1908 - EXPLOSION IN SIBERIAJune 30, 1908, 7:17a.m., local time, an immense explosion occurs at the heart of Siberia, in the Tunguska region. It is felt by all of Europe, and at 500 miles from the point of impact, a train conductor for the Transsiberian line stops, thinking that one of the wagons has just derailed. For more than a week, the nights are clearer than usual. Seeing that the area is extremely isolated and no one was really bothered at the time by this phenomenon, we will have to wait until after the Revolution of 1917 before this event is brought to the attention of the public. In 1921, the Academy of Science asks the scientist Leonod Kulik to investigate the fall of meteors on USSR territory. It's at this time that Kulik discovers that something extraordinary happened in 1908.The reports that he made are contradictory and do not go with the nature of the thing that fell in Siberia. Statements from the eyewitnesses provide surprising precision : they say the ground opened up from the shock before releasing an immense column of smoke and fire towards the sky while a shockwave devasted the region. However, all the witnesses who were questioned had only seen the catastrophe from far away, and Kulik had to wait a long time before finding a local meteorologist who had done an estimate of the point of impact. It is not until 1917 that the Academy of Science finally decides to finance an expedition there. After a tiring journey on horseback and by raft through the immense Siberian forest, in April of 1927 Kulik finally reaches the border of the zone devastated by the explosion. At this place, just beyond the horizon, almost 20 years after the event, there was not one standing tree of normal size. All the trees had been knocked down at the same time and pointed in the same direction, towards the outside of the zone. Returning in June, Kulik goes further among the knocked down trees, and it will take him several days of heavy walking to reach the widened and quite shallow depression which is evidence of a point of impact. The destroyed zone goes 37 miles beyond this point but in a very irregular way. An aerial view in 1938 will show, moreover, that only 781 sq. miles of forest were flattened. Something stranger, even on the edges of the point of impact, certain trees only had a burnt trunk and are still standing. Other mysteries arise: - Why hasn't even the smallest piece of meteorite ever been found during the prior expeditions? - Why do hundreds of witnesses affirm having seen the incandescent " meteor " change direction before crashing? - Why does it seem that plant and animal life have been genetically affected in the zone of devastation - Why isn't there a crater at the point of impact? Conclusions show that the only form of explosion capable of answering each one of these questions, and explaining the apparition of an immense column of fire accompanied by a large quantity of smoke, is a nuclear type explosion which would have taken place at a slightly higher altitude above the ground. For the moment, all other explanations put forward by scientists (minuscule black hole that would have crossed the Earth but without its departure being noticed, improbable block of antimatter coming from space, comet so discreet that it would not have been detected by astronomers even though it was charging straight at the Earth or large meteor self-destructing at ground level) remain incapable of accounting for the " meteor's " behavior before impact as well as its effects on the ground and the genetics of the local species. Therefore remains the hypothesis of a spaceship in distress whose propellers would have explosed, provoking a complete disintegration of the machine and the erratic effects of the shockwave. A hypothesis perhaps reinforced by a poor photograph taken by a train passenger at the station in Kansk about 7:00a.m. on June 30, 1908 at more than 220 miles to the south-west of the point of impact and which shows a bright body moving horizontally in the direction of this point...
|