Geologists explain the origin of the Tunguska - The Russian Newspaper

Geologists say that the Tunguska phenomenon was a meteorite. This conclusion Ukrainian and American scientists analyzed the mineral and chemical composition of the grains found by Soviet scientists once near the crash site of a celestial body.

Tunguska catastrophe took place over 100 years ago in the Stony Tunguska River basin. Since then, the area was visited by many expeditions, but on the site of the explosion has not been found to dropping or fragments of the cosmic body. So there is a version that the Tunguska body was a small comet, which is completely evaporate at high altitude. Although many supporters and meteorite theory, but they still failed to present any evidence. And a group of geologists led by Victor Kvasnitsa Institute of Geochemistry, Mineralogy and Ore Formation of the NAS of Ukraine stated that it has a compelling case. Scientists studied the grain found in 1980. But because of the imperfection of methods for many years failed to unambiguously confirm their meteoritic origin.

But today, using mass spectroscopy and scanning electron microscope, the researchers were able to fill this gap. It was found that the grains are composed of graphite inclusions microdiamonds and “space” minerals – troilite, and taenita shreyberzita. This means that the Tunguska object can be attributed to a rare subtype of the number of meteorites of the carbonaceous chondrites. That is, according to scientists, “meteor” theory is likely true, but the “comet” hypothesis should be put into question.

Comment

Andrew Ol’khovatov, the candidate of physical and mathematical sciences:

In my memory, it can not even count what the bill find the Tunguska meteorite. Now his arguments lead Ukrainian scientists. It is necessary to pay attention to a few points. First, in 1908, took more than a century. Cosmic matter falls to the ground every day. Therefore, an accurate binding the presence of particles is studied by 1908. And again it is difficult to do, you should at least be compared with data for the adjacent layers of peat.

But the most important thing is that so far there is no evidence at all that the Ukrainian scientists studied particles have a cosmic origin. The fact is that in the 1990s, British researchers analyzed microdiamonds from the epicenter of Tunguska, as they assumed in 1908. However, concluded that their terrestrial origin.

reason for the “mess” in the fact that the epicenter of the Tunguska event coincided with the muzzle of paleovolcano. In this area of ??the Earth 250 million years ago was the most powerful of the known volcanic activity. Therefore, this area of ??the planet – a real natural larder. By the way, research geologist from St. Petersburg Gennady Tikhonovich Skublova identified a number of signs that in 1908 there was an increase of degassing paleovolcano.

However, if the results are Ukrainian scientists in the field of volcanology or Meteoritics, the appearance of this work, as well as any new information is welcome. And while the title of the discoverers of the Tunguska meteorite matter for more than a century, is still vacant.