Theories

What really happened then in Siberia?
The Tatar name for Siberia is "sleeping country".
On 30 June 1908,at 7:17 local time, the inhabitants of the Siberian region of Tunguska were woken up rather rudely. On this morning, an explosion with the force of 2,000 nuclear bombs shook the region. A light column 20 kilometres high was followed by a black mushroom-shaped cloud.
The following three nights were so bright all over Europe that newspapers could be read without artificial light out of doors. It is still not clear what caused the catastrophe. Here we would like to introduce you to the most popular theories – what do you believe?

The meteorite theory
A meteorite is one of the most widespread theories for the cause of the Tunguska catastrophe. When a meteor falls, a heavenly body is captured by the Earth’s gravitational pull and strikes the planet’s surface. Most of them are so small that they leave no clear trace on the landscape. On 30 June, 1908, the shock wave of an explosion was recorded in a Siberian meteorological station. A seismic wave was also registered worldwide by seismographs. Why, then, were neither pieces of the projectile nor an impact crater found?

Geophysical interpretation
Several scientists, most recently the German astrophysicist Wolfgang Kundt, suspect that a volcanic eruption was the cause of the catastrophe. The event is said to have been an explosion of 10 million tonnes of escaping methane gas which rose to the upper layers of the atmosphere, ignited there, and burned down to the escape point as a column of fire. This theory is corroborated by eyewitnesses who report seeing the light moving in a variety of directions and feeling a small earthquake. However, the luminance produced by gas burning in atmospheric oxygen is barely greater than that produced by a candle flame, and it radiates very little heat. How does this theory explain the brightness of the explosion and the intense heat generated?

The antimatter hypothesis
In 1941, the American physicist Lapace proposed the hypothesis that the ‘Tunguska meteorite’ was composed of antimatter. The antimatter theory assumes that every elementary particle has a corresponding anti-particle. Thus, in our universe, not only matter, but also antimatter can exist. If matter and antimatter meet, they convert completely into radiation. This releases the maximum amount of energy, resulting in a nuclear explosion. If an antimeteorite entered the Earth’s atmosphere, it would explode like a thermonuclear hydrogen bomb without reaching the surface of the Earth. There is, however, no direct evidence for the natural existence of antimatter.