Tunguska blast
 

A huge explosion happened in Russia 103 years ago, before the nuclear bomb was invented. It was about 1,000 times more powerful then the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima, blasted stuff 3-6 miles in the air, and nobody knows exactly why or how it happens. Cool shit IMO.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event

says on the link it was most likely an impact from a meteoroid or comet -
where's the big mystery?

It was aliens maaaaaaaan. I mean c'mon duh.

It is interesting though. What if that happened now, and was a direct hit to a big city. Crazyness.

If I recall, some of the weirdness is that given the size of the explosion, you'd expect a pretty massive meteorite, and thus a substantial crater at the epicenter. Instead, the blast pattern was more akin to a bomb detonated before actual impact (can't remember what those are called...aerial burst or something like that?), which was considered unusual for a meteorite.

No crater was found, no foreign object was ever found, and the lake that was formed around the same time has trees at the bottom of it, meaning it was an "air burst" explosion caused by a meteor if indeed it was a meteor.

Some physicist from NW Europe (can't remember where exactly) thought it might be an explosion caused by gases pushed up from within the earth that detonated once the gases made there way to our atmosphere and where ignited by static electricity (like in a dust storm).

Not aliens.

You got it, it's weird that it exploded like one of the nuclear bombs over Japan instead of hitting the ground, and no evidence of a traditional meteor was ever found.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_burst

All of the evidence I have seen, and what most people in the scientific community believe is indeed an air burst of a large astronomical fragment. I kind of thought Tunguska was sort of common knowledge... :dunno:

Geez, follow the Wikipedia link to the Tsar Bomba. Crazy shit.

Gozer's entry in our world was, according to Ray in Ghostbusters, "The biggest interdimensional crossrip since the Tunguska Blast of 1909".

Of course they got the year wrong, but those guys were kinda screwups.

I did it.

so you're saying this is a footprint of the staypuffed marshmellow man?

There was a program about on the Smithsonian channel last night. Interesting stuff.

Does that not sound like an excuse given by the Men in Black? I can hear Tommy Lee Jones' voice now followed by a bright light.

it was obama's fault

Obama took out a 799 Billion dollar loan using the blast site as collateral.

Until the Russians said "Nyet".

Now what will he do…what *will* he do?

:gtfo:

I find this strangely believable. Was it a turkey and havarti grilling accident?

So..if this blast from over a century ago was not manmade…could it happen again?

If so, would it trigger nuclear war depending on where it occurred?

I wonder what happened in Tunguska.

Yes.
Maybe. I'd say most countries with nuclear capabilities have the technology to figure out if a missile is coming at them or not, and assuming it was a meteoroid or comet, these things would be seen coming from space, and even though the end result looks pretty similar to a man made nuclear explosion, I'd say there would be enough of a difference in the characteristics of the blast for it to be known that it was not man made.
This:

That viddie was cool as hell...