Science or fringe science? Removing the ‘giggle factor’ from Near Earth Object impacts
FollowOn June 30, 7.17am in a remote, sparsely inhabited area in Siberia, Russia, near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River, occurred an event of enormous devastation. An asteroid or comet estimated to be 40-50 meters in diameter, exploded at low altitude with an energy almost 200 times that of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Trees where knocked down over an area of two thousand square kilometres, hundreds of reindeer where killed and the seismic shock from the airborne explosion was registered on barometers in England. Eyewitnesses 60km away, reported seeing the northern sky covered with fire, followed by an enormous bang, though thankfully no human deaths were recorded.
Dan Yeoman from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory stated in an interview in 2008, “the Tunguska event is of great importance not only because of the devastation caused to a thankfully remote area, but also as it is the only modern era event of this type where we actually have first-hand accounts.