Indicating the possible cosmic origin of the substance.

Epicenter coordinates

It was established that the explosion occurred in the air at a certain altitude (according to various estimates, 5 - 15 km) and was unlikely to be a point explosion, so we can only talk about the projection of the coordinates of a special point, called the epicenter. Different methods for determining the geographic coordinates of this special point (“epicenter”) of the explosion give slightly different results:

Author	Coordinates	Determination method
Kulik L. A.	60.901944 , 101.904444  /  (G) (O)	Along the radial fall of trees
Astapovich I.S.	60.901944 , 101.904444 60°54′07″ n. w. 101°54′16″ E. d. /  60.901944° s. w. 101.904444° E. d.(G) (O)	According to the physical parameters of the explosion
Fast V. G.	60.885833 , 101.894444  /  (G) (O)	By asymmetrical tree felling
Zolotov A.V.	60.886389 , 101.886389 60°53′11″ n. w. 101°53′11″ E. d. /  60.886389° N. w. 101.886389° E. d.(G) (O)
Boyarkina A.P.	60.895833 , 101.891667 60°53′45″ n. w. 101°53′30″ E. d. /  60.895833° s. w. 101.891667° E. d.(G) (O)
Ilyin A. G., Zenkin G. M.	60.868889 , 101.9175 60°52′08″ n. w. 101°55′03″ E. d. /  60.868889° s. w. 101.9175° E. d.(G) (O)	For burn damage to trees

Course of events

It is noted that three days before the event, starting on June 27, 1908, unusual atmospheric phenomena began to be observed in Europe, the European part of Russia and Western Siberia: noctilucent clouds, bright twilight, solar halos. British astronomer William Denning wrote that on the night of June 30 the sky over Bristol was so bright that the stars were practically invisible; the entire northern part of the sky had a red tint, and the eastern part had a green tint.

At 7:14 a.m. local time, the body exploded over the Southern Swamp near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River; the force of the explosion, according to some estimates, reached 40-50 megatons of TNT equivalent.

Eyewitness observations

One of the most famous eyewitness accounts is the message of Semyon Semenov, a resident of the Vanavara trading post, located 70 km southeast of the epicenter of the explosion:

As soon as I swung my ax to hit the hoop on the tub, suddenly in the north the sky split in two, and a fire appeared in it, wide and high above the forest, which engulfed the entire northern part of the sky. At that moment I felt so hot, as if my shirt was on fire. I wanted to tear and throw off my shirt, but the sky slammed shut and there was a strong blow. I was thrown three fathoms off the porch. After the blow there was such a knock, as if stones were falling from the sky or guns were firing, the ground shook, and when I was lying on the ground, I pressed my head, fearing that the stones would break my head. At that moment, when the sky opened, a hot wind rushed from the north, like from a cannon, which left traces in the form of paths on the ground. Then it turned out that many of the windows were broken, and the iron bar for the door lock was broken

Even closer to the epicenter, 30 km from it to the southeast, on the banks of the Avarkitta River, was the tent of the Evenk brothers Chuchanchi and Chekaren Shanyagir:

Our tent then stood on the bank of Avarkitta. Before sunrise, Chekaren and I came from the Dilyushma River, where we visited Ivan and Akulina. We fell fast asleep. Suddenly we both woke up at once - someone was pushing us. We heard a whistle and felt a strong wind. Chekaren also shouted to me: “Do you hear how many goldeneyes or mergansers are flying?” We were still in the plague and we couldn’t see what was happening in the forest. Suddenly someone pushed me again, so hard that I hit my head on a crazy pole and then fell onto the hot coals in the fireplace. I was afraid. Chekaren also got scared and grabbed the pole. We started shouting for father, mother, brother, but no one answered. There was some noise behind the tent; you could hear the trees falling. Chekaren and I got out of the bags and were about to jump out of the chum, but suddenly thunder struck very hard. This was the first blow. The earth began to twitch and sway, a strong wind hit our chum and knocked it down. I was firmly pressed down by the poles, but my head was not covered, because the ellune had lifted up. Then I saw a terrible miracle: the forests were falling, the pine needles on them were burning, the dead wood on the ground was burning, the reindeer moss was burning. There is smoke all around, it hurts your eyes, it’s hot, very hot, you could burn.

Suddenly, over the mountain where the forest had already fallen, it became very light, and, how can I tell you, as if a second sun had appeared, the Russians would say: “suddenly it suddenly flashed,” my eyes began to hurt, and I even closed them. It looked like what the Russians call “lightning.” And immediately there was agdylyan, strong thunder. This was the second blow. The morning was sunny, there were no clouds, our sun was shining brightly, as always, and then a second sun appeared!

Testimony of the brothers Chuchanchi and Chekaren

Consequences of the event

The explosion on Tunguska was heard 800 km from the epicenter, the blast wave felled a forest over an area of ​​2,100 km², and the windows of some houses were broken within a radius of 200 km; the seismic wave was recorded by seismographic stations in Irkutsk, Tashkent, Tbilisi and Jena.

Soon after the explosion, a magnetic storm began that lasted 5 hours.

The unusual atmospheric light effects that preceded the explosion reached a maximum on July 1, after which they began to decline (individual traces of them persisted until the end of July).

First publications about the event

The first report about the event that occurred near Tunguska was published in the newspaper “Sibirskaya Zhizn” dated June 30 (July 12), 1908:

At about 8 o'clock in the morning, a few fathoms from the railway bed, near the Filimonovo crossing, not reaching 11 versts to Kansk, according to stories, a huge meteorite fell... Passengers approaching the train crossing during the fall of the meteorite were struck by an extraordinary roar; the train was stopped by the driver, and the public poured to the place where the distant wanderer fell. But she was not able to examine the meteorite closer, since it was red-hot... almost the entire meteorite crashed into the ground - only its top sticks out...

It is clearly evident that the content of this note is extremely far from what actually happened, however, this message went down in history, since it was it that prompted L.A. Kulik to go in search of the meteorite, which he then still considered “Filimonovsky”.

The newspaper “Siberia” dated July 2 (15), 1908, provided a more factual description (author S. Kulesh):

On the morning of June 17, at the beginning of the 9th hour, we observed some unusual natural phenomenon. In the village of N.-Karelinsky (200 versts from Kirensk to the north), peasants saw in the northwest, quite high above the horizon, some extremely strongly (it was impossible to look at) body glowing with a white, bluish light, moving for 10 minutes from top to bottom . The body was presented in the form of a “pipe,” that is, cylindrical. The sky was cloudless, only not high above the horizon; in the same direction in which the luminous body was observed, a small dark cloud was noticeable. It was hot and dry. Approaching the ground (forest), the shiny body seemed to blur, and in its place a huge cloud of black smoke formed and an extremely strong knock (not thunder) was heard, as if from large falling stones or cannon fire. All the buildings shook. At the same time, flames of an indeterminate shape began to burst out of the cloud.

All the residents of the village ran into the streets in panic, the women were crying, everyone thought that the end of the world was coming.

However, no one showed widespread interest in the fall of an extraterrestrial body at that time. Scientific research into the Tunguska phenomenon began only in the 1920s.

Kulik's expeditions

Despite the absence of a crater, Kulik remained a supporter of the hypothesis about the meteorite nature of the phenomenon (although he was forced to abandon the idea of ​​​​the fall of a solid meteorite of significant mass in favor of the idea of ​​its possible destruction during the fall). He discovered thermokarst pits, which he mistakenly mistook for small meteorite craters.

During his expeditions, Kulik tried to find the remains of the meteorite, organized aerial photography of the crash site (in 1938, over an area of ​​250 km²), and collected information about the meteorite fall from witnesses to the incident.

A new expedition being prepared by L.A. Kulik to the site of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite in 1941 did not take place due to the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War. The results of L. A. Kulik’s many years of work on studying the problem of the Tunguska meteorite were summed up in 1949 by a student of L. A. Kulik, who died in the Great Patriotic War, and a participant in his expeditions, E. L. Krinov, in the book “Tunguska Meteorite” published by him.

Nature of the phenomenon

To date, a generally accepted hypothesis that explains all the essential features of the phenomenon has not been proposed. At the same time, the proposed explanations are very numerous and varied: for example, an employee of the Committee on Meteorites of the USSR Academy of Sciences I. Zotkin published in 1970 in the journal Nature an article “Guide to help compilers of hypotheses related to the fall of the Tunguska meteorite,” where he described seventy seven theories about his fall known as of January 1, 1969. At the same time, he classified hypotheses into the following types:

The initial explanation of the phenomenon - the fall of a meteorite of significant mass (presumably iron), or a swarm of meteorites - quickly began to raise doubts among experts due to the fact that the remains of the meteorite could not be found, despite significant efforts made to search for them.

In the early 1930s, British astronomer and meteorologist Francis Whipple suggested that the Tunguska events were associated with the fall of a comet nucleus (or a fragment thereof) to Earth. A similar hypothesis was proposed by geochemist Vladimir Vernadsky, who suggested that the Tunguska body was a relatively loose clump of cosmic dust. This explanation was later accepted by quite a large number of astronomers. Calculations showed that to explain the observed destruction, the celestial body had to have a mass of about 5 million tons. The cometary material is a very loose structure consisting primarily of ice; and almost completely disintegrated and burned upon entry into the atmosphere. It has been suggested that the Tunguska meteoroid belongs to the β-Taurid meteor shower, associated with Comet Encke.

Attempts were also made to refine the meteorite hypothesis. A number of astronomers indicate that the comet would have collapsed high in the atmosphere, so only a rocky asteroid could act as the Tunguska meteoroid. In their opinion, its substance was sprayed into the air and was carried away by the wind. In particular, G.I. Petrov, having considered the problem of deceleration of bodies in an atmosphere with low mass density, identified a new, explosive form of entry into the atmosphere of a space object, which, unlike the case of ordinary meteorites, does not give visible traces of a disintegrated body. Astronomer Igor Astapovich suggested that the Tunguska phenomenon can be explained by the ricochet of a large meteorite from dense layers of the atmosphere.

In 1945, Soviet science fiction writer Alexander Kazantsev, based on the similarity of eyewitness accounts of the Tunguska events and the explosion of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, suggested that the available data indicate not the natural, but the artificial nature of the event: he suggested that the “Tunguska meteorite” was a cosmic a ship of an extraterrestrial civilization that crashed in the Siberian taiga.

The natural reaction of the scientific community was the complete rejection of such a hypothesis. In 1951, the journal “Science and Life” published an article devoted to the analysis and destruction of Kazantsev’s assumption, the authors of which were the most prominent astronomers and meteoritics specialists. The article stated that it was the meteorite hypothesis and only it that was correct, and that the crater from the meteorite would soon be discovered:

Currently, the most plausible place for a meteorite to fall (explode) is considered to be the above-mentioned southern part of the depression, the so-called “Southern Swamp”. The roots of fallen trees are also directed towards this swamp, which show that the blast wave spread from here. There is no doubt that at the first moment after the meteorite fell, a crater-shaped depression formed in the place of the “Southern Swamp”. It is quite possible that the crater formed after the explosion was relatively small and was soon, probably even in the first summer, flooded with water. In subsequent years, it was covered with silt, covered with a layer of moss, filled with peat hummocks and partly overgrown with bushes.

About the Tunguska meteorite // Science and life. - 1951. - No. 9. - P. 20.

However, the first post-war scientific expedition to the site of the events, organized in 1958 by the Committee on Meteorites of the USSR Academy of Sciences, refuted the assumption that there was a meteorite crater anywhere near the site of the event. Scientists came to the conclusion that the Tunguska body must have exploded in the atmosphere one way or another, which ruled out the possibility that it was an ordinary meteorite.

In 1958, Gennady Plekhanov and Nikolai Vasiliev created the “Complex amateur expedition to study the Tunguska meteorite,” which later became the core of the Commission on Meteorites and Cosmic Dust of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The main goal of this organization was to resolve the issue of the natural or artificial nature of the Tunguska body. This organization managed to attract a significant number of specialists from all over the Soviet Union to the study of the Tunguska phenomenon.

In general, despite the rather fantastic nature of the hypothesis about the artificial origin of the Tunguska body, starting from the 1950s of the 20th century, it enjoyed quite serious support in the scientific community; Relatively large funds were allocated to attempts to confirm or refute it. The fact that this hypothesis was considered quite seriously can be judged by the fact that its supporters were able to raise sufficient doubts in the scientific community when, in the early 1960s, the issue of awarding the Lenin Prize to Kirill Florensky for the hypothesis about the cometary nature of Tunguska was discussed. meteorite - the prize was ultimately never awarded.

Other hypotheses

• Other versions, including exotic ones: antimatter, nuclear explosion, collision with the Earth of a miniature black hole with traces in the Patom crater, accident of an alien spacecraft (put forward by the famous Soviet science fiction writer A. Kazantsev and developed by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky in the story “Monday” starts on Saturday").

Display in culture

Literature

• Stanislaw Lem in the novel “Astronauts” also used this hypothesis - in the novel the ship was a reconnaissance ship sent by the warlike inhabitants of Venus, who were preparing to destroy life on Earth and take it over, but did not carry out their plan due to global war and general destruction.

A representative of the Institute of Time, ..., stood in front of the time machine and explained its structure to the scientific community. The scientific community listened to him attentively. “The first experience, as you all know, was unsuccessful,” he said. - The kitten we sent ended up at the beginning of the twentieth century and exploded in the area of ​​the Tunguska River, which marked the beginning of the legend of the Tunguska meteorite. Since then we have had no major failures. ...

In the second story (from the book A Million Adventures), two employees of the Time Institute return from 1908 and one of them claims that it was a simple comet nucleus. Also in Kir Bulychev’s book “The Secret of Urulgan” the Tunguska phenomenon appears before us in the form of a crashed alien spaceship.

• In Vadim Panov’s series “The Secret City” (mainly in the volume “Pulpit of Wanderers”) the Tunguska phenomenon is associated with the launch and subsequent attempts to conceal the main human artifact and Source of magical energy - the Throne (Small Throne of Poseidon).

• In Yuri Sbitnev’s story “Echo” (1986), the genre of which in Soviet times was defined as a “modern fairy tale,” one of the chapters is dedicated to the Tunguska diva. What is described in the story is based on the testimony of real people.

• It is the central theme of Vladimir Sorokin's "Ice Trilogy", consisting of the novels "Bro's Path", "Ice" and "23000".

• In the Ultimate Nightmare comic (Marvel Comics), the plot is directly related to the fall of the Tunguska meteorite.

• The explosion of the Tunguska meteorite is also described in one of the novels in the series “The Adventures of Tomek Vilmovsky” by the Polish writer Alfred Shklyarsky.

The popularity of the topic among science fiction writers, especially beginners, led to the fact that in the 1980s, the Ural Pathfinder magazine, among the requirements for science fiction works proposed for publication, mentioned: “Works that reveal the secret of the Tunguska meteorite are not considered.”

Movies

• In the series “The X-Files” there is an episode called “Tunguska” (season 4, episode 9, “Tunguska” 12/01/1996), which describes an alien invasion.

• In the movie "Hellboy" Rasputin buys an obelisk made from the Tunguska meteorite stone from the Russian military for a ritual

Music

• Metallica's video for the song All Nightmare Long tells the story of alien spores being found at the site of a meteorite explosion, with the help of which the Soviet Union seizes power over the world.

• Mango-Mango in her song and video “Berkut” presented one of the versions of the Tunguska meteorite.

Computer games

• In the game Crysis 2, it is mentioned that two scientists, Jacob Hargreave and Carl Ernest Rush, obtained samples of alien technology in Tunguska in 1919. The game takes place in 2023, and both of them are alive, and Hargreave made a fortune by studying and applying found nanotechnology, the limit of development of which is the main character’s costume.
• The game Secret Files: Tunguska is built around a certain artifact that appeared as a result of a meteorite fall and allows you to control the consciousness of humanity.
• Game Syberia II. At the very beginning of the introductory video, the train passes a place with coordinates 60.885833 , 101.894444 60°53′09″ n. w. 101°53′40″ E. d. /  60.885833° s. w. 101.894444° E. d.(G) (O), that is, through the epicenter of the explosion of the Tunguska meteorite according to Fast.

"Brazilian Tunguska" (1930)

There are reports of an event similar to the Tunguska disaster that occurred in Brazil on August 13, 1930.

Due to its similarity to the Tunguska meteorite, the Brazilian event was called the “Brazilian Tunguska”.

This event is practically unstudied, since it occurred in an area difficult to reach for expeditions, and also because of the prevalence of banditry in this area.

Records from recorders at seismic stations have been preserved, showing a seismic shock.

Vitim meteorite (Russia, 2002)

Main article: Vitim meteorite

If the Tunguska meteorite had fallen 4 hours later (see the map “Approximate location of the explosion” at the beginning of this article), then, due to the rotation of the planet around the earth’s axis, Vyborg would have been completely destroyed and St. Petersburg very significantly damaged.

Literature

• Rubtsov V. The Tunguska Mystery. - N.Y.: Springer, 2009. - 318 p. - ISBN 978-0-387-76573-0
• Rubtsov V. The Tunguska Mystery. - N.Y.: Springer, 2012. - 328 p. - ISBN 978-1-4614-2925-8
• Bronshten V. A. Tunguska meteorite: history of research. - M.: Selyanov A.D., 2000. - 312 p. - 1540 copies. - ISBN 5-901273-04-4
• Gladysheva O. G. Tunguska disaster: Pieces of the puzzle. - St. Petersburg. : Nauka, 2011. - 183 p. - 1000 copies. - ISBN 978-5-02-025530-2
• Zhuravlev V.K., Rodionov B.U. One hundred years of the Tunguska problem. New approaches: collection of articles. - M.: Binom, 2008. - 447 p.
• Olkhovatov A. Yu. Tunguska phenomenon of 1908. - M.: Binom, 2008. - 422 p.
• Olkhovatov A. Yu. Tunguska radiance. - M.: Binom, 2009. - 240 p.
• Rubtsov V.V. Methodology of research programs and the problem of the Tunguska meteorite // The Tunguska phenomenon: at the crossroads of ideas. Second century of studying the Tunguska Event of 1908. - Novosibirsk: City Press Business LLC, 2012. - pp. 74-86. - ISBN 5-8124-0059-8.
• Rubtsov V.V. Tunguska meteorite: on the way to oblivion // Earth and Universe. - 2012. - No. 4. - P. 80-89. - ISSN 0044-3948.

Notes

1. : It was visible over the vast territory of Eastern Siberia in the area between the Lena and Podkamennaya Tunguska rivers. The visibility zone of the car was about 600 kilometers.
2. : The explosion completely destroyed the forest over a vast area - an area of ​​2150 square kilometers (this roughly corresponds to the area of ​​modern Moscow). The outbreak scorched forest over an area of ​​200 square kilometers and caused a huge forest fire.
3. Rubtsov, 1.
4. Denning W. F. Genial June // Nature. 1908. V. 78. N 2019. P. 221. Cited. by: Rubtsov, 1.
5. Rubtsov, 1-2.
6. Rubtsov, 2.
7. Rubtsov, 3.
8. Suslov I.M. Survey of eyewitnesses of the Tunguska disaster in 1926 // Problem of the Tunguska meteorite. Sat. articles. Tomsk: Tomsk University Publishing House, 1967. Vol. 2. pp. 21-30.
9. Rubtsov, 4.
10. Tunguska meteorite - 1908. Small bodies of the Solar System. Archived
11. Tunguska meteorite . My Krasnoyarsk. People's Encyclopedia. Archived from the original on August 23, 2011. Retrieved September 16, 2009.
12. Rubtsov, 5.
13. A. I. Voitsekhovsky “What was that? The Mystery of Podkamennaya Tunguska" in the "Question Mark" series on the website of the electronic library "Librarian Tochka Ru"
14. - 1939
15. This book was awarded the USSR State Prize in 1952.
16. Rubtsov, 5-6.
17. Rubtsov, 6.
18. Academician V. G. Fesenkov, Chairman of the Committee on Meteorites of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Chairman of the Committee on Meteorites of the USSR Academy of Sciences; Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences A. A. Mikhailov, Chairman of the Astronomical Council of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Director of the Pulkovo Observatory; E. L. Krinov, scientific secretary of the Committee on Meteorites of the USSR Academy of Sciences; K. P. Stanyukovich, Doctor of Technical Sciences; V. V. Fedynsky, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences.
19. Vasiliev, N.V. Tunguska meteorite: a mystery remains // Earth and Universe. - 1989. - № 3.
20. Rubtsov, 7.
21. Rubtsov, 8.
22. [email protected]: NASA deprived the Tunguska guest of his secret
23. : English meteorologists could observe a rare atmospheric phenomenon in the sky - noctilucent clouds.
24. :Head of the Laboratory of Upper Atmosphere Physics, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Anatoly Semenov, in a conversation with a Pravda correspondent. Ru" regarded the assumption of his colleagues from Cornell University as very reliable.
25. Cheko. Evenki Autonomous Okrug, Russia
26. L. Gasperini, F. Alvisi, G. Biasini, E. Bonatti, G. Longo, M. Pipan, M. Ravaioli, R. Serra, (2007) A possible impact crater for the 1908 Tunguska Event. Terra Nova, Vol 19 (4), pp. 245-251
27. L.Gasperini, E.Bonatti, G.Longo, (2008) Lake Cheko and the Tunguska Event: impact or non-impact? Terra Nova, Vol 20 (2), pp.169-172.
28. Italian scientists claim that they have found the Tunguska meteorite // "Ogonyok", No. 25 (5234), 06/25/2012
29. Article “The Tunguska meteorite and time: 101ST HYPOTHESIS OF THE SECRET OF THE AGE”
30. D/f “Lord of the World. Nikola Tesla”, see the text of the film
31. The 1908 Tunguska catastrophe: An alternative explanation
32. Tunguska Miracle
33. Application of the anthropic principle to a radical solution to the Tunguska problem
34. Belkin A, Kuznetsov S. The Tunguska meteorite is... of terrestrial origin // "Evening Novosibirsk": article. - 2001. - No. 02.03.2001.
35. Belkin A, Kuznetsov S., Rodin R. Will the mystery of the origin of the Tunguska meteorite finally be solved? // "Evening Novosibirsk": article. - 2002. - No. 09.14.2002.
36. Strugatsky A. and B."Monday starts on Saturday." Story three. All sorts of fuss. Chapter 5.

The Tunguska meteorite is a kind of space object that caused an air explosion near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in. The event occurred on June 17, 1908, but it has not yet been solved.

Tunguska meteorite is also called the Tunguska phenomenon, and the abbreviation TKT is also used - Tunguska cosmic body.

In this article we will look at different versions of the mysterious explosion that occurred at the beginning of the last century, and try to understand: it was an artificial phenomenon, or only forces were involved in it.

The fall of the Tunguska meteorite

In the early morning of June 17, 1908, a bright flash was seen in the sky over Siberia. After this, according to eyewitnesses, a certain object with a fiery tail began to approach the ground at great speed.

A few seconds later there was a deafening explosion that was heard over a great distance. It was 2000 times greater than the power of the atomic bombs dropped on.

Consequences of the disaster

As a result of the Tunguska explosion, about 2,000 km² of forest were destroyed, along with and. The shock wave was so strong that it circled the entire planet twice.

Barometers recorded a sharp jump in atmospheric pressure. Those who lived in the territory from Siberia to Western Europe could see white nights that lasted for 3 days.

An interesting fact is that German scientists noticed noctilucent clouds, consisting of a cluster of ice particles that appeared as a result. But at that time no eruption occurred anywhere.

Surprisingly, no one paid enough attention to this incident. Only decades later did scientists begin to take a more serious interest in the so-called Tunguska meteorite.

However, after much research, they were unable to find out the nature of the explosion. This gave rise to even more questions and versions regarding the phenomenon, which began to be called the Tunguska meteorite.

Eyewitness accounts

Fortunately, residents who lived near the incident were interviewed. They all unanimously insisted that even a few days before the explosion, some strange flashes similar to lightning could be seen in the sky.

After the explosion, the earth shook violently. Then a loud boom was heard for about 20 minutes. There were also those who said that in fact there were several explosions, not just one.

Interestingly, Russian, European and American seismographic stations recorded an unusual vibration of the earth's crust that day.

People claimed that after the incident there was deathly silence. The sky darkened, and the leaves on the trees first turned yellow, and after a few hours turned black. In addition, in the direction of Podkamennaya Tunguska, a silvery wall could be seen for 8 hours.

However, since the descriptions of eyewitnesses still differed from each other, they had to be treated with caution.

The site of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite

Today you can see many new trees at the site of the Tunguska meteorite fall. According to experts, their active growth is caused by genetic mutations.

However, such mutations are never found in areas where meteorites fall, which leads to certain thoughts. Some scientists suggest that the fall of the Tunguska meteorite caused a powerful electromagnetic field.

Today you can still see fallen rows of trees lying in the same direction. Their scorched trunks serve as a vivid reminder of an unusual disaster.

Photos from the site of the Tunguska meteorite fall

Not long ago, scientists again began to actively explore the site of the Tunguska meteorite fall. They still had more questions than answers. An interesting fact is that the place where the meteorite fell resembles the shape of a bird or butterfly.

Where did the Tunguska meteorite actually fall?

If we assume that a certain cosmic body actually fell to the earth, then a huge crater should have formed on its surface. But no one has been able to discover it so far.

Scientists who adhere to the official version believe that the space object most likely exploded in the air, after which its small parts scattered hundreds of kilometers.

That is why there are no traces of a meteorite at the epicenter of the explosion.

8 km from the explosion site is Lake Cheko, the depth of which reaches 50 m. Some foreign geologists have put forward the version that the lake appeared after the fall of the Tunguska meteorite.

In this regard, a group of Russian geologists took particles of lake sediments for examination and found out that Cheko’s age is almost 300 years, and maybe more.

The comet burned up before falling

A number of scientists suggest that the comet could have burned up in the atmosphere, since it consisted of ice and space dirt. The explosion occurred at an altitude of about 5 km above the earth's surface.

But here everything is not so smooth. The fact is that scientists were able to discover perfectly preserved remains of comet mud and water in peat.

Black and white

The famous Russian writer and journalist Andrei Tyunyaev is a supporter of the existence of black and white holes.

Black holes absorb any objects that are near them, after which they transform them into space. In turn, white holes have the ability to form this matter. This creates a kind of cycle.

It follows from this that the Tunguska meteorite could be the result of the activity of a white hole, which could have formed not far from or will appear from the bowels of our planet.

It is worth noting that white holes are still too poorly studied, and many scientists do not believe in their existence at all.

Damn cemetery

Physicists also contributed to the study of the Tunguska meteorite. And it all started with one interesting and at the same time frightening story that happened approximately 30 years after the disaster.

An interesting fact is that not far from the Tunguska phenomenon there is an anomalous zone called the Devil’s Cemetery.

So, one day local shepherds lost several cows, which they were driving to the river for watering. Noticing the loss, they went in search of the animals. They soon discovered a deserted area, devoid of any vegetation.

It was there that the shepherds saw torn cows and many dead birds. The dogs began to bark frantically and eventually ran away.

After this, the men took the cows to use their meat. However, the beef turned out to be inedible. If you believe this, the shepherds and dogs died from an unknown disease.

The site of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite was explored by many different expeditions. Four of them went missing, and the rest allegedly died after visiting the Devil's Cemetery.

According to local residents, at night in the area of ​​the Tunguska phenomenon you can see unusual lights and hear someone’s screams.

Tunguska meteorite and UFO

Speaking about the Tunguska meteorite, it is worth mentioning one more version, despite its absurdity. According to science fiction writer Kazantsev, the cause of the explosion was an alien ship that crashed above the earth.

To all this, Kazantsev adds that the aliens allegedly deliberately sent their ship to the taiga, and not to a populated area, in order to avoid the loss of life.

How can we not remember the mysterious one, which has been talked about a lot lately.

Kazantsev also placed special emphasis on the fact that the Tunguska explosion occurred in the air. In principle, scientists confirm this idea.

After conducting a medical examination of local residents, doctors did not record a single case of radiation sickness, which spoke in favor of an air explosion.

Conclusion

Since researchers have still not been able to come to a consensus regarding the Tunguska meteorite, this has led to the emergence of many theories.

Today there are more than a hundred of them. There is even a version according to which the culprit of the Tunguska explosion is, who conducted unique experiments with electricity. However, it is not yet possible to reliably confirm this version.

Still Tunguska cosmic body is of keen interest to scientists all over the world. Perhaps in the future, thanks to new discoveries and modern technology, we will be able to get to the bottom of the truth and find out what happened near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River on June 17, 1908.

Today, the Tunguska meteorite is widely represented in culture, which is generally not surprising, given the human penchant for various riddles and secrets. It is mentioned in films, computer games and various music videos.

Now you know everything you need about the Tunguska meteorite. If you liked this article, share it on social networks and subscribe to the site. It's always interesting with us!

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The Tunguska meteorite is rightfully considered the greatest scientific mystery of the 20th century. The number of options about its nature exceeded a hundred, but none was recognized as the only correct and final one. Despite a significant number of eyewitnesses and numerous expeditions, the crash site was not discovered, as well as material evidence of the phenomenon; all put forward versions are based on indirect facts and consequences.

How the Tunguska meteorite fell

At the end of June 1908, residents of Europe and Russia witnessed unique atmospheric phenomena: from solar halos to abnormally white nights. On the morning of the 30th, a luminous body, presumably spherical or cylindrical in shape, flashed over the central strip of Siberia at high speed. According to observers, it had a white, yellow or red color, was accompanied by rumbles and sounds of explosions when moving, and left no traces in the atmosphere.

At 7:14 local time, the hypothetical body of the Tunguska meteorite exploded. A powerful blast wave felled trees in the taiga on an area of ​​up to 2.2 thousand hectares. The sounds of the explosion were recorded 800 km from the approximate epicenter, seismological consequences (an earthquake with a magnitude of up to 5 units) were recorded throughout the Eurasian continent.

On the same day, scientists noted the beginning of a 5-hour magnetic storm. Atmospheric phenomena similar to the previous ones were clearly observed for 2 days and occurred periodically for 1 month.

Gathering information about the phenomenon, assessing the facts

Publications about the event appeared on the same day, but serious research began in the 1920s. By the time of the first expedition, 12 years had passed since the year of the fall, which had a negative impact on the collection and analysis of information. This and subsequent pre-war Soviet expeditions were unable to discover where the object fell, despite aerial surveys carried out in 1938. The information obtained allowed us to conclude:

• There were no photographs of the fall or movement of the body.
• The detonation occurred in the air at an altitude of 5 to 15 km, the initial estimate of the power was 40-50 megatons (some scientists estimate 10-15).
• The explosion was not a point explosion; the crankcase was not found at the supposed epicenter.
• The intended landing site is a swampy area of ​​taiga on the Podkamennaya Tunguska River.

Top hypotheses and versions

1. Meteorite origin. The hypothesis supported by most scientists is about the fall of a massive celestial body or a swarm of small objects or their passing tangentially. Real confirmation of the hypothesis: no crater or particles were found.
2. The fall of a comet with a core of ice or cosmic dust with a loose structure. The version explains the absence of traces of the Tunguska meteorite, but contradicts the low height of the explosion.
3. Cosmic or artificial origin of the object. The weak point of this theory is the lack of traces of radiation, with the exception of rapidly growing trees.
4. Antimatter detonation. The Tunguska body is a piece of antimatter that turned into radiation in the Earth's atmosphere. As in the case of the comet, the version does not explain the low altitude of the observed object, and there are also no traces of annihilation.
5. Nikola Tesla's failed experiment on transmitting energy over a distance. The new hypothesis, based on the scientist’s notes and statements, has not been confirmed.

The main controversy arises from the analysis of the area of ​​the fallen forest; it had the butterfly shape characteristic of the meteorite fall, but the direction of the lying trees is not explained by any scientific hypothesis. In the early years, the taiga was dead, but subsequently the plants showed abnormally high growth, characteristic of areas exposed to radiation: Hiroshima and Chernobyl. But analysis of the collected minerals did not reveal evidence of ignition of nuclear matter.

In 2006, artifacts of various sizes were discovered in the Podkamennaya Tunguska region - quartz cobblestones made of fused plates with an unknown alphabet, presumably deposited by plasma and containing particles inside that can only be of cosmic origin.

The Tunguska meteorite was not always talked about seriously. So, in 1960, a comic biological hypothesis was put forward - a detonation thermal explosion of a cloud of Siberian midges with a volume of 5 km 3. Five years later, the original idea of ​​the Strugatsky brothers appeared - “You need to look not where, but when” about an alien ship with a reverse flow of time. Like many other fantastic versions, it was logically substantiated better than those put forward by scientific researchers, the only objection being anti-science.

The main paradox is that despite the abundance of options (scientific over 100) and international research conducted, the secret was not revealed. All reliable facts about the Tunguska meteorite include only the date of the event and its consequences.

Tunguska meteorite as imagined by an artist

There are a lot of space legends in the Russian-speaking space. Almost every village has a hill above which mysterious lights were seen in the sky, or a hollow left by a “comet”. But the most famous (and actually existing!) remains the Tunguska meteorite. Having descended from heaven on the unremarkable morning of June 30, 1908, he instantly laid down 2000 km²taiga, broke out the windows of houses hundreds of kilometers around.

Explosion near Tunguska

However, the space guest behaved very strangely. It exploded in the air, several times, did not leave a trace, and the forest fell to the ground without a blow. This ignited the imagination of both science fiction writers and scientists - since then, at least once a year, a new version of what caused the explosion near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River appears. Today we will explain what the Tunguska meteorite is from the point of view of astronomy, photos from the fall sites will become our guides.

The most important, the very first and most unreliable information about a meteorite is the description of the meteorite fall. The whole planet felt it - the wind reached Britain, and the earthquake swept across Eurasia. But only a few personally saw the largest fall of a cosmic body. And only those who survived could tell about it.

The most reliable witnesses say that a huge fiery tail flew from north to east, at an angle of 50° to the horizon. After this, the northern part of the sky lit up with a flash that brought great heat: people tore off their clothes, and dry plants and fabrics began to smolder. This was the explosion - more precisely, thermal radiation from it. The shock wave with wind and seismic vibrations came later, knocking trees and people to the ground, breaking windows even at a distance of 200 kilometers!

Strong thunder, the sound of the explosion of the Tunguska meteorite, came last, and resembled the roar of cannon fire. Immediately after this, a second explosion occurred, less powerful; Most of the eyewitnesses, stunned by the heat and shock wave, noticed only its light, which they described as a “second Sun.”

This is where the reliable testimony ends. It is worth taking into account the early hour of the meteorite fall and the identities of the eyewitnesses - these were Siberian peasant settlers and aborigines, Tungus and Evenki. The latter in their pantheon of gods have iron birds that spit fire, which gave the stories of eyewitnesses a religious connotation, and ufologists - “reliable evidence” of the presence of a spaceship at the site of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite.

Journalists also did their best: the newspapers wrote that the meteorite fell right next to the railway, and train passengers saw a space rock, the top of which was sticking out of the ground. Subsequently, it was they, in close connection with science fiction writers, who created a myth with many faces, in which the Tunguska meteorite was both a product of energy, and interplanetary transport, and Nikola Tesla’s experiment.

Tunguska myths

The Chelyabinsk meteorite, the younger brother of the Tunguska meteorite in chemical composition and fate, was filmed by hundreds of cameras during its fall, and scientists quickly found solid remains of the body - but there were still people who promoted the version of its supernatural origin. And the first expedition to the site of the Tunguska meteorite fall was undertaken 13 years after the fall. During this time, new undergrowth managed to grow, streams dried up or turned their course, and eyewitnesses left their home on the waves of the recent revolution.

One way or another, Leonid Kulik, a well-known mineralogist and meteorite expert in the Soviet Union, led the first search for the Tunguska meteorite in 1921. Before his death in 1942, he organized 4 (according to other sources - 6) expeditions, promising the country's leadership meteorite iron. However, he found neither a crater nor the remains of a meteorite.

So, where did the meteorite go, and where to look for it? Below we will look at the main features of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite and the myths generated by them.

“The Tunguska meteorite exploded stronger than the most powerful nuclear bomb”

The force of the explosion of the Tunguska meteorite, according to the latest calculations of supercomputers at the US Sandia National Laboratory, was “only” 3–5 megatons of TNT. Although this is more powerful than the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima, it is much less than the monstrous 30 - 50 megatons that appear in the data about the Tunguska meteorite. Previous generations of scientists were let down by an incorrect understanding of the mechanism of a meteorite explosion. The energy did not spread evenly in all directions, as during the explosion of a nuclear bomb, but was directed to the earth in the direction of movement of the cosmic body.

“The Tunguska meteorite disappeared without a trace”

The crater from the Tunguska meteorite was never found, which gave rise to a lot of speculation on this topic. However, should there be a crater at all? Above, it was not for nothing that we called Tungussky’s younger brother - it also exploded in the air, and its main part, weighing several hundred kilograms, was found at the bottom of the lake only thanks to multiple video recordings. This happened due to its loose, loose composition - it was either a “heap of rubble”, an asteroid made up of saws and individual parts, or part of it. Having lost most of the mass and energy in an air flash, the Tunguska meteorite could not have left a large crater, but in the 13 years separating the date of the fall and the first expedition, this crater itself could have turned into a lake.

In 2007, scientists from the University of Bologna managed to find the crater of the Tunguska meteorite - theoretically, it is Lake Cheko, which lies 7-8 kilometers from the site of the explosion. It has a regular ellipsoidal shape, directed towards the forest felled by the meteorite, a conical shape, characteristic of impact craters, its age is equal to how long ago the meteorite fell, and magnetic studies show the presence of a dense object at the bottom. The lake is still being studied, and perhaps soon the Tunguska meteorite itself, the culprit of all the commotion, will appear in the exhibition halls.

Leonid Kulik, by the way, was looking for such lakes, but near the crash site. However, science was then unaware of the descriptions of meteorite explosions in the air - the remains of the Chelyabinsk meteorite flew quite far from the explosion site. Having drained one of the “promising” lakes, the scientist found at its bottom... a tree stump. This incident gave rise to a comic description of the Tunguska meteorite as “an oblong cylindrical object in the form of a log, made from a special type of cosmic wood.” Later, there were fans of sensations who took this story seriously.

“The Tunguska meteorite created Tesla”

Many pseudoscientific theories about the Tunguska meteorite originated from jokes or incorrectly interpreted statements. This is how Nikola Tesla became involved in the meteorite story. In 1908, he promised to light the way in Antarctica for Robert Peary, one of the two people credited with leading the way to the Arctic Pole.

It is logical to assume that Tesla, as the founder of the modern alternating current electrical network, had in mind some more practical method than creating an explosion at a considerable distance from Robert Peary's path in Siberia, maps of which he allegedly requested. At the same time, Tesla himself argued that transmission over long distances can only be done using ether waves. However, the absence of ether as a medium for the interaction of electromagnetic waves was proven after the death of the great inventor.

This is not the only fiction about the Tunguska meteorite that is being passed off as truth today. There are people who believe in the version of “an alien ship moving back in time” - only it was first introduced in the humorous novel by the Strugatsky brothers “Monday Begins on Saturday”. And the participants of Kulik’s expeditions, bitten by the taiga midge, wrote about billions of mosquitoes that gathered into one large ball, and their heat generated a burst of energy with a power of megatons. Thank God, this theory did not fall into the hands of the yellow press.

“The site of the Tunguska meteorite explosion is an anomalous place”

At first they thought so because they did not find either a crater or a meteorite - however, this is explained by the fact that it exploded completely in, and its fragments had much less energy, and therefore were lost in the vast taiga. But there are always “inconsistencies” that allow you to idly fantasize about the Tunguska meteorite. We will analyze them now.

• The most important “proof” of the supernatural nature of the Tunguska meteorite is that in the summer of 1908, supposedly before the fall of the cosmic body, glows and white nights appeared across Europe and Asia. Yes, one could say that any low-density meteorite or comet has a dust plume that enters the atmosphere before the body itself. However, a study of scientific reports on atmospheric anomalies in the summer of 1908 showed that all these phenomena appeared in early July - that is, after the meteorite fell. This is the consequence of blindly trusting headlines.
• They also note that in the center of the meteorite explosion, trees without branches and foliage remained standing, like pillars. This, however, is typical for any powerful atmospheric explosions - surviving houses and pagodas remained in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and at the very epicenter of the explosion. The movement of the meteorite and its destruction in the atmosphere knocked down trees in the shape of a butterfly, which also caused bewilderment at first. However, the already notorious Chelyabinsk meteorite left the same mark; There are butterfly craters even on. These mysteries were solved only in the second half of the 20th century, when nuclear weapons appeared in the world.

This house was located 260 meters from the epicenter of the explosion in Hiroshima. There weren't even any walls left from the houses.

• The last phenomenon is an increase in the growth of trees in the place of a forest felled by an explosion, which is more characteristic of electromagnetic and radiation bursts than of thermal bursts. The strong explosion of the meteorite definitely took place in several dimensions at once, and the fact that trees began to grow quickly in fertile soil exposed to the sun is not at all surprising. Thermal radiation itself and injury to trees also affects growth - just as scars grow on the skin at the site of wounds. Meteorite additives could also accelerate the development of plants: many iron and silicate balls and fragments from an explosion were found in the wood.

Thus, in the fall of the Tunguska meteorite, only the power of nature and the uniqueness of the phenomenon are surprising, but not the supernatural overtones. Science is developing and penetrating into people's lives - and using satellite television, satellite navigation and looking at images of deep space, they no longer believe in the firmament and do not mistake astronauts in white spacesuits for angels. And in the future, much more amazing things await us than the fall of meteorites - the same plains of Mars untouched by man.

On June 30, 1908, at about 7 o'clock in the morning, a large fireball flew through the Earth's atmosphere from southeast to northwest and exploded in the Siberian taiga, in the area of ​​the Podkamennaya Tunguska River.

The place where the Tunguska meteorite fell on the map of Russia

A dazzling bright ball was visible in Central Siberia within a radius of 600 kilometers, and heard within a radius of 1000 kilometers. The power of the explosion was later estimated at 10-50 megatons, which corresponds to the energy of two thousand atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, or the energy of the most powerful hydrogen bomb. The air wave was so strong that it knocked down a forest within a radius of 40 kilometers. The total area of ​​the fallen forest was about 2,200 square kilometers. And due to the flow of hot gases as a result of the explosion, a fire broke out, which completed the devastation of the surrounding area and turned it into a taiga cemetery for many years.

Lesoval in the area of ​​the Tunguska meteorite fall

The air wave generated by the unprecedented explosion circled the globe twice. It was recorded in seismographic laboratories in Copenhagen, Zagreb, Washington, Potsdam, London, Jakarta and other cities.

A few minutes after the explosion, a magnetic storm began. It lasted about four hours.

Eyewitness accounts

"... suddenly in the north the sky split into two, and a fire appeared in it, wide and high above the forest, which engulfed the entire northern part of the sky. At that moment I felt so hot, as if my shirt was on fire. I wanted to tear and throw off my shirt, but the sky slammed shut, and there was a strong blow. I was thrown from the porch three fathoms. After the blow, there was such a knock, as if stones were falling from the sky or being fired from cannons, the earth shook, and when I was lying on the ground, I pressed my head, fearing that the stones did not break their heads. At that moment, when the sky opened, a hot wind rushed from the north, as if from a cannon, which left traces in the form of paths on the ground. Then it turned out that many of the glasses in the windows were broken, and the iron bar for the door lock was broken ".
Semyon Semenov, resident of the Vanavara trading post, 70 km from the epicenter of the explosion ("Knowledge is Power", 2003, No. 60)

“On the morning of June 17, at the beginning of the 9th hour, we observed some unusual natural phenomenon. In the village of N.-Karelinsky (200 versts from Kirensk to the north), peasants saw in the northwest, quite high above the horizon, some extremely strong (it was impossible to look at) body glowing with a white, bluish light, moving for 10 minutes from top to bottom. The body seemed to be in the form of a “pipe,” that is, cylindrical. The sky was cloudless, only not high above the horizon, in the same direction , in which a luminous body was observed, a small dark cloud was noticeable. It was hot, dry. Approaching the ground (forest), the shiny body seemed to blur, and in its place a huge cloud of black smoke formed and an extremely strong knock (not thunder) was heard, "as if from large falling stones or cannon fire. All the buildings were shaking. At the same time, a flame of an indefinite shape began to burst out of the cloud. All the residents of the village ran into the streets in panic, the women were crying, everyone thought that the end of the world was coming."
S. Kulesh, newspaper "Siberia", July 29 (15), 1908

Over a vast area from the Yenisei to the Atlantic coast of Europe, unusual light phenomena of an unprecedented scale unfolded, which went down in history under the name “bright nights of the summer of 1908.” The clouds, which formed at an altitude of about 80 km, intensely reflected the sun's rays, thereby creating the effect of bright nights even where they had never been observed before. Throughout this vast territory, on the evening of June 30, night practically did not fall: the entire sky was glowing, so that it was possible to read a newspaper at midnight without artificial lighting. This phenomenon continued until July 4th. It is interesting that similar atmospheric anomalies began in 1908 long before the Tunguska explosion: unusual glows, flashes of light and colored lightning were observed over North America and the Atlantic, over Europe and Russia 3 months before the Tunguska explosion.

Later, at the epicenter of the explosion, increased growth of trees began, which indicates genetic mutations. Such anomalies are never observed at meteorite impact sites, but are very similar to those caused by hard ionizing radiation or strong electromagnetic fields.

A section of larch from the area where the Tunguska body fell, cut down in 1958.
The 1908 annual layer appears dark. Accelerated growth is clearly visible
larch after 1908, when the tree suffered radiant burn.

Scientific research into this phenomenon began only in the 20s of the last century. The place where the celestial body fell was explored by 4 expeditions organized by the USSR Academy of Sciences and headed by Leonid Alekseevich Kulik (1927) and Kirill Pavlovich Florensky (after the Great Patriotic War). The only thing that was found were small silicate and magnetite balls, which, according to scientists, are the product of the destruction of the Tunguska alien. The researchers did not find a characteristic meteor crater, although later, over many years of searching for fragments of the Tunguska meteorite, members of various expeditions discovered a total of 12 wide conical holes in the disaster area. No one knows to what depth they go, since no one has even tried to study them. It was discovered that around the site of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite, the forest was fanned out from the center, and in the center some of the trees remained standing, but without branches and without bark. “It was like a forest of telephone poles.”

Subsequent expeditions noticed that the area of ​​fallen forest was shaped like a butterfly. Computer modeling of the shape of this area, taking into account all the circumstances of the fall, showed that the explosion did not occur when the body collided with the earth’s surface, but even before that, in the air, at an altitude of 5–10 km, and the weight of the space alien was estimated at 5 million tons.

Scheme of forest felling around the epicenter of the Tunguska explosion
along the “butterfly” with the axis of symmetry AB taken
for the main direction of the trajectory of the Tunguska meteorite.

More than 100 years have passed since then, but the mystery of the Tunguska phenomenon still remains unsolved.

There are many hypotheses about the nature of the Tunguska meteorite - about 100! None of them provides an explanation for all the phenomena that were observed during the Tunguska phenomenon. Some believe that it was a giant meteorite, others are inclined to believe that it was an asteroid; There are hypotheses about the volcanic origin of the Tunguska phenomenon (the epicenter of the Tunguska explosion surprisingly coincides exactly with the center of the ancient volcano). The hypothesis that the Tunguska meteorite is an extraterrestrial interplanetary ship that crashed in the upper layers of the Earth's atmosphere is also very popular. This hypothesis was put forward in 1945 by science fiction writer Alexander Kazantsev. However, the largest number of researchers recognize the most plausible hypothesis that the Tunguska alien was the nucleus or fragment of the nucleus of a comet (the main suspect is Comet Encke), which burst into the Earth’s atmosphere, heated up from friction with the air and exploded before reaching the earth’s surface - that’s why no crater. The trees were toppled by the shock wave from the air explosion, and the ice fragments that fell to the ground simply melted.

Hypotheses about the nature of the Tunguska alien continue to be put forward to this day. So, in 2009, NASA experts suggested that it was indeed a giant meteorite, but not stone, but ice. This hypothesis explains the absence of traces of the meteorite on Earth and the appearance of noctilucent clouds, observed a day after the Tunguska meteorite fell to Earth. According to this hypothesis, they appeared as a result of the passage of a meteorite through the dense layers of the atmosphere: this began the release of water molecules and microparticles of ice, which led to the formation of noctilucent clouds in the upper layers of the atmosphere.

It should be noted that the Americans were not the first to hypothesize about the icy nature of the Tunguska meteorite: Soviet physicists made such an assumption a quarter of a century ago. However, it became possible to test the plausibility of this hypothesis only with the advent of specialized equipment, such as the AIM satellite - it conducted research on noctilucent clouds in 2007.

This is how the Podkamennaya Tunguska area looks from the air today

The Tunguska disaster is one of the most well-studied, but at the same time the most mysterious phenomena of the twentieth century. Dozens of expeditions, hundreds of scientific articles, thousands of researchers were only able to increase knowledge about it, but were never able to clearly answer a simple question: what was it?