A quiz question · medium
On the morning of 30 June 1908 something exploded several kilometres above the Siberian taiga with the force of a hydrogen bomb. The first scientific expedition to reach the site arrived how long afterward?
Kulik reached the Tunguska blast zone in 1927. The Russian Empire had bigger problems in 1908 (it was running out of money and political legitimacy), then the First World War, then the Revolution, then the Civil War. Kulik found about 2,150 square kilometres of forest flattened in a radial pattern around a central point — but no crater. The explosion is now understood as an airburst of a stony asteroid or icy comet roughly 50–60 metres across at about 5–10 km altitude. The 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor was a much smaller version of the same phenomenon.
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The Morning the Siberian Sky Caught Fire On 30 June 1908 something exploded above central Siberia with the force of a hydrogen bomb. It took the first scientists nineteen years to reach the site.
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