Science & Technology

First Tunguska meteorite fragments found ?

By T.K. Randall
May 3, 2013 ·  16 comments

Image Credit: Wikipedia In 1908 Tunguska was the site of a tremendous explosion that was 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The blast flattened 80 million trees over an area covering 2,000 square kilometers, however due to the sparse population of the region only one person was killed. For years scientists have attempted to explain the cause of the explosion with the prevailing theory being that the area was hit by a meteor that most likely exploded when it reached Earth's atmosphere.

Now scientist Andrei Zlobin from the Russian Academy of Sciences has announced that he has located what he believes to be three meteorite fragments in the region that he claims are from the object that caused the event. If he is right then the discovery could offer important new clues in to what happened and help to solve the mystery once and for all.[!gad]In 1908 Tunguska was the site of a tremendous explosion that was 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The blast flattened 80 million trees over an area covering 2,000 square kilometers, however due to the sparse population of the region only one person was killed. For years scientists have attempted to explain the cause of the explosion with the prevailing theory being that the area was hit by a meteor that most likely exploded when it reached Earth's atmosphere.

Now scientist Andrei Zlobin from the Russian Academy of Sciences has announced that he has located what he believes to be three meteorite fragments in the region that he claims are from the object that caused the event. If he is right then the discovery could offer important new clues in to what happened and help to solve the mystery once and for all.

Source: Technology Review | Comments (16)

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