The Tunguska Fireball: Solving One of the Great Mysteries of the 20th Century

289 Pages·2005·2.35 MB·English

by  Surendra Verma

THE MYSTERY OF THE
TUNGUSKA
FIREBALL
SURENDRA VERMA
THE
TUNGUSKA
FIREBALL

THE
TUNGUSKA
FIREBALL
Solving One of the Great Mysteries
of the 20th Century
SURENDRA VERMA
ICON BOOKS
Published in the UK in 2005 by Icon Books Ltd,
The Old Dairy, Brook Road, Thriplow, Cambridge SG8 7RG
e-mail: [email protected]
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Frating Green, Colchester CO7 7DW
Published in Australia in 2005
by Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd,
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Crows Nest, NSW 2065
Distributed in Canada by
Penguin Books Canada,
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Toronto, Ontario M4V 3B2
ISBN 1 84046 620 0
Text copyright © 2005 Surendra Verma
The author has asserted his moral rights
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any
means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher
Typesetting by Hands Fotoset
Printed and bound in the UK by
Clays of Bungay
C
ONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii
INTRODUCTION ix
CHAPTER ONE: FIRE IN THE SKY 1
CHAPTER TWO: THE CASE OF A MISSING METEORITE 19
CHAPTER THREE: THE TALE OF A FIERY COMET 57
CHAPTER FOUR: ASTEROIDS BEHAVING BADLY 79
CHAPTER FIVE: TRACELESS TUNGUSKA 105
CHAPTER SIX: THE INCREDIBLE JOURNEY OF A
BLACK HOLE 122
CHAPTER SEVEN: THE MATTER IN QUESTION 134
CHAPTER EIGHT: A BLAST FROM BELOW 154
CHAPTER NINE: OPENING THE X-FILES 173
CHAPTER TEN: A FIREBALL IN THE DINOSAURS’ SKY 202
CHAPTER ELEVEN: WHODUNIT? 240
TIMELINE: ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF AN ENIGMA 251
SOURCES AND FURTHER READING 258
INDEX 267
v
Surendra Verma is a science writer based in Melbourne,
Australia since 1970. He has published several books and
numerous articles, besides churning out pretentious
prose for corporate and government publications. His
Little Book of Scientific Principles, Theories and Things
will be published in 2005 by New Holland.
A
CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
During the writing of this book, I requested the major
proponents of two leading theories on the Tunguska
event, Dr Zdenek Sekanina of NASA’s Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in California and Dr Vitalii Bronshten of the
Committee of Meteorites of the Russian Academy of
Sciences, to express their latest views on their theories. I
was saddened to hear of Dr Bronshten’s death a few
weeks after I had written to him. I’m grateful to Dr
Sekanina for his response.
I’m also grateful to Dr Robert Foot of the University of
Melbourne; Professor Wolfgang Kundt of the University
of Bonn; and Dr Kiril Chukanov of Chukanov Quantum
Energy in Salt Lake City, Utah, for commenting on their
research on the Tunguska event.
My special thanks go to Dr Marek Zbik of the Ian
Wark Research Institute at the University of South
Australia for his help in providing research papers and
illustrations; to Mr Vitalii Romeiko of Moscow for
giving permission to use his photograph of the Suslov
crater; to the staff of the State Library of Victoria for
their courteous help on numerous occasions; to Geoff
vii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Coleman, Simon Kwok, Ruth Learner, Darren Lewin-
Hill and Arun Tomar for their moral support; and to Eric
(‘Fizzle’) Fiesley and Colin (‘Stick’) Storer for being true
Aussie mates for more than 30 years.
The writing of this book became a pleasure with Dr
Andrei Ol’khovatov’s enthusiastic support in many
ways. Dr Ol’khovatov, formerly of the Soviet Radio
Instrument Industry Research Institute and now an
independent researcher in Moscow, is a well-known
personality in the Tunguska cyberspace and research
communities. Thank you, Andrei. Keep the Tunguska
fireball burning brightly.
I’m indebted to Icon Books’ publisher Simon Flynn
for giving me the opportunity to write this book, and
their editor Duncan Heath for his indispensable advice.
Finally, I would like to thank my wife Suman and my
sons Rohit and Anuraag for their unfailing support
throughout the writing of this book.
viii
I
NTRODUCTION
The so-called Tunguska event has been part of the folk-
lore of science since 1927, when Leonid Kulik became the
first scientist to visit the explosion site. He saw an oval
plateau 70 kilometres wide where the forest had been
flattened. Trees were not uprooted: instead they were
stripped of their branches, snapped off and scattered like
matchsticks pointing away from the direction of the
blast. Even after a careful search Kulik found no crater or
other evidence of impact. He searched for meteorite
fragments but found nothing. As there was no impact
crater and no substantial remnants, a giant meteorite
could not have caused the Tunguska explosion. If it were
not a meteorite, then what caused the explosion?
The search for the answer to this question has gener-
ated a Tunguska industry that has kept both scientists
and charlatans busy for eight decades.
Hundreds of research articles in renowned and not-
so-renowned journals prove that bright scientific minds
are keen to solve the riddle. Tunguska also provides
them with an opportunity to test-drive new theories:
black holes, ball lightning, anti-matter and mirror matter
ix