Fire In The Sky: Tunguska 1908

Over the years I have researched a lot of interesting stories, but few have left me scratching my head like the Tunguska event of 1908.  This phenomenon occurred in a very remote and impoverished area of Siberia near the arctic circle, but it's effects were witnessed by hundreds of people from Russia to London. 

Artist impression of explosion

At around 7:14 a.m. on June 30th 1908, eyewitnesses reported seeing a column of bluish light moving from east to north with a brightness "like the sun."  Moments later, a massive explosion ripped through the surrounding country side producing a shock wave that actually knocked people off of their feet, and broke windows hundreds of miles away.  The explosion registered on seismic detectors all across Eurasia and in some places would have registered 5.0 on the Richter scale.  Atmospheric disturbances were so severe that the effects were experienced as far away as Great Britain for several days afterwards!  Lights glowed in the night sky so bright they illuminated the streets of London and were reported by many newspapers.  Yet no crater or evidence of impact was ever found.  Due to it's remote location, and the chaos of several large scale conflicts breaking out in the area around the same time (WWI, Russian Revolution, etc.) it took researchers more than a decade to actually mount an expedition to the location.  What explorers found when they arrived was nothing short of stunning.

Tunguska damage 1927

When officials arrived in an area of forest thought to be "ground zero" they found over 250 square kilometers literally flattened, the charred trees lay in odd concentric patterns and were stripped of bark, very closely resembling nuclear fallout in Japan during WWII... except nuclear technology would not be developed for another twenty five years!  Bizarre marsh bogs had developed, and researchers found evidence of radiation throughout the area, as well as signs of what would later become known as radiation sickness among individuals that lived near the epicenter.   

So, what caused this remarkable event at the top of the world?  Many scientists believe that the air burst destruction of a meteor or asteroid was the culprit, some say it may have been a comet, theories of a natural nuclear explosion, antimatter, aliens, and even experiments performed by Nicola Tesla using his Wardenclyffe Tower have been proposed, but there are as many inconsistencies as there are questions surrounding what truly occurred. 

The possibility of a celestial body causing the damage is highly likely, but many of the witnesses to the original event spoke of seeing an odd shaped mass moving across the sky, as well as seeing the object change course, and of the object having a very low speed.  This has lead some researchers to support the idea that this could have been a very significant UFO encounter. Many believe either a nuclear powered craft exploded causing the damage or one discharged a weapon for some reason.

Crystals found in Tunguska

Later expeditions uncovered even more unusual material such as strange inscribed crystals and chemical compounds that can only be made in outer space.  All of this evidence coupled with the fact no other event in recorded history can be used as reference for Tunguska, leaves it alone in its oddity.  It is likely, which is the case with many of these stories, that we will never know what happened that morning in 1908.