tunguska meteorite fall have claimed they had discovered parts of an extraterrestrial device.

The expedition, organized by the Siberian Public State Foundation “Tunguska Space Phenomenon” completed its work on the scene of Tunguska meteorite fall on August 9. It was the first expedition to the region since 2000. Guided by the space photos, the researchers scanned a wider territory in the vicinity of the Poligusa village for parts of the space object that crashed into Earth in 1908 and was later called the Tunguska meteorite.

The scientists claim that they found remains of an extraterrestrial technical device that allegedly had an accident in Siberia in 1908. They also say that they found the so called “deer stone” - an artifact repeatedly mentioned in the reports of the eyewitnesses of the Tunguska phenomenon. A part of the “deer stone” has been delivered to Krasnoyarsk for research.

The head of the expedition Yuri Lavbin told MosNews on Tuesday that the researchers had traced the possible trajectory of the space object, but this time they counted that it ran from West to East, unlike the members previous missions who thought that the object had flown East to West. The new approach allowed the expedition members to find a buried object covered with trees.

The object appeared to be a large block made with metal. The researchers chipped a piece of the object and will now test its composition.

In his further comment to MosNews, Lavbin noted that according to his calculations, the mass of the space object that collided with the Earth in 1908 amounted to almost 1 billion tons and the blast on impact must have destroyed the humanity. The fact that it did not happen testifies to the theory that the Tunguska event was an explosion of an artificial object at an altitude of about 10 kilometers.

“I am fully confident and I can make an official statement that we were saved by some forces of a superior civilization,” the scientist said. “They exploded this enormous meteorite that headed towards us with enormous speed,” he said. Now this great object that caused the meteorite to explode is found at last. We will continue our research, he said.

Lavbin says that the results of this year’s expedition give him hope that the Tunguska mystery will be solved before the phenomenon’s 100th anniversary. To do this, Russian researchers plan another large-scale expedition to the Eastern Siberia.

The Tunguska event was an aerial explosion that occurred near the Tunguska River in Siberia on June 30, 1908. The blast felled an estimated 60 million trees over 2,150 square kilometres. On this day, local residents observed a huge fireball, almost as bright as the Sun, moving across the sky. A few minutes later, there was a flash that lit up half of the sky, followed by a shock wave that knocked people off their feet and broke windows up to 400 miles away.

The explosion registered on seismic stations across Eurasia, and produced fluctuations in atmospheric pressure strong enough to be detected by the recently invented barographs in Britain. Over the next few weeks, night skies over Europe and western Russia glowed brightly enough for people to read by. In the United States, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Mount Wilson Observatory observed a decrease in atmospheric transparency that lasted for several months.

The size of the blast was later estimated to be between 10 and 15 megatons. Until this year members of numerous expeditions have failed to find any remains of the object that caused the event."

Hmm. I just noticed the other thread.. feel free to merge if it doesn't make the above fade into obscurity under some two year old posts ;)
 
Feel Free To Excise After Suturing Threads

Listen guys, you really are going to have to start checking to see if there have been any previous posts on the same subject.

This is not the first multiple posing on this dubious story.

Try, doing a search for 'Tunguska', or even 'Russian space debris', first.

:p
 
Does anybody know why they called it a 'deer stone'?
 
Does anybody know why they called it a 'deer stone'?

Because it cost so much to find.
 
Tesla

I've always been a fan of the theory that Tesla inadvertantly caused the Tunguska explosion with his "death ray" (which Tesla himself seemed to believe). That doesn't mean I believe it, however.
 
What, an air-bursting meteor not a good enough explanation?
I WISH it were Aliens ofr TEsla coils... which I've made, by the way but it was probably a meteor...
;)
 
Update: The Tunguska Special Value Pack Bundle!

Comet, meteor, stray lump of anti-matter, UFO, black hole?
Now, thanks to Yuri Lavbin, you don't have to settle for just one:
Lavbin's theory is that a comet and a mysterious flying machine collided 10 kilometres (six miles) above the earth's surface causing the explosion.
(Yahoo! News)
Click to expand...
This is getting better and better. :D
 
Strange Doings on Tunguska

Amazingly, some people still believe the devastating Siberian event was caused by space aliens




Thursday, Aug. 26, 2004

If any people are more gullible about Unidentified Flying Objects than Americans, it’s the Russians. And if any group of professionals is more gullible than Russians about UFOs, it’s the journalists. This truism was confirmed again this month when, around the world, wire services and other press outlets straight-facedly reported a new claim that a UFO had been involved in the great Tunguska catastrophe.

Tunguska? That’s the then-uninhabited region in Siberia where in 1908 a mammoth explosion leveled and charred trees and killed wildlife over an area of 800 square miles. That night in northern Europe and western Russia, the skies glowed with an eerie light and in London, for example, it was light enough outside to read a newspaper. The lone human being in the area, a trapper living near the periphery of the blast, was blown off the porch of his shack, but survived. Had the explosion occurred over London, say, or New York, the casualties would have been counted in the hundreds of thousands.

Most scientists today believe that the Tunguska event was caused by an asteroid or a comet that heated so rapidly upon plunging into the atmosphere that it blew up some five miles above the surface with an explosive force of 10 to 15 megatons. But that conclusion is far too rational for Russians like scientist Yuri Lavbin, who heads the Tunguska Space Phenomenon public state fund. It was Lavbin who in July announced that he would lead an expedition to Siberia and stated, “We intend to find proof that not a meteorite but an extraterrestrial spaceship crashed with the Earth.”

Some might suggest that Lavbin was predisposed to making a remarkable discovery. And that is precisely what happened. A Russian scientific team headed by Lavbin scoured the Tunguska site early in August and breathlessly announced that it had found the remnants of an extraterrestrial spacecraft, in the form of a large metallic block. After sending a 50 kilogram chunk of the block to a laboratory for testing, Lavbin chose not to await the results. “I can make an official announcement that we were saved by some forces of a superior civilization,” he proclaimed. “They exploded this enormous meteorite headed toward us with tremendous speed. Now this great object that caused the meteorite to explode is found at last.”

His announcement was greeted by loud raspberries from reputable scientists. Interviewed by Space.com, British researcher Benny Peiser, who runs the CCNet website, a scholarly forum devoted largely to asteroid impacts and other potential natural threats, called the Russian report “a rather stupid hoax.” He was equally critical of the press: “It’s a rather sad comment on the current state of anything-goes attitudes among some science correspondents that such blatant rubbish is being reported."

All this came as no surprise to science writer James Oberg. In his 1982 book, “UFOs and Outer Space Mysteries,” he had traced the origins of the Russian Tunguska UFO obsession to a science fiction writer named Kazantsev, who wrote a story attributing the mighty blast to an exploding nuclear power plant of a spaceship from Mars. Other Russians took the bait. Astronomy lecturer Feliks Zigel, who was also a flying saucer enthusiast, became a spokesman for the “spaceship” theory of Tunguska, and a scientist named Aleksey Zolotov, began claiming, almost annually but without proof, that he had found radioactivity at the blast site.

Oberg predicted that the Tunguska spacecraft story, in various forms, would endure and that gullible members of the press would continue to be hoodwinked by Russian UFOlogists. More than two decades later, his prediction stands unchallenged.
Click to expand...


http://www.time.com/time/columnist/jaroff/article/0,9565,688585,00.html
 
Re: Update: The Tunguska Special Value Pack Bundle!

MeteorMaker said:
Comet, meteor, stray lump of anti-matter, UFO, black hole?
Now, thanks to Yuri Lavbin, you don't have to settle for just one:

This is getting better and better. :D
Click to expand...

AND...
Due to Tesla and his coil activity the UFO was unable to manouver away from the comet!.
:)
 
I have just started reading a book called The Tunguska Fireball by Surendra Verma and I am enjoying it so much already I am going to jump the gun and say its great. The author is going to explore the various theories such as Black Holes, the underground gas thing, comets and much more. The eyewitness accounts at the start of the book are amazing and I can't wait to get through and read all the theories.
 
Fiction related to the Tunguska event : "And having writ" by Donald R. Bensen


This book' s nothing special, but it's not bad. Basically an alien spacecraft exploding over the taiga and alternate timelines.
 
I, too, am a subscriber to the Tesla theory. I don't think we know half of what there is to know about that man, and what he was doing.
 
Tunguska impact Crater "Found" -maybe

From http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6239334.stm

Scientists have identified a possible crater left by the biggest space impact in modern times - the Tunguska event.

The blast levelled more than 2,000 sq km of forest near the Tunguska River in Siberia on 30 June 1908.

A comet or asteroid is thought to have exploded in the Earth's atmosphere with a force equal to 1,000 Hiroshima bombs.

Now, a University of Bologna team says a lake near the epicentre of the blast may be occupying a crater hollowed out by a chunk of rock that hit the ground.

Lake Cheko - though shallow - fits the proportions of a small, bowl-shaped impact crater, say the Italy-based scientists.

Their investigation of the lake bottom's geology reveals a funnel-like shape not seen in neighbouring lakes.

In addition, a geophysics survey of the lake bed has turned up an unusual feature about 10m down which could either be compacted lake sediments or a buried fragment of space rock.

Luca Gasparini, Giuseppe Longo and colleagues from Bologna argue that the lake feature, about 8km north-north-west of the airblast epicentre, may have been gouged out by remnant material that made it to the ground.

"We have no positive proof this is an impact crater, but we were able to exclude some other hypotheses, and this led us to our conclusion," Professor Longo, the research team leader, told BBC News.

The object that hurtled through the atmosphere on the morning of 30 June, 1908, is thought to have detonated some 5-10km above the ground with an energy equivalent to about 20 million tonnes of TNT. The explosion was so bright it even lit up the sky in London, UK.

Small fragments of the body should have survived the airburst and made it Earth. But, mysteriously, no crater - or even the slightest trace of the impactor - has ever been positively identified.

"In my opinion, they certainly haven't provided any conclusive evidence it's an impact structure," commented Dr Gareth Collins, a research associate at Imperial College London, UK.

He added: "The impact cratering community does not accept structures as craters unless there is evidence of high temperatures and high pressures. That requires evidence of rocks that have been melted or rocks that have been ground up by the impact."

Dr Collins pointed out that the Cheko feature was "anomalously" shallow and lacked the round shape of most craters - being more elliptical in its form. Elliptical craters only occur if the impactor's angle of entry is less than about 10 degrees.

"We know from modelling of the Tunguska event that the angle of entry must have been steeper than that," Dr Collins told BBC News.

A key feature of other impact craters is conspicuously missing from Lake Cheko - a "flap" around the crater rim of upside-down material tossed a short distance from the crater by the impact.

Dr Collins added that if pieces of the space rock had survived the airburst, they would have been too small and travelling too slowly to have generated a crater the size of Lake Cheko.

An impact would also have felled trees all around the crater, said the London geologist, yet there appeared to be trees older than 100 years still standing around Lake Cheko today.

Computer models carried out by other teams suggest that centimetre-sized fragments of the body could be found hundreds of kilometres away from Tunguska.

As the impactor plunged through the atmosphere, it pushed air out of its way, leaving a near-vacuum in its wake.

As it broke up, fragments would have expanded back up the vacuum and rained out over a much larger area.

The Italian researchers argue that some of the lake's anomalous features could be explained if a space rock was travelling at a low speed and had a "soft" impact into the swampy Siberian taiga.

The crater could have become subsequently enlarged by the expulsion of water and gas from the ground.

The Bologna team says this could also account for the limited damage to the surrounding area and the absence of a rim of upturned ejecta.

"If formed during the impact, [the rim] would have been rapidly obliterated by collapse and gravity-failures during the subsequent degassing phase," the authors write in the journal Terra Nova.

Lake Cheko does not appear on any maps before 1929, though the researchers admit the region was poorly charted before this time.

The University of Bologna team plans to mount another expedition to the Tunguska region in summer 2008.

The researchers aim to drill up to 10m below the lake bed to the anomaly picked up in the geophysics survey and determine whether it really is a piece of extraterrestrial rock.
Click to expand...
 
Interesting story, but would it have hurt to include just a couple of lines of explanation as well as the link? I'm not making an accusation of spamming, but I've clicked links in the past that led me places I'd rather not have gone, so a brief desciption is always appreciated.
 
This chap doesn't agree
link
In my opinion, they certainly haven't provided any conclusive evidence it's an impact structure," commented Dr Gareth Collins, a Natural Environment Research Council (Nerc) research fellow at Imperial College London, UK.

He added: "The impact cratering community does not accept structures as craters unless there is evidence of high temperatures and high pressures. That requires evidence of rocks that have been melted or rocks that have been ground up by the impact."

Dr Collins pointed out that the Cheko feature was "anomalously" shallow and lacked the round shape of most craters - being more elliptical in its form. Elliptical craters only occur if the impactor's angle of entry is less than about 10 degrees.

"We know from modelling of the Tunguska event that the angle of entry must have been steeper than that," Dr Collins told BBC News.

A key feature of other impact craters is conspicuously missing from Lake Cheko - a "flap" around the crater rim of upside-down material tossed a short distance from the crater by the impact.

Dr Collins added that if pieces of the space rock had survived the airburst, they would have been too small and travelling too slowly to have generated a crater the size of Lake Cheko.

An impact would also have felled trees all around the crater, said the London geologist, yet there appeared to be trees older than 100 years still standing around Lake Cheko today.

Dr Benny Peiser, from Liverpool John Moores University, was also cautious about the findings, adding: "There has been an inflationary increase in the number of claims that allege discovery of impact events or impact craters."
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