A gigantic explosion that shook part of Russia more than a century ago has never been categorically explained.
And yet, some scientists believe this could be the result of a very close encounter with a mysterious form of black hole.
The extraordinary explosion occurred just after 7 a.m. on June 30, 1980, over the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in what is now modern-day Siberia.
Its power was estimated to be equal to as much as 15 megatons of TNT, making it a thousand times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. EncyclopediaBritannicanotes.
The phenomenon flattened about 2,000 square kilometers of the surrounding land – an area larger than London – and the impact could be heard up to 1,000 kilometers away.
In 1927, Semyon Semyonov, a local farmer living 70 km south-southeast of the epicenter of the explosion, recalled his experience, saying: ‘I was sitting on the steps of my house facing north. Suddenly the sky in the north parted and a fire appeared and spread over the entire northern part of the firmament.
“At that moment I felt an intense heat, as if my shirt had caught fire. I wanted to take off my shirt and throw it away, but at that moment a powerful explosion threw me down the stairs.
“I fainted, but my wife ran out of the house and helped me up. Then we heard a very loud knocking, as if stones were falling from the sky.”
Other witnesses described seeing a “second sun” in the sky, as thunderous roars and blinding flashes filled the sky and burning trees fell around them.
Others, in the village of Nizhne-Karelinskoye, some 450 km from the epicenter, reported seeing a “blindingly bright body of blue-white color that flew overhead for about 10 minutes” and “looked like a tube.”
“There was a huge mass of black smoke and a loud knocking, but no thunder,” the local newspaper reported Sibir reported just days after the disaster.
“The buildings shook and a fire of indeterminate shape poured out [a] little dark cloud.
“All the villagers ran from their houses in panic. Women were crying and everyone thought Armageddon had arrived.”
A map of where the explosion occurred (Wikipedia via NASA)
The most confusing aspect of the entire event was that no crater was left behind, despite experts largely concluding that the event must have been the result of an asteroid impact.
The lack of a gaping hole remains a source of much debate, despite some scientists claiming it formed a nearby lake.
The mystery has inevitably led to a host of theoretical explanations, including the somewhat bizarre hypothesis that the explosion was caused by a primordial black hole passing directly through the Earth.
There are three main types of black holes, with the original ones being the smallest.
The most common kind (the medium-sized ones) are known as ‘stellar’ black holes, and these form when the center of a massive star collapses in on itself.
The largest kind is called ‘supermassive’ and is likely formed by the collapse of supermassive stars in the early universe, and can continue to grow by feeding on smaller objects or merging with other supermassive black holes.
And the group’s subordinates, the primordials, are in fact purely hypothetical: scientists have yet to find definitive evidence that these now exist or ever existed.
According to NASA: “Scientists theorize that primordial black holes formed in the first second after the universe was born.
“At that time, the regions of hot material may have been dense enough to form black holes, with potentially masses ranging from 100,000 times less than a paperclip to 100,000 times more than the Sun.
“As the universe rapidly expanded and cooled, the conditions for black hole formation ended.”
A simulated image showing how stellar black holes bend the background of stars and capture light, creating black hole silhouettes(NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA)
And while it’s entirely possible that all the original black holes evaporated as the cosmos aged, it’s also possible that some still linger in the universe.
Some experts have even suggested that mini primordial black holes, smaller than an atom, could pass harmlessly through Earth on a daily basis.
Then in a 1973 article published in the magazine NatureA team of physicists at the University of Texas suggested that the Tunguska explosion could have been caused by a larger primordial black hole crashing through the planet.
The researchers suggested that a black hole with the mass of a large asteroid would explain the lack of an impact crater, as well as the ethereal blue ‘tube’ mentioned by witnesses.
“Most of the radiation from the shock front would be in the ultraviolet vacuum and would be absorbed and re-emitted at longer wavelengths,” the study authors wrote.
“There would be little hard X-rays and the associated plasma column would appear deep blue.”
The experts then suggested that, despite not creating a crater, the black hole could still have left an exit wound on the other side of the world.
“[The black hole] would penetrate the Earth, and the stiffness of the rock would not allow a subsurface shock wave,” they explained.
“Because of its high speed and because it loses only a small portion of its energy as it passes through the Earth, the black hole should follow an almost straight line through the Earth, entering at 30° from the horizon and passing through the North -Atlantic Ocean goes out again. in the area 40°-50° N 30°-40° W.
“This exit provides a check on the entire hypothesis.”
The authors then recommended conducting research into shock waves and ocean disturbances in and around that potential “exit location.”
Suffice to say, no such evidence has been found since, and the existence of primordial black holes remains a mystery.
The blast in Tunguska felled about 80 million trees(Leonid Kulik)
In the meantime, if you want a more widely accepted – if admittedly more prosaic explanation for the Tunguska disaster – you have to return to asteroids.
The generally accepted explanation is that an asteroid, or meteoroid, with a diameter of about 50 to 80 meters (between 160 and 262 feet), exploded in the air at an altitude of 10 to 14 kilometers (six to nine miles) above the ground exploded, like IFL Science notes.
Estimates suggest the celestial rocket weighed about 220 million pounds (99 million kilograms) and entered Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of about 54,000 kilometers (about 33,555 miles) per hour before disintegrating into multiple fireballs.
The sudden release of energy from the explosion created a powerful shock wave that radiated outward and destroyed the surrounding area.
But because the explosion occurred in mid-air, no impact crater was created.
Yet, due to the remoteness of the area where the disaster occurred and the limited instruments available at the time, we have no definitive proof of the cause of this extraordinary event.
The good news is according to the Royal Museums Greenwicha Tunguska-like event is expected to occur only once per century on average.
But wait, doesn’t that mean we’re too late now…?
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