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The Tunguska Explosion

UFO Sweden - USSR UFO History

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Summary: The Tunguska Explosion is by many considered to be caused by an exploding UFO over Siberia, Russia in 1908. Even today people are trying to solve what caused the explosion. Everything from a comet to some unknown phenomena of the nature has been suggested in over 70 essays.

Before I keep reporting sightings in the early 19th century I want you to read about the Tunguska Explosion. By many considered to be caused by an exploding UFO over Siberia, Russia in 1908.

On June 30th 1908 a ball of fire was seen by the farmer S.B. Semjonov and his neighber P.P.Kosalopov at a trade-station in Vanavara (Sibiria). The ball of fire ”covered a great part of the sky” and it burned Semjonov right through his clothes. Kosalopov’s ears also felt like they were on fire as he looked to the cealing thinking it was on fire. A few seconds later an explosion appeared 40 miles north of Vanavara which left a pillar of dust in the horizon in the form of a mushroom cloud as it threw Semjonov of the porch unconscious. As he came to he felt the ground tremble and his house shaking violently as the windows fell out.

Even today people are trying to solve what caused the explosion. Everything from a comet to some unknown phenomena of the nature has been suggested in over 70 essays. And one of the theories is that a extraterristrial nuclear spaceship went down and exploded 8 kilometers over ground causing damage similar to a 12,5 megaton hydrogen bomb. The explosion was enormous and could be heard over 600 kilometers away as a train-driver in Kansk stopped his train to see if one of his wagons had exploded. 10 million trees was demolished, lying flat on the ground. This is an excerpt from Ion Hobaba & Julien Weverbergh’s book UFO’s Behind The Iron Curtain:

”A hurricane arose above the taiga which tore roofs from houses and shttered windows. Shock waves encircled the Earth twice and were recorded in London on barographs. Huge waves flooded the banks of the Angara river and wood floating on other sreams was thrown high into the air. Seismogrpahs in Jena, Irkutsk and other cities recorded earth tremors and for three nights in succession people were able, in London and Paris, to read their papers wothout the aid of any artificial light. Around Moscow it was even possible to take photos at night, while in Siberia itself the clouds during wet weather were greenish-yellow.”

The clouds sometimes turned to rose-pink tinge. All in all the explosion destroyed everything in a 20 million sq km area. Severe genetic damage to the vegetation where it made trees to grow extremely fast and an analysis made by Nobel prizewinner Willard Labard (see picture to the right) showed a increased degree of carbon-14 since 1908 which shows of radiation-influence, and radiation-sickness on the nomad people in the area - everything showing traces of a nuclear explosion. One person of the Kulik-expedition (more about Kulik further down) was also proclaimed to have died in radiation-like symptoms but this were never npted in the expedition files.

Leonid Kulik

The incident fell aside as the revolution shook peoples lives. And as the area is placed in the middle of the Siberian wilderness, it took 19 years before the Russian Minerologist Leonid Kulik (see picture to the right)arranged an expedition to Tunguska. He had heard of the explosion only 6 years prior to the expedition and his interest in meteorites made him arrange the expedition despite the unfriendly area when it came to travel (he belived the explosion was caused by huge iron-meteorite, bigger than the meteorite that caused the Baringer-crater in Arizona, USA, 25,000 years ago). In 1927 he set off from the trainstation of Tajsjet. By horse-sled the traveled 600 kilometers on the frozen Tiaga until they reached Vanvara. Here he heard the natives strange storys of the explosion and he was even more confident that it was a crashing meteorite. The expedition had to wait for a week in Vanavara due to a snowstorm, but on April 8 he arrived to the outskirt of the explosion-site which had no roads or even cart-tracks. But as the natives-trackers refused to enter the center-area (they were afraid of the ”Fire-God” Ogdi) he had to turn back and wait for months before he found trackers that dared to enter the explosions eye.

So in the spring of 1928 he returned- He didn’t find the enormous crater he expected but a frozen swamp with an untouched clump of trees in the middle. Around the grove 10 million trees was lying flat, like they’ve been mown down with a gigantic scythe, like they had been torn up by the roots. Kulik didn’t find any traces of the meteorite or a crater, all he found was dead trees all laying in an outpointing pattern from the epicenter with their roots in the air. The first doubts of the meteorite theory now began to appear.

Theories

As there has been over 70 papers on the incident there is a great deal of theories on what caused the explosion, which was almost certainly by nuclear origin. One of the most rediculous ones was presented by Kuliks partner Vasili Sytin. He thought a ”wind” of enormous power had swept the area. The reason I say rediculous is - if you look at how the trees have fallen in a precise outgoing pattern from the epicenter, you understand that the ”wind” theory is without substance. If it wasn’t a wind that went in all directions at the same time with qual speed...
Another theory by the physicists A.A. Jackson and Michael Ryan at the Texas University is that a microscoptical ”black hole” passed through earth caused the explosion. A black hole caused when the mass of an asteroid is compressed into the size of an atomparticle and runs through earth. If that theory was true an equel big incident should have roze as the ”black hole” came out through the Atlantic on the other side of earth. There was no reports of any unusual movements in the Atlantic at the time.

In 1938-9 a series of topographical measurments were made by aircraft, along with photos, but the work was interupted by the Second World war. Kulik, an enlisted volunteer, was killed near Kaluga in April 1942.

It was the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs that brought up the Space-ship theory. The Russian magazine Vokrug Sveta published a short story in January 1946 by the science-fiction writer A. Kazantsev, in which he suggested that the Tunguska-incident could well have been caused by a outerspace nuclear space-ship exploding as it tried to land, as it was about to collect sweetwater from the Lake Baikal (worlds biggest sweetwater supply), and that the explosion destroyed the ship so thoroughly that not a single trace of it could be found. The missing crater was also due to the ship exploding 8-10 kilometers above ground.

In 1958 a team of specialists from the Committee for meteorite studies led by Kiril Florenskij made an expedition to Tunguska in the footsteps of Kulik. He returned in 1961 and finally in 1962, when he used a helicopter to cover the site. Instead of searching for a big meteorite (as Kulik did), he searched for smaller items - and found them. The expedition found a small trail of cosmic dust all the way from the center to 250 kilometers north-west of it. The dust contained magnetit iron-oxide and small drops of glasificationed rock.

Florenskij concluded that it was a part of a comet that exploded over Tunguska in 1908 and he made that conclusion on this:

1.The carbonoxide-14 analysis by Libby was missinterpret as other analysis has been made on Norwegian trees of 1909 - which showed an decreased amount of carbonoxide-14, a much more closer location to Tunguska than US.

2.The cosmic-dust that was spread in a outward line 250 kilometers northwest, and that the tests pof this dust showed the same compound as meteorites and other ”space junk”.

3.Florenskij’s measurments on radiation showed an increased amount that he belived was caused by bomb-testings.

4.The radiation-sickness that was shown on people and livestock (raindeer a.s.o.) could have been caused by the emence heat and not by any nuclear blast. The people who showed these symptoms lived a long and normal life after 1908.

5.The increased growth of the forest after the explosion was a normal behaviour after a forest-fire.

6. A similar explosion (but smaller in scale) happened in the Amazon’s in 1930 and Canada in 1965 where the same ”black dust-rain” was observed and analyzed.

So what is it that still makes UFOlogists to consider this explosion to be UFO-connected?

Well, the main reason is the report from the, then, Polish Tatranska observatory, which observed a ”fire ball” in the sky on June 30, 1908, that suddenly changed it’s coarse, which a comet or meteor don’t do. The Russian UFO-researcher Dr. Felix Zigel says that the ”object” changed it’s coarse two times as it came in over the explosion-area. This information is based on witnesses in the area (miles from eachother) and by numerous complicated calculations connected with the earthquakes and electrical changes registered during during the object’s flight..

Another thing that supports Zigel’s nuclear-theory is the burning marks on the trees. If there was forest-fire caused by an exploding comet-part, the trees would have been burned all around. The trees were only burned on the side that faced the center of the explosion. This is belived to be caused by an concentrated, short time, heat as in a nuclear explosion.

' As I mentioned in point 6 - in 1930 another explosion like Tunguska is supposed to have happened in the Western Amazon, Brazil, in a remote part called Curucá. The case was investigated by the Catholic missionary Father Fidele s’Alviano the same year. His report was cited by Laonid Kulik the year after, who immediatly saw the simularities with the Tunguska explosion.

The incident happened on August 13, 1930. And witness statements says that: shortly before the explosion the sun turned red and then the sky went totally dark, followed by a rain of white ash and an ear-piercing whistle. Then three fireballs streaked across the sky and exploded, their rumblings were heard hundreds of kilometers around. It took months until the fire in the soil on the explosion-area faded. The estimated size of the impact was 1 megaton, 1/10 of the Tunguska explosion.

Even today scientists are arguing over what caused the biggest explosion in 20th century and we probably will never know. But the thought of an extraterrestrial lifeform-connection is intriguing and falls into the ”puzzle”.

Read more articles on this topic:

The Tunguska Event - Siberia, 1908