The Tunguska Event

On June 30, 1908, at approximately 7:14 a.m., a huge explosion rocked the area near the Podkamennaya (Lower Stony) Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai of Russia. This explosion, known as The Tunguska Event, has fascinated scientists for a hundred years.

Though no one has been able to fully explain the cause, most scientists agree that the Tunguska Event was the explosion of a meteor or comet 3-6 miles above the Earth’s surface. Witnesses report seeing a bright, bluish light streaking across the sky followed by a blinding flash and deep booming sounds similar to thunder or artillery fire. Shock waves and hot winds knocked people off their feet and broke windows for hundreds of miles. For several days, the night skies over Europe and Asia glowed so brightly that residents were able to read by the eerie light.

Strangely, scientists did little to investigate the explosion, possibly because of the extreme isolation of the Tunguska region. The first expedition didn’t take place until 1927, nearly a decade after the event. Scientists on this expedition, and several others that followed determined that the Tunguska explosion was about 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan in 1945. The Tunguska blast flattened 80 million trees over an area of 830 square miles, killing thousands of reindeer but only two people.