The Tunguska event occurred more than 100 years ago, but to this day attracts the attention of scientists and gives birth to all sorts of conspiracy theories. A powerful explosion, the cause of which has not been fully established, literally leveled everything over an area of more than 2,100 square kilometers. Its power was equivalent to 10-20 megatons of TNT, that is, it was about 1000 times more powerful than the explosion of the Little Boy atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. However, no crater was found at the epicenter. According to one version, the Tunguska event could have been caused by a black hole.
A powerful explosion, called the Tunguska event, turned an area of more than 2,100 square kilometers into a scorched field. Photo source: inosmi.ru
Tunguska event — eyewitness accounts
A powerful explosion occurred at 7:14 am on June 30, 1908 in the territory of the modern Krasnoyarsk Territory of Russia in the area of the Podkamennaya Tunguska River. Eyewitnesses heard it hundreds of kilometers from its epicenter. Moreover, they claim that several explosions sounded at once, similar to cannon shots. Also, according to them, it suddenly became very light over the mountain, as if a second Sun had appeared in the sky.
One of the women who became an eyewitness describes the event as follows — “My eyes hurt and I even closed them. It was like lightning. Immediately there was a loud thunderclap. This was the second blow. The morning was sunny, there were no clouds, our Sun was shining brightly, as always, and then the second Sun appeared!” Then, according to her, she saw something above in a different place, and a third explosion was heard. At the same time, the wind came, knocked her off her feet and hit a fallen tree. Other eyewitnesses said they saw a blue “tube” in the sky.
The Tunguska event occurred over the territory of the modern Krasnoyarsk Territory. Photo source: paleohunters.ru
According to one of the most common versions, a meteorite exploded over the Krasnoyarsk Territory. Since the explosion occurred in the atmosphere at an altitude of 10-14 kilometers, no impact crater appeared. In 2013, one of the geologists of the Russian Academy of Sciences even claimed that he had found fragments of this meteorite. According to another version, or even a conspiracy theory, the Tunguska event was caused by the experiment of the scientist Nikola Tesla, which remained secret.
How black holes appear
Scientists suggest that giant stars degenerate into black holes at the end of their life cycle, that is, when they run out of fuel. Under the influence of their own gravity, they begin to fall inward and shrink to a critically small size. The result is a new ultra-high-density object known as a “black hole.” Since the process of degeneration of a star into a black hole requires a very large amount of mass, only stars that are at least 20 times larger than the Sun are capable of this.
In addition, there is supposedly another type of black holes, which are usually called primordial. They arose in the first seconds of the existence of the Universe. At that moment, all the matter from which all cosmic objects subsequently arose was tightly packed. The mass of primordial black holes can be different – some were 100 thousand times lighter than a paper clip, while others could have a mass 100 thousand times greater than the Sun. After some time, when the Universe expanded a little, the conditions for the formation of such black holes disappeared.
A powerful shock wave was felt hundreds of kilometers from the epicenter of the explosion: Photo source: paleohunters.ru
The black hole caused an explosion on Earth
If primordial black holes really exist, then they could pass , and perhaps they are still passing through the Earth. We are talking about microscopic objects, smaller than an atom. However, they do not cause any harm to the planet. There is also an assumption that larger black holes pass through the Earth once every 1 thousand years.
In 1973, a group of physicists published a paper in the journal Nature suggesting that the Tunguska event may have been caused by the passage of a relatively large black hole through the Earth. This version can be confirmed not only by the absence of an impact crater, but also by the blue light that many eyewitnesses reported.
The Tunguska event could theoretically have been caused by a black hole. Image source: naked-science.ru
According to scientists, during an explosion caused by a black hole, most of the radiation will be in vacuum ultraviolet. This light will be absorbed and re-emitted at longer wavelengths. In this case, there would be little strong X-ray radiation, and the plasma column accompanying it would be just dark blue.
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Then physicists suggested that this version was quite easy to test — on the far side of the Earth there should be traces of a black hole exiting. According to scientists, it should have followed an almost straight path through the planet. However, no such evidence has been found so far, but perhaps it exists somewhere on the ocean floor. Although the version seems fantastic, it has not been refuted.