The Day the Sky Split Open
On the morning of June 30, 1908, a massive explosion flattened 80 million trees over 2,000 square kilometers near the Stony Tunguska River in Siberia. The blast was so powerful (estimated at 12 megatons) that it knocked people off their feet 40 miles away and lit up the night sky as far away as London. Windows shattered hundreds of kilometers from the epicenter. Yet, when the first expedition reached the site 19 years later, they found something baffling: there was no impact crater.
Where is the Meteor?
If an asteroid had hit Earth with that force, it should have left a massive hole. Instead, the trees at “ground zero” were still standing upright, stripped of their branches like telephone poles, while the surrounding forest was flattened in a radial pattern pointing away from the center.
- The Airburst Theory: The leading scientific explanation is that a stony meteor or comet entered the atmosphere and exploded 5 to 10 kilometers above the ground due to immense pressure. This “airburst” caused the shockwave without a physical impact.
- Antimatter or Black Hole: In the 1970s, fringe scientists proposed that a tiny black hole or a chunk of antimatter collided with Earth, passing straight through the planet. However, this would have caused an exit wound on the other side of the globe, which didn’t happen.
- Nikola Tesla’s Death Ray: A popular conspiracy theory suggests Nikola Tesla was testing a wireless energy weapon that day. While Tesla was indeed working on such technology, there is no evidence he fired it, let alone targeted Siberia.
The Legacy: The Tunguska Event remains the largest impact event on Earth in recorded history. It serves as a terrifying reminder that the planet is constantly in the crosshairs of cosmic debris.