| Another expedition set off in search of the Tunguska meteorite Corresponding member of the Petrovsky Academy of Sciences and Arts (St. Petersburg), chairman of the Siberian public foundation “Tunguska Space Phenomenon” Yuri Lavbin intends to prove that the legendary Tunguska meteorite could not be discovered only because they were looking in the wrong place. He is sure that when determining the probable location of the meteorite fall, scientists made a mistake of almost 250 km. Together with specialists from various fields and students from Krasnoyarsk technical universities, he went on an expedition to the shores of the Lower Tunguska, where he hopes to finally find the main body of the meteorite.
On June 30, 1908, at 7.15 local time, the driver of a train heading to Kansk (about 250 km from Krasnoyarsk) stopped the train. It seemed to him that one of the carriages had exploded. However, passengers who poured out of the emergency braked train saw only a huge hot stone crashing into the ground not far from the railway. He was so hot that none of the people dared to come closer. They reported to the authorities about the stone that fell from the sky, but they did not believe the driver. Meanwhile, it was one of many thousands of fragments of the so-called Tunguska meteorite.
Yuri Lavbin believes that the Tunguska meteorite was actually a comet. And he flew not from east to west, as was previously thought, but from west to east. It began to fall apart over the Tomsk region, then pretty much bombed the Yenisei province (the present-day Krasnoyarsk Territory) - Mr. Lavbin discovered many craters and at least eight taiga rubble on both the right and left banks of the Yenisei. The last large fragment fell relatively close to the Evenki village of Vanavary. In Evenkia, near the village of Polygus, the researcher hopes to find the largest fragment of the comet.
Images of the area from space helped determine the correct direction of flight of the Tunguska meteorite. In 1996, a large company, with the help of a Russian satellite constellation, studied the prospects for building an oil pipeline from the Yurubcheno-Tokhomskoye oil and gas field. When deciphering images of the territory of southern Evenkia, specialists from the Krasnoyarsk branch of the State Center "Nature" discovered several giant taiga fells. The largest of them reaches 30 km in length and four in width. All the slopes stretch from west to east. The slopes and hills in this area have been damaged in the same way.
Yuri Lavbin's expedition returns from Nizhnyaya Tunguska on August 6. However, the researchers hope to present to their colleagues not only the meteorite itself, but also the remains of a certain “man-made object” that collided with the comet at an altitude of 25-30 km above the earth’s surface. Using satellite images, we discovered an area of taiga between the Angara and Lower Tunguska rivers, very similar to the spacecraft launch site - the trees there were felled too symmetrically. In addition, soil samples in those places contain unnaturally high amounts of beryllium (an extremely rare metal) and iridium (an element equally rare for planet Earth). In the same area, as space photography has shown, there is a huge crater, approximately 500 m in diameter. There are several smaller craters around it - about 100 meters each.
It is because of this version that Mr. Lavbin is not taken seriously in the Siberian scientific community. Most scientists are confident in the “natural” nature of the Tunguska phenomenon. Experts argue only about what exactly this cosmic body was: a meteorite, a fireball, a shrunken comet. Or, for example, the explosion and debris of the forest were caused by an earthquake. Only fans of science fiction and legends about the alien origin of humanity believe in the version of a collision with a spaceship, which Mr. Lavbin pathetically calls a “man-made object.” Alexander KLIMOVICH, Krasnoyarsk |
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