On the morning of June 30, 1908 — now designated Asteroid Day — a roughly 150-foot object exploded over Tunguska with the force of 10–15 megatons. The 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor was about 20 meters (66 feet) wide and injured roughly 1,500 people. Decades of eyewitness radiant point analysis (points A, K, and Z) place Tunguska's origin near the Taurid stream, whose resonant asteroids orbit near 2.2 AU.
Tunguska event linked to Taurid meteor complex via radiant point analysis
Key facts
- The Tunguska event occurred on the morning of June 30, 1908, now designated as Asteroid Day
- The Tunguska object was approximately 150 feet in diameter and exploded with the force of a 15 megaton hydrogen bomb
- The Chelyabinsk meteor (February 2013) was about 50 feet in diameter and injured hundreds
- Radiant point analysis (points A, K, and Z) refined over decades using eyewitness accounts places the Tunguska object's origin near the Taurid stream
- The Taurid stream's radiant is closest to the beta Taurids; associated asteroids include Geographos, Icarus, and Adonis, all at approximately 2.2 astronomical units from the sun
- NASA Apollo-era lunar seismometers recorded a major boulder swarm impacting the moon in 1975 coinciding with Taurid meteor stream timing
- A giant comet (potentially 50 miles in diameter, hundreds of times larger than Halley's) is hypothesized to have entered a sub-Jovian orbit between 25,000 and 30,000 years ago
Sources
THE TUNGUSKA EXPLOSION OF 1908icr.org
The Tunguska explosion occurred on the morning of June 30, 1908 at 7:17 A.M. local time (0h 17m 11s U.T.) in the area of the Stony Tunguska River … velocity of ...
1908 SIBERIA EXPLOSION: Reconstructing an Asteroid Impact ...psi.edu
At 7:17 AM on the morning of June 30, 1908, a mysterious explosion occurred in the skies over Siberia. It was caused by the impact and breakup of a large ...
The Tunguska Mystery Explosion | Originsorigins.osu.edu
On June 30, 1908, a massive mysterious explosion of a cosmic body shook the skies of Tunguska (in Siberia), on a date that would come to be ...
Tunguska event - Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org
The Tunguska event was a large explosion of between 3 and 50 megatons TNT equivalent … on the morning of 30 June [O.S. 17 June] 1908.
115 Years Ago: The Tunguska Asteroid Impact Event - NASAnasa.gov
On June 30, 1908, an asteroid plunged into Earth's atmosphere and exploded in the skies over Siberia. reported seeing a fireball and hearing a ...
Was this story useful?
Keep exploring
Every site on this page sits on the globe, and the people who research them are on the Discord.
3D Globe · Sites by country · Story Archive · Research Library · Weekly Journal · Search
AI-generated text · images from the original sources · always verify with the sources.