rdfs:comment
| - On 30 June 1908, shortly after 7 a.m., residents of the hills northwest of Lake Baikal in Siberia saw a light in the sky, nearly as bright as the sun. This was followed by a flash of light, a sound like artillery fire, and a shockwave that knocked people off their feet and shattered windows. Something had exploded in the forest near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River, with energy equivalent to 10-15 megatons of TNT (However, some recent experiments indicate that the blast may have actually been smaller, at "only" 3-5 megatons). Sub-Trope of Historical In-Joke. Compare Roswell That Ends Well.
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abstract
| - On 30 June 1908, shortly after 7 a.m., residents of the hills northwest of Lake Baikal in Siberia saw a light in the sky, nearly as bright as the sun. This was followed by a flash of light, a sound like artillery fire, and a shockwave that knocked people off their feet and shattered windows. Something had exploded in the forest near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River, with energy equivalent to 10-15 megatons of TNT (However, some recent experiments indicate that the blast may have actually been smaller, at "only" 3-5 megatons). In 1921, Russian mineralogist Leonid Kulik concluded from eyewitness accounts that the explosion was from a meteorite impact. He led an expedition to the Tunguska region, hoping to find and salvage the meteor itself. Instead, they found a 50 kilometer-wide region of scorched and felled trees, with no impact crater to be found. Today, most scientists agree that The Tunguska Event was caused by a meteoroid exploding in mid-air; there's some debate over whether the exploding space rock came from a comet or an asteroid. Other, less credible but more interesting, theories suggest that the event was caused by: a deuterium-rich meteorite causing an all-natural thermonuclear explosion; a chunk of antimatter; a miniature black hole passing through the Earth; an Alien spacecraft exploding or discharging some alien weaponry; psychic experiments or magic rituals gone wrong; or a test run of Nikola Tesla's Death Ray. And those are the theories that people believe in Real Life. The fictional references to Tunguska are really out there. Sub-Trope of Historical In-Joke. Compare Roswell That Ends Well. Examples of The Tunguska Event include:
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