The Tunguska event

[Flipmo]

I dunno if anyone knows about this (I'm sure a few here know prehaps). I don't want to type it all so this is a breif description from Wikipedia of what it was.

''The Tunguska event was an aerial explosion that occurred at 60°55′ N 101°57′ E, near the Podkamennaya (Stony) Tunguska River in what is now Evenkia, Siberia, at 7:17 AM on June 30, 1908. The size of the blast was later estimated to be between 10 and 15 megatons. It felled an estimated 60 million trees over 2,150 square kilometers.''

Keep in mind, this happened in 1908. Nuclear weapons from my knowledge were not yet created.

This is still an unsolved mystery. Some scientists/researchers say it was a comet, others say a blackhole, piece of Antimatte dropped from space, even a UFO explosion has been a possible hypothesis and lastly, it was an experiment gone wrong by Nikolo Tesla.

So, for those who know a bit about it, what are your views on it? This is quite interesting that it hasn't been solved yet. The blast was estimated between 10 and 15 megatons and 60 MIL trees collapsed.
Whatever it was, it sure was big for it's time...


Here's the Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event

 

[Duke]

Yeah i heard about this a long time ago. I've always wondered. Ask me, i say it was an asteroid. Undetected, not entirely burnt up in the atmosphere. Probably a chuck of rock perhaps 500 kg or so when and if it impacted. Or the airblast thing, but a meteroid nonetheless.

UFO sounds silly to me. And a black hole sounds odd. I'll read up about the theories.

 

[Illuminattile]

Yeah, I think consensus within the scientific community is that it was a meteor.

Christopher Chyba, Paul Thomas and Kevin Zahnle investigated it, and they agreed it was a 100 foot asteroid. If their calculations are accurate then we're due another Tunguska level event in three years or so.

 

[Jokerman]

The Tunguska explosion was remarkably like an atomic one; for example, the mushrooming cloud of smoke immediately after the explosion. Much of the energy output of the explosion was in the form of concussion, heat and light—again a characteristic of a nuclear explosion. The temperature of the blast was deduced to be several million degrees; surely only a nuclear explosion could create such temperatures. There was some possibility of radiation sickness among domestic animals in the region, and plant life, too, showed possible signs of genetic damage.

I doubt the Russians were experimenting with atomic energy at the time. Striking evidence has emerged that would seem to be in favor of the exploding-alien-spacecraft hypothesis. Collating the accounts of eyewitnesses as to the direction they saw the object traveling in, it appears that the object seems to have taken a course which took it in the directions of south-south-west to east-north-east, then west-south-west to east-north east, and then finally east-south-east to west-north-west. Meteors and asteroids don’t change direction like that. This could indicate an alien crew, realizing their ship was about to explode, made maneuvers to try to be over the most sparsely inhabited region possible when it did so.

No impact crator was found. There were, however, many shallow holes a few yards deep and up to a dozen yards across. Like something had burst into pieces in the air sending fragments everywhere. But, if so, why were there no remains?

If we dismiss the exploding-alien-spacecraft theory, the only other one that is plausible is that it was the nucleus of a comet. The chances of such a thing hitting the Earth are small but reasonable. But there’s still uncertainty in the evidence.

 

[Jokerman]

Christopher Chyba, Paul Thomas and Kevin Zahnle investigated it, and they agreed it was a 100 foot asteroid.

"The asteroid itself contained an alien life-form, looking similar to motor oil, which can "crawl" into a human body and control them."

---Wikipedia

 

[TecK NeeX]

"The asteroid itself contained an alien life-form, looking similar to motor oil, which can "crawl" into a human body and control them."

---Wikipedia

X-Files huh? God i missed that show!

 

[Flipmo]

Thanks for the insight Jokerman and others.

 

[greezi']

Maybe the comet or spacecraft exploded itself right before impact. This would explain the lack of evidence for a direct point of impact and explain why some trees closer to the point of explosion were unafected, perhaps because the force of the explosion would have been obove them, and would have pushed down on them instead of knocking them over.

 

[S O F I]

I like the alien theory. However, it's Nikola, not Nikolo, lol.

 

[Flipmo]

Yes, I know it's Nikola. I wrote it down quickly, and for some reason when I typed Nikolo. It seemed right.

 

[Bigg Limn]

A tad off topic but why are people always so quick to dismiss any alien theory?

 

[Illuminattile]

A tad off topic but why are people always so quick to dismiss any alien theory?

There's no evidence for intelligent alien life in the universe. Speculating that this was aliens is like speculating it was an invisible dragon.

 

[Bigg Limn]

There's no pure fact that there aren't alien lifeforms though. Just cuz we don't know about something doesn't make it impossible for it to exist.

 

[Seko]

I'm no scientist or anything but I'm pretty sure we can rule out blackholes.. If it was a blackhole woudn't it have sucked whole earth with it as well?

 

[Duke]

There's no pure fact that there aren't alien lifeforms though. Just cuz we don't know about something doesn't make it impossible for it to exist.

Reverse logic. Doesn't fly. The burden of proof isn't on the sceptic.

 

[Illuminattile]

There's no pure fact that there aren't alien lifeforms though. Just cuz we don't know about something doesn't make it impossible for it to exist.

There's no "pure fact" that there aren't invisibly dragons, but nobody's suggesting them.

Occam's Razor. You take the simplest solution that works. The fewer assumptions the better. If you see a charred tree that has fallen down, you might say "That was probably struck by lightning" or you might say "That was probably attacked by an alien spacecraft". We know lightning exists, but we don't know aliens do. The latter hypothesis has more assumptions than the former, so the former is accepted. Doesn't mean it's necessarily true, but it's preferred.

 

[Jokerman]

Speculating that this was aliens is like speculating it was an invisible dragon.

No, it's not. Since the object was seen, not only could it not have been an invisible dragon, but it couldn't even have been an invisible alien spacecraft. BWHAHAHA!

No, but you’re making the mistake of thinking that physical evidence is everything, or else no speculative theory is more valid than another. But there's really big differences between the two. Are there any reasonable lines of argument to think that intelligent life exists on other planets? How about invisiblle dragons?

Scientists believe it's reasonable to think there are likely to be some 640,000,000 earthlike, life-bearing planets in our galaxy alone. That there may be as many as 1,000,000 planets in our galaxy that not only bear life, but bear intelligent life and advanced civilizations. The oft-repeated old notion that nothing can travel faster-than-light therefore…no such thing as visitors, is an out-dated notion from the recent pre-quantum scientific Dark Ages, and no scientific-oriented mind worth anything would accept it as a limit anymore or a basis for any argument of what possible advanced civilizations possibly can or can not do.

Have numerous trained pilots seen unidentified objects that looked and behaved like intelligently-driven craft, or have they seen what looked like dragons? Is it more likely that something like a nuclear explosion might be connected to an advanced race, or with a dragon?

The way to speculate about this explosion is to consider human origin first, natural origin second, alien origin third, and invisible dragon origin never. So an alien hypothesis is not the equivalent of an invisible dragon hypothesis or any other made up thing. Even without concrete evidence, there are reasonable lines of argument for positing the existence of aliens, yet you can't say the same for invisible dragons.

As you said in your last post. Occam's Razor. But you didn't apply it to your example. Between aliens and invisible dragons, aliens is the simpler answer with fewest unreasonable assumptions.

 

[μακαφελι]

There's no evidence for intelligent alien life in the universe. Speculating that this was aliens is like speculating it was an invisible dragon.

There's a difference though. We know that life exists, and there's no evidence limiting it to Earth. An invisible dragon is just an imaginary concept that has no reason for existing anywhere. But I do think speculating it was caused by aliens is making way too many other unjustified assumptions.