From Science Alert
In the early morning of 30 June 1908, something exploded over Siberia. The event shattered the normal stillness of the sparsely populated taiga, so powerful that it flattened an area of forest 2,150 square kilometres (830 square miles) in size - felling an estimated 80 million trees.
[...] It is often referred to as the "largest impact event in recorded history", even though no impact crater was found. Later searches have turned up fragments of rock that could be meteoric in origin, but the event still has a looming question mark. Was it really a bolide? And if it wasn't, what could it be?
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.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 11 2020, @10:45AM (6 children)
They ignore the obvious conclusion: since large iron objects can't fly into space without some form of propulsion, the fact that it lifted off means it was obviously a U.F.O., most likely teenage gray aliens out for a joyride.
(Score: 4, Funny) by zocalo on Monday May 11 2020, @11:28AM (1 child)
Nah. If it was that we'd fit right in and would have joined the party a long time ago. Or maybe that's why it only seems to be rednecks that get abducted by aliens...
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday May 11 2020, @07:51PM
Why do you think Luke wanted those power converters at Tosche station?
This sig for rent.
(Score: 4, Funny) by WeekendMonkey on Monday May 11 2020, @02:46PM (1 child)
An early attempt at crop circles, but they set the dial to high.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Tuesday May 12 2020, @08:51PM
The good people of Fraochy Bay [bbc.co.uk] know all about crop circles.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Monday May 11 2020, @11:40PM
I thought everyone knew that teenage space aliens are green and little.
The Musk/Trump interview appears to have been hacked, but not a DDOS hack...more like A Distributed Denial of Reality.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday May 12 2020, @01:42AM
Guy alien was getting head from gal alien and he lost control, side-swiping Earth before recovering.
She didn't swallow.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 11 2020, @11:42AM (11 children)
But events like that are expected to happen every couple of centuries or so. Hitting the atmosphere at exactly the right angle would be a lot less likely, elevating it from a reasonably likely occurrence to a once every million years or so occurrence. Not impossible, but less likely than the meteor just blowing up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 11 2020, @12:31PM (5 children)
Current fortune is:
> But events like that [Tunguska] are expected to happen every couple of centuries or so.
Probably also applies to generations that are lucky enough to have a poet like Dylan...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday May 11 2020, @01:54PM (4 children)
Given the number of people in this world, there are probably thousands of Dylans running about, perhaps even millions. You just haven't heard of them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 11 2020, @02:25PM
> You just haven't heard of them.
Correct, also because these others haven't won a Nobel Prize.
(Score: 3, Touché) by HiThere on Monday May 11 2020, @04:54PM (2 children)
Bob Dylan or Dylan Thomas?
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 12 2020, @03:11PM (1 child)
Or Thomas Bob?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 12 2020, @08:55PM
Thomas the Tank Engine [thomasandfriends.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Monday May 11 2020, @11:36PM (3 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 12 2020, @02:44PM (2 children)
Good point, as a number of people saw whatever the buggering thing was on it's way in...
ISTR if you go to google earth, follow the reported inbound track to the epicentre, and then extend it onwards in a fan shape, you'll find a number of similarly sized circular and elliptical shaped lakes/ponds, spread over hundreds of miles..which, owing to locations, have probably never been investigated.
But, hey, personally I'd rather it was an exploding 'great ark'...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 12 2020, @03:33PM (1 child)
That's Siberia in a nutshell. Probably a combination of kettle lakes left over from ancient glaciers and methane outbursts after the glaciers retreated.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 13 2020, @01:28PM
I came across this pseudo-paper with this stuff one night on a trawl for something completely different, must have been over a decade ago now (before I started my last job, I had lots of idle time..). I've checked my local stash to see if I'd downloaded it, no joy, and I've tried finding the page again with similar results, so I can only go on what I remember of it.
He'd worked out a probable ground track for the object based on extant eyewitness accounts, and then checked it on google earth for, as he put it, anomalous numbers, shapes and clusters of circular/ellipsoid lakes either along the inbound track, or in his arbitrary shaped fan-out from the explosion centre in the direction of this extension of this track. The problem is/was, as you rightly point out, there are other explanations for the formation of lakes of these shapes, the problem also is, the location of some of what he had as potential 'targets', the middle of Siberia, miles away from any sort of roads..it's the sort of expedition you'd now see someone wanting crowdfunding for (..and I'd probably give them some, if only for the inevitable 'found footage' of them getting eaten alive by the mozzies and horse flies..).
It was at least an interesting attempt at pointing out possible locations to look for fragments of the thing, as it didn't exactly leave too much at ground zero.
Anyhoo, Tunguska wasn't unique, these [bibliotecapleyades.net] keep getting overlooked (ok, not as spectacular, but still...)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 12 2020, @05:47PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBXjf8Jce10 [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 11 2020, @02:57PM
Vote for it every presidential election. Maybe one day it will decide it has enough votes and actually show up.