One of the mysterious events in the “life” of our planet is the fall of the Tunguska meteorite, which took place in the early morning of 30 June 1908 in the area of the Podkamennaya Tunguska River, in Eastern Siberia. Like the Chelyabinsk meteorite, whose fall was recorded in 2013 by numerous video cameras, the fall of the Tunguska meteorite was (according to eyewitnesses) accompanied by a dazzlingly bright glow. Because the size of the latter was considerably larger, the explosion had a striking power: 40—50 megatonnes of TNT equivalent. The explosion occurred at a height of 5-10 km and was recorded by seismological stations situated not only relatively close to the epicentre of the explosion but even on the opposite side of the Earth. The explosion was heard at a distance of more than 1000 km (for comparison: the distance from Moscow to St Petersburg is about 700 km). Trees were felled and the windows of houses were broken over an area of more than 2000 km2. Colossal loss of human life was avoided thanks to the sparse population of the area where the meteorite fell.The difficult situation in the country did not allow scientific expeditions to be sent to the site of the fall. For this reason the first expedition was organised in 1927 (19 years after the fall of the meteorite!) under the leadership of A. Kulikov. To the surprise of the scientists, they found no remains of the meteorite. This news gave an impetus to hundreds of hypotheses about the event of 1908, ranging from man-made causes to religious events.
Subsequent expeditions made it possible to determine the composition of the soil, water, plants and so on in the area of the explosion. Substances were identified that confirm the extraterrestrial origin of the “fallen” body. One of the widespread versions of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite is that it consisted for the most part of ice. This explains the absence of fragments of the meteorite.
According to one of the most interesting hypotheses about the nature of the “Tunguska meteorite”, the phenomenon was caused by an experiment of the brilliant physicist Nikola Tesla on the wireless transmission of electrical energy. This hypothesis remains highly doubtful, however, since at the time of the fall of the Tunguska meteorite Nikola was 12 years old.
Since 1927, hundreds of books have been written about the “Tunguska meteorite”, international expeditions organised, scientific seminars held, and so on. With the development of technology, some hypotheses have begun to be confirmed by the results of calculations carried out with computer programs. Nevertheless, the fall of the Tunguska meteorite remains not fully investigated to this day and continues to arouse the interest of many modern scientists.