The explosion over Siberia—which has come to be known as the 'Tunguska event'—has long puzzled experts.
But despite the widespread destruction on the ground, only a few tiny fragments that could potentially have come from the offending object have ever been found. While it is classified as an impact event, to date, no impact crater has been uncovered even though the damage on the ground had a clear epicenter.
"A century later some still debate the cause and come up with different scenarios that could have caused the explosion," Don Yeomans, a former NASA planetary scientist, wrote."But the generally agreed upon theory is that on the morning of June 30, 1908, a large space rock, about 120 feet across, entered the atmosphere of Siberia and then detonated in the sky."
The objects they examined in their computer modelling had diameters of 50, 100 and 200 meters and were made from three types of materials—iron, stone and water ice—all of which have previously been proposed as possible materials for the object that caused the event. According to the scientists, any of the iron material lost during this process would have sublimated—or turned directly from solid to gas—meaning they would leave little detectable trace, as they appear exactly like iron oxides found on Earth. This rapid loss in mass would have created a destructive shockwave capable of flattening trees over wide areas without leaving any traces of iron droplets on the Earth's surface.
This section of Siberia was devastated by a massive explosion on July 30, 1908 in what has become known as the Tunguska event.Furthermore, this version of events can help to explain"optical effects associated with a strong dustiness in high layers of the atmosphere over Europe, which caused a bright glow of the night sky," the authors wrote in the study.
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