Secrets of the Tunguska phenomenon. One hundred years ago, on June 30, 1908, something happened in Eastern Siberia that went down in human history as the “Tunguska meteorite”. What was it? And how to protect earthlings from "aliens from space" - The New Times found out from Professor Yuri Chudetsky, whose scientific interests range from ballistic missile warheads to asteroid safety
So, what did happen 100 years ago in the area of the Podkamennaya Tunguska River?
A hundred years ago, there was a message in the Siberian Life newspaper that a passenger train was moving along the Trans-Siberian Railway, they heard thunder, saw a bright glow in the sky, the train stopped, passengers ran out, looked up and drove on. Then it turned out that it was not a passenger train, but a freight train. And there was a machinist, frightened to death, who saw the glow and heard the wild roar of the explosion. Then the First World War began, and they forgot about it.
And in 1927, geologist Leonid Kulik led an expedition to Podkamennaya Tunguska and was the first to explore the epicenter of the phenomenon. Evenk hunters were still alive, who remembered the explosion and who led them to that very place. And they discovered that on a vast area of more than 2,000 km2, century-old pine trees were uprooted. But not enough of this: in the center of all this disgrace, like telegraph poles, there were scorched black pine trees. They began to look for the remains of a meteorite. They dug trenches, but found nothing. Let's go next year. Then they did various soil tests. But again, no alien material was found. K Ulik was captured in 1942, he was shot, and again everyone forgot about the Tunguska story. And in the 47th year, the Sikhote-Alin meteorite flew in the Khabarovsk Territory. But there were already a large number of observers here. And most importantly, they found about one and a half hundred funnels and about 30 tons of space iron, it is also called "Pallas iron" - after Academician Pallas, who investigated it. And here, of course, they remembered the Tunguska phenomenon. The science fiction writer Kazantsev wrote a novel: the aliens flew in on a nuclear spaceship and exploded. But today there are at least 32 hypotheses of what happened in the Podkamennaya Tunguska area in 1908.
Are there “little green men” among these hypotheses?
Yes. There is just no evidence for that. Today, the most likely hypothesis is that a comet-shaped body exploded over Tunguska.
So it's definitely not a meteorite?
Fallen trees in the area where the Tunguska phenomenon occurred (from the materials of the expedition of Leonid Kulik, 1927)
A meteorite is something that appears on the earth's surface. Or on the surface of Mars or the Moon, it doesn't matter. Important - on the surface. Nothing of the kind was found either in the Tunguska forest falls or nearby. So this, apparently, was a small comet - according to calculations, about 20 meters in diameter, consisting of ice crystals interspersed with some kind of proto-substance - carbon or iron, which flew into dense layers at a tremendous speed of more than 20 kilometers per second Earth's atmosphere and exploded at an altitude of about 10 km. That is why no crater was found in the Tunguska region. And a shock wave came to Earth and then a blast wave. Therefore, the pines in this area were not stacked in concentric circles, as they should have been as a result of such an explosion, but lay down in the shape of a butterfly - this is the result of a shock wave. The explosion was about 15-20 megatons of TNT - a thousand Hiroshima 1 . The first to put forward this hypothesis was Academician Georgy Ivanovich Petrov, who later was the organizer and first director of the Space Research Institute. True, there is one problem with this hypothesis: according to calculations, the density of that comet-shaped body - in order for it to explode the way it exploded - should have been significantly less than the density of air. That is, it was such a loose, loose lump of snow. This raises doubts among some scientists: it is believed that the density of cometary bodies is still greater. It is possible - there is such a hypothesis - that it was an asteroid. Giuseppe Longo, a professor at the University of Bologna and a member of several Tunguska expeditions, examined fallen pine trees: he claims to have found particles of cosmic matter, that is, what was left of the cosmic body after the explosion. A number of geologists claim that in the place of the Tunguska phenomenon there was a tension in the earth's crust, as happens on glass: it is enough to hit a pebble and it shatters. There was such a tension, and a meteoroid - this is the name of a cosmic body that flies to the Earth, it can be an asteroid or a comet - hit this fault, as a result, an explosion occurred that knocked down centuries-old pines on such a huge area. There are all sorts of hypotheses.
What is the probability that such a meteoroid will fly into the Earth's gravitational field and explode somewhere above our heads today?
Something very similar to the Tunguska phenomenon took place in 1930 in the upper reaches of the Amazon: there was also an explosion, and no craters were found either. In 2002, in the upper reaches of the Vitim River - this is Eastern Siberia, a tributary of the Lena, "where gold is dug in the mountains" - a glow and an explosion were also recorded, but no funnels were found either. In short, phenomena similar to the Tunguska, although smaller in scale, are recorded approximately every 20 years.
Does this periodicity have any explanation?
No. The point is this. There is an asteroid belt that lies between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars. It is believed that the planet Phaethon was between them a long time ago, but as a result of some kind of cataclysm, it exploded and many thousands of fragments were formed. However, Jupiter has a very strong gravitational field that can affect these fragments. And they collide with each other. Therefore, a number of asteroids appear, which change their orbit. Yes, they all revolve around the Sun, but some asteroids' orbits intersect the Earth's orbit. And some descend from outer orbit and are exposed to the gravitational field of the Earth. Here they are the most dangerous. Look at our satellite the Moon: once it was believed that the "pockmarks" on its surface are of volcanic origin. It is now known for certain that craters are the result of the impact of cosmic bodies. The same is with Mars. The Earth has a shield - the atmosphere, in the dense layers of which thousands of tons of meteoroids burn. But some may not burn.
How NASA artists envision Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 hitting Jupiter
AND - ?
There was such a comet, named after astronomers - Shoemaker-Levy 9. In 1994, scientists managed to observe for the first time how it plopped onto Jupiter: there was an amazing Jupiter quake, a lot of matter rose from the planet. As for the Earth, the same Tunguska comet flew in the direction of Yekaterinburg, St. Petersburg, Helsinki - if it had not exploded over Siberia, these cities would have been wiped off the face of the earth. Not only is there a shock wave, but also thermal radiation, very high temperatures ... In short, the consequences can be catastrophic. The impact of an asteroid with a diameter of about 100 m on the Earth's surface will destroy everything within a radius of up to 1000 km from the place of impact, fires will cover vast areas, a huge amount of ash and dust will be thrown into the atmosphere, which will then settle for several years. In March 1989, a 300-meter celestial body crossed the Earth's orbit at the point where it was only six hours earlier, and the appearance was unexpected - it was detected already at the moment of removal. In May 1996, an asteroid with a diameter of 500 m flew only 450 thousand km from the Earth. In 2004, the asteroid 2007 WD5 almost hit Mars - if this happened, the impact would be tantamount to a Tunguska phenomenon. It is predicted that in April 2029, the asteroid Apophis will fly quite close to Earth.
And how can one protect oneself from such an "alien"?
There are many proposals for this. The father of the hydrogen bomb, Edward Teller, once proposed creating a super-powerful nuclear bomb and “hitting” it on a cosmic body that could be dangerous to the planet. However, the problem is that if you detonate this bomb in space, then only 10-15, maximum 20 percent of the energy of the explosion will affect this dangerous space body. Therefore, it is necessary to introduce this bomb into the body of the object to a decent depth.
How was it in the movie "Armageddon"?
Exactly. At the Lavochkin Research and Production Association, we came up with the Citadel planetary defense project: to create a space constellation of a thousand rockets, put them into orbit and follow - if a dangerous comet appears, hit it. It seems to me that there may be a simpler and, accordingly, cheaper option - to use not nuclear, but kinetic, that is, force impact. The idea is very simple: most asteroids burn up in the Earth's atmosphere, and for those that may not burn up, it is necessary to create an artificial atmosphere. It is impossible to create a gaseous atmosphere in space. Therefore, it is necessary to create it from artificial particles - such a cloud of particles of metal, silicon oxide, sand.
Artificial atmosphere - is it something from the realm of fantasy?
No. We can do all this: creating such artificial clouds and carrying them with a rocket to any distance is not difficult. Such "clouds" are created in space for radar protection of missile combat formations. And how big could such a cloud be? With a length of 200, 300, 400 kilometers ... The Americans once brought 200 kg of copper needles into the near-Earth space. They occupied the entire near-Earth space. For what? In order to clog our radars. Then the French put the Ariane 4 into Earth orbit, and it was as if—and I don't believe them—there was an accident and it exploded. Again, all near-Earth space was littered with space debris. This is called "chaff". And you propose to put something similar on the way of a dangerous space object? I propose to create artificial cloud formations on the way of a dangerous space object. If an asteroid or comet is about 100–200 meters in diameter, then they can be destroyed by 5–6 Proton missiles. It is difficult to bring down large osmic bodies - they must be taken away from the Earth, changing the trajectory. And this can also be done with an artificial cloud.
And how much does it cost to create such a cloud?
A few years ago, the Americans did an experiment they called Deep Impact, where they hit the Temple-1 comet to see what the comet was made of. The gift was applied with a copper sphere weighing 340 kg. Why was there copper? Because so far in the solar system, copper has been found only on Earth. And therefore it was believed that as a result of this explosion it would be possible to determine what the comet consists of. So, the cost of this experiment is $ 120 million. The experiment to create an installation for an artificial cloud will cost about the same.
And this cloud will constantly hang in space?
No. Only when it is needed. And so there should be missiles on combat duty. By the way, our Zenit rocket, a ground-to-ground combat strategic missile, can be used for this. Thus, the funds have already been spent. With minor modifications, such rockets can also be used for scientific purposes - to study and protect against space bodies.
There are missiles, it is known what to do and how, it remains only to find $120 million, right?
Exactly. However, it is possible that the costs will be less.
Yury Viktorovich Chudetsky - Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor of the Aerospace Department of the Moscow State Aviation Institute. From 1974 to 1990, he headed the design department for ballistic missile warheads at the then terribly secret TsNIIMash. Laureate of the State Prize of the USSR. Now he deals with issues of asteroid and environmental safety.
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1 In 2007, an experiment on modeling the Tunguska explosion was carried out at NA SA on a superfast computer: calculations showed that the exploded body was possibly much smaller in size, and the explosion was much weaker, about 3-5 megatons.
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