The lack of an impact crater, for one, since the meteor would skim past the epicentre of the explosion without falling. This model would explain several characteristics of the Tunguska event.
It would never have dropped below 11.2 kilometres per second (7 mps), or below an altitude of 11 kilometres. Iron bodies are much more resistant to fragmentation than rocky ones.Īccording to the team's calculations, the most likely culprit is an iron meteorite between 100 and 200 metres (320 to 650 feet) across that flew 3,000 kilometres (1,800 miles) through the atmosphere. Meteors are thought to explode when air enters the body through small fractures in the meteor, causing a build-up of pressure as it flies through the air at high speed. The rocky body, too, would be less likely to survive. The heat generated by the speed required to obtain the estimated trajectory would have entirely melted the ice body before it reached the distance observational data suggests it covered. The ice body - a hypothesis floated by Russian researchers in the 1970s - was pretty simple to rule out. The team mathematically modelled the passage of all three asteroid compositions at different sizes to determine whether such an event is possible.
We argue that the Tunguska event was caused by an iron asteroid body, which passed through the Earth's atmosphere and continued to the near-solar orbit." "The results obtained support our idea explaining one of the long-standing problems of astronomy - the Tunguska phenomenon, which has not received reasonable and comprehensive interpretations to date. "We have studied the conditions of through passage of asteroids with diameters 200, 100, and 50 metres, consisting of three types of materials - iron, stone, and water ice, across the Earth's atmosphere with a minimum trajectory altitude in the range 10 to 15 kilometres," wrote researchers led by astronomer Daniil Khrennikov of the Siberian Federal University in their paper.
Well, it's possible we'll never actually know… but according to a recent peer-reviewed paper, a large iron asteroid entering Earth's atmosphere and skimming the planet at a relatively low altitude before flying back into space could have produced the effects of the Tunguska event by producing a shock wave that devastated the surface. Was it really a bolide? And if it wasn't, what could it be? Later searches have turned up fragments of rock that could be meteoric in origin, but the event still has a looming question mark. It is often referred to as the "largest impact event in recorded history", even though no impact crater was found. The Tunguska event - as it came to be known - was later characterised as an exploding meteor, or bolide, up to 30 megatons, at an altitude of 10 to 15 kilometres (6.2 to 9.3 miles).
#Tungusta meteorite windows
Eyewitness reports describe a brilliant ball of light, shattered windows and falling plaster, and a deafening detonation not far from the local river.
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